The Fire Drake Files No.2 - Darjeeling & Himalaya Class B tank engine

I was entranced by film footage of the Darjeeling and Himalaya Railways many years ago and a preserved locomotive from the DHR visited the Launceston Steam Railway over the summer. It didn't come all the way from India for it now lives a life of restful ease in the UK.

What captivated me from then start was an aerial view that must have been filmed by a helicopter of a small but big-hearted little train struggling up the sort of scenery a fantasy writer would like to have imagined. It was obviously working hard but seemed to have lost its way slightly for it went round and round in circles while climbing all the time. It looped around conical hills with an abyss in every direction and sometimes gave up climbing and went backwards - except it didn't go down the hill but lost its way again and, in a cruel trick of fate for a train that must have wanted to freewheel downhill so much, it went up the hill backwards (just like the David Bowie song).

How could a train get so confused?

The Darjeeling train even went down what appeared to be a rabbit hole in its search for the summit, perhaps slyly reasoning that going into the ground would offer some downward relief but - no - it just came out at the other end of the burrow a bit higher up again.

And this was what made me like the Darjeeling & Himalaya Railway so much. As the little train struggled out of its hole, the passengers - all dressed in brilliant white - sportingly leapt off the carriages and ran up the side of the embankment next to the tunnel mouth. Relieved of some of its burden, the little tank engine put on a spurt of speed and rattled round another loop to line itself up with another tunnel some distance above the last one. As it came out of the curve and dug its wheels in to reach the tunnel as fast as it could, the passengers scrambling up the bank must have been regretting their decision to jump off but even from a distance they seemed to be grinning. As the fastest climbers reached the higher track, the engine dived into the tunnel before them. As the tunnel swallowed the train the passengers hurled themselves at the train and somehow they all got back on, even if their friend shad to pull them aboard bodily.

It looked like the happiest railway service in the world. Although built by the British as a strategic objective in an attempt to add Tibet to their empire, the Indians found ways of getting the most fun out of it.

And as the last passengers clapped each other on the back and laughed again before being plunged into darkness once more, I wanted to join them. For how many people have raced a train on foot and won?

So when a Darjeeling & Himalaya Class B tank engine came to Cornwall I had to go and see it. I was too late to ride behind but I didn’t mind because I’d come to just see it.

It’s an odd looking machine with front and rear overhangs almost as long as its wheelbase but I really like it. There’s an enormous coal bunker in front of the cab but a tiny saddle tank between chimney and dome. It doesn’t look big enough for an engine this size and it isn’t – it’s supplemented by a well tank under the footplate and between the frames ahead of the front axle. The saddle tank probably doesn’t qualify as a saddle tank On the DHR, they called them collar tanks. Some engines has extensions to the well tanks ahead of the cylinders to increase water capacity a little further. Some people reckon the added capacity was negligible and that their real purpose was to stop the engine toppling over if it ever de-railed, an important point considering the vertical tendencies of the terrain. To my mind these wing plates are little pannier tanks and, when you consider that the engines ran with tenders as well, the attempt to classify this type of tank engine descends into anarchy.

The important thing about these engines, though, is that they worked incredibly well at their allotted task from 1879 onwards. This particular engine, DHR No. 19, was built in 1889 by Sharp Stewart with 11” by 14” cylinders and worked on the DHR until 1960 when it went to the USA. It was bought by Adrian Shooter in 2002 for use on his Beeches Light Railway at Steeple Aston in Oxfordshire and it often visits other narrow gauge railways.

I understand that a significant amount of work had to be undertaken on the track on the LSR to take this engine. Although it weighs 13 tons, the baby Hunslets that live at Launceston weigh only 6 tons and they make the engine of the toy train from Darjeeling look massive.

In Switzerland they relied on a rack of teeth between the rails for adhesion but the DHR tanks habitually manage to climb 1 in 3 gradients without slipping, so somebody knew what they were doing when they laid out these little engines on the drawing board. Not only were they well designed and well made, they were well maintained, for anything less would not have made such strenuous operation possible.

On thing I didn’t appreciate was that they had a crew of 6. So where did they all go? There was an engine driver and a fireman plus two coal men, one standing on the right hand running plate and the other in the coal box itself. The other two crew were the sandmen. Gravity or steam sanding was found to be never as good as an experienced human hand so two men sat on each end of the front buffer beam feeding sand from a box between them. That’s how the British managed without a rack system.

I think it’s significant that I’d already bought secondhand the Loco Profile covering the Darjeeling Tanks several years before, in the excellent bookshop at the Launceston Steam Railway. This was the only profile available at the time that interested me. My principle enthusiasms have always been cars followed by motorbikes but there are exceptional steam engines that interest me from time to time and the Darjeeling and Himalaya Railway B Class is definitely one of them.

This is the turbo generator set for the big headlamp – it looks like it would do well on my Hillman Imp!