Author: Chris Newman

ASTT has added a new title to its book catalogue which is sure to be of interest to members and non-members alike.

Compiled and edited by Martyn Bane, the title is “Selection of Papers by L.D. Porta (and others) – Volume 4 – Locomotive Boiler Water, covering Water Treatment, Feedwater Heating and Boiler Water Behaviour”.  It fills 513 pages and is available in both soft and hard covers at a cost of £40 for the soft cover version and £48 for the hard cover excluding postage and packing.  The usual 20% discount on in-house titles is offered to ASTT members.

Details of the book can be found at http://advanced-steam.org/books-for-sale/selection-of-papers-by-l-d-porta-and-others-volume-4/ which includes a link to a 72 page “sample” file that allows potential buyers to see the wide-ranging subject-matter that the book covers.

ASTT will hold its 2024 conference in the Aston Court Hotel in Derby.  The first day of the conference will focus on Alternative Fuels for Steam Locomotives which will feature five presentations as follows:

• Bob Gwynne, Environmental and Sustainability Manager at the Llangollen and Corwen Railway, who will talk about the challenges facing the UK’s heritage rail sector from the Net Zero directives.
• Roger Waller from DLM in Switzerland who will talk on oil firing.  For those who don’t know him, Roger is best known for his oil-fired rack-tanks operating in the mountains of Switzerland and Austria, and for his modernised oil-fired “Kreigslok” 2-10-0 No. 52-8055.
• Mike Stockbridge who will talk about the combustion characteristics  of coal and biofuels and the ideal biofuel.
• Our chairman John Hind who will talk about coal substitutes and what have we learned after 3 years of trials.
• Finally, it is hoped that Maik Drechsel will be able to come to talk about wood pellets being successfully tested as a locomotive fuel on the Emsland Railway in Germany.

A conference dinner will be held in the hotel on the Saturday evening and a visit to the Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust workshop in Butterley which houses two well-known ex-LMS Stanier Pacific locomotives – No 6203 Princess Margaret Rose and No 6229 Duchess of Sutherland. 

Details of the conference can be found in the Derby Conference Flyer DRAFT No 7-3.

Non-members are welcome to attend.

Welcome news for steam’s engineering fraternity and in particular to ASTT’s members:  Adrian Tester has released his long-awaited book “The  Physiology of the Locomotive Boiler – Part 1” after at least 7 years in gestation.  At our 2017 conference in Bury, Adrian presented what he described as a “Peep” into his planned book, and those who attended will find familiar diagrams in the first chapter of the published book.  In total, the book encompasses 11 chapters plus 16 appendices which fill no less than 583 pages – and now Adrian is working on Part 2!

Members can read Joe Cliffe’s comments in praise of the book on ASTT’s website at http://advanced-steam.org/physiology-of-the-locomotive-boiler-vol1/.  The page includes a link to a Table of Contents which offers a glimpse of what the book contains.

Members are offered a 10% discount on the £48 book price.  Packing and postage costs an extra £5.50 within the UK – extra for overseas postage.

Those who have not been able to purchase a paper copy may be pleased to learn that Dave Wardale’s iconic book “The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam” is now available in digital form from Camden Miniature Steam – see https://camdenmin.co.uk/collections/digital-books/products/the-red-devil-and-other-tales-from-the-age-of-steam-digital-edition.

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ASTT held its 2024 on Sunday 2nd March.  The meeting was led by Chairman John Hind and followed the agenda distributed to members in advance of the meeting.

The meeting was attended by 20 members (illustrated above at the Zoom  meeting), including two stalwarts from the USA – Wolf Fengler and Austin Unruh – who rose at ‘unearthly hours in order to be there.  Many thanks to them and to the other UK members who took the time to attend.

The main outputs from the meeting were as follows:

• The appointment was confirmed of Hendrik Kaptein who replaces Cedric Lodge as Secretary .
• Thanks were given to Cedric Lodge and David Nicholson who stood down from the Committee.
• A 25% rise in membership fees was approved for the year starting 1st January 2025.  Associate Memberships will rise to £12.50 and Full Memberships will rise to £25 per year.
• ASTT’s 2024 conference will be held in Derby over the weekend of 5th – 6th October with a Sunday afternoon outing to the Midland Railway Centre in Butterley.  The plan is for one day of the conference to focus on alternative locomotive fuels.

A conference notice and Call for Papers will be circulated shortly.

In case any members have not received email notification of its release, our Newsletter No 23 was released to the membership on 7th December 2023.  It may be downloaded from the link on our Newsletter page.

Filling 25 pages, it contains our usual updates on ASTT’s membership and activities, plus three articles of interest:

• Derivation of the Locomotive Energy Balance – Part 3, by Martin Johnson,
• Caprotti on PLM in France, by Graham Shirley and
• A short note about Nigel Harris and Richard Bowker’s Green Signals podcast, by Chris Newman.

If you have not received a copy of this Newsletter, please let us know by writing to info@advanced-steam.org.

We are pleased to report that the second volume of the “Porta Centenary Compendium” is now available for sale.  At 331 pages, it is over 100 pages longer than the first volume, however we are offering it for the same price – £27 RRP or £21.60 after members’ discount, including UK postage.  This has been made possible by moving to a new on-demand printing company by the name of “Bookvault” which offers slightly cheaper printing costs and significantly cheaper set-up costs than Lightning Source which we’ve used in the past.  (Bookvault also offers a superior print quality such as was used to meet David Wardale’s requirements for his “Reminiscences of a Trainspotter”, but it comes at an extra cost that isn’t warranted for most publications.)

We have a problem however in that PayPal has withdrawn support for its “Buy Now” buttons which we’ve been using for several years.  So, until we can come up with another solution, buyers are asked to submit their orders by writing to info@advancede-steam.org.  We will then send out a PayPal invoice or “payment request” to facilitate payment.

Unfortunately, Bookvault’s prices for overseas postage are rather more random than Lightning Source’s and are thus harder to predict, so we’ll have to quote extra postage charges to overseas buyers depending on what Bookvault charges us.

Bookvault don’t yet have a printing-works in Australia, so Australian buyers will have to wait longer for their copies to reach them than titles printed by Lightning Source.  Hopefully this situation will change in the future as Bookvault’s business expands.

Anyway, please go to the Sales page where you can see a description of this new title.

A new page has been added reporting on ASTTs 2023 conference which was successfully staged in Swindon over the weekend of 7th/8th October.

Copies of the 9 presentations can be downloaded from the page in PDF format.  Video recordings of each presentation will be added shortly.

ASTT will hold its 2023 conference in the Leonardo Hotel in Swindon over the weekend of 7th-8th October.

It is expected that the conference will include around nine presentations, an afternoon outing (to the nearby Swindon & Cricklade Railway), and a conference dinner at the hotel on the Saturday evening.  The anticipated admission fee is between £100 and £125 including the conference dinner (half-price for speakers).

Further information can be found in our Conference Flyer No 2.

Breaking away from our normal focus on steam loco technology, we have just published a new book by David Wardale which he has titled “Reminiscences of a Trainspotter”.  Wardale describes it as “the story of his passage through the 1960s” and shows the incredible variety of locomotive shapes that could be seen on BR in the early 1960s.

The book contains a collection of Wardale’s black-and-white images taken during his adolescent years.  In order to meet Wardale’s demanding standards, the book is printed on higher quality paper than used in our previous publications

It’s a short book, just 67 pages long, and is available for a price of £16.00, or £12.80 to members who would like to claim the 20% discount that we offer to members.

Please see our sales page for further details.  UK-based members can purchase the book at the discounted price through members’ payment page. (Please log in to access this page.)

To obtain the higher quality print required by the author, we are using a different printing service which currently can only print books in the UK.  This situation is expected to change in the future but in the meantime, overseas members wishing to purchase a copy are requested to write the Webmaster to find out the postage cost to their country.

Note:  Wardale has chosen not to have his name printed on the book cover.  It is therefore published anonymously.