P2 ‘Prince of Wales’
As Supporter of the newest locomotive project to be cooking nicely in the old carraige shed, Hopetown Lane, Darlington, the 7th Gresley class ‘P2 2-8-2 Mikado‘ to be called Prince of Wales.
I recently attended the first of this years promotional roadshow events held at the London Transport Museum as a private function. It was superbly attended and I spotted some Hornby live steam admirers in the crowd as well so this is serious stuff!!
The project is whizzing forward well ahead of time. In fact, the project is at the same stage of construction and development in 3 years that Tornado was at in 10 years. The wheels will be going on the engine frames in April and I hope to attend the roll-out event.
There are two great films that we watched with the producer Tom Ingle going through the ups and downs of the film making escapades. ’Absolutely Chuffed’ and ‘The 100mph Steam Engine’ which covered the birth and exploits of Tornado which has just reached 100,000 miles on the clock and is in the dock at the moment for main cylinder reboring and a good seeing too before its new season of sevice to all those steam loving chuffing punters.
If you would like to know more about the project and give some support then jog along to the P2 website where all will be revealed. www.P2steam.com
There are many steam projects that become just vaporware soon after launch but these guys are the real deal with the next project a Gresley V4 2-6-2 already drawn up.
