Churchward’s Masterpiece—Lode Star In-Depth Tour | Curator with a Camera

My son met Anthony at locomotion last week. His passion for the project was clearly on show and loves that people are watching these videos and then being inspired to visit all their sites. Highly recommend anyone who hasnt been, to visit all their museum sites and see these engines in person AND maybe stumble across all the hosts of these videos and share your appreciation for them in person!

Despite being a Doncastrian, and growing up just two miles from Gresley's office, hearing the Plant works former air raid siren signalling lunch time for the staff, i couldn't help being drawn to the clean lines and powerful looks of this GWR family of engines. Simple from the outside, ingenious and beautifully engineered inside they have a masterful stately prescence about them. Thank you for a wonderful description of this fabulous machine.

Churchward's Saint Class was described by OS Nock as the "keystone in the arch" and was arguably the most important engine built in Britain as it was such a huge leap forward in loco development. Churchward was interested in "balance" and the avoidance of "hammer blow" to avoid track damage that a two cylinder engine like the Saint might cause and that was also why he was interested in those four cylinder French locos that were bought. Churchward's engines were considered ugly when introduced and they were beautified by Holcroft- with the curves instead of the previous drop ends and these curves debuted on the Star. Both the Saint and the Star had the same boiler which had very high pressure and very high degree of ( for the time) superheating- and that was revolutionary in Britain back then. Arguably, the Star was complicated and maybe developing the Saint further would have made sense. Clearly, the Star was the start of a family of successful engines that also extended to the LMS when Stanier left the GWR for that railway. During World War One the brass beading was removed from the splashers and for some reason this was not replaced when the engine was restored for display- although the later "elbow" steam pipes were removed as they were a later addition. The Saint really was the engine that brought the Great Western into the 20th century- not the Star and Stanier's Black 5 class- a very close but mixed traffic derivative of the Saint hauled Britain's last steam train in August 1968 which sums up the reality of the importance of the Saint class.

Steam locos are so fascinatingly complicated to operate, and vary so much.

Beautiful engineering. Truly beautiful to behold.

I was initially raised in Kingskerswell between Newton Abbot and Torquay alongside the Torbay line. I loved the GWR house style. Imagine my shock when we moved to Poole when I was 10 years old and was confronted by the mess of loco styles that defined the Southern!

I visited the museum in April with my family, a really good day out and i do remember Load Star, Many thanks , Sisaket Thailand.

Anthony, I'm a relative newcomer to this series but the work that you and your colleagues do in putting together the videos is superb. Educative and hugely watchable, there can scarcely be a better combination. Sincere thanks.

It would be great to see a view of the running gear from an inspection pit!

I'd never realised what the condenser in the cab roof did for the displacement lubricator. I'd made a wild guess that it was for heating - which made zero sense with the firebox in front! Thank you for that..

I really appreciate this top drawer tour of the Star class. Thanks so very much.

The layout of the cab is so clean and organized -- unlike many that you have shown in the past. Anthony is the best curator BTW, more of him

Very well made video as per usual , now Cheltenham is back please keep her in as last ran BR green ,also any chance one day of seeing Mallard in as last ran BR green even if for a year only

A wonderful engine and video , well done team

Another fantastic video that is incredibly well presented. I know road steam isn’t what the national rail museum is about but it would be interesting to see the difference between the relative simplicity of say a Burrell traction engine and the complex rail locos done in the curator with a camera series.

It’s interesting to see the differences between a GWR and LNER/LMS locomotive, great video

Great insight into a great engine.Thank you for these videos.

Excellent tutorial, Doctor Coulls. As a slight aside, the engineer Harold Holcroft was the man responsible for the GWR 'house' style. He later went on to work with Sir Nigel Gresley in developing the valve gear for locomotives, such as Flying Scotsman & Mallard.

Thanks Anthony for another great video

Proper engineering.