Frederick road running over London’s Bridges for Parkinson’s

The intrepid miniature steam road locomotive “Frederick” will be making a unique run through London on Saturday October 28th in aid of Parkinson’s UK.  We will start at Guy’s Hospital at 0930 and tour all the accessible bridges in the Cities of Westminster and London.  Our route will take us past the Tower of London, St Pauls Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall & Westminster.  We will stop at the Evelina Childrens Hospital at St Thomas’  at midday to pick up water and then head towards Battersea Park before returning to Guy’s mid-late afternoon.

Steve Traill and I will be traversing the heart of London with Frederick: quite a challenge, and we won’t incur a C or T charge!

Your support in sponsoring this run is much appreciated as my wife Cecily has Parkinson’s.  Maybe you will be able to see Frederick on the streets of London this weekend!

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Parkinsons-miniaturesteamrun

Tim Watson

Route:
Guy’s Hospital
Southwark Bridge
The Tower
Tower Bridge
London Bridge
St Pauls
Blackfriars Bridge
Waterloo Bridge
Trafalgar Square
Whitehall
Westminster Bridge
St Thomas’ Hospital
Vauxhall Bridge
Chelsea Bridge
Battersea Park
Albert Bridge
North Embankment
Lambeth Bridge
Borough
Guy’s Hospital

Best wishes
Tim

It should be a great challenge, glad I'm not steering! & hope I can get to grips with the Rosebud grate! Last time the traffic around Marble Arch was trying to cut us up quite a bit. I had to give them a rap on their bonnet with my knuckles to get them to move over! Funny how they responded to that pretty well. Might take a bit of house coal to smoke them out in the heavy traffic! What low emissions zone!

The crew on Frederick for our ten bridges run was Steve Traill as co-driver: we work as a superb team on the road and Nick Houghton rode shot gun as another set of eyes for the heavy London traffic.  Jim MacDonald was videoing the escapade, trying to keep up on a Boris bike.  Frederick was made four years ago and the the wagon has an extra plumbed-in water tank for road runs.  We used the same arrangements for our world record 80 mile run from St Albans to Brighton in 2015, raising over £5600 for Parkinson’s UK we are now aiming for £10000.  My wife, Cecily, has Parkinson’s.

Key points of the ten bridges run:
We covered all the accessible bridges in the cities of Westminster and London. Net travelling time was four hours for about 15 miles.   We set off a little later than expected 1030 but we’re still back by 1500.  We were greatly helped by Guy’s & St Thomas Hospital Trust allowing us to use both their hospitals as a base and watering stop.  Our start was made even more challenging because there were massive building works for Kings College on the Guy’s site that day, blocking the main access road.

Whilst my wife and I had surveyed the route beforehand, we had mis-read the traffic rights of way on the south side of Tower Bridge and so we had to negotiate around the back streets of the Borough, Guy’s Hospital and the Shard to pick up London Bridge from the correct direction.

We stopped at St Thomas’ for an hour for lunch and to pick up water.  It was actually an exceedingly hot water supply from the hospital but the injector still kept working.

Our ride west from St Thomas’ was very fast, easily running at 15+ mph on certain bits on the embankment, so no slower than much of London’s traffic.  The roads are what limits our speed, but the Bridges are generally a bit lumpy because of the need for expansion joints: you feel every bump with no rear suspension and solid rubber tyres.

After crossing Chelsea Bridge we tried to go through Battersea Park, but unfortunately the through route was not open to us so we had to go round.

Frederick only burnt one bag of Welsh Dry Steam coal: the rosebud grate with 400 x 5mm diameter holes (rather than bars) makes for much better fuel efficiency and produces virtually no ash.

We only had one car carve us up into our safe breaking distance at a set of traffic lights requiring a sharp application of the reversing lever.  The London traffic was generally very courteous.  If Parkinson’s UK had a pound for every tourist picture taken of us on the route, then their research funds would be well endowed!

All donations are very welcome:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/parkinsons-miniaturesteamrun

I would be available to give talks on our epic road runs with Frederick in aid of Parkinson’s to interested societies in the Home Counties.  Will post some pictures later.

Tim Watson

Fantastic effort guys and all for a good cause.
Being originally from South London I know exactly what you had to deal with.
Good to hear your report on the rosebud grate because I've just made one for my SCC.
Again, well done.

Regards

Jim

My worries over the Rosebud grate were unfounded, it worked fine keeping a reasonably thick fire. When there was a hole in the fire it makes a deep groaning noise (a bit like whale noises!) which is easily remedied with the poker & a bit more coal. It was very efficient with the coal as it all gets burnt, very little was left in the ashpan when we finished. Tim's navigation was brilliant and even when through roadworks we had to divert we were soon back on track. The brake worked well especially when some numpty decided to swerve in front of us and then stop just before a set of traffic lights, winding on the brake soon brought us to a halt. The weather was perfect and overall it was a very enjoyable day, seeing the sights & sounds of Central London. It has been some years since I last spent any time there and it is a lot cleaner now than years ago. Frederick ran like a Swiss watch, apart from the noise from the straight cut gears when we were clipping along at (we guessed) about 15 - 18mph the motion work was silent. The roads we drove on were generally pretty good so Tim drove as fast as the road surface would allow.

Happy days.

Job's a good'n

well done to all
any video?

Not sure if this will work.....
let me know

click here

Didn't work for me!!
Regards
Tom A

will upload a vid to youtube and post back here when its done.

click here

click here

Brilliant job, the rose grate sounds like the way forward.

As for that idiot cyclist who under took you on Tower Bridge

nice one

any more videos?