Because when given the absolute freedom to do whatever they like, most people do what everyone else is doing. And everyone else is saying it sounds like a freight train.
Same as when people describe the destruction caused by a tornado… “Looks like a war zone!”
And when describing the destruction from a fierce war battle… “Looks like a tornado came through!”
Isn’t there some kind of locomotive called a tornado? I thought I recently heard of one. I would not have named anything on the railroad a Tornado, for obvious confusions between the real deal and whatever equipment is involved.
About the %s with the girlfriend/wives comments, I disagree with you a good bit. You see, the girlfriends number is at 98%, because they’re new and don’t know any better. The wives have been around a good bit, and a number of them have learned that men will simply ignore them, so some of them don’t even bother. That’d put their numbers somewhere around 80% for the wives, rough guess.
Yes, a newly built English steam locomotive.
I can just imagine it now. Railfan: “There’s a Tornado coming down the tracks!” Average Joe: “What the??? Why is everyone running towards the tracks if there’s a tornado coming there!?”
Are there even tornadoes - the windy kind - in England/ Great Britain ? I wonder if they even have the atmospheric conditions to set-up for them ? If not, then there’d not be much risk of confusion . . . then again, if not then why name the steam locomotive after something no one’s ever seen, heard, or experienced ?
- Paul North.
I think the weather folks say that a tornado can happen pretty much anywhere. We just seem to have the perfect mixing bowl for them here in the US.
In fact, this story suggests that Britain may have more tornados (at least based on area) than the US…
For lots of tornado info: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/index.html#References
When I lived in Ohio, a train derailed into a trailer park. The local TV station interviewed a resident he said “IT SOUNDED LIKE A TORNADO COMING”.
Britain’s splendid new Peppercorn class A1 4-6-2 loco 60163 ‘Tornado’ was actually named in honour of the RAF’s Tornado aeroplane crews flying sorties in the Gulf War at the time she was constructed. As an aside, Tornado is actually considered to be a continuation of the all-scrapped A1 class rather than a replica. Once her current boiler repairs have been sorted out, she’ll be back on home rails again, hauling main line excursion workings at speeds seldom matched by American steam locos in more than a half-century (C&O 614 in northern New Jersey being a notable exception during the late 1980s!). And yes, there are indeed meteorological tornadoes on rare occasion in Great Britain, but most tend to be of low velocity, short duration, and cause little harm.