I know that 8 is going in for a major overhaul and will be gone for some time (a year at least, perhaps more) but I wasn't aware there was further work on no 7. It's not long back! Sounds like I might be lacking material for my 2019 version. Thanks for the kind comments. Check out the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch equivalent.

I’ll go check it out in a bit, and I don’t know what I can really say about 8 and when it’s back, fingers crossed by the end of this year if all goes well. 7’s boiler needs doing, when it was last out that was to do with the frames, although could be wrong.

Technically it's not - but there is a history and it's quite nuanced. When I first heard it I actually thought it was a Britannia whistle and it's not that either. No 9's whistle was manufactured especially for the BVR from a Crosby design. But I guess Crosby probably had lots of designs - no 8's whistle is also a Crosby design and the two are quite different. I read somewhere that the first ever chime whistles in the UK were a pair of Crosby's bought in the 1930's in Canada by Jack Howey who founded the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch. He gave one of those to his good friend Sir Nigel Gresley (who eventually put it on Cock'O'The North) and put the other one on Romney's no 9 - where where remains to this day. Gresley was so impressed by the Crosby chime that when the A4 class was built they were all fitted with US built chime whistles (whether these were Crosby's I don't know, but it would make sense that they were). Gresley then gave one as a gift to Howey who put it on Romney's no 8 - where it remains to this day. However, according to the story I read, they were deemed to sound too much like the air raid sirens in WWII and were removed (and subsequently melted down for the war effort). After the war it was decided to restore the sound so a new batch of whistles were made which were manufactured in the UK. These had a slightly different sound and a slightly higher pitch than the originals. One of these, from the A4 Commonwealth Of Australia, is now on Romney's no 10 (and has been for at least the last 50 years). So, it's not an A4 whistle but a 1990's job made in the UK using Crosby designs - though the (original) A4 whistles may well have been Crosby ones as well.

To summarise - BVR 8 and BVR 9 both have UK made whistles to Crosby designs. RHDR 9 has the original Crosby chime which gave rise to the A4 whistles and RHDR no 8 has one of the original pre-war A4 whistles, whilst RHDR 10 has one of the post-war versions. You can hear them in the relevant video.

Thanks very much for that!

@@simonpleasants7453 it's strange how different RHDR 8 sounds to RHDR 9 and 10, always sounds like a different whistle, I know it's chrome plated however so I don't know if that would make a difference? But thank you for the information, I've got an unfathomable fascination with minimum gauge whistles!

@@rhdrbob Well they are all three different whistles as per the explanation above so I would expect them to each make a slightly different sound. I would think the chrome plating on RHDR 8's whistle makes sound even more different.