I now know the answers about the steam whistles. It would have been both illegal and dangerous to have the whistle on an exhaust steam supply. Apart from the scenario I outlined earlier; BEFORE setting off a steam locomotive driver had to sound the whistle... this clearly could not be done if the whistle was supplied by exhaust steam. I did check with a couple of friends who are drivers on a standard gauge line, (having only had a ticket to fire and drive on a narrow gauge line myself I wanted to be sure before I spouted off). (One of the chaps I spoke to is rebuilding a bullied pacific). To clear up the technical bits, the steam for the whistle is usualy tapped off the boiler manifold where the steam for injectors, ejectors and any other bits of mainly ancillary equipment is also tapped off. (The steam for motion exiting via the regulator head).
I spoke to a member of the Tornado support crew he told me that Tornado has both chime and "ordinary" whistles!
"Brit" 70013 along with all the other "brits" has a chime whistle and it was making some nice noises on the Worth Valley at the weekend, much as I remember it in 1967 on the Settle & Carlisle.
Tornado is in an apple green but there are 4 such versions... which one it is I am not sure as I have had 2 different answers from 2 different members of its support crew. One said Darlington green the other said apple green (the differences grew up partly out of the bad feeling by the ex NER people at Darlington when they perceived the the GNR people had got most of the top jobs in the LNER at the grouping of 1923). I undestand from one of those support crew members that Tornado was initially finished in workshop grey. I thought this to be the case when I saw it at York both before and on the day when it made it's initial main line test run to Barrow Hill on Nov 6th 2008. This is likely to be true as it was the practice of many companies to finish one of the first of a new design of locomotive in workshop grey for photographic purposes, remembering of course that it was monochrome photography, and contrast was more important for that exercise than colour. I was also informed by my contact that the colour of Tornado is likely to be changed a number of times in the future to show all the liveries that the Peppercorn A1 pacifics sported during their working lives and to satisfy the different memories and aspirations of those who supported the buiding of it.
As to the valve gear being the problem on the Duke. The one word reply from my contact was NO! I have to say however that he poo-pooed my understanding of the fundamental problem that caused heavy coal consumption (and at certain times poor drawbar horsepower) although we were clear that the manifestation was to drag small lumps of unburnt coal off the firebed and up the chimney without them burning properly. (reference to the BR "black book" will explain about coal combustion and the fact that 90+% of heat comes from the burning of the long chain hydrocarbons given off when the coal is completely burned). I might, in the next week or so meet, some of the people who really do know what the problem was, If I do I'll ask them.
Apologies for the rambling nature of this but a fair amount of mis information was spouted in one contribution. I have sought not to do that, alas at the expnse of brevity. Oh and by the way 13 is not a heavy load for a pacific, A4s (and V2s) frequently lifted a grossly overloaded 19 or 20 out of Kings Cross during the war without any banking loco at the back.
I am also unclear which operating procedures have been improved by volunteers on volunteer railways making them better than those carried out by the thousands of people who were paid professional railway workers, when it, the railway, was the major mover of people and freight in this and other countries.