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Midland Railway 0-6-4T


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How did the Midland Flatiron tanks compare to other big 0-6-4 tanks of other railways?

From a similar era the North Staffordshire Railway class F with 5' 6" coupled wheels.

The SECR J class fast passenger tank with  again 5' 6" wheels and the Lancashire, Derbyshire

and East Coast Railway also had an 0-6-4t but I think it was a small wheeled, slow, coal hauler?

 And you may add Highland, Barry and Metropolitan Railways classes to those. (Were there yet more?) The slow types intended for goods or banking (BR, HR, LDECR) seem to have been OK if unremarkable. Robinson developed the LDECR type into a 2-6-4T, so even in coal hauls the leading truck may have been considered useful.

 

The North Staffs class F by general report worked well and were put on express turns until the LMS subsumed that system; the rest not so good, but there were only five of the SECR and four of the Metropolitan classes. The latter were quite quickly relegated to goods turns, displaced from passenger work by a 4-4-4T.

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This is undoubtedly true, but what I find odd is that these problems only seem to have appeared in their fourth decade of use. Why?

 

One factor may (repeat 'may') have been the rebuilding from 'H' boilers to superheated G7 boilers. There doesn't seem to have been any bother with them before that.

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With large driving wheels, a set of guiding wheels would have solved the problem, hence the Fowler 2-6-4T and its deriviants.  But the MR fckwits in charge of the LMS never learned from this nor any other development and trotted out a further drawing for an 0-6-2T as late as 1930. The final outcome was a 2F boiler mounted on a 2-6-2T chassis complete with with inadequate bearings and short-travel valves. We know it as the Fowler 2-6-2T, but even Stanier barely improved on the design with his taper boiler version. It took Ivatt and Riddles to sort matters out with the 2MT Mickey Mouses.

 

The 2-6-2T used the standard Derby wheelbase of 8'  8' 6". It is generally accepted that this choice was made because it worked with the Civil Engineer's bridge curve and so the design would be accepted. There are lots of "might have beens" which the civil engineer rejected. The result of having a long wheelbase for a small engine was that a small boiler had to be used to get the mass down to what was required. The boiler was derived from that used on the Johnson singles. Hence the result was an underpowered engine.

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(snipped)

Beames, at Crewe, did a lot of work to bring the 0-8-0s into the 20th century. He had the lubrication system, the axleboxes and the brakes redesigned in the 30s which was one reason why they lasted until 1964. Other LNWR designs went early and non except the 0-8-0s wouldn't have lasted much into the 1940s if it hadn't have been for WW2. I saw the last Cauliflower (itself an example of local standardisation) at Preston in the mid-fifties on its way to Crewe for cutting up. They were replaced by Ivatt 2-6-0s in Cumbria in the fifties and by MR 2Fs at Willesden in the late 40s, yet another example of local standardisation.

 

(snipped)

 

The long-lasting nickname for the Super D class was 'swammies'.

 

When you know that a 'swami' was a stage magician who ended his act by disappearing in a cloud of steam, that explains a lot about these engines! And the Coal Tanks seem to have lived on as long as they did largely because of their low mileage - itself a comment on their limited usefulness.

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The long-lasting nickname for the Super D class was 'swammies'.

 

When you know that a 'swami' was a stage magician who ended his act by disappearing in a cloud of steam, that explains a lot about these engines! And the Coal Tanks seem to have lived on as long as they did largely because of their low mileage - itself a comment on their limited usefulness.

But they were still considered better than the locos built to replace them, the 7F 0-8-0, which suffered from many of the same failings as the 4F 0-6-0, except in a bigger loco!

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There seems to have been several contributory factors to the Flatiron derailments, they all seem to have been superheated when they started falling off the track, that exended smokebox contained a very heavy superheater header and the superheater tubes were all in front of the the middle coupled axle. Other railways, such as the GC when they sort of copied the LDECR 0-6-4s and superheated them provided a leading truck to take some weight.

 

The LMS had a maintenance regieme of run it till it stops and then shop it. Unlike the GWR who carefully recorded mileages etc and then sent locos  to works when traffic was light anyway, so maintenance of these obsolete locos was probably none of anyone's priorities.

 

They had been displaced from their intended suburban workings by Fowler 2-6-4Ts mainly before they started falling off the rails, obviously they could go faster with lighter loads on rural locals and semi fasts and the last 2 accidents were when they had supposedly been relegated to goods workings.

 

The Midland were not alone with Suburban Tank locos woes, The LNER had the N2s (?) and excellent  N7s and A5s  the expensive V1 and V3  and the lash up NER 4-6-2Ts,   The Southern then disastrous Rivers, The LMS some excellent 2-6-4Ts and some awful 2-6-2Ts while the GWs attempts were lamentable, the County Tanks famed as rough riders and the sole 4600 4-4-2T were about all they managed for suburban tanks and instead used the Prairie tanks originally intended as goods locos.

 

But BR had to take the biscuit for sheer awfulness. The Thompson L1 class!  How could they build such an awful load of s**** from LNER Works at the same time as the LMS and SR works were churning out Fairburn 2-6-4Ts and the GW 41XX locos?   The mInd boggles.      

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There is a hint in the report on the Ashton derailment that track maintenance was less than perfect. The LMS was working hard to cut costs. They downgraded the quality of lubricating oil (result the 4Fs amongst many others started having hot boxes - by the way Super Ds were more prone to hot boxes than 4Fs), they stopped painting stations and it looks like they may have skimped on track maintenance.

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There's a natural assumption nowadays that any locomotive intended to run at high speed should have some form of 'steering mechanism' in the form of a front pony truck or bogie, but that assumption hasn't always held true.

 

Stroudley, for instance, was a strong advocate of avoiding any form of front-end 'steering', and the Gladstones - built until 1891, and used for fast and heavy passenger work on the LBSC - exemplified this view. And they stuck to the rails like glue!

 

The Flatirons, themselves derived from an 0-4-4T design, followed the same philosophy. The absence of a leading bogie may seem odd to our eyes, but wouldn't have struck people as strange when they were built.

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