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2-4-0s, and the Armstrong era in particular

JimC

Entry posted by JimC in Miscellaneous Musings

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When I wrote the first book I was rather guilty of somewhat glossing over the 2-4-0s in the Armstrong and Dean eras. There were so many of them, they were rebuilt so much and I just found them confusing and, dare I say it, not that interesting. I'm paying for it now! Working up my experimental chronologically based GWR locomotive history I'm in into the late 1860s, early 1870s, and they are becoming impossible to avoid! I have to wonder, incidentally, why, with standard goods engines and standard tank engines in numbers there were so many different ones.

The old Gooch era 149s built by Englands and the Joseph Armstrong's 111 class from Wolverhampton were adequately documented, but then...

Next was the 439 class. Intriguing beats, because they were an early Joseph Armstrong product at Swindon, and looked almost exactly like broad gauge engines. When they were rebuilt/renewed later just about everything was changed, so there are no clues there. So what do we have? Russell has nothing. No drawings at GWS or NRM. Ahrons in British steam has nothing I can see. RCTS has one rather unclear photograph and a bare minimum of dimensions. There was a thread here some years ago, but even @MikeOxon doesn't seem to  have found much other than a slightly better version of the same photograph. So I wondered about Ahrons original article in "The Locomotive". You may be aware that Ahrons wrote a whole series of articles on early GWR locomotives for the Locomotive, typically illustrated with his simple line drawings, which have been widely reproduced, notably in Holcroft's books and his own "British Steam Locomotive", and which I have made wide use of for my drawings. I discovered, to my surprise and delight, that the RCTS archives are at Leatherhead station, just a few miles from where I live, and they have a complete run of"The Locomotive". So I joined up and yesterday spent a useful but very chilly couple of hours perusing the bound issues. And yes, Ahrons does cover the 439s in the magazine issue. But the article was written a few years after the previous one, and he is eschewing his line drawings for photographs, which for the 1870s are presumably increasingly available. And I turned to it and:

IMG_20231107_134120shrink.JPG.9903be54c55e2c5a13d0bed5c54f8079.JPG


Yes, its the same photograph, although the reproduction is better so it's a lot clearer. It's a nice profile at least, I could do a hell of a lot worse.

Now this morning I've come to the 481s, which were the next batch at Swindon. Very much the same dimensions, but visually quite unlike. And another I happily glossed over in the book. And what do I find in RCTS? A similarly tiny profile photo. In Russell - only the renewals, again rather different, and in Holcroft little enough too. So, slightly discouraged, I'm writing this blog post to let off steam! Really I don't think there's much of a way round it, I need to produce something. Perhaps I should make them plain line outlines and much more diagramattic than my usual ones to make it plain they are, well, rather sketchy sketches!
 

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Miss Prism

Barnum 3222 at Westbourne Park, probably c 1904, with a BR0 boiler and a Belpaire box. Looks like it is superheated. Early 3000g Dean tender.

 

This is before rebuilding with extended frames and Bulldog cylinders.

 

3222-westbourne-park.jpg.401397084bd25490c61f5a729b0b61ba.jpg

 

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Compound2632
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On 10/11/2023 at 20:43, Miss Prism said:

106, apparently ex-Birkenhead Railway. Date unknown. I don't know the original loco builder - the body as updated here is mostly Wolverhampton, but the frame front end is a dead ringer for a Metro tank. The tender is strange, springs mounted low, Swindon-looking toolboxes, but it doesn't have a footplate. Looks more LNWR than GWR to me. (The Birkenhead Railway had feet in both camps.)

 

Southern Division (McConnell) rather than Northern Division (Ramsbottom) - curious.

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JimC

The Birkenhead Railway was 'vested jointly' (which I presume means taken over and split up) in the GWR and the LNWR on 1st January 1860, and the GW and LNW got 21 of their locomotives each. Their main routes ran from Chester to Birkenhead and Chester to the LNWR near Warrington and became a joint line of the two companies.

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MikeOxon
On 17/11/2023 at 12:39, JimC said:

Here's a bit of fun, and probably some procrastination as well. This is the current contents of my 2-4-0 sketches directory.

I missed seeing this collection for a while.  Although I've been exploring the early broad-gauge (BG) era recently, I started my own scratch-building with the simple, well-proportioned Armstrong designs.  I was attracted back then by that 'missing link' to the BG: the 'Bicycle' class and, now that I can use 3D-printing, I may re-visit the idea.

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Miss Prism

Not strictly in scope I know, being ex-M&SWJ locos, but apart from the tenders, which remained intact, these locos were very Swindonised, and I think were the last 2-4-0s working on the ex-GWR system. This is 1335, location unknown, but possibly on the M&SWJ line, although the coach formation (3rd, Brk compo, brake 3rd) is typical of the DN&S. The photographer has accentuated the superelevation!

 

 1335-small.jpg.0d26bb8645fcdb71e5362c8a885b873e.jpg

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JimC

Here's another little in progress vignette. I thought I should make myself a list of 2-4-0 builds and renewals so I can get a bit of a track on what I should be documenting. This list doesn't include a myriad of boiler variations, it just new builds and renewals and rebuilds which had significant chassis changes!
Its a working document for me, so excuse the formatting and the crude layout, also the screenshot because I couldn't be bothered to format text for the web forum, but I was so struck by the variety I thought I'd share it.

 

My next job is to list which I have done sketches of, which I have enough info to make sketches, and which, for I fear there will be some, are going to stump me completely!
 

 

image.png.ae12c0cb7ce730ca446fe6f5f3e2df5f.png

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Compound2632
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1 hour ago, JimC said:

rebuilds which had significant chassis changes!

 

By which I take it you mean new frames (were there changes of wheelbase?) and / or new cylinders?

 

Did the outside-framed engines also have inside frames? I'm familiar with the Matthew Kirtley arrangement whereby the outside frames carried the axleboxes for all three axles but the inside frames also carried additional axleboxes for the middle, crank axle - hence they were referred to as double-framed (DF) rather than outside-framed. In Kirtley's earlier designs, the inside frames were not full length but fixed to the front of the firebox - a hangover from very early design practice where the boiler was treated as the main structural component of the locomotive. But by the 1860s it was realised that this was a Bad Idea. 

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JimC
23 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

By which I take it you mean new frames (were there changes of wheelbase?) and / or new cylinders?

Yes (all of them on one or other!)


There were all sorts of combinations of frame setups, some of them quite eccentric to my eyes.  Quite a few of the 2-4-0s had inside frames for the driving wheels and outside frames for the leading wheels. Maybe it made for more room round the cylinders. Actually, you've got me wondering now, what were the cylinders fastened to on a locomotive with just outside frames?Must look that up.

And you remind me of an excellent point. I need to make very sure I've distinguished (correctly) between outside frames and double frames (or even part and part!)

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Mikkel
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That kind of overview by wheel arrangement and/or type would be interesting to see in your next book, I think.

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phil_sutters
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I don't know whether this would be of any interest, but my father had a notebook with details of locos absorbed by GWR. From the writing I think it was probably drawn up just before WW2.

This is a sample. If it would help anyone's research, they are welcome to it. It may well all be information that is well known. He had no railway connections apart from his keen amateur interest.

Absorbed GWR loco notes.jpg

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MikeOxon

Many of Armstrong's designs had double plate frames.  One difference between the Armstrong and Dean 'standard' goods engines was that Dean only used single inside frames on his version.

 

John Gibson in his 'Critical Appreciation' of GW engine design commented that "Swindon was always noted for astonishing reconstructions but for broad gauge 0-4-2 tanks to end up as standard gauge 4-4-0 tender engines was the most remarkable re-build ever."

 

Dean returned to double frames with his larger 4-4-0s and Gibson again commented that "... we mostly had double-framed Bulldogs , which were horrid to work on.  After 55 years I still remember working, with a smoky paraffin flare lamp, with head and shoulders in the space of some 14in between inner and outer frames, with an inch thick layer of filthy black grease all around and above me."

 

The use of inside frames for driving wheels and outside for carrying wheels was a feature of David Joy's 'Jenny Lind' design, which was highly successful and set the pattern for many engines thereafter.  Joy wrote in his diary about his design: "Inside frames, which must be made to
carry the cylinders, the frames stopped at the firebox, so that the firebox was got as wide as the wheels would allow it. ... Then I put on the Gray's outside frames for leading and trailing wheels, 4 ft. diameter, giving the bearings below, thus making a firm wheel-base, with no overhanging weight."

 

Mike

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Harlequin
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4 hours ago, JimC said:

Yes (all of them on one or other!)


There were all sorts of combinations of frame setups, some of them quite eccentric to my eyes.  Quite a few of the 2-4-0s had inside frames for the driving wheels and outside frames for the leading wheels. Maybe it made for more room round the cylinders. Actually, you've got me wondering now, what were the cylinders fastened to on a locomotive with just outside frames?Must look that up.

And you remind me of an excellent point. I need to make very sure I've distinguished (correctly) between outside frames and double frames (or even part and part!)

 

I know you're concentrating on tender locos but, FWIW, the contemporaneous Metro's inside frames were continuous front to rear and the apparent outside frames for the leading wheels were outrigger extensions. So I suppose the leading wheels were, in effect, double framed.

 

The cylinders were entirely inside the the inner frames and the only help that this arrangement gave to cylinder placement that I can see was that the axle of the leading wheels passed under the slide bars and piston rods.

 

Phil

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