Well, I've had a few sleepless nights recently. At least, I think they were sleepless.

A little background...

In 1914, the Baldwin Locomotive Works designed a... rather large loco for the Great Central. It was unusual not just in terms of size, but for its cylinders which were arranged in pairs. That is, it had four external 18" x 30" cylinders.

Oh yes, and the S200 2-8-2 was another American loco made to fit to the British loading gauge.

Now, one of my favourite locos - that isn't British is the Pennsylvania Railroad's I1. Some of which were built by Baldwin...

I think you can see where this is going.

Could you build a loco with the [Jeremy Clarkson] power [/Jeremy Clarkson] of the I1 that would... be usable in Britain? Never mind why you'd want to, Never mind that it could replace double-heading 9Fs. Never mind that the Great Central loco would have needed the top taking off the Conisborough tunnel... Could it be done?

So I got to thinking. Well, when you can't sleep you think of all sorts of things.

We start by taking the cylinders from the Baldwin GCR loco - and make them a little bigger. 20" should be doable. Certainly, I've seen locos planned (for use in Britain) that had 20" external cylinders. (I thought the 9F had 19 1/2" cylinders, but apparently they had 20" cylinders) 22" would be nice, but I have a feeling that we'd be pushing it too much for width. And also for clearance from the ground... So, 4 20" x 30" external cylinders. Could it be done as a conventional 4 cylinder design? I'm not sure. My instincts say... no. Again, I've seen designs for British locos with internal cylinders at 20 1/2" but they only had internal cylinders.

Next, we borrow the chassis - or at least the wheels and general arrangement from the 9F. On top of this, we're going to need a really good boiler to feed those cylinders. Also, we'll be moving it backwards and down to sit behind the last set of drivers, and also to give us a little more height. The I1 has a boiler that tapers from 7'9 to 7', and a firebox that's 10'8" long and 6'8 wide. These should fit within the British loading gauge- well, width-wise at least . (The boiler is 7" bigger than the Baldwin GCR loco.) Oh yes, and we'll want a mechanical stoker. This is going to be one really hungry engine. And thirsty too. Not sure what kind of tender you'd need, but I'm guessing it's going to have bogies.

Oh, in terms of power... I have no idea the tractive effort should be.

I have plugged the numbers into the relevant formula, and get an answer that feels wrong (too large.) I've also taken the relevant figures for the 9F and adjusted them for the differences (again, according to the formula) And that too feels too large. I'm prepared to believe a figure of between 80 and 89 thousand pounds of tractive effort, but not the figures I get. Especially as I put the figures for the I1 into the formula, and it too came out too high.

So, what do we call it, this... monster?

I've had a few ideas for loco names... [in no particular order]

John Michael Osbourne

Randall William Rhoads

William Penn

George Fox

Yui Ikari

Matthias W. Baldwin

As for class names... No idea at all.

Source: Imaginary Locomotives