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GWR No 34 0-4-4T (1890)


JimC

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044-34-v21.jpg.849bb2d8caf6e3311a90ee1aeba497c7.jpg

One of a pair of small 0-4-4T constructed under Dean, its believed for branch lines with heavy curvature. They were superficially similar in concept to the ill-starred 3521 class, but considerably smaller, and like the 3521s went through a good number of changes in their early years. They started life in 1890 as 0-4-2 saddle tanks, with the same layout of much shorter spacing between the driving wheels than between the trailing drivers and the trailing wheels. In 1895 they were altered to the form shown, with a water tank in the bunker as well as the short side tanks. In this form they served for a few more years. The second, no 35, was condemned in 1906, whilst No 34, which had acquired a fully enclosed cab along the way, was sold to the army in 1908 and spent the next few years at the Longmoor Military Railway until condemned in 1921.

 

 

159555999_044-34-v21cab.jpg.2505df5bcb984cb1d490270fc89f2a8c.jpg
This second sketch is based on the only photo I've found showing the full cab, taken on the St Ives branch. Sadly the junction of the bunker and the cab is entirely speculative as the photograph has someone leaning on the relevant area. Its based on the treatment of that area on the 36xx, 2-4-2Ts, but they don't have the deep Dean style cab cut out, so I'm not altogether convinced.

Strictly speaking I ought to have drawn lining, but its a great deal of trouble, and gives very problematic reproduction if drawn to scale. At the scale I produce these sketches a 1/8in line is about a quarter of a pixel wide...

Edited by JimC

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  • RMweb Gold

A lovely rendering of a favourite loco.  I used to think there was only one or two photos of it, but various have cropped up over the years, including these two:

 

https://imagearchive.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk/transport/railways/gwr-tank-number-34-pictured-men-st-ives-branch-12422464.html

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/135768-nether-madder-and-green-soudley-rly/&do=findComment&comment=3714264

 

Dave Perkins built a superb model from the Roxey kit, which I was fortunate to own for a while, seen here at Farthing. 

 

image.png.17ceea604e2ede3cf7440c781d64b018.png

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The St Ives one is particularly good, I found it very late in the drawing process - this is one that's been on the electronic drawing board for months. I'm quite tempted to have a shot at drawing the full cab. 

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I've sketched up a possible arrangement for the full cab and added it to the main post.

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JimC

Posted (edited)

It struck me anew how these two locos, the 3521 class and the 1345 class of ex Monmouthshire Railway 0-6-0ST that were converted to 0-4-4T are all of a very similar style with the firebox apparently in clear air and not behind a wheel and thus a big gap between driving and trailing wheel(s) . Was a similar configuration used on any other lines? I'm not very good on late Victorian types. I wonder what the intention of the type was? And how odd to convert that entire class of 0-6-0STs to that style. 

Edited by JimC
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11 minutes ago, JimC said:

Was a similar configuration used on any other lines?

 

Very common, I would say, e.g. M7, O2. (Unless I have misunderstood your question.)

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5 hours ago, Miss Prism said:
5 hours ago, JimC said:

Was a similar configuration used on any other lines?

 

Very common, I would say, e.g. M7, O2. (Unless I have misunderstood your question.)

I would think that almost every 0-4-4 and most 0-4-2 designs were similar in this regard. The Caledonian Railway had four locos that show this clearly, and they may have been influenced by the Forney tank design that was developed in the USA for intensive suburban working.

Ans_05373-1172.jpg.d3880294dc3b7d7895fc7d3306394b25.jpg

Photo from the wonderful ETH Zurich collection

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JimC

Posted (edited)

Obviously I didn't explain that well.

What I means was that these locomotives seemed to have an exceptionally long run between the coupled wheels and the trailing bogie compared to the spacing of the driving wheels and bogie. 

As 0-4-4Ts

3521s were

7'0 +10'4 + 4'6,

34 & 35 were

6'8 + 8'6 + 5'0

and the 1345s were

6'6 + 9'6 + 4'6

 

For an LSWR O2 I make it (scaled off a drawing)

7'5 + 8'9 + 4'2

However having converted it all to percentages, although the Dean types do run shorter on the coupled wheelbase and longer on the gap between drivers and bogie than the O2, it doesn't seem spectacularly different. I think possibly the small driving wheels of the Dean types exaggerate the effect. I just sketched 34 with 48xx driving wheels & a long side tank and it looks a lot more conventional. Perhaps optical illusion was a lot of what I was seeing.


[added] Thanks Nick, yes, that's very much the style. When I look at an 0-4-2 3521 against a 517 say it looks radically different, but looking at the 0-4-4 configuration against others, while its a bit of an outlier (as you'd expect given the poor record of staying on the track) its maybe not that far off.

 

Edited by JimC
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What I find interesting is how these long 0-4-4Ts got round curves. 34/35's total wheelbase is a comparatively modest 20'2", but seemed to cope reasonably on the St Ives branch. The 3521s, at 21'10", disgraced themselves in the Doublebois incident, and although dodgy track was perhaps primarily to blame, it was enough to convince the GWR that 0-4-4s could mean trouble, and they quickly reversed them into 4-4-0s. Not sure exactly what an M7 is offhand, but it is probably approx 23'4" total wheelbase, so there must be significant sideplay allowance in the bogie suspension.

 

Edited by Miss Prism
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  • RMweb Gold

S&DJR's Johnson Avonside 0-4-4Ts had a total wheelbase of 22ft -  8ft - 8ft 6in - 5ft 6in.

S&DJR 0-4-4T No 10 Avonside 1877 to 1930.jpg

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I thought I'd have a go at charting out a good selection of 0-4-4s. Driving wheels to the left. 

044-layouts.gif.6d22299854420d1013bccc0f28a2c04b.gif

The Dean engines do seem to be outliers, but not nearly as much as I thought. Its perhaps interesting that the GWR 1308 class of 3 (there were other 1308s later on), Avonside built and absorbed from the Monmouthshire railway, appears to have a lot of the look of the later Dean 0-4-2Ts and 0-4-4s, and were rather different to the Armstrong style. I wonder if they were good locomotives and influenced Dean/ his drawing office's thinking. I can't find a reproduceable photo of the 1308 0-4-4s, but there's one in RCTS part 3, C129.

 

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I'm beginning to further appreciate what a weird and largely unsuccessful bunch Dean's larger tank engines were, and what a contrast in style they were from the smaller 6 wheeled engines, conventional, successful and very long lived, and heavily based on Armstrong originals. I'm going to look at writing something up.

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Coming back to these, I've just started working up a sketch of the 1866 incarnation of numbers 34 and 35. These numbers seem to have been reserved for oddities! The original 34 & 35 were a pair of locomotives built by the Vulcan Foundry which the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway bought off the shelf in 1853, and one may suspect at a bargain price. They could be described as long boiler 0-4-0 tender engines, but the drive was not to either wheel axle, but to an intermediate crank axle, somewhat in the position that the middle driving axle of a long boiler 0-6-0 would be.  In 1866 Joseph Armstrong took these weird contraptions in hand and reconstructed them. They reappeared as long boiler 0-6-0s, the only ones of this configuration to be built by the GWR, although a fair number of others were taken over in the early days. I'll probably do a separate blog page for them when the sketch is done.

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16 hours ago, JimC said:

The original 34 & 35 were a pair of locomotives built by the Vulcan Foundry which the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway bought off the shelf in 1853, and one may suspect at a bargain price.

 

Back in 2014, I started a thread about these early absorbed engines.  Sadly it has now been archived and I cannot restore the images that were lost in the 'great extinction'.  There was a link that may be of interest:  "I found that there are extensive records of all the locomotives built by the Vulcan foundry on the web at  http://www.enuii.org/vulcan_foundry/ These records includes lists of locomotives deliveries by years, in which the S&H engines appear.

 

According to Ahrons, one of these engines could still be seen "lying in a heap of scrap behind Swindon Works in 1886".  

"Some of these early engines survived well into the 20th century, usually after having been re-built several times.  The last engine from the OW&W seems to have been around until 1921, by which time it had acquired a more conventional GWR appearance, as 0-6-0 No.58."

 

At the time, I felt that trying to model one of these engines was beyond my ability but they may now go onto my list for 3D printing!

 

Mike

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Thanks for that (I think) Id forgotten that Vulcan list. Lot of work to do presenting some of them. 

I'd love to know the economics of these reconstructions. Going back to mid 19thC the tools and facilities were so different from how we'd do stuff today I have to wonder whether they found it economic to alter stuff we'd think crazy to reuse.  I recall being gobsmacked by Holcroft's description of cutting the holes in a saddle tank for handrail pillars *by hand with a chisel* as late as the turn of the century because they had no powered tools that would function on a curved surface. 

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33 minutes ago, JimC said:

Going back to mid 19thC the tools and facilities were so different from how we'd do stuff today I have to wonder whether they found it economic to alter stuff we'd think crazy to reuse. 

The economics were very different - in general, labour was cheap.  High grade steels for tools and the like were extremely expensive. Holes were usually punched rather than drilled.  It seems almost incredible to us that all those curved frames and cut-outs were done by hand!  Re-working them by hand was much cheaper than buying new materials.

Edited by MikeOxon
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