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brack

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  1. I did know someone who had a middle initial, and when I asked what it stood for he replied it was just the letter M. His parents had actually just given him a middle initial rather than a middle name. I think the initial was just there to make his name sound a bit grander. He was american.
  2. Remember it isn't just going up. The local colliery branch to us had a ruling grade of 1 in 18. A loco could take 9 empty hoppers up, but only bring 3 loaded 20 tonners back down. There were a few runways and spectacular derailments in the early days. But yes, a world of difference between a 3 mile ncb branch where multiple trips are feasible if needed and sticking a gradient like that on the mainline. Whilst adhesion locos might be able to best steeper grades, not economically, and not without hugely restricting train loads and traffic movements. It also necessitates disproportionate motive power per train - I believe the mersey 064t had the biggest cylinders of any loco in the country when built, but were far from hauling the heaviest trains. Keeping that amount of power going eats away at profits, so if possible you resort to banking on the steep bit. That just gives you an operational headache, a permanent requirement for shed, locos and crews on site, with all the ongoing costs of those, and delays every train that passes. If you priced in the increased operating costs since opening to the present, it probably would prove to be vastly cheaper to have replaced the lickey incline with a big long tunnel, cutting or embankment to spread the climb out. Unfortunately shareholders tend not to take quite such a long view when the lines are getting built!
  3. The lickey incline is only 1 in 37. I doubt anyone would be considering rack unless you're past 1 in 20 (for steam/diesel). Saluda on the Norfolk Southern (in the US) is about 1 in 20 and was always adhesion worked. For rack worked main line sections you're looking at something like the Erzbergbahn's 1 in 14 in Austria. Adhesion lines mostly run with railcars can go to about 1 in 13 without too much trouble (e.g the bernina or MOB, and I believe that non rack equipped diesel passenger railcars were allowed over the Erzbergbahn). I imagine thats down to you being able to have every axle both powered and braked.
  4. It'd have been interesting - I was under the impression (but may be wrong) that the Met 264t's demise in 1948 was essentially due to them getting to the age where major bits needed replacement/repair, but they were non standard, hence spares weren't kept and they phased them out, rather than they were scrapped due to any actual flaw in the design (indeed if I recall part of the rationale for Thompson's L1 was to make something like the ex Met L2 out of LNER bits). If there were more locos of related design, a pool of boilers and spares, then the assessment of whether it was worth overhauling and keeping them might well have been different.
  5. Think it's fair to say that the scheme to build locos and wagons at woolwich postwar to maintain the workforce looks more like the sort of grand initiative our current government might think up and announce without really planning or considering the consequences than a sensible, costed, thought through provision to essentially set up a state operated rolling stock builder. They were also supposed to build 2000 open wagons for the NER and 500 for the GWR. After a year 30 GW and 852 NE wagons had been delivered, following which it fizzled out and there isn't much further mention - labour and material price increases sort of doomed it. The initial proposed price was quoted as £10000 each in The Locomotive in 1920. Smithers' Woolwich Arsenal book states that no cost estimates were prepared when the order for 100 locos was placed, but after a few years they estimated the total cost of the project at £1.6 million. Essentially reconfiguring a munitions and weapons factory into a loco works was a lot more difficult and took a lot longer than the politicians had assumed - even once the bits had been built, they didn't actually have an erecting shop that could put them together! Worth considering that in spite of excellent facilities woolwich bought in all their 18" and standard gauge locos from a variety of builders - they knew what they were and weren't good at. There is a report that Romanian State Railways were interested, but the deal was quashed on the grounds that too much money was already owed to Britain by Romania, and there were concerns regarding their ability to pay. There's an interesting might have been to go with the GER one. Strangely the SR purchase (at £3950 apiece) occurred a month or so after the initial MGWR sale (at £2000 each!) Presumably the price charged was adjusted on the fly according to the perceived depth of the customer's pockets!
  6. If the Midland Great Western Railway could afford to buy them, then they were remarkably cheap! You're talking about a railway than mostly ran superannuated 6 wheel coaches (as did its successor GSR and CIE) and 30-40 yr old 240s. Their main line passenger power in the 20s was a bunch of 440s rebuilt 20 years earlier from 1880s 240s. The average price paid by the MGWR was £2200 per loco for their kits. Given that Woolwich had bought the boilers in at a cost of £3375 apiece 3 years earlier, then made all the wheels, cylinders, frames and other bits themselves, they were incredibly cheap for what they were. I imagine other lines didn't want them as they weren't their design (CME pride), they were financially up the creek post ww1 (and indeed may have had other priorities than locos to fix - infrastructure and maintenance had taken a hammering), and had their own works and men (which they had to pay regardless) to keep busy. Hence the buyers were either the SECR/Southern, or smaller concerns with less prideful CMEs and smaller design/works departments - the Met and MGWR. The GSR looked at the new MGWR moguls they'd just inherited in the merger, then the price tag, and promptly bought another batch. The southern bought way more kits than they needed, then worked out what else they could make out of them - that suggests a good deal to me. Additionally they picked up the spare pony truck bits on the cheap and used them to rebuild E1s.
  7. Which modern loco designs were available, tested, fit the brief and would fit most railways loading gauge? Once you've worked that out, the N class might be the only one left*, additionally the fact that plans, patterns, tooling and men experienced in building them were available a very short distance away would probably tip the balance. The ARLE process was a good idea for producing new designs for railways to take off the shelf, but if a design already existed which fulfilled all the criteria, producing a new one seems superfluous. *Whilst the 43xx was very good, it is well known that the n class was an attempt at improving the design, so choosing the older version as standard would seem strange. Plus outside walschaerts valve gear is a definite advantage.
  8. Interesting beast - what are the wheel spacing and diameter of the mallet chassis? Wonder how it lines up with the 30hp O&K 600/700mm gauge mallets? Though ironically they have far simpler valve gear! I don't think Beyer's ever made a mallet - plenty of garratts of course, and the FCAB cab forward tender meyers, but it's an interesting machine you've built nonetheless.
  9. Depends how expendable you consider the local population to be...
  10. I'd heartily recommend a trip to mariefred to see the survivor on the Oslj, and all their other stock. Then a trip back along the lake to stockholm on the steamer... I haven't been for 10 years.
  11. Doesn't need to be 60cm to get decauville mallets. The Nesttun-Osbanen in norway was 750mm, but kitted out with 3 standard 0440t decauville mallets (built by Tubize) and a 042t. Exactly the same designs as the french 60cm tramways, but with nicer cabs. The strange thing was it was planned as 60cm gauge, and they started building in 1891 but after a year of construction in 1892 they decided to widen the gauge to 750mm, but then bought a load of stock to designs usually supplied to 60cm! The locos weren't built until 1893, so it wasn't as if they changed their gauge mid building either. Not that they were very careful with their mallets mind you... Somehow all 3 survived til the line closed in 1935!
  12. What about hiring in the local industrial shunter? Plenty of those were registered to run over BR.
  13. Dad's had one of these for a few months, it's a nice model and runs well, and as you say a genuine 1870s design. The green Cork, Bandon & South Coast one is probably the best 'freelance-friendly' livery/details rather than the GSR grey, lswr or SR versions. When I looked at some of my reference material as prompted by this thread I couldn't help but notice that 042st or 240t seemed perhaps more common for mixed or passenger traffic at that time period.
  14. The cornwall minerals railway 060t dated from 1873-4: Sharp, Stewart products, they had 18 of them. Half were kept by the GWR and rebuilt as saddle tanks, the last of which made it into the 1930s. The 1361 and 1366 classes were GW built developments of the rebuilds. The other 9 were sold to the colney valley and Lynn & Fakenham. with some rebuilt to tender locos and some as 240s.
  15. There were several proposals for both adhesion (though it'd be more spectacular climbing than the bernina!) and rack lines down the grimselpass to meiringen. I believe there was an idea floated for putting a 20 mile tunnel in for both rail and power lines a couple of years back. Likewise you can get an adhesion line from goschenen over the sustenpass to link up with the brunig line. So if one of those had been built, then perhaps the FO might have needed a few more ge4/4 to run them, and they'd be running outside of tunnels.
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