PeteBrid

You could do that with the Yorskhire 'Taurus' but that had a special compounding gearbox to enable the second engine to come and off load and the latter's function was to bring in more hp for speed (tripping). Titan's drivelines (engine -torque converter - final drive) were sized to power half the loco: if you like, Titan was a pair of 0-4-0s squashed together. You could, at a pinch, shut one engine down but it would reduce the tractive effort by half and you'd be dragging a torque converter on the 'dead' half which would further reduce the performance. (In fact, unless you went under and physically locked the gearbox in neutral - you can't do it pneumatically - you'd be bound to spin the output of the converter which would drag the fluid round and cause a heat-build up when there was no engine to provide cooling, so all in all, it wasn't a recommended procedure other than as a get-back-home.) My abiding memory of a ride on a Titan was up at Ravenscraig. As I explained, each engine drive the forward/reverse gearbox at the opposiite end of the loco, so the two drive lines passed one another in opposite directions under the cab. In fact, to prevent the propshafts being too long, they were split into pairs with a plummer block on a cross stretcher. On this occasion I was on a 'fact-finding' tour of Ravenscraig with the Loco Superintendent and we climbed aboard a Titan about to propel two loads of red hot molten slag up to the tip. As we set off, the driver grunted at the Loco Super and moved us to one side so that he could lift an access panel in the cab floor. He drew our attention to what was underneath. There were the two pairs of propshafts, but one of the 4 was bent and in consequence its associated plummer block was no longer secure to the cross stretcher. Instead it rose half an inch or so and fell back as the propshaft rotated, and each time a flake of metal flew off. The driver was anxious to bring this defect to the Super's notice, and quite rightly, but I suddenly became aware of the surreality of the situation. Here we were, propelling two wagons* full of red hot molten slag at about 5 or 6 mph. There were personnel and rubber-tyred vehicles moving around in the vicinity (there was a level crossing a short way ahead) and the loco was driving itself as the driver and all of us in the cab were watching a plummer block rising and falling through a hole in the floor - and they say mobile phones are a distraction. (*After a safe return I went to look at the wagons - now empty but still quite warm - and found on one of them, instead of having 4 bolts holding a buffer on, 3 had gone and said buffer had swung down out of line.) Pete Briddon

It's basically a copy of what Hunslet did for BNFL. A large profile welded over the buffer face, a round bar welded back from the 'face along the buffer axls and one or more guides on the buffer body to keep it in line. The other trick was to add round 30" dia face plates on the buffer but the weight did shorten the buffer life, so a prototypical droop should be considered! Pete Briddon

Hec no, they were completely new build. The Sentinel 0-6-0 leading and trailing axles gave enough troubles without upping them from 16tons/axle to 25! No, Thomas Hills absorbed both Sentinel and Yorkshire once loco production ceased at Shrewsbury, and already had copied Sentinel parts and practices for standardisation. Here's a better view of a Titan, well, it looks more complete than the last ones but it was at Kilnhurst for attention too. Back on Steelman a minute - I followed 10277 down to Southampton when it went Stateside and also met it at Immingham when it returned. I came across these two shots tonight - sorry one of the slides has begun to fade - and you can see on the cabside the loco of the Varlen Loco Corporation. (There was some sticky-tape over it but it mostly came off in tarnsit.) While in the States the loco hauled 3000tons (OK US tons but it's not much less) of dead DE locos, traction motors rotating an'all. Outbound and returning. Pete Briddon Oh and another footnote: the gate guardian at Round Oak - the Thomas Hill 0-6-0 - is none other than 293V, which is the loco we built for Ketton Cement after Moyse ceased trading (see earlier post).

Scunthorpe's 91 was one of a pair I repowered in the mid 90s. The idea was to replace the long-in-the-tooth Rolls' C6Ts, the obsolete PLC (that was sited in the box let into the cab roof) and replace it with Krauss-Maffei dedicated control gear coupled with the 'latest' generation of radio control units from Theimeg. I did 90 and 91 under sub-contract, and was blamed for 'late delivery' by the prime contractor even though the K-M kit wasn't even in the country. In order to make more room for the control gear (and move away from siting sensitive electronics in cab rooves) I hit upon the idea of dispensing with the central 'walk-round' control stand and replacing it with a control desk that butted up to No.1 end bulkhead and ended at the cab centreline, thus giving us more space inside the desk and actually a wider walkway for the driver. As Rotherham was interested in adopting radio control they borrowed 91 (and I believe RMS's H024, another I had converted) for evaluation but nothing further came of it. I was certain I had done a reply to one of two points raised earlier but I cannot seem to see it anywhere. So let me recap a bit: Sentinels: Osgood asked about the weights of chain drive Sentinels. As Mike Edge said, they are generally 34 tonners, but there was at least one specially built at 37tons. The Chain drive Sentinels were known as "L0-4-0s" for 'light' whereas the rod drive 0-4-0s were "H0-4-0" for, yes, 'heavy'. Trouble is, although the 'standard rod drive 0-4-0 was 40tons, they were also made at 30tons and 37tons meaning that some "H0-4-0s" are actually lighter than all the "L0-4-0"s. Sentinel 0-6-0s were nearly all 48tons, buty those at Scunthorpe were ballasted to 50tons. As I said earlier, we had a few of the Scunthorpe ones back for Tinsley Park, so here's a picture of a very woebegone 10111, sat front end down and with its axles cut through outside the hornguides. It did eventually get rebuilt. Talking of woebegone - here's 10026 an ex Lackenby chain drive, just arived at Kilnhurst for a complete rebuild... . ..and, although not the same loco (I'd have to hunt around to see if I did get a shot of it later), here's 10040 in pristine condition, after rebuild and about to go off to a new operator at RPCC Rochester, although it and its buddy 10035 (they were fitted out to run in tandem) moved on to the Barrington Light Railway later. Another batch of Lackenby locos that saw further use were the Thomas Hill 'Titans', the first UK industrial loco with a 25ton axleload. They were nominally 75ton 0-6-0DHs, using twin Rolls engines (C6T or C8T) which were angled to drive gearboxes on the opposite end axles: thus two long propshafts passed by underneath the central cab. We saw quite a bit of them at Hills, firstly sorting them out and getting them running for Ravenscraig, and then sorting them out again after Ravenscraig set fire to them on the slag run. Here's 3 (246 and 247 and another) outside the workshops at Kilnhurst in 1978 or -9, and below 250 in the then-new erecting shop about to receive attention... Busman says he couldn't get into Trostre. I've spent much too much time there! RMS took over the loco contract in 2002 and we had 3 or 4 locos in there over the next few years - here's one, fresh from workshops and with radio control all functioning. (the box on the side is to give the driver visual indication that the loco is responding to his commands). This is a Hunslet 0-6-0DH and it went in first with a Rolls' C8 engine that kept going but gave us no confidence, but here it is after repowering to a Cat 3406. I've other shots at Trostre but not digital. And Round Oak: Round Oak was once a steelworks with a fleet of early Yorkshire diesels. When I first visited it had become a bulk distribution depot and had a massive store of grain. Twenty years on and it had become a steel stockholder depot as Busman says, and was a subsidiary of a firm called Insulated Structures Ltd at Scunthorpe. ISL went out and bought the ex Tyne& Wear Brush 0-6-0DEs when the Channel Tunnel had finished with them, and progressively wrote off one after another. I suspected that whoever inspected them at Cheriton assumed that as they had 400+bhp and looked 'meaty' they must be 48tonners, whereas they were 36tons and ROR overloaded them. Here's BT803 parked up outside the new offices having flashed over a traction motor and set fire to the cab, put out by a nearby mainline driver with an extinguisher. Now, let's see if I can post this without it disappearing..... Pete B

Michael Edge said: I've got drawings for the GECT 6wh shunters but they do present some difficulties in model form. I would need to drive all axles and the compensation gear is rather strange and very visible, it would have to move with the wheels. And which wheels? As originally delivered the GECs had a "thin" spoked wheel, but the complex suspension, to which was attributed the high adhesion the locos achieved, seemed 'reluctant' to allow the locos to go around curves and the stresses caused spoke fractures. The record was apparently one loco with 19 fractures out of its 6 wheels, causing GEC to initiate a 'campaign change' from thin to a thicker spoked wheel. But these too started cracking (though I know at least 2 of the 4 built for NCB at 65 tons still had them when they left NCB) so a second campaign change was started to a rolled steel (solid) wheel. It was said that this financial disaster was what caused Lord Weinstock to pull GEC out of locomotive manufacture, the last loco out of Vulcan works ironically being the 50Ton version of the same 6wDE design, now at Darley Dale. The Engineers down at Llanwern showed me changes they'd made to the GEC suspension to enable the locos to curve more readily - wish I could remember what they were! Many of the GECs were centre-flangeless, at least latterly, though that in itself can be problematic if track standards aren't high. Ruston said: Are the Moyse locos the same ones that were at Stockton Haulage? I think they had three of them. Yes, but they were originally imported by Shell for Teesport, following a demo loco that Moyse brought to Lackenby (which didn't get them an order but may have swayed Lackenby towards DEs rather than the Sentinel/Thomas Hill DH fleet). Tommy Wards were Moyse agents for a number of years, and I found myself bidding for a loco against Moyse for Ketton Cement, which was then owned by Wards. It looked like Wards would 'persuade' Ketton to go Moyse, but Moyse went out of business just in time. Pete Briddon

I've dug out some old slides and put them through the scanner, so here, from the dim and distant past (well, July 1965 to be exact) are some from Normanby Park during the transition from steam to diesel. Here's Lionel, Sentinel 10109 of 1963. Generally Sentinel 0-6-0s were 48tons, but the NPW ones were 50tonners, with additional weights including two just below and behind the bottom edge of the buffer beams. Code and headlights vary quite a bit on Sentinels - NPW specified the configuration shown here with codelights as 'ears' on the cab roof and headlights on the exhaust cowl in front. Here's another - might be NIM from the very short nameplate (S 10108) with a I think an HC 0-6-0ST alongside. Oh and for those who are still wondering, the buffer beams have had 'sad' chevrons applied. 'Happy ' chevrons go thus "v". An interior view of the steam loco shed. And finally, by way of contrast, a publicity shot we did of Steelman 10277 in the yard at Kilnhurst before it went to Ravenscraig. There were so many lights the photographer blew 3 fuses in extension cables doing the shoot. Busman refered to the 'cat' logo: actually it was supposed to be a Cheetah, and was a profile based on the logo Thomas Hill's then parent company used which was then tacked on to the sideskirts. We didn't like it much at Kilnhurst - seemed to show its bum off most of all. Pete Briddon

Sorry, being involved in the sharp end I automatically think of suspension rather than mere paintwork! Then when people start expressing a preference for 'happy chevrons' as opposed to 'sad chevrons' and I wonder what b... difference it makes!

As a former Thomas Hill employee I can add something to Busmansholiday's story. First off, not all the NPW Sentinels were scrapped, we had several back for rework for Tinsley Park, 10111 being one of them, I'd have to dig up my notes to identify the others. (For that matter we had several Janus back and reworked for ICI.) On Steelman, Hills didn't "step in" to save 10277 from scrap - it was part of a longer negotiation, which included the steelworks recovering the fuel tank which they had taken off for another purpose. The trouble was, it was an 'odd-ball' loco in a works that was entirely diesel-electric otherwise. Apart from my general duties at Hills, I oversaw the loco leave for the States (via Southampton) and its return through Immingham after the Varlen deal collapsed. It came back for the simple reason that we had already sold the prototype Steelman (10265) to Ravenscraig and they wanted more. After supplying 10277. and with no s/h example available, we ended up building two new ones. (I remember taking Ravenscraig engineers down to Bardon where 10273 was employed to show them what a working Steelman looked like and get first hand opinion from the quarry personnel.) You said in your photo caption that all the chevrons on the three Scunthorpe locos were different. Not entirely true. The R-R Steelman locos had chevrons made by Metalastik to their design, and the centre axle chevrons are different to leading and trailing in order to give the centre axle easier ability to offset when going through curves. When it came to building new Steelmen, (the first two for ICI) Metalastik had moved on, and the included angle had changed. Metalastik would only produce the original angle as 'specials' at a price and lead time that were not encouraging. So we had to accept the later Metalastik design, even though this meant different patterns for axleboxes and the mating frame parts. The centre axle again had a different chevron and this proved to be a major headache as it did not allow the middle axle to move transversely as the older ones did. In the end, we found an FAG bearing that incorporated a 19mm end float, i.e. the axlebox stayed put but the axle could float on the bearing within. The Ravenscraig pair had these from the outset. When Ravenscraig closed I was running my own company and went up to assess the locos for re-use: it was a toss up then whether they went to Port Talbot or Shelton. If memory serves PT paid my bill for the subsequent report. The locos were parked up in a building, with as much valuable kit around them as they could squeeze in to avoid theft. Security guards patroled by day, dogs were left loose at night, feral cats wandered everywhere and pigeons lived in the roof space. You had to look wherever you were about to put your feet, it was filthy. Despite my overalls, I wrote a shirt off climbing over and under them. I put a quote in to do the neccessary work but the Engineers at Lackenby insisted to BSC that they were the loco experts and the work should be performed in-house: I was a given a sop in the shape of a contract to move them from Ravenscraig to Lackenby, though I did get one from Shelton for attention later. As for your 'party trick': it ought not to have been possible, one of the primary safety features of a decent control system is that you cannot engage drive with the engine revs above idle. But a weakness in the R-R system (which I fear we perpetuated) was that we detected throttle lever position, not actual engine rpm. So assuming that nobody had tampered with the control systems, I would expect that the trick was to rev up, then smartly pull the throttle lever back to release the interlock, put the clutch in and rev up again before the engine had time to decelerate. Do that on a Sentinel and it would throw you across the cab (if it didn't seriously trash the clutch), but the converter charge pump on Steelman was driven after the clutch, so on engagement you would have no base pressure for 2 or 3 seconds, giving a softer take up. It is though, a stupid pactice with potential for loco damage and personal injury. Pete Briddon (At Thomas Hills 1978 to 1988)

I thought I'd blow the dust back off this thread and show the progress being made on bringing RS8 back to life. For the last 12 months it has been resident in the workshop where it was transformed from steam to diesel, coming up 60 years ago. It is not runnable - yet - but it is nearing the end of what has been a thorough overhaul. To pick up on Bennyboy and Signaller69, RS8 is indeed within load gauge, were it not, it could not have passed under the hoppers where the wagons loaded. The cab however is intended for one man operation and has its throttle and brake controls (which are all you require until you need to change direction) duplicated at each corner of the cab, a unique arrangement. We accept that it is not to some peoples' taste - 'aesthetically challenged' is the term we tend to use - but it is nonetheless a fascinating example of industrial railway history. Pete Briddon

For anyone interested, Tarmac are now running a website on its restoration - http://rs8restoration.co.uk/index.htm - and there are a few historic photos there from quarry archives. A number of RS8's parts have already found their way up (back) to Tunstead as the restoration gets under way. The seized torque converter (which was the reason we approached Tarmac in the first place) turned out to be much less severe than we had feared. Although the restoration workis taking place in the quarry workshops, some way from the rail system, it is more than likely that RS8 will find itself back in the quarry eventually.

Your reference to "DH50-1" is the LH/Hunslet nomenclature for the ex Llandarcy/EVR ones they rebuilt for Cardiff. From the date on the Quarry Faces website ('c.1990') I would guess that it is 261V which was a hire loco when I left Thomas Hills at the end of 1988 (they were taken over by RFS in 1989). I don't think the Westbury loco ever left there till the works closed. (But you have my smpathies. I've seen some woefully inaccurate captions on Flickr claiming that Hills built 2 0-6-0s for Westbury in 1971 and that these are the locos (re)built by Hunslet for Celsa. Twaddle. We built one, 278V, which was nearly complete when I joined TH in April 1978). Pete Briddon

As 2mm Andy has pointed out, it has joined my son's loco collection, although the instigation behind acquiring it was very much a family effort. You can read more about its removal here - http://www.weekendrails.co.uk/latest-posts/312.html . We are in touch with one of the engineers who did the conversion, and was instrumental in bringing it to the NSC from Dinting, but thanks to age and health was unable to see its restoration through. We would very much welcome photos of RS8 at Dinting or Tunstead to add to the archive of the loco and possible display on Andrew's site. Pete Briddon