JimC

If one is doing alternate histories one may imagine Collett's wife not dying young, Collett retiring in 1936 at her instigation, and Hawksworth picking up his compound Castle proposal with a large chunk of the Chapelon ideas that were demonstrably (Grange valve chests) already floating round Swindon. The result could potentially have been spectacular given a high superheat boiler, maybe even enlarged to Std 7 size. [later] And to my surprise I think the boiler on the surviving GWR diagram of the "Compound Castle" *is* a standard 7. It's not very safe scaling from such drawings, especially from scans, not originals, but I'm about 85% confident that's the case. The proposal had 2* 17 x26 cylinders and 2* 25x26. It doesn't seem to me that would have been lighter than the Castle's 4* 16x26, but I don't know enough to offer any kind of informed opinion.

Or, for that matter, Marylebone's 3 cylinder white elephant. Seems to me there probably wasn't that big a gulf in costs between 3 cylinders and 3 valve gears and 4 cylinders and 2. But I m sure you're right, there wasn't a job for a Mattingly Pacific. To my mind the Hawksworth/Stanier 4 cylinder compound is a more interesting never was.

The top one is the GWR sketch as included in RCTS. The centre one is a composite of issued weight diagrams over the sketch. I reckon there are substantial chunks of County and King in it, not sure about anything else. I think it must have been produced by an enthusiast, not a Swindon trained draughtsman. The third appears to be a composite based on photos of models. I'm not sure what all the components are, but I'm guessing Stanier Pacific and King are in there, probably County too.

The consensus on the 4-6-2 seems to be that it was a project kicked off by the drawing office that Hawksworth had halted when he heard about it, so to call it a Hawksworth pacific is definitely stretching a point. Mattingly pacific perhaps . There isn't very much to go on because it didn't get very far. The basic weight diagram in RCTS part 9 is about all that's available I believe. That drawing shows a dome and apparently pop safety valves on the firebox, and no safety valve cover at all. It was cancelled at an early enough stage that really one is free to imagine what one likes, because who knows what would have changed as the design was worked up.

I should have thought the water feed information was best obtained from those maintaining the locomotives now! Its something that could have been changed later as a result of experience though. I've got scans of the tender drawings register and I will say that I can't see any relevant drawings listed for A120 (which was ordered against lot 267) that are unique to that lot. A113, according to the Register, was originally ordered for Lot 234 (Castles) so the register might not list changes made post order. However the register does seem to support your contention that there was no difference. On the other hand Swindon seems to have been quite happy to swap autogear on and off pre group tank engines on works visits, so it doesn't seem impossible they could have changed pipework. I believe there were other changes that needed to be made to tenders to suit what they were leaving the works with. But tender frames seems to be something few notice. I wonder if I'm the only one who wishes Didcot would shuffles tanks between 3822 and 2999s tenders so 2999 could have the pre grouping style frames!

Well, it's something that so far as we know was never built new. As for never happened, don't we need to be rather careful about that? There's plenty of evidence for bitsas from Swindon, especially older tenders upgraded with the later 45 degree frames. According to the VCT list there are three surviving tenders from Lot A113, all of which now have the later style frames. I don't, I'm afraid, know what fillers they have. Tenders get horribly complicated. There are a number of weight diagrams from Swindon, for instance, that show combinations of tender features that were never on newly built tenders, but I would hesitate to say they never could have existed.

I think the main takeaway is that one shouldn't generalise about locomotives with the ROD. We've got black ROD 2-8-0s, Khaki GW 53s, grey LBSCR E3s, and a suggestion on an SREMG page that the SECR P class were also grey. I've also just found a page stating that NNER T1s were painted grey.

According to the GW liveries bible, Great Western Way, the GWR painted locomotives a shade of khaki between 1916 and 1917. 5322 was built new during this period and sent straight to France. So with 5322 what we are looking at would seem to be a representation of GWR Khaki rather than ROD livery. GWW also states some Dean Goods went overseas in GWR Khaki. I rather doubt that under wartime conditions a gloss surface would be much of a problem. I'd anticipate a layer of matt grime at a very early stage.

I would have thought that too, but apparently not. I've got a scan of the drawing "Arrangement of tubes Standard boiler No.7" in front of me, (59502, June 1920) and whilst the arrangement is basically the same, they are definitely spaced differently at the firebox end. I've just spent some time trying to understand the drawing - in the past I've given up, frustrated! As well as the position of every tube at 3in to the foot scale it has insets at full size showing arrangement of small tubes at each end around the centre. At the smokebox end it shows hexagonally packed with horizontal spacing of small tubes 2 3/8in and vertical spacing of 1 3/8 in. At the firebox end it shows 2.33 in horizontally and 1.45in vertically. And yes, it does have that mix of decimal and vulgar fractions! First time I can recall seeing decimals on a GWR drawing. As I'm sure you all know without me telling you the vulgars work out at 2.375 and 1.375. Which means that the firebox end tubes are spaced narrower horizontally and wider vertically compared to the smokebox end! When you go over the whole drawing it gets even more complex. The top couple of rows of tubes are horizontal at the smokebox and arched slightly, following the inner firebox profile at the other end. The bottom rows at the firebox end are stretched down towards the grate. The whole arrangement is immensely complex and very difficult to understand in words or even on the drawing! It seems to me that immense effort must have been put into optimising the layout.

From 1925 the GWR fitted a pair of 5 1/8 diameter flue tubes in the upper corners of untapered boilers that had belpaire fireboxes, pressure 165psi and above and no superheater. This is reckoned to have reduced cracking in the corners of the firebox. Tapered boilers like the 94xx never had this feature, but it was seen on all post 1934 designs and also on replacement boilers on smaller pre group pannier tanks and side tanks like 850s, 2021s and I think 517s. Did any other lines use this design feature? I would imagine, BTW, it was a pragmatic innovation, based on experience, rather than theory. Plenty of P class boilers on pannier tanks had been superheated before 1925, with a single row of flue tubes, and by this date the superheater elements were being removed. If those boilers were seeing a significant reduction in problems then it was an obvious thing to try. It wasn't done on the taper boilers. It seems to have been first used on replacement boilers for small pre group pannier tanks, 850s and 2021s, in 1925. The Std 11 boiler of 1924, which was basically a variation on the Metro boiler didn't have them, although the Std 21 on the 54s 64s and 74s, which was a Std 11 with a drum head smokebox, did. Worth noting that although P class (and other) boilers were standard and interchangeable on the outside there were any number of different tube arrangements tried on the inside during the Churchward era. Tube layout was clearly a preoccupation in the drawing office.

I've seen ropes and/or horses mentioned to handle points on atmospheric lines. I should have thought the inconvenience and delays would have been rather significant.

I'm pretty sure I've seen somewhere that this is the result of altering a single track broad gauge tunnel ino double track standard. ISTR in other cases along there the tunnel was removed completely, but could be wrong.

Only takes one major water leak or some other catastrophic failure I suppose.

Good question! I've never seen a answer. Anyone? If someone knows of a really square on photo as per Railwayana sales websites and can point me at it I could try measuring it up.

Cast iron and brass plates (see above in thread for details).

Very hard to disprove... Wouldn't it be better to turn the question round and ask whether any one has any evidence of a 4,000 gallon tender fitted to a Saint?

According to Pole's book the GWR kept its existing 19 directors and added one from each of the constituents. I would say his text implies this was convenient rather than essential though.

I don't see anything I'm afraid, having resolved my confusion with your other picture. According to the VCT list that's a 1931/2 tender so could have carried "Great Western" when it was brand new, but since then there should have been GWR roundel, GWR and/or G crest W and various BR liveries including Departmental ones, and I don't see any sign of those either.

I think its British Railways (written in full) rather than Great Western. That's the 1931 - 1946 production tender chassis, and most of those would not have ever carried the words Great Western.

I suppose if you are building enough of them there's much less disadvantage to having different boilers for different classes. More than a couple of hundred or so and you've probably got a big enough pool of spare boilers that there's little difference provided you have enough storage space for overhauled pool boilers. But my reading of Cox is that the attitude in the drawing offices was to find reasons not to use standard boilers rather than ways to use them. But as for throatplates and things, as long as a standard boiler fits the locomotive it doesn't need to be identical. There were a good number of variations on all the Swindon standard boilers with improvements over the years and even upgrades as they went through the shops. You get oddities like locomotives that have top feed for a few years and then lose it again with a change to a non top feed boiler.

Perhaps city of London would be better. Small c. The whole is perhaps worthy of one of those Venn type diagrams that are produced to explain to our transatlantic cousins how Great Britain, United Kingdom, British Isles etc overlap.

I wonder what the logic was with the 1922 amalgamations. It's hard to believe there were any operational or practical advantages in an amalgamation that only lasted a year, so I suppose it must have been to do with manipulating share holdings/share classes or executive/director posts. Do any of you know?

Which in turn was presumably the driver for updating a road system fit only for horse drawn vehicles...

But was there enough of a road system in 1921 to make a Beeching Mk1 possible? Could it be argued that Beeching was facilitated by 1930s/1950s road building?

I haven't thought through it, but were Churchward and Collett somewhat outside that pool? If the Swindon men were a little distanced from such a fraternity would that be part of Swindon's "splendid isolation"? As I say I haven't examined it to see if its true, and I might be completely wrong, and of course cause and effect. Just offering it up as a discussion point. Going back to the early 19thC I did some potted biographies of early engineers for a project I'm working on, and it was evident that Gooch and the Armstrongs of the GWR came from a very small pool of Northumbrians including Stephensons, Hackworths and the like whose families were all known to each other.