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JimC

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  1. JimC
    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. 
     
  2. JimC

    Errors/Inaccuracies etc

    By JimC,


    Miscellaneous Musings
    Mistakes. We all make them, and if I was immune I wouldn't have to publish this errata sheet for my [hopefully first] book. 
    https://www.devboats.co.uk/gwdrawings/errata/GWRlocoDevelopmentErrataFirstEdition.pdf
     
    At the moment I've been going through some of my sketches for the book, improving some of the older ones where I think I can do better now, and adding some new ones where I can.
    I reuse everything I can, so coming to do a 79 class (1858 0-6-0) based on the Ahrons drawing in Holcroft's Armstrongs of the Great Western, I resolved to use as much as possible of my drawing of the slightly earlier and very similar 57 class. All well and good,and inside frames and motion went easily, whilst different size wheels are scarcely a problem, just count the spokes. So I got to the boiler. A quick cross check in RCTS confirmed that the principal dimensions  are recorded as being the same, so I anticipated a straight copy and paste. Pasted it in and... Well, just didn't match. 
    An overlay of three of the Ahrons drawings in Holcroft (see below) seems to suggest that his 57 boiler is just a little short. I've lined up 57, 79 and 121 drawings in the image below and you can see the variation. 
     
     

     
    So what to do. The trouble is although we have boiler dimensions in RCTS, they are inside the cladding, so of limited use. So do I go with my source, or do I conjecturally amend? Rightly or wrongly I'm taking the view that as these are my sketches, not Ahrons, and as I claim to be doing more than simply copying his work, I'm going to change the boiler on the 57 to be what I think it probably was, rather than reflect the source. It was a nasty surprise though.
     
    As a little something to amuse further, here's two other things I picked up. This is a page extract from C J Freezer's "Locomotives in Outline, GWR". You can see that my copy has angry pencil annotations.  I was very detuned when I put these in, because I'd put the statement about lever reverse in the book, and had to make a desperate last second change as it went to the printers, for the proof had already been approved. Fainter are the words "Too short" above the bunker. Freezer had unaccountably drawn the same rear overhang on his 94 drawing as on a 57, which is of course too short, and there are all sorts of distortions of bunker door cutout and roof to cram it all in. 
     


    Compare the proportions on the real 94.
     

     
    (photo 9466 group on Facebook)
  3. JimC

    GWR 1392/1393 Class 0-6-0T (ex Cornwall Mineral Railway)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    An interesting class, not least because they were significant as being the basis of the design of the 1361 and 1366 classes.
     
    In their original form the locomotives did not look much like this, being side tanks with no back to the cab and intended to be used in pairs operated by a single crew. They were built by Sharp Stewart for the Cornwall Minerals Railway. The designer is a little obscure. Its apparently credited to an F. Trevithick.  Francis Trevithick, son of the great pioneer, had formerly been Locomotive superintendent of the Northern division of the LNWR and was resident in Cornwall at the time working as Factor for the Tehidy Estate, which had considerable mineral connections. One of his subordinates had been Alexander Allan, inventor of the eponymous valve gear, with which these locomotives were fitted. There were other F. Trevithicks, but he seems to be considered most likely. 
     
    The GWR took over running the line in 1877, but only acquired nine of the line’s eighteen identical locomotives as the other nine were pledged as security against various debts and were sold separately. 
    The GWR numbered their locos 1392-1400. In 1883/4 they were all converted to saddle tanks and given a rear frame extension to provide a conventional cab and bunker. They received a variety of cabs, tanks and bunkers over the years and were twice reboilered, the second time with 1361 class boilers, but were otherwise little altered. One was sold in 1883 and 1392 scrapped after a collision in 1906, but otherwise they survived into the 1930s.  After 1392 was scrapped the class became known as the 1393 class! At the 1912 renumbering 1400 was renumbered 1398, being the number of the loco sold in 1883.
     
    In GWR history they were significant as being the basis of the design of the 1361 and 1366 classes. Harry Holcroft tells the story of "a roll of musty old drawings" being deposited at his drawing board, which were those of the 1392s, which he was instructed to use to design a complete new class. 
     


     
    This sketch is partly based on a 19thC weight diagram which is minimal in the extreme, and partly on 20thC photographs. I think its hopefully reasonably representative of an 20thC configuration for the class, although I've had to rely a little more on the known similarity to the 1361 class as is perhaps advisable. Later weight diagrams exist and it would be interesting to see those to try and tie things down a little more.  
  4. JimC

    2-4-0s, and the Armstrong era in particular

    By JimC,


    Miscellaneous Musings
    When I wrote the first book I was rather guilty of somewhat glossing over the 2-4-0s in the Armstrong and Dean eras. There were so many of them, they were rebuilt so much and I just found them confusing and, dare I say it, not that interesting. I'm paying for it now! Working up my experimental chronologically based GWR locomotive history I'm in into the late 1860s, early 1870s, and they are becoming impossible to avoid! I have to wonder, incidentally, why, with standard goods engines and standard tank engines in numbers there were so many different ones.
    The old Gooch era 149s built by Englands and the Joseph Armstrong's 111 class from Wolverhampton were adequately documented, but then...

    Next was the 439 class. Intriguing beats, because they were an early Joseph Armstrong product at Swindon, and looked almost exactly like broad gauge engines. When they were rebuilt/renewed later just about everything was changed, so there are no clues there. So what do we have? Russell has nothing. No drawings at GWS or NRM. Ahrons in British steam has nothing I can see. RCTS has one rather unclear photograph and a bare minimum of dimensions. There was a thread here some years ago, but even @MikeOxon doesn't seem to  have found much other than a slightly better version of the same photograph. So I wondered about Ahrons original article in "The Locomotive". You may be aware that Ahrons wrote a whole series of articles on early GWR locomotives for the Locomotive, typically illustrated with his simple line drawings, which have been widely reproduced, notably in Holcroft's books and his own "British Steam Locomotive", and which I have made wide use of for my drawings. I discovered, to my surprise and delight, that the RCTS archives are at Leatherhead station, just a few miles from where I live, and they have a complete run of"The Locomotive". So I joined up and yesterday spent a useful but very chilly couple of hours perusing the bound issues. And yes, Ahrons does cover the 439s in the magazine issue. But the article was written a few years after the previous one, and he is eschewing his line drawings for photographs, which for the 1870s are presumably increasingly available. And I turned to it and:



    Yes, its the same photograph, although the reproduction is better so it's a lot clearer. It's a nice profile at least, I could do a hell of a lot worse.

    Now this morning I've come to the 481s, which were the next batch at Swindon. Very much the same dimensions, but visually quite unlike. And another I happily glossed over in the book. And what do I find in RCTS? A similarly tiny profile photo. In Russell - only the renewals, again rather different, and in Holcroft little enough too. So, slightly discouraged, I'm writing this blog post to let off steam! Really I don't think there's much of a way round it, I need to produce something. Perhaps I should make them plain line outlines and much more diagramattic than my usual ones to make it plain they are, well, rather sketchy sketches!
     
  5. JimC
    The 'Victory' class was a class of ten built in 1917 for the Inland Waterways and Docks dept. Post war they were sold off by the Railways Operating Department, mostly to collieries. There's a detailed history here at Planet industrials. 
     
    The ADR bought two of these from the ROD. They had outside cylinders and were quite powerful locomotives. They were numbered 666/7 on absorption. They received a moderate Swindon rebuild. Another had been purchased by the Brecon & Merthyr. This loco was numbered 2161. It was given a significant overhaul in 1922.
    The B&M loco was sold in 1929, and lasted to 1951 in colliery service. Both the ADR locos reached British Railways.

    This sketch of the beast is intended to portray the later GWR configuration on at least some of the class with GWR dome and safety valve cover. They seem to have had new tanks in GWR days with prominent riveting, but I don't do rivets in my sketches. The drawing owes a lot to Planet Industrials and in particular the Don Townsley drawing on the web page for their upcoming model. However the beast is completely redrawn, and, for instance, I've steered something of an intermediate course between the GWR weight diagram B13 and the Townsley drawing on some aspects, notably cab window position.
  6. JimC

    Book Format for Locomotive Development

    By JimC,


    Miscellaneous Musings
    I'm mulling over something different in the way of formats. Traditionally locomotive books have been written class by class, which in many ways is the most logical way to do it. But the trouble is that its difficult to get a sense of how design developed. Say for instance, you're looking at GWR 0-6-0 freight engines. You list the 57 class and its history from a cabless domeless sandwich frame locomotive in 1855 with Gooch motion, then maybe the renewals around the mid 1870s which were almost new locomotives, domes boilers,  Stephenson link etc, and then typical 1890s boilers, even Belpaire fireboxes before being withdrawn mostly in the 1910s. Then you jump back to the 79s in 1857, and a similar story, and so it proceeds, jumping between eras and what by the end of their lives are very different locomotives. Which is fine, and its conventional because it works for most people, but it makes it very difficult to gain a picture of how the design school was progressing. A Dean Goods at the end of the class service life in the 40s and 50s was a very different beast to the first built Dean Goods in the early 1880s, and maybe it makes as much or even more sense to look at it alongside a 2251 as opposed to an Armstrong Goods?

    So then I got to thinking, OK, lets look at it over a time line. The most extreme version would be to use a format of annals - literally year by year, So sort of 

    "1903.
    Of the 60 locomotives built this year, most were transitional Dean/Churchward types with Churchward boilers. There were 10 Aberdares with Std 4 tapered boilers without top feed and slide valves. 27 Bulldogs, which mostly had second hand parallel barrel Std 2 boilers, although the last ten had short cone taper boilered Std 2s. The reason for the second hand boilers was that the original plan was for a sort of super Bulldog with a Std 4 boiler, but in the event these were used to upgrade Aberdares instead. The ten new Cities, fitted with Std 4 boilers were also built this year as were a further 10 of the 36xx 2-4-2Ts. Most notable, however, was the start of the Churchward revolution. The 2nd and 3rd prototype Saints 98 and 171, the 28xx, No 97 and the large Prairie No 99 all appeared this year, the first with the Churchward front end with integrated cylinders/saddle. The DeGlehn  no 102 also made its first appearance this year. Arguably this was year the final form of the British steam locomotive appeared.
    Then illustrations of a City and the Churchward prototypes perhaps."

    An alternate approach would be to do periods of design, for instance Churchward/Dean Transition and Churchward Standards. That would separate the 36xx, Aberdare, Std boilers on 4-4-0s and the Std 2/4 boiler era from the true outside cylinder era, and in many ways would be a lot more readable, but on the other hand there would be big overlaps, with transition types like the Bird and Flower as late as 1908, but the outside cylinders starting in 1903. On the other hand it would be a lot more readable.

    What do you think folks? Would you be more likely to purchase a book based on timelines? Rigidly as annals, or more flexible with eras?

     
  7. JimC

    First use of injectors?

    By JimC,


    Information required
    RCTS states "Up to 1865 the general practice was to use crosshead driven pumps... At that date the Giffard injector (invented in 1859) was
    introduced on the GWR.".

    Which begs the question, what classes, were they rapidly retrofitted etc etc.  Does anyone know any more?
     
    There's a photo in RCTS (Part 4 D113) of a 322 (Beyer) no 334 "as built by Beyer Peacock in 1864" which would appear to have an injector fitted. Similarly D119 shows a 360 class with injector, but the caption makes it clear the photo is not quite in as built condition. An Ahrons drawing in Holcroft's "Armstrongs" (p66) shows 361 in very early condition with the injector, but drawings of the slightly earlier 110 and 111 do not.
     
    So from this very sketchy information one might surmise that injectors came to the GWR with the Beyer, and started to be fitted to Swindon products with the 360 class. Anyone know if that's accurate? The trouble is the RCTS photo could just as easily be an experimental fitting, or, if they were rapidly introduced, simply very early installations to existing locomotives.  Thoughts?
     
  8. JimC

    GWR 111 Class (1863-1866)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    Anyone following this will gather that I'm currently working on very early Wolverhampton classes.
    The 111 Class was the first real class to be designed and built by Joseph Armstrong at Wolverhampton, but to my mind its very much a development of the earlier singles I've previously sketched here. 
     
    The first six were built in 1863/4 under Joseph Armstrong. They had outside plate frames with the footplate rising in curves to clear the coupling rods, 6ft0in driving wheels and 16x24in cylinders. This first batch had raised round top fireboxes and no domes.

    Twelve more followed in 1866/7 after Joseph had been promoted to Swindon. These could be considered to be George Armstrong designs and were built with domed boilers. Initially they all had open splashers and weatherboards.
     
    In the eccentric numbering of the GWR early days, the first batch of six in 1863/4 was numbered 111-114, 115A and 116A.
    Eleven more followed in 1866. The first four were numbered 5A, 6A, 7A, 8A and renumbered 1006-1009 soon afterwards. That same year 115A and 116A were renumbered 1004/5. 372-7 and 1010/11 followed, the last being completed in January 1867.

    Cabs and enclosed splashers appeared by the late 1880s, along with larger cylinders and thicker tyres, bringing the wheels up to 6ft 2in.  In 1866 Nos 30 and 110, two of the early Wolverhampton singles, were renewed into locomotives of this class with all these features.
    A considerable variety of boilers were fitted in their later years, encompassing not only varying dome positions, but also boilers as small as the Metro and as large as the Standard Goods.
    Most were withdrawn between 1903 and 1906, but a few lingered on longer, the last being scrapped in 1914. 
     
     
     
     
     
     
  9. JimC

    GWR No 7 (1859) and 110 (1862)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    Two very early ones. This is GWR No 7 from 1859, Wolverhampton works no 1, and the first Joseph Armstrong design for the GWR. Holcroft tells us that Armstrong, very much a member of the Northumberland school, was much associated with George Gray. Gray's designs for the Hull & Selby and LBSCR had the same feature of inside frames on the driving wheels and outside on leading and trailing wheels. They were also the inspiration for the well known Jenny Lind type. My sources are quiet on what motion was fitted. There were eventually five of these early singles. No 8 was very much a sister of No 7 and came out the same year, whilst 30 and 32 (the last classed as a renewal) followed in 1860 and finally No 110 in 1862. They didn't really constitute a class, but had a number of common features.  There are plate frames rather than the sandwich frames Gooch would have used, and the very complex shaped Armstrong safety valve cover.  Early Armstrong boilers like this were domeless, although domes were adopted fairly soon.
     

    The last of these similar singles was GWR No 110 from 1862. Surprisingly it was the second No 110, the first having been an 1851 locomotive for the Birkenhead Railway which lasted hardly a year under Armstrong. It's worth noting that by this time Armstrong had about 70 locomotives in his charge of many designs from most of the significant manufacturers of the period, so he should have been in a strong position to evaluate the best features for his own design. Unlike its predecessors No 110 had outside bearings on the driving wheels.  This 110 bears a distinct family resemblance to the 111 class 2-4-0s which came along in 1863. 

    In later years the 1862 110 received larger cylinders, a weatherboard and maybe even a cab. It ran until 1887, when it was renewed as a 2-4-0 of the 111 class in the form that class had been rebuilt into at that time. It seems unlikely that many if any major components were reused. By contrast No 7 had been withdrawn in 1876, some years before any of its cousins, and seems to have been largely unaltered.
  10. JimC
    Numbers 34 and 35 seem to have been reserved for oddities! Later there were a couple of Dean 0-4-4Ts.
    The original GWR 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. An original works drawing of these oddities is available here on this excellent site of  Vulcan Foundry locomotives . Presumably they must have been reasonably competent since they ran for twelve years before they were taken out of service. This drawing is from Ahrons "The British Steam Railway Locomotive" but was clearly originally published in "The Engineer". Anyway long out of copyright, so I'll break my normal habit and include it.



    In 1866 George 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. They were definitely not in the general Armstrong style. and one may speculate how much of their predecessors was reused and why. RCTS claims that the boilers were of the same design as those of the Vulcan Foundry originals, but the surviving Vulcan foundry drawing shows a dome as does the above illustration. 

    There's very little other information about them, and they were withdrawn in 1888 and 1889.
     

  11. JimC

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

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    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.
     
     

    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...
  12. JimC

    Cambrian Small Side Tank (2-4-0T) Class

    By JimC,


    Cambrian Railway Sketches
    Three small side tank locomotives from Sharp Stewart, delivered in 1866. They received a significant reworking in Cambrian days which altered their appearance considerably. All survived to the GWR, who proposed to scrap two of them immediately, but they were reprieved and numbered 1192, 1196 and 1197. They soon received the full GWR treatment above the footplate. The boilers were thoroughly overhauled with top feed added and they were given new GWR smokeboxes, tanks, cab and bunkers. Thus utterly transformed they resumed work, normally on the very weight-restricted Tanat Valley line. One was scrapped in 1929 but the other two soldiered on until 1948, becoming British Railways locomotives and running over a million miles each.
    A difficult one to draw, because they all had minor variations and the GWR changed the bunkers twice. Lets not be too precious as to whether every feature in the sketch was on any one locomotive at the same time, but this is intended to show the second bunker enlargement. 
    This drawing is very much influenced by the 7mm drawings in Welsh Railway Records Vol 4 - Cambrian Railways Drawings Part 1 : 1853-1892, which has just been published and is much recommended. I've also grabbed photos and so on. I find the safety valve cover rather unconvincing in some drawings and models. Maybe this one is better! This little class has a somewhat higher profile than one might expect due to being the subject of an old school white metal kit in 4mm, and an etched brass one in 7mm. Also, I suspect because they were notably cute in GWR form and more photographed than one might expect. 

  13. JimC

    GWR/WR 15xx Class (1948)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    I was mulling over the design of the (to me at least) strangely appealing 1948 15xx. It was a pure GWR design, and it appears from the NRM drawings list that it was actually on the drawing boards as early as 1944. As Cook tells us it was designed as a "24 hour shunter", not needing to be serviced over a pit: a worthy aim, but rendered largely obsolete by the early 350HP diesel shunters that were being introduced at the same time. I've seen an interesting comparison made between the GWR 0-6-0PTs and their theoretical equivalents on other lines, the Riddles Austerity/J94, the LMS Jinty and the USA tanks used on the Southern. The numbers indicate that the GWR locomotives have considerably greater boiler capacity than the others, but a similar tractive effort. A pure shunter doesn't really need much boiler capacity, since there is plenty of time for boiler pressure to recover, whereas a locomotive used for traffic work does need continuous steam, and 57s and 94s were regularly used on branch and even short trip main line services.

    A flaw/feature in the 15xx design is commonly held to be the relatively short wheelbase, which is reported as rendering them somewhat unstable at speed, and it seems they rarely if ever undertook the traffic roles of other pannier tanks, although the survivor with the Severn Valley seems to do well enough at preserved line speeds. The actual wheelbase is 6ft 4in + 6ft 6in, 12ft 10in.  Its interesting to compare this with dedicated short wheelbase dock shunters, such as the  GWR 1361 and 1366 classes , 6ft + 5ft - 11ft,  , the USATC S100 at 5ft + 5ft for 10ft and the Riddles Austerity 5ft 9in + 5ft 3in for 11ft. The shortest wheelbase regular 0-6-0T on the GWR was the 850 class,  7ft 4in + 6ft 4in - 13ft 8in. The short wheelbase on the 15s is commonly held to be intended to improve their ability to traverse curves, and their work in Newport and on the Paddington ECS workings stated to support this. Its interesting that the wheelbase on the 15s is intermediate between the pure shunting types listed above and traffic locomotives such as the 850, and even more the other large pannier tanks, 94xx, 57xx and their 7ft 3in + 8ft 3in 15ft 6in wheelbase. As such it has occurred to me that the 15xx wheelbase might be for other reasons than curves. My theory is this: the 57 and 94 cylinders are set partially between the wheels, as is possible with inside cylinders. The big outside cylinders on the 15 can't be, so the leading wheels have to be set back relative to the smokebox in order to clear the cylinders. In addition, whereas on the inside cylinder locomotives the cylinders themselves brace the frame, on the 15xx there's a large structure between the cylinders to perform the same function. All this makes the locomotive heavy, and in particular front heavy.  This in turn means that the trailing wheels have to be set forward for the locomotive to balance. The 15 is heaviest on the leading wheels and lightest on the 3rd pair, whereas the 94 is opposite. It would be interesting to know what someone better versed than I on the subtleties of steam locomotive designs makes of that idea. 
     
    Its often claimed that the 15xx was inspired by the S100/USATC 0-6-0T. The locomotives are indeed superficially similar, with prominent outside cylinders, outside walschaerts valve gear, external steam pipes, water tanks that do not flank the smokebox and no footplate. However this claim doesn't appear in any of the memoirs of contemporary GWR staff that I am familiar with.  Given the design aim declared by Cook, a 24 hour shunting locomotive that did not need to go over a pit for servicing, then when examined in detail the comparison is less certain. The design aim forces outside valve gear and outside cylinders. GWR practice was to use walschaerts gear on (their few) outside valve gear locomotives - notably the railmotors and the VOR 2-6-2Ts.  By this time external steam pipes were standard on GWR outside cylinder classes.  The S100, with its very short (10ft) wheelbase drives to and has the eccentric on the rearmost driving wheel. Apart from anything else there would be no room for the valve gear driving on the middle wheel. The 15xx, on the other hand, has 12ft 10in wheelbase, and a connecting rod driving the trailing wheels would be some 13ft 6in long.  The longest connecting rod on any of the Churchward standards was 10ft 8½ inches. I wonder if 13ft 6in would be practical.  Here's a list of similarities and differences.
    Similarities
    No footplate
    Outside cylinders with prominent steam pipes
    Outside Walschaerts gear
    Wheel size 4'6 v 4'7.5
    Differences
    coal capacity (1 ton , 3.25 ton)
    parallel/taper boiler
    driven wheel
    wheelbase (s100 as short as possible, 15xx longer)
    boiler proportions (much bigger boiler on the 15xx)
     
    All in all, I submit that there's a strong case to describe it as convergent evolution, rather than consider the 15xx to be a direct descendant of the S100. Arguably the only feature of the 15xx which may not be extrapolated from previous GWR practice is the absence of footplate. This could well be a weight saving feature, and in that respect we might also look at Bulleid's 1942 Q1 as an inspiration.
    On the other hand the GWR drawing office must have had drawings for the S100 available, since the first weight diagram for the type at Swindon is dated July 1943. They may have been in service at WD sites adjacent to the GWR as early as 1942,  but RCTS states they were not used on GWR metals until June 1944. The first drawings at the NRM for what became the 15xx are dated February 1944. 
  14. JimC

    GWR 1360 (Ex Pembroke and Tenby Railway)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    This one is really much too conjectural... The Pembroke and Tenby Railway was taken over by the GWR on 1st July 1896, and this Shrp Stewart 2-2-2T, one of two biuilt in 1863, was taken out of service in July 1897, so there must be some considerable doubt as to whether it ever carried its allocated GWR number or was painted in GWR livery. Apparently it hung around until 1908 before finally being scrapped, so photographs might exist. My drawing is worked up from a handful of dimensions in RCTS and a couple of photos, one in RCTS and the other here.  Neither are exactly up to the standards of Swindon works photos, and curiously both must have been taken within seconds of each other from the same camera position , since all the same figures appear, but some are in different positions.
     
    It seems one drawing has survived with the GWS, but its catalogued as being just the wheels, so I didn't think it would be very helpful. Beyond that I've made all sorts of guesses about what the photos actually show, and you're all very welcome to disagree with me. There are quite a few things I am not at all confident about. Did the safety valve cover really overhang the structure its sitting on, for instance? Cute as it undoubtedly is, I'm not quite sure why I picked it to draw, other than I am in the middle of writing a lot of text, and fancied a change. Rather than consider a second edition of the book, I'm looking at an alternate way to use the drawings, and am drafting out a very chronological format which is currently in the 19thC. The format ought to be good for tracing design concepts, and I've picked up a few things myself, but the big drawback is that, for instance, some classes have to feature in two or three different places to reflect rebuilds that brought them up to the latest state of the art. One thing I've already spotted, incidentally, was that the Armstrongs seem to have initiated few or no classes with sandwich frames, but were quite happy to retain them on rebuilds of existing designs, even when the rebuild involved such major changes to the chassis - different wheelbase and so on - that you'd think reusing components was hardly worth the bother.
  15. JimC

    GWR No 92

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    No 92 was one of five small 0-4-0STs, superficially rather similar in appearance, but which were not treated as a class.  With one exception they were late 19thC Wolverhampton reconstructions of older locomotives, and by the end of their long lives probably retained few original parts. 
    The first of the group was no 45, built in 1880, which was a new engine, albeit given the number of a Sharp Stewart built locomotive withdrawn a very few years earlier. It had the odd feature of a cab that was only accessible from the right hand side. 
     
    The next to appear were 95 and 96,which were originally Sharp Stewart built for the Birkenhead Railway, and their cabs only had entrances on the left hand side. In their final form they had rather vestigial spectacle plates at each end of the cab and a rather minimal roof. They were substantially reconstructed at Wolverhampton in 1890 and 1888 respectively when they received new boilers.
     
    No 92 started life as two 0-4-2 saddle tanks, 91 & 92, built for the GWR by Beyer Peacock in 1857. In  1877/8, one good 0-4-0ST, 92 was made from the two. In 1893 it received a very major rebuild at Wolverhampton to gain basically the appearance shown here. Amazingly, it then survived until 1942, albeit only as a stationary engine in its latter years. A similar loco, 342, was built by Beyer Peacock in 1856, and bought by the GWR in 1864. This had a similar life to 92, converted to 0-4-0ST in 1881 and rebuilt in 1897.   The original 0-4-2ST form can be seen in this blog entry. 
     
     
    A peculiarity of all these five was that the design had the firebox behind the trailing wheels with a distinctive long overhang. The result was much greater weight on the trailing wheels than the driving wheels and this high load on the second axle meant they were prohibited on uncoloured routes. They had long lives, mainly in the obscure northern reaches of the GWR around Wrexham.  At least two were cut down at one time or another for use on a route with a very low bridge, and this sketch of 92 is based on a photograph of the locomotive in cut down condition.

    No. 342 was withdrawn in 1931 and No. 45 in 1938. No. 92 survived until 1942, with the boiler lasting a few more years in stationary use. One wonders whether the curious reluctance of Swindon to build 0-4-0Ts  was the reason for the long lives of these antiques, or contrariwise, their long lives were why Swindon didn't build any replacements.
     
  16. JimC

    GWR Nos. 24, 26, 30, 31, 202-205

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    This design was specified by the Locomotive Superintendent of the Shrewsbury & Chester, Edward Jeffreys, and built by the Vulcan Foundry.  Four were ordered in 1852, and delivered in 1853. They were double framed, and quite powerful locomotives for the time.  In the meantime Jeffreys had left the Shrewsbury & Chester and was now Locomotive Superintendant of the Shrewsbury and Hereford.  Four more of the design were built for the S&H in 1853/4.  The S&C locomotives came to the GWR in 1854. The S&H locomotives had a more complex ownership (pay attention, this is like the three card trick), In 1862 the GWR (1/4 share), the LNWR (1/2 share) and the West Midland Railway (1/4 share) jointly leased the S&H. The locomotives went half to the LNWR and half jointly between the GWR and WMR, and these 0-4-2s went to the GWR/WMR. Then in 1863 the GWR took over (formally amalgamated with) the West Midland, and so all eight were now GWR locomotives.

    No 30 was destroyed in a boiler explosion in 1859 and a new No 30, most likely incorporating usable parts from the old, was built the next year. They were never renewed or received major rebuilds and scrapped from 1870-5.

    There's a sort of grim fascination about the enormous variety of these very early locomotives and their changes and rebuilds. I can imagine a keen scratchbuilder getting quite excited about all the possibilities. One would certainly never run out of subjects.  From my point of view there's a large number of drawings required to do reasonable justice to the 19thC GWR scene. At a guess it's going to be well into three figures, and some will be very tricky to manage because of limited data, especially the Wolverhampton rebuilds, for which there are some photographs but few drawings. One can only admire the dedication of Ahrons, who drew so many of the early engines by hand for an article in 'The Locomotive'. I can only hope they paid better than modern book publishers!
  17. JimC

    GWR Nos. 28 & 50-53

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    More very early locomotives. These ones were designed and built by Robert Stephenson's.  Like No 25 et al these were built for the Shrewsbury and Birmingham, and the one with an out of sequence number had been sold to the Shrewsbury and Chester. A raised firebox and a dome rather than the gothic firebox of the Longridge engines, but similarities seemed very marked as I came to draw them. The very early days of steam traction seems to have been a very small world based round Northumbria. I was struck by how very like the Longridge and Stephenson's 0-6-0s were, and doing a little research found that Longridge's son did an apprenticeship with Stephensons, so there would seem to have been friendly relations. Armstrong and Gooch were both Northumbrians very closely associated with these people and others like Timothy Hackworth.
     

     
     
    Apparently a conversion to saddle tanks was considered but never implemented. They too were withdrawn about the same sort of time, 1869-1877. Livery on these early locomotives is very much a matter of guesswork, so don't place any reliance whatsoever of the difference in livery between the two sketches, which is simply down to whimsy!
     
  18. JimC

    GWR No 40 (Ex Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    This was one of those locomotives which, for no reason apparent at this distance, was rebuilt time and again for a very long life. This is the  first GWR No 40, which was officially withdrawn in 1904! It was constructed as a long boilered 0-4-2 tender engine with outside cylinders in 1849 by R.B. Longridge & Co of Bedlington, for the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway, and was so well regarded that the S&B attempted to sell it without success. In 1854 it became GWR property. In 1858 Armstrong had it completely reconstructed as an 0-4-2ST with inside cylinders, possibly using the old boiler, much modified, but little else. In 1873 it was reconstructed again, still as an 0-4-2ST, but with new cylinders and boiler. Finally in 1897 it received new boiler and cylinders again. Ahrons has a neat phrase for these complete rebuilds come renewals: "Reusing the space between the wheels" and in this case it seems entirely appropriate.

     I wonder how Armstrong saw all these locomotives. Did he treat them as classes, or as individuals, upgraded/rebuilt or withdrawn according to their merits and the state of the GWR bank balance? Presumably when one of these antiques and curios came into the factory some long vanished notebook contained estimates of what was going to be needed to repair it to run until another overhaul was due, and George Armstrong would look at what it was going to cost and where there was capacity in the factory, and a decision on high would be promulgated to scrap or rebuild. Its also worth considering, I think, too, that we need to consider that because so much had been replaced over the years, in 1897 it was not so much a question of putting a new boiler and cylinders on an 1849 locomotive, but rebuilding an 1873 one. Maybe too the Chester workshops, which had once been the works of the Shrewsbury and Cheseter, was adept at keeping the old crocks running. Its striking just how many of the oddities survived in that area, and how few were in front of Dean or Churchward's eyes at Swindon!
     
  19. JimC

    GWR No 15.

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    GWR No 15 was a bar framed 0-4-0 by Bury. Note the domed firebox which it retained for its whole life in spite of other changes. Built in 1847 for the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, it was withdrawn in 1903. This first sketch shows her around 1866.

     
    And this second one about 1887, when it had been cut down in height.


  20. JimC

    GWR Nos 9, 10, 12, 14, 22 & 23 (Ex Shrewsbury & Chester)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    These were built in 1847 by Sharp Stewart for the Shrewsbury & Chester, and  came to the GWR in 1854 as part of the merger that formed the Northern Division and brought narrow gauge to the GWR. They were of a type known as Sharp singles that were delivered to a number of lines. One was converted to a tank engine, and a couple more had replacement cylinders but otherwise they were not greatly altered.  They were in service until the 1870s (1885 for the tank engine conversion). It's disappointing to note that no 14 was preserved at Wolverhampton until 1920 when it was finally broken up. A shame it didn't make it to 1928 and the York museum. One web page states that the GWR Directors didn't know it had been cut up and asked for it to be prepared for the 1925 Railway centenary at Darlington, but that might be just another rumour like the ones surrounding the loss of the Broad gauge locomotives some years earlier.
     
    This sketch is more conjectural than I'm really comfortable with. I didn't find a drawing of one in as built condition, so I extrapolated from a drawing of the tank engine conversion and photographs of No 14 as preserved and significantly altered. I've found a suggestion that E L Ahrons had to do a fair amount of guess work in some of his series of drawings of early GWR engines in "The Locomotive" that are more familiar from the RCTS series (and which I am largely relying on for these very early types) so perhaps I am in good company.
     
     
     
  21. JimC

    GWR Nos 25 & 46-49

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    Very early stuff this time. I've got an idea for a new publication, but the concept means I will have to have much better coverage of the early locomotives than I did in "Introduction to". So I think I'm going to have to do a lot of drawing, and this one is starting very near the beginning! Its tempting to simply reuse the E.L. Ahrons drawings in RCTS, which are out of copyright, but I don't feel comfortable doing it.

    As far as I can see no-one really talks about classes this early, but this is one of five long boiler goods engines which were probably built in 1849 by R.B. Longridge & Co. for the Shrewsbury & Birmingham Railway. Longridge seem to have been associated with Stephensons to some extent, and were based in Bedlington, Northumberland. They featured the gothic style firebox. One was sold to the Shrewsbury and Chester, but all five came to the GWR in 1854. In 1868 one was rebuilt into a saddle tank with a new boiler and cylinders and altered wheelbase. According to RCTS a similar conversion was considered for the others, but in the end they were withdrawn between 1868 and 1877. They don't seen to have been reconstructed as much as many other early locomotives. The saddle tank, with a further reconstruction in 1875, worked on until 1889. 
  22. JimC

    GWR No 342 0-4-2ST

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    from an E.L. Ahrons sketch, this is No 342 in original or at least very early form. It was built in 1856 by Beyer, Peacock for the Commissioners of Chester General Station, which was jointly owned by the GR, the LNWR and the Birkenhead railway, and was bought by the GWR in 1865.
     
     

     
     
    In this form it was really a slightly earlier version of Nos 91 and 92, also from Beyer, Peacock. In 1881 it was altered into an 0-4-0ST of much the same form as its cousins. The rebuilt locomotive looked substantially similar to nos. 91 and 92 as discussed elsewhere in this blog.  In 0-4-0ST form the locomotive was in service until 1931.

    I wonder what the rationale for the conversion was. They would up rather heavy on the trailing wheels, as noted under No 92. I suppose it may have been a fixed wheelbase rather than a trailing truck of some kind, so they would have been a lot more flexible round sharply curved sidings as 0-4-0STs. 
     
     
     
  23. JimC

    GWR No 1490

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    Built in 1898 this odd experimental locomotive is arguably significant only as having the first set of pannier tanks. It had outside frames and an unconventional firebox, wider than it was long and  initially featuring water tubes inside the firebox. Apparently it was unsuccessful in its designed role as a passenger engine and was relegated to shunting duties before being sold off. Initially it went to the Ebbw Vale Steel and Iron Co, then to the Brecon & Merthyr at a time when they were particularly in need of locomotives and finally to a Northumberland colliery, who scrapped it in 1929.
     
    The sketch is better founded than some, in spite of it being based only on a weight diagram, because there are some excellent photographs available.  Its difficult to imagine it as an industrial shunter, but maybe the colliery got it very cheap! 
     

  24. JimC

    Cross-fertilisation in design... Locomotive/Marine

    By JimC,


    Miscellaneous Musings
    Browsing through Steamindex having awoken in the early hours I happened on a mention (by LA Summers) of a GWR Dean era proposal for a water tube boiler on a 4-4-0. You'd think that came out of nowhere, but a couple of months ago I was given sight of part of the Swindon drawing office register of drawings for the time when the 3521  0-4-2Ts were being worked on. One thing that struck me was the number of drawings being produced at Swindon for the GWR's ships. They clearly didn't maintain a separate drawing office or outsource at least some marine work, even though I don't think Swindon designed their own ships.
    It also seemed evident that at least some draughtsmen worked on both marine and rail drawings. I'm not going to double check now, but if memory serves me right a young G. J. Churchward worked on drawings for a marine boiler. One assumes, too, that at least the keener young draughtsmen would be readers of trade publications like 'The Engineer' which covered a very wide range of engineering topics.
    Now I think of it I'm also reminded of Cook's tale of how big end lubrication for Kings, Castles and eventually LNER A4s was sorted out with inspiration from the design of a machine tool in Swindon Works. Collett did his apprenticeship with Maudsley's, a very high status marine engineering firm too. 
    We're accustomed to think of a silo mentality in railway design in the 20thC, and there certainly was some of that, but equally the above suggests that design staff had a rather wider range of experience than we might expect. 
  25. JimC

    GWR 157 Classes (1862 and 1878)

    By JimC,


    GWR Locomotive Sketches
    There were actually two 157 classes. The first, above, was specified by Gooch and built by Sharp Stewart in 1862. They could be regarded as a development of the earlier 69 class with larger driving wheels. They were numbered 157-166. They were little altered in their lives, with only one receiving a new boiler, from an Armstrong Goods. They did receive weatherboards and it is possible that some may have been given open cabs.
    Most were scrapped in 1878/9 when the new 157 class took over their numbers. The last three stayed in service until 1881; these survivors were renumbered 172-4 for their declining years.
     
    I don't usually put drawings up here that are featured in my book unless very heavily updated, but I thought both 157 classes should be in this piece. Normally 19thC heavy rebuilds, even those reusing "only the space between the wheels" were classified as renewals, but RCTS tells us the second 157s were classified as new. Its interesting that even when renewals were effectively all new locomotives they tended to keep the same frame type as their predecessors as these did. As with most of the later 19thC classes they had a healthy variety of different boilers fitted over their lives, domes and domeless, belpaire or round topped box. This sketch is intended to be representative for around 1900. A little prototypical note though: I typically draw my locomotives bearing the class number, so 157 here. But to be strictly correct then as I read RCTS 157 herself  never actually ran with a domeless Belpaire firebox boiler. 

    And finally a Wolverhampton variant of the class, discussed in comments below.
     

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