Castle Aching

[Northroader]

I could watch her all day, could she do a talk on 00, EM, and P4, please? (as I model in 0, I wouldn’t care a bit)

[Edwardian]

Sometimes you get unlucky.

 

Sometimes you pay a feckton of money, wait patiently for months, then......

 

 

This is my long-awaited Hardwicke once carefully unpacked. 

 

There is a warning label on the clear plastic sleeve saying that the locomotive and tender are linked, so should be lifted together from the cradle. They in fact came as you see them, unconnected.

 

The dome, cab and buffer I could fix, but I do not see how I could re-attach the broken front guard iron and the missing safety valves are nowhere to be seen.

 

I shall have to contact Locomotion first thing and hope they have some spares.

[Nearholmer]

Crikey!

 

It looks as if it’s taken a severe belting.

 

Renumber 1220, name ‘Belted Will’?

 

Money back.

[Edwardian]

Well the loco buffers needed to go anyway!

 

The real s0d will be trying to fill in those wash-out plug recesses and make good the firebox to an acceptable standard.

 

Otherwise, it's then just paint the roof black and add the usual refinements to gain a loco fit for 1905 and LNWR through services to the WNR.

 

If Locomotion has any replacements left, that is. 

[Annie]

What a rotten disappointment James.  Plainly the model was never packed properly in the first place.

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Annie said:

What a rotten disappointment James.  Plainly the model was never packed properly in the first place.

 

It's been a week for receiving battered LNWR locos.

 

I had long-wanted a 2-4-2T, one of 7 Really Useful LNWR types that I have been slowly collecting so that one day I might have a reasonably practical LNWR stud.    

 

Whereas the Improved Precedent is a flash visitor for CA, the others are more practical choices: the aforementioned 2-4-2T, 0-6-2 Watford Tank, 0-6-2 Coal Tank, 0-6-0 Coal Engine, 0-6-0 Special DX, 0-6-0 Cauliflower and 2-4-0 Waterloo/Whitworth. I now have 5 out of these 7, with the Coal Engine and the Waterloo/Whitworth still to go.

 

Anyway, the 2-4-2T arrived with its chimney and whistle knocked off. This is no drama as they are present and easily re-secured.  The point was that I absolutely could not have faulted the packing, both inside its own box and the outer packaging. 

 

The Locomotion IP, on the other hand, has a substantially metal loco (and a feather-light plastic tender) and I suspect that the conventional clear-plastic clam packaging has been unequal to the task of restraining such a heavy loco from throwing its weight around.

 

Anyway, the 2-4-2T will need a good clean/fettle and, I assume, some boiler-band lining (unless some LNWR aficionado tells me it should be absent for some reason). I do not know what I've done with my Talbot volume, but I suppose this to be a 4'6" class loco. The wheels are rather small, the tanks extend quite far forward and it has condensing pipes fitted. With the extended tanks it is not easy to see the boiler bands on period pics.  

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Anyway, the 2-4-2T will need a good clean/fettle and, I assume, some boiler-band lining (unless some LNWR aficionado tells me it should be absent for some reason). I do not know what I've done with my Talbot volume, but I suppose this to be a 4'6" class loco. The wheels are rather small, the tanks extend quite far forward and it has condensing pipes fitted. With the extended tanks it is not easy to see the boiler bands on period pics.  

 

Apart from a batch of Beyer Peacock Met Tanks (that Webb rebuilt as 4-4-2Ts - genuine hippogryphs), the 4'6" Tanks were, I think, the only LNWR condensing engines - the Mansion House Tanks. There were 220 of them (don't know how many were condensing), making them the second most numerous LNWR tank engine class after the Coal Tank:

The red lining of the boiler bands is next to impossible to pick out in photos but the official works grey photo in Talbot shows it represented in white, so there's no reason to doubt that it is there.

[Nearholmer]

There was also a Met tank rebuilt as a 4-2-2-0 three cylinder compound which was a condenser. It’s about the only LNWR loco I remember, because it was so blooming strange.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

There was also a Met tank rebuilt as a 4-2-2-0 three cylinder compound which was a condenser. It’s about the only LNWR loco I remember, because it was so blooming strange.

 

Ah yes, the "First Compound Tank":

 

 

Don't ask about the second, third, and fourth...

[Nearholmer]

I’ve been lent a really good, paving slab type, book about the LNWR compounds, and it is utterly fascinating. Even if you aren’t into the LNWR, the technical/engineering voyage of discovering is worth understanding, and it has a mass of photos that contain so much incidental detail.

[Compound2632]

39 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve been lent a really good, paving slab type, book about the LNWR compounds, and it is utterly fascinating. Even if you aren’t into the LNWR, the technical/engineering voyage of discovering is worth understanding, and it has a mass of photos that contain so much incidental detail.

 

This one:

 

 

... which covers the three-cylinder compounds. A companion volume on the four-cylinder compounds is in preparation.

[Nearholmer]

That’s the one.

 

The thing I couldn’t get my head round was how the Directors let him get away with all that experimentation and innovation using company money. Maybe there was just so much profit at that juncture, and the business ever-expanding, that it was both possible and desirable to ‘push the bounds’ - it might be interesting to compare the LNWR with Amazon now in terms of profitability and growth curves. And, tax regimes. I bet the LNWR wasn’t paying much tax, because the Victorians hadn’t quite invented widespread redistribution by then, and Amazon seem to know how to squiggle round paying much!

[Nick Holliday]

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Apart from a batch of Beyer Peacock Met Tanks (that Webb rebuilt as 4-4-2Ts - genuine hippogryphs), the 4'6" Tanks were, I think, the only LNWR condensing engines - the Mansion House Tanks. There were 220 of them (don't know how many were condensing), making them the second most numerous LNWR tank engine class after the Coal Tank:

The red lining of the boiler bands is next to impossible to pick out in photos but the official works grey photo in Talbot shows it represented in white, so there's no reason to doubt that it is there.

According to Talbot the initial batch of 4' 6" tanks were built in 1876 as 2-4-0 tanks, not as per the photo. He is not exactly clear, but gives the impression that all 50 of them were fitted with condensing gear, for work in Manchester, Birmingham and to Mansion House. Once the 2-4-2 tanks had proved themselves, in the 1890's most of these earlier tanks were recycled as 2-4-2 tanks, with new frames, the remaining 10 being stripped of their condensing pipes for use on the Cromford and High Peak section.

The 2-4-2 tanks, as pictured, were built from 1879, sadly Talbot doesn't specify how many had condensing pipes, but 2524, built in 1890, had them when new, so not just an initial batch.

Apart from the Met tanks, there were three other condensing locos. Euston and Liverpool were Special Tanks, but built with unfortunate square saddle tanks and fitted with condensing gear to work the Wapping Tunnel in Liverpool. Finally, I have to mention "The Second Compound Tank".  This was a variant of the Mansion House tank design, built new as a three cylinder compound, with a 2-2-2-2 wheel arrangement and condensing gear.

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

Euston and Liverpool

 

Doh. I should have remembered those two. My mind was focussed on the Mansion House services. 

[Northroader]

I expect Webb told the directors that the success of his compounding trials would mean vast savings in loco coal, anyway most intriguing to find that Euston has invaded West Norfolk.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I expect Webb told the directors that the success of his compounding trials would mean vast savings in loco coal, 

 

He was desperate for more power, economically. Davis reproduces a graph* that shows the power required to work a typical West Coast Scotch Express on the level:

• in 1864, 100 tons at 40 mph: 100 hp;
• in 1885, 250 tons at 45 mph: 400 hp;
• in 1903, 450 tons at 50 mph: 1000 hp. 

That the 2pm Corridor of the 1890s was routinely worked to time is enough evidence that the 3-cylinder compounds were among the most outstandingly successful locomotives of the time.

 

*Fig. 41, from Dalby, The Engineer, 2 Sept 1910.

[Nearholmer]

35 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

among the most outstandingly successful locomotives of the time

I get the impression that you needed a PhD in thermodynamics to be able to operate one to maximum economy though.

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I get the impression that you needed a PhD in thermodynamics to be able to operate one to maximum economy though.

 

No, that's the Smith-Johnson Compounds you're thinking of. 

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

That’s the one.

 

The thing I couldn’t get my head round was how the Directors let him get away with all that experimentation and innovation using company money. Maybe there was just so much profit at that juncture, and the business ever-expanding, that it was both possible and desirable to ‘push the bounds’ - it might be interesting to compare the LNWR with Amazon now in terms of profitability and growth curves. And, tax regimes. I bet the LNWR wasn’t paying much tax, because the Victorians hadn’t quite invented widespread redistribution by then, and Amazon seem to know how to squiggle round paying much!

I am sure that all of that experimentation was fully tax deductible.

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

I am sure that all of that experimentation was fully tax deductible.

 

I'm not sure there was much tax to be deducted. Shareholders paid income tax on their dividends and I think that was it apart from the rates.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Northroader said:

I expect Webb told the directors that the success of his compounding trials would mean vast savings in loco coal, anyway most intriguing to find that Euston has invaded West Norfolk.

 

Well, I don't see why the LNWR couldn't run a train onto the WNR* via Peterborough** and GER lines.

 

* Whether they'd want to is an entirely different matter.

** Just 'Peterborough', not, in our time, 'Peterborough East'.  The ECML GNR station is 'Peterborough Cowgate'. 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Edwardian

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Ah yes, the "First Compound Tank":

 

 

Don't ask about the second, third, and fourth...

Oh yes I do like that.  Very nice.

[Compound2632]

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

** Just 'Peterborough', not, in our time, 'Peterborough East'.  The ECML GNR station is 'Peterborough Cowgate'. 

 

Nor Peterborough Crescent, the Midland station, opened 1858, closed 1866. Very nice buildings that remained in use for offices for a further century. Drawing here [Midland Railway Study Centre Item 77-13501].

[Edwardian]

Thought it would be simpler in the end to pop over to Shildon to fetch a replacement.

 

 

It was just as well that I had the chance to inspect the replacement, as the first one I was offered proved to be, to say the least, interesting ....

 

 

This would not have mattered to me, as I will overlay with the etches, but I was not allowed to leave the shop with this rarity, this misprinted penny black.

 

So, I took this one instead ....

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Did they let you keep ‘Belted Will’ too, or did you buy him at quarter price as chop-fodder?