Castle Aching

[Northroader]

Well, you’ve got the driving wheels going up into the tanks, so you don’t have to faff with splashers, then they’re just the place to put plenty of lead to get the weight on to the drivers., and you don’t have to worry about the motor and gears showing underneath like on a saddle tank, and there’s less spectacle plate to fit round the firebox, and shorter handrails round the boiler, and they’re much easier to do than saddle or pannier tanks, and there’s no tender needed, so side tanks are a great idea, I reckon.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, runs as required said:

Please could you remind me of the technical/operational advantages of side tanks

 

I said, bigger, But now I've looked it up, I have to retract. Kirtley's 690 and 780 Class back tanks carried 1,000 gal and 39 cwt of coal. Johnson's early side tanks, 6 Class, S&DJR Class A, and 1252 class carried 950 gal, 876 gal, and 1,000 gal respectively (I don't have numbers for the 134 Class). It wasn't until the 1532 Class of 1881 that larger capacity was achieved: 1,150 gal and 42 cwt.

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Well, you’ve got the driving wheels going up into the tanks, so you don’t have to faff with splashers, then they’re just the place to put plenty of lead to get the weight on to the drivers., and you don’t have to worry about the motor and gears showing underneath like on a saddle tank, and there’s less spectacle plate to fit round the firebox, and shorter handrails round the boiler, and they’re much easier to do than saddle or pannier tanks, and there’s no tender needed, so side tanks are a great idea, I reckon.

 

And they're easier to do the "Hand of God" thing when you need to turn them round!

 

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Well, you’ve got the driving wheels going up into the tanks, so you don’t have to faff with splashers, then they’re just the place to put plenty of lead to get the weight on to the drivers., and you don’t have to worry about the motor and gears showing underneath like on a saddle tank, and there’s less spectacle plate to fit round the firebox, and shorter handrails round the boiler, and they’re much easier to do than saddle or pannier tanks, and there’s no tender needed, so side tanks are a great idea, I reckon.

 

... hence the surprising popularity of Deeley's 2000 Class "Flatiron" 0-6-4Ts:

 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

So, go and smack yourself for being unnecessarily pedantic!

Ooer missus!

I think the subtle differences detract from the looks of the second batch, but yes, they are essentially the same class.

In my late teens I tried to produce a drawing, using photos and known measurements as a guide. Not knowing that there was a difference, I struggled to estimate the height of the side tanks and I ended up with a drawing that would have made Hornby* proud: managed to combine bits of both, which didn’t look right. (Width of an E22, height of a B32.)

These differences are important in creating an accurate model.

 

* The “silver seal” Black Five had a short firebox and a short boiler, rather than a long and a short or a short and a long.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

To be vulgar for a moment, they're all J65s aren't they?

Teacher he swore, - he said an LNER word......  

[Nearholmer]

Well tanks are limited in size by frame-spacing and the presence of inside valve gear, cranks etc, and they get in the way of piling-round, and back tanks tend to put mass in the wrong place.

 

Well tanks, however, work very well with outside valve-gear, and the world standard industrial narrow gauge design became the German one, with a well tank integral with the frames (most are separate) and o/s valvegear. They are cheap to build and very effective, especially with a low c.o.g., but tank corrosion can kill them, or require huge repairs, which isn’t too much of an issue given that they were designed for c10yr life anyway (many have racked-up 100+ of course, given tlc).

 

The LBSCR Baltic’s are interesting, because they had well, back and side tanks, although the last were about half-height to control sloshing and c.o.g., hidden behind false full-height side panels. The lessons of this design failed to make it from Brighton to Ashford, hence the sad saga of the River tanks.

 

 

[runs as required]

Thank you WNR stakeholders shareholders for those posts on tanks.

I was thinking too of easy accessibility for large filler flaps and leak staunching compared to well tanks (but many appear, from rivets lines, to also have back tanks ). I hadn't thought of interchangeability mentioned above.

Saddletanks seem to be the most beneficial in locos of smaller boiler diameter: engine valve gear accessibility/ adhesion/driving wheel dia./ preheating.

I suppose the Armstrongs' panniers win out on the above (including condensing pipe connections) but lose in terms of overall capacity 

[webbcompound]

Of course if we are talking saddle tanks there is nothing to compare with my favourite, the Coal Saddle Tank.  Maximum access to the undergubbins for the maintenance men with this one.

 

[Nearholmer]

Good set of photos of an O&K well tank under repair here, which show how the frames form a rigid box structure.

 

 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Teacher he swore, - he said an LNER word......  

Worse: he said a post-grouping word.

[Guy Rixon]

2 hours ago, runs as required said:

Please could you remind me of the technical/operational advantages of side tanks over other less visually obvious placings.

Except for pannier/saddle, they seem to become universal in standard gauge practice through the C20.

Is is not a matter of highest capacity with lowest centre of gravity?

[runs as required]

Interesting - I hadn't thought of riding at speed in terms of tank engines. 

Where were the highest speeds attained with tank engines?

the Lanky 2-4-2s, Brighton, the runs from Glasgow to the Clyde steamers? - Even Annie's  Bristol & Exeter Broad gauge claimed astonishing maxima.

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, runs as required said:

Even Annie's  Bristol & Exeter Broad gauge claimed astonishing maxima.

'Astonishing', - good word that.  I like words like 'awe' too.  We shall never see their like again  

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Worse: he said a post-grouping word.

 

I would argue that an LNER word is worse than a post-grouping word. For example, I'll say: Royal Scot.

[runs as required]

36 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Good set of photos of an O&K well tank under repair here, which show how the frames form a rigid box structure.

 

 

I've never really ever come to a comfortable justifiable balance between Restoration; Preservation; Improvement; and Replicas - despite paying lip service to W Morris's SPAB (you never read this here)

The obvious improvement here would seem to be inserting a plastic bag into the space (other than an expendable small boy as in Brunel's Great Eastern steamship)  

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The lessons of this design failed to make it from Brighton to Ashford, hence the sad saga of the River tanks.

 

To be fair on the Rivers, they were handicapped by the state of some track on the Southern, though a high CoG and inadequate baffling in the tanks caused a lot of "sloshing" and instability, which didn't help matters.  When tested on the LNER after the Sevenoaks accident, speeds of around 80mph were attained with no stability problems. 

 

LNER.  Southern.  LMS...

 

I'm sorry, that last one just slipped out...

[Compound2632]

43 minutes ago, runs as required said:

the runs from Glasgow to the Clyde steamers? 

 

Not Clyde bogies* but  Coast or Gourrock bogies for those - the standard Scottish 4-4-0 adapted to the local requirements. Only at the end did the 'Sou-West try the Big Puggies.

 

*Highland engines built by the Clyde Locomotive Co., Walter Neilson's company set up after he fell out with James Reid, leaving the Neilson name to Reid. Not a great success - the works were sold to Sharp, Stewart when the latter outgrew their Manchester Atlas Works. Sharp, Stewart renamed the Clyde works, Atlas Works, and in due course the wheel turned full circle as it returned to the Neilson fold as part of NBL.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

I hope you are all well and have devised some pleasant way of enjoying an isolated Easter. I must say, mine has got off to a slightly shaky start.

 

Today it was necessary to venture out for supplies, but, of course, that was a mistake.

 

I started out with a slightly hysterical dash of naive optimism.  I hadn’t seen a loo roll for sale in six weeks; maybe today would be different?  Well, I’ll leave you to guess the answer to that. Barnard Castle did not look very much less busy than it had pre-lock-down, mid-morning on a non-market day. I realised that, rather than anticipating pre-bank holiday panic buying, I’d driven right into the midst of it.  The full horror was apparent when I turned into a well-populated carpark and saw the zig-zag queues up the hill to Morrisons.  I wasn’t about to spend my morning queuing so I exited the carpark without stopping and grimly set the nose of my Disco toward the metropolis that is Darlington.

 

Where, of course, the situation was far, far worse.  Sainsburys had long queues outside, stretching – at 2m intervals - around 3 sides of its ample car park.

 

Now, I hate queues.  I would not queue if my life depended upon it. I simply refuse to do it. I inherit this trait from my father, who, as is well documented, has only ever queued once in his life for anything.  He and I once waited patiently in a queue for the Scottish crown jewels at Edinburgh Castle.  Not that either of us gave a fig for the Scottish crown jewels, then or now, but at that time the tower room above housed the Eagle of the 45e Ligne.  The other tourists looked dumbfounded when, eventually, reaching the head of the immensely long queue, my father and I bounded past the jewel room door up the stairs to the room above.  There, finally, my father was in the presence of his Emperor.

 

Add to an aversion to queuing that borders on the phobic, my growing sense of paranoia about Covid-19, and you will appreciate why I didn’t hang around at Sainsburys, either.  I’m fat, unfit, asthmatic and I have the lung capacity of a small rodent after it’s been run over by a heavy vehicle.  That’s on a good day. Whereas, the more I hear about the Borris Leveller, the more I see that it could have been specifically engineered with the sole purpose of ending my existence on earth.  

 

So, I swore and cursed with abandon at the patient, gloveless, maskless throngs, diligently queuing the statutory 2 metres apart. Yes, while masks have still yet to come to Barnard Castle, the patient denizens of Darlington also seemed to believe that fresh air and 2m would render them invulnerable.

 

“Fools!”, I cursed, “if only you knew how Death stalks your supermarket trollies!”.  So, back I went, by a different route to fool the over-zealous Long Arm of the Law, and, indeed, the only blessing this morning was a complete no-show by Plod on the roads. This time I went home via the local farm shop.  No good for staple items and 30-40% more expensive for everything else, it is not a regular haunt, but the quality is, of course, excellent, and, crucially, there were no queues. Here a modest crowd of the affluent elderly of North Yorkshire were circulating gently at what seemed to be a distance dictated merely by good manners.  All were un-gloved with faces uncovered.  A Covid-Carrier could, in one fell-swoop, have freed up the luxury home market for miles around. Instead, in their midst appeared an outlandish figure, his 3-week beard mercifully hidden by a red scarf wrapped tightly around mouth and nose, though the suggestion of raffish bandito was somewhat spoilt by his chosen eye protection in the form of reading glasses, which kept steaming up.  I had no idea what I was buying.  It could have been worse, earlier this morning, the only pair of gloves I could find were my lavender grey kid leather morning gloves.  Fortunately, just before leaving I found an unremarkable pair of black fleece winter gloves, in which it took several attempts to enter my PIN at the till. And, of course, there were no loo rolls.     

[Nearholmer]

25 minutes ago, runs as required said:

I've never really ever come to a comfortable justifiable balance between Restoration; Preservation; Improvement; and Replicas -

These run-of-the-mill 20, 30, 40, 60 and 80hp well tanks are so incredibly useful that they are simple given ‘new heads and handles’ to keep them going.

 

Theres no point “conserving” one, because there are representative examples in museums already.

[Compound2632]

Is Peats still open?

[Donw]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

... hence the surprising popularity of Deeley's 2000 Class "Flatiron" 0-6-4Ts:

 

 

It does look a little silly with a hole for the splashers when you have shrunk and uncoupled the front wheel. It would be very interesting doing a live steam model of a flatiron with the tanks actually holding water. Mind you the same could be said of a pannier or saddle tanK.  I wonder if a saddle tank has a benefical pre-warming effect on the water?

 

Don

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

It does look a little silly with a hole for the splashers when you have shrunk and uncoupled the front wheel. It would be very interesting doing a live steam model of a flatiron with the tanks actually holding water. Mind you the same could be said of a pannier or saddle tanK.  I wonder if a saddle tank has a benefical pre-warming effect on the water?

 

Don

 

My understanding is that live steam injectors work less effectively as the temperature of the feedwater increases. Locomotives with feedwater heaters had to use pumps. Common in North America, I believe.

[Nearholmer]

I’m steeling myself for a foraging expedition too, and although I detest queueing as much as the next man, it feels less bad than going further in search of a shop that might, and might not, be less popular.

 

We’re beginning to suffer from Lockdown Lassitude, a state that seems to come after Cabin Fever, and hopefully not before something much darker. The lassitude involves realising that everything can wait ‘til tomorrow, because tomorrow is merely a time-shifted version of today. 
 

Time to attempt to motivate the offspring.

 

(Objective achieved with the help of the garden hose, set to “full squirt”)

 

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

42 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

It does look a little silly with a hole for the splashers when you have shrunk .... the ... wheel. 

 

Don

 

Yes, I hate it when they do that ...

 

 

As God and Mr Burkett intended her, she looked better, if no less eccentric. A legitimate visitor to Castle Aching?