Castle Aching

[martinT]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I think Benjamin Outram needs to be mentioned here; wasn't he the chap who effectively standardised the horse-drawn railroad in the form that has become archetypal, and set the pattern that very early locomotive-railway engineers, rather to their regret, followed? Before Mr Outram, I think construction of the track was more varied in form.

 

Benjamin Outram certainly needs a mention from time to time as he's now generally forgotten but was one of the first tramroad engineers who foresaw  a national interconnected network rather than independent concerns that had been the norm. A national network would need a uniform gauge for which he recommended 4ft 2ins - 8ins wider than the 3ft 6ins that had been widely used. He died in 1805 at the early age of 41 but because of his influence 4ft 2in was widely used especially in south Wales.

 

 

[NCB]

Interesting. 4'2" is very close to 16.5mm in 4mm/ft scale. So they got it right, sort of ...

[mullie]

5 hours ago, NCB said:

Interesting. 4'2" is very close to 16.5mm in 4mm/ft scale. So they got it right, sort of ...

The Merchants Tramway on Portland was built to 4'6" so built in EM. Obviously the branch line was built in P4!

 

Martyn

[runs as required]

17 hours ago, martinT said:

Benjamin Outram certainly needs a mention from time to time as he's now generally forgotten but was one of the first tramroad engineers who foresaw  a national interconnected network rather than independent concerns that had been the norm. A national network would need a uniform gauge for which he recommended 4ft 2ins - 8ins wider than the 3ft 6ins that had been widely used. He died in 1805 at the early age of 41 but because of his influence 4ft 2in was widely used especially in south Wales.

 

Not where I grew up and went to New Mills secondary school in North Derbyshire. 

The teachers generally lived along the line of the Peak Forest canal to Marple and Samuel Oldknow country but a brace lived the other way: the Wash /Chapel Milton and in Chapel en le Frith itself.

 

Particularly the last two were always ramming Benjamin Outram down our necks because of his Peak Forest Tramway running down to Bugsworth basin from the limestone quarries (still today the economic raison d'etre for the stub of the Midland Derby- Manchester mainline through Peak Forest tunnel and around to Buxton being expensively maintained). 

Their conceptual argument was theoretically the fact that B.O's unflanged cart wheels could run on smooth road surfaces as well as be  guided on the L shaped rails - so it was a technical window of opportunity lost to Stephensonian  'Great North Coalfield" technology.

The  Benjamin Outram (1764-1805) Wiki page portrays him as being hampered by a narcissistic leadership personality. But his company at Crich manufactured all the technical components of an Outram tramway including the waggons (and was also the trackway on which "my" Steam Horse" first cavorted).  

He died of a stroke aged 41 and intestate. His company subsequently became the Butterley Company (after litigation) in 1807; his wife, impoverished for many years, died in Edinburgh in 1864.

 

Once George Stephenson was Engineer to the the York and North Midland Railway, he made his fortune in the mines around Crich (and died in Chesterfield).  George Stephenson was also responsible for the first metre gauge track in the world in his mineral railway from Crich lime quarry - now the site of the National Tramway Museum.

Though much of the Stephensonian metre gauge legacy is explained in the National Tramway Museum website, perhaps by oversight, the existing tramway gauge seems not to be given - although it has to be 'standard gauge'.

dh

Edited November 14, 2019 by runs as required

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, runs as required said:

 George Stephenson was also responsible for the first metre gauge track in the world in his mineral railway from Crich lime quarry 

 

 

I'm curious - was this just serendipity (i.e. was the gauge actually 3'3⅜") or did Stephenson deliberately choose the metric measure? If so, he was a remarkably early adopter - the big (but at the time largely unsuccessful) push for the adoption of the metric system in Britain came in the 1860s. Debate in the 1830s/40s was more around decimalisation of the currency - the sole fruit of which was the florin, which lives on as the 10 pence piece. The Imperial System of Units had only just been properly established by the Weights & Measures Act of 1824.

[Nearholmer]

I’m fairly sure this is another of CA’s perennials,  but there seems to have been an earlier burst of metric-fervour among engineers. I’m sure that some of the strange “a smidgin less than two feet” gauges in north wales originated as 60cm between centres, or between gauge faces. 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

On 29/08/2018 at 15:33, Edwardian said:

 

Yes, but the point Compound and I made was that chronology suggests that Beyer Peacock took from Adams' designs in the case of these 4-4-0s.  They changed from the Crewe Type raked outside cylinders to something resembling the early Adams classes after building 4-coupled designs for Adams on the South western.

 

Adams's early 4-coupled designs show great uniformity, regardless of the builders used, and I suggest that the appearance of Beyer Peacock's locomotives is derived from Adams, not visa versa.

 

The style of these engines originated with a series of Adams's 4-coupled designs.  They embraced both tank and tender designs and had different sized coupled wheels, to meet different needs, but they all had a coupled wheelbase of 8'6" and all were of similar appearance:

 

• 46 Class 4-4-0T suburban tanks, with 5'7" coupled wheels at 8'6" centres.  All 12 were built by BP in 1879.

• The first of Adams's 4-4-0s for the SW was a mixed traffic tender version of the 46 Class tanks.  These were the 380 Class or 'Steamrollers'.  They also had 5'7" coupled wheels at 8'6" centres. They were also built by BP in 1879.

• Next came an express class, 135 Class with 6'7" coupled wheels at 8'6" centres. They were also built by BP in 1880-1.

• Beyer Peacock built none of the next two 4-4-0 classes.  First came 7' flyers for east of Salisbury, the 445 Class of 1883.  The class maintained the 8'6" wheel-base.  All of them were built by R Stephenson, but the family resemblance held good.  

• Second came more 6'7" express engines, the 460 Class of 1884-7.  These again maintained the 8'6" wheel-base.  This time the builders were R Stephenson and Neilsons.

The progression of these classes suggests to me that it is the BP Lynn & Fakenham locos of 1882 and the Buenos Aires & Rosario Railway locos of 1884 that look like Adams's South Western 4-coupled types, not visa versa. 

 

The Lynn & Fakenham engines had 6' coupled wheels at 8'6" centres.  I don't know about the Argentine locos.

 

 

 

Some while ago we had a discussion, precis'd above, about the relationship between the "Adams" outside cylinder 4-4-0s built by Beyer, Peacock & Co. for various customers including the LSWR, Lynn & Fakenham, Buenos Ayres Great Southern, etc., in contrast to the sloping-cylinder/footplate "Met Tank" look that had previously been a distinctive feature of Beyer Peacock locomotives. 

 

I've been looking through backnumbers of the Midland Railway Society Journal. In one of Jack Braithwaite's Locomotive Aesthetics photo-features*, he included the above works photo of Lynn & Fakenham No. 24. In his caption, he noted that following Charles Beyer's death in 1876, Herman Lange succeeded to the position of chief engineer; this set me wondering whether the change in design was in fact due to Lange. However, according to the Wikipedia article on Charles Beyer, Lange as chief draughstman had been largely responsible for the design of the Met Tanks. 

 

So as not to be guilt of too brisk a thread diversion, I'll note that Beyer moved in the same Manchester industrial and scientific circles as Joule.

 

*Midland Railway Society Journal No. 43 (Summer 2010) p. 3.

[runs as required]

45 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m fairly sure this is another of CA’s perennials ...

 

CA is admirably conscious of its Parishioners. Thus, along with a lot of the rest of RMweb, we can. I suppose, get rather parochial. 

 

I realise my 'early railwaying' is prone to in-mbyism. 

• Currently I'm astonished that a railway ran past the top of our road in west Gateshead back in 1605.
• in the war that Camborne Bodmin and thereabouts were the early places of steam technology.
• As a schoolboy, that Ferodo brake linings were invented on Outram's tramway out the back of the asbestos works.
• As a student in Liverpool that my digs were above Edge Hill /Crown St tunnel on the L&M 
• During work experience in Salop CC that rails were first cast by the Darbys in Coalbrookdale 
• After my parents retired down to Kent: that the Canterbury and Whitstable was really so early.

dh

[Nearholmer]

One thing that strikes me about a lot of RMWeb, and virtually all railway/modelling mags with the honourable exception of Backtrack, is that one could be forgiven for thinking that railways were an early C20th invention.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

One thing that strikes me about a lot of RMWeb, and virtually all railway/modelling mags with the honourable exception of Backtrack, is that one could be forgiven for thinking that railways were an early C20th invention.

I disagree. I think they came along during WW2.
I am beginning to think that a lot of railways were diesel depots, squashed into incredibly tight spaces and with torturous curves...

[Compound2632]

It was all downhill from c. 1903.

[Hroth]

57 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I am beginning to think that a lot of railways were diesel depots, squashed into incredibly tight spaces and with torturous curves...

You've got to have somewhere to display all those Diesels with sound, all ticking away, quite loudly, in the middle of a show!  OTOH a depot of Heljan Pilot Scheme Diesels is quite restful, as the only thing prototypically capable of moving, or even making a sound would be the depot pilot, typically a Hornby EE Type 1 with TTS sound...

 

Anyhow, back to normal services.

 

I quite like Railway Bylines, that has many small industrial locos* lurking in battered sheds.

 

* Mostly steam, some of amazing antiquity, though some of the "new" diesels also look rather careworn.

[corneliuslundie]

Back on Mr Stephenson, I am just typing up a hand written manuscript on the locomotives of the Shrewsbury & Chester Railway, written by Edward Craven many years ago but never published. It concentrates on those ordered by the North Wales Mineral Railway which became part of the S&C and then the GWR. The first locomotives were to "Stephenson;s Patent" outside cylinder design and were an absolute disaster as far as I can tell. He says, inter alia "The four engines then on the line proved a failure: by the 18th an engine had had to be borrowed from the Chester & Birkenhead Railway who were also asked for a second." There is a serialised article on the line by Ahrons in the Locomotive Magazine (I have just bought the CD containing all pre-grouping issues from the GER Society, excellent value). So something else that Mr S appears not to have got quite right. I wonder what these rather small 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 locos looked like at speed. I think they must have provided the definition for the word "hunt" in this context.

Jonathan

PS Can anyone tell me anything about Mr Craven other than that he was a London school teacher who was well respected in railway history circles and made major contributions to RCTS Volumes 3 and 10 , mainly the Welsh companies, as well as writing on Cumbrian railways?

[ChrisN]

20 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

It was all downhill from c. 1903.

 

Is that not how all the speed records for steam were achieved?  

[Annie]

45 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Back on Mr Stephenson, I am just typing up a hand written manuscript on the locomotives of the Shrewsbury & Chester Railway, written by Edward Craven many years ago but never published. It concentrates on those ordered by the North Wales Mineral Railway which became part of the S&C and then the GWR. The first locomotives were to "Stephenson;s Patent" outside cylinder design and were an absolute disaster as far as I can tell. He says, inter alia "The four engines then on the line proved a failure: by the 18th an engine had had to be borrowed from the Chester & Birkenhead Railway who were also asked for a second." There is a serialised article on the line by Ahrons in the Locomotive Magazine (I have just bought the CD containing all pre-grouping issues from the GER Society, excellent value). So something else that Mr S appears not to have got quite right. I wonder what these rather small 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 locos looked like at speed. I think they must have provided the definition for the word "hunt" in this context.

Jonathan

PS Can anyone tell me anything about Mr Craven other than that he was a London school teacher who was well respected in railway history circles and made major contributions to RCTS Volumes 3 and 10 , mainly the Welsh companies, as well as writing on Cumbrian railways?

And what great sales webpages the GER Society has too.  I've just now ordered the Locomotive Magazine CD's for myself and the whole process was completely painless.  Other railway societies could learn a lot from the GER Society.

 

[Compound2632]

57 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

 

Is that not how all the speed records for steam were achieved?  

 

By no means. The DR 4-6-4 05 002 attained the world speed record for steam by running at 200.4 kph over several kilometres on the level on the Berlin-Hamburg line.

[Nearholmer]

I bet the wind was behind it.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

It was all downhill from c. 1903.

Only if you start drinking early in the day. I can usually manage until about 10 pm before things start to unwind...

[Edwardian]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

It was all downhill from c. 1903.

 

Oh, no, someone's shown him a picture of the new Midland lamp iron position again!

 

Nurse! 

[Compound2632]

On 15/11/2019 at 08:13, Edwardian said:

 

Oh, no, someone's shown him a picture of the new Midland lamp iron position again!

 

Nurse! 

 

The change in lamp iron positions was due to the adoption of RCH standard headcodes by agreement amongst the major companies. Insofar as I've got a grip on this complex topic, the RCH headcodes required three lamp irons above the bufferbeam: port, centre, and starboard, and one at the top of the smokebox, as seen here on 115 Class 4-2-2 No. 118, displaying the 1903 headcode for an express passenger train:

 

 

 

The Midland codes in use before 1903 had a pair of lampirons on the port side and none in the centre, plus a fifth lamp iron on the smokebox door. This photo of 115 Class 4-2-2 No. 124 at St Pancras is the best I could find to illustrate the smokebox door lampiron but it appears to lack the second port-side lampiron, possibly because the only code requiring two lamps on that side was for shunting engines, stopping goods and mineral trains, and ballast trains requiring to work in section - work that was well beneath the dignity of a spinner:

 

 

The code for an express passenger train should have had a lamp above the port buffer and one on the smokebox top. I suspect what we see here is the work of a short fireman. Plenty of photos of Midland goods engines show the two lampirons above the port buffer.

 

On No. 118 one can see the bolt used to fill the hole where the smokebox door lampiron had been fixed. As an aside, note the difference in front framing of these two 115 Class engines - No. 118 is from the 1896 batch and No. 124 from the 1899 batch.

 

Anyway, the point is, the lampiron positions can be used to date a photo pre- or post-1903. I'm afraid I don't know the exact date at which the change came into force. The changeover was on 1 February 1903.

 

Headcode etc. info from G. Dow, Midland Style (HMRS, 1975).

Edited November 21, 2019 by Compound2632
Added reference.

[runs as required]

Off Rail for one moment but  back onto Land Speed Records - my favourite picture is this 

Camille Jenatzy, the "Red Devil"  built 'Jamais Contente'  a torpedo shaped electric car on which he claimed the "Land Speed Record" in 1899 as the first man to exceed 100 kilo metres an hour on a road 

No one thought to remember brakemen sitting out on top of Great Western trains had been exceeding 100 kph (60 mph in Brexit speak) since 1840.

 

He went on to drive giant 90 hp petrol GP racing cars for Mercedes after1900 but by 1910 was dead - shot (accidentally?) in the balls by his mistress's husband on a hunting trip; he'd been imitating a wild boar as a joke hiding behind a bush. But he did actually die in a Mercedes as he always said he would - in the back of a shooting brake being rushed to hospital in the Ardennes.

dh

Edited November 17, 2019 by runs as required

[phil_sutters]

My great uncle Percy had an aviation engined car back in the 1930s, a 19 litre Mercedes Maybach tourer. I don't know what speed he achieved in it. This photo is of my mother standing beside it after Percy's funeral. It was so noisy that special permission had to be obtained for it to be allowed into Hereford Cathedral's precincts. He had sold it earlier and it was loaned back for the funeral.

[runs as required]

17 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

My great uncle Percy had an aviation engined car back in the 1930s, a 19 litre Mercedes Maybach tourer. I don't know what speed he achieved in it. This photo is of my mother standing beside it after Percy's funeral. 

Was it great uncle Percy who led all the family on those intrepid motor cycle tours?

dh

[Compound2632]

I note that the BBC dramatisation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which has been the subject of discussion here, starts this evening at 9 pm, hard on the heels of Pullman's His Dark Materials. 

[Edwardian]

Hello All,

 

Nothing to report on the railway front, but my mouse and keyboard are failing, at least I hope that's the cause of their intermittent rejection by my 'pooter.  Until I can get this sorted, my presence will be unpredictable and might cease altogether!

 

I am not being rude, therefore, if I fail to join in.

 

Great Merc, Phil, I recall some big aircraft-engined pre-war German car once featuring on the old Top Gear.  Was it Uncle Percy's? 

 

Very pre-Woke the old Top Gear now seems, and perhaps the joy of the Rich in high performance cars is no longer something to be celebrated by the Beeb as we jog towards Climate Armageddon. 

 

Well, ain't I cheerful today? 

 

Just found some war thing with Sean Bean on the Beeb, so not yet got as far as Pullman, let alone WOTW, but will certainly watch all of the above, IT meltdowns permitting, so thanks for the news Stephen.

 

I feel I've pushed my luck and must press 'submit' before disaster strikes once more!