Bachmann 94xx

[The Johnster]

The 94xx makes no sense at all as a replacement for the 57xx/8750, because that's not what it was meant to be.  I have never heard that it was to be a replacement for the 56xx either, relatively modern locos that were well capable of the work they were doing.  As a replacement for the pre-grouping independent 0-6-2Ts it makes much more sense and one can see how it developed.  The no.10 boiler was originally  developed by Collett for the TVR A class, rather than any GW type, and the A is one of the locos the 94xx was to replace.  

 

The 08 was not much use for anything but shunting and the shortest distance trip work, whereas the 57xx/8750 and 94xx were capable of running at decent enough speeds to keep themselves and their trains out of the way, and of passenger work if needed; the 57xx were used on the Newport-Brecon and Neath-Brecon services and the 94xx were not only used on the New Tredegar branch with a B set but also hauled the Cheltenham-Gloucester part of the Cheltenham-Paddington trains, with class A headlamps.  

 

The 08 was so useless at the trip and transfer work the 94xx were built for that a replacement class was devised for the 94s at the end of steam, the D95xx.  Not that they turned out to be much in the way of value for money.

 

My 94xx is 8448, new to Tondu in 1954 and withdrawn from Tondu in 1959, AFAI can tell the only loco that spent it's entire (admittedly short) working life at the shed.  The number plates are currently on a LImbach and will be transferred to the new Baccy when it arrives.  It is easy to argue in the light of 20-20 hindsight that the 94xx were a waste of effort, but there was plenty of work for them even in 1955 when the last were built.  The situation changed with alarming rapidity and the work was gone by 1965, even as the new locos intended for it, the D95xx, were entering service.  Nobody could have foreseen how great the loss of traffic to the road haulage industry would be or how massive the reduction in demand for coal in favour of oil. 

[Ian Hargrave]

To the above workings I will add passenger turns on the Vale of Neath line.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, MG 7305 said:

I have read that the 94xx were meant to replace the pregrouping 0-6-2T, and perhaps the 56xx , a process I cannot track.  My understanding is that the post 9409 locomotives were part of an effort to provide various builders with business.  The new design offered no improvement over the 57xx and significant demerits.

 

Indeed the subcontracting involved and delivery rates are  indicative of this.  It took a long time for the contracted locomotives to be delivered.  Cook was a GW man and I suggest that his views are of great value, given his great seniority and works experience   He had enormous workshop experience and become the BR(W) CME before his successful move to Doncaster.  The essential question is what improvement over the 57xx did the 94xx provide?  I for one cannot see what it was and I bow to the views of the very senior (top of the tree) engineers of the time.

Regrettably a load of cobblers has been spouted, and far too often repeated, regarding the 94XX and indeed various other late pannier tank designs.  The truth of the matter  is that the CME submitted a building programme fo additional 57XX class engines and the General Manager rejected the design 'because it had a dome and looked old fashioned'.  So Hawksworth went back to Swindon and did the next best thing in order to keep the GM happy and supporting the building programme and basically developed a tank engine version of the 2251 using the same No.10 Standard boiler - in much the same way that the 57XX was designed around the 2301 class boiler.

 

No serious author has ever claimed anything different and as the information regarding the rejection of an order for further 57XX engines comes from no lesser a source than Kenneth Cook - who was effectively Hawksworth's successor albeit in the somewhat different situation of BR days.  Thus the tale about them being designed as a replacements for various remaining South Wales Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts is nonsense and indeed the allocation pattern does little or nothing to further that suggestion, for example by 1951 with 78 engines in service only 12 had gone to South Wales sheds which were not originally GWR depots and that number was considerably less than the number of Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts that had been withdrawn between 1948 and 1951.  Where they did replace the Pre0Group 0-6-2Ts it was simply because they, instead of yet more 57XX, existed.  They obviously went where suitable work existed thus by 1954 the largest concentration of them, 17,  was at Duffryn Yard which had only had 7 Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 (and also had 7 x 56XX in 1954).  The second largest allocation in South Wales at that time was 11 at Llanelly - which didn't have any Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 but had a considerable assortment of ageing GWR 0-6-0Ts.  Then among the Welsh allocations next in line were Neath and Aberbeeg with 8 each;  Neath had had one Pre-Group 0-6-2T in 1948 plus one more modern GWR engine with that wheel arrangement,  Aberbeeg had one 56XX at the start of 1948 but that had gone by 1961 although the shed had gained a 94XX by then.

 

That some 94XX replaced Pre-Group engines - both 0-6-0T and 0-6-2T is obvious - they did so because they were new and they were available in considerable numbers but it is a fallacy to suggest that they were specifically designed to replace the various remaining Welsh Pre-Group -0-6-2T classes because they weren't; they were designed and built because Hawksworth was not allowed to build the additional 57XX he wanted to build.

 

There is no mystery about the 15XX class - they were designed as 24 shunting engines with outside valve gear which obviated the need for them to go over a pit for oiling (ash might have been a different matter?) while the 16XX panniers were a straight replacement for superannuated Pre-Group GWR engines and no doubt were justified on that basis

[The Stationmaster]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The 94xx makes no sense at all as a replacement for the 57xx/8750, because that's not what it was meant to be.  I have never heard that it was to be a replacement for the 56xx either, relatively modern locos that were well capable of the work they were doing.  As a replacement for the pre-grouping independent 0-6-2Ts it makes much more sense and one can see how it developed.  The no.10 boiler was originally  developed by Collett for the TVR A class, rather than any GW type, and the A is one of the locos the 94xx was to replace.  

 

 

Do not forget that the 57XX and 94XX were in the same (G)WR power group  - Group C  - and were allowed the same loads as each other on passenger train working.  They had exactly the same size cylinders and wheels the only difference being the boiler hearting surface and that was why they differed under the BR powet classification system.  The 94XX was, in many respects,  little more than a 57XX with a bigger boiler.

[The Johnster]

Or a tank loco version of a 2251, which could itself be said to be a tender development of the rebuilt Swindonised Taff A.  If it is a modernised 57x one has to ask why they were still building 6750s and the last of the 96xx after it's initial introduction.  Sometimes you have to just accept that not everything the railway does makes sense...

 

Given the varieties of the 54/64/74xx, it is perhaps surprising that Collett didn't have a go at a 5'2" drivered 56xx, perhaps a 76xx, for Valleys passenger work in the style of the Taff A or Rhymney P.  The 56xx can be regarded a a Rhymney R made of Swindon standard bits.  How about a 4'1" version based on the M...

[tomparryharry]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Regrettably a load of cobblers has been spouted, and far too often repeated, regarding the 94XX and indeed various other late pannier tank designs.  The truth of the matter  is that the CME submitted a building programme fo additional 57XX class engines and the General Manager rejected the design 'because it had a dome and looked old fashioned'.  So Hawksworth went back to Swindon and did the next best thing in order to keep the GM happy and supporting the building programme and basically developed a tank engine version of the 2251 using the same No.10 Standard boiler - in much the same way that the 57XX was designed around the 2301 class boiler.

 

No serious author has ever claimed anything different and as the information regarding the rejection of an order for further 57XX engines comes from no lesser a source than Kenneth Cook - who was effectively Hawksworth's successor albeit in the somewhat different situation of BR days.  Thus the tale about them being designed as a replacements for various remaining South Wales Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts is nonsense and indeed the allocation pattern does little or nothing to further that suggestion, for example by 1951 with 78 engines in service only 12 had gone to South Wales sheds which were not originally GWR depots and that number was considerably less than the number of Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts that had been withdrawn between 1948 and 1951.  Where they did replace the Pre0Group 0-6-2Ts it was simply because they, instead of yet more 57XX, existed.  They obviously went where suitable work existed thus by 1954 the largest concentration of them, 17,  was at Duffryn Yard which had only had 7 Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 (and also had 7 x 56XX in 1954).  The second largest allocation in South Wales at that time was 11 at Llanelly - which didn't have any Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 but had a considerable assortment of ageing GWR 0-6-0Ts.  Then among the Welsh allocations next in line were Neath and Aberbeeg with 8 each;  Neath had had one Pre-Group 0-6-2T in 1948 plus one more modern GWR engine with that wheel arrangement,  Aberbeeg had one 56XX at the start of 1948 but that had gone by 1961 although the shed had gained a 94XX by then.

 

That some 94XX replaced Pre-Group engines - both 0-6-0T and 0-6-2T is obvious - they did so because they were new and they were available in considerable numbers but it is a fallacy to suggest that they were specifically designed to replace the various remaining Welsh Pre-Group -0-6-2T classes because they weren't; they were designed and built because Hawksworth was not allowed to build the additional 57XX he wanted to build.

 

There is no mystery about the 15XX class - they were designed as 24 shunting engines with outside valve gear which obviated the need for them to go over a pit for oiling (ash might have been a different matter?) while the 16XX panniers were a straight replacement for superannuated Pre-Group GWR engines and no doubt were justified on that basis

 

Thanks for that Mike; a lesson learned for me today. I was always understood the 94's were replacements for (as you say) superannuated locomotives. 

 

Cheers,

Ian.

[AY Mod]

You wait five years for a number 94 and two turn up. Within 30 mins of each other today.

 

Catalogue item on left and Locomotion exclusive on the right.

 

Review to appear in BRM soon.

[No Decorum]

8 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

You wait five years for a number 94 and two turn up. Within 30 mins of each other today.

 

Catalogue item on left and Locomotion exclusive on the right.

 

Review to appear in BRM soon.

Est est est!

[gwrrob]

55 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

You wait five years for a number 94 and two turn up. Within 30 mins of each other today.

 

 

 

What a shame you can't pop around for a cuppa as I have the Ivybridge goods waiting for it.

['CHARD]

Looking absolutely beautiful, as expected!  

 

I must not revisit a Dudley based layout in OO set in 1965, no I really must NOT.

[brushman47544]

2 hours ago, AY Mod said:

You wait five years for a number 94 and two turn up. Within 30 mins of each other today.

 

Catalogue item on left and Locomotion exclusive on the right.

 

Review to appear in BRM soon.

Thanks Andy. Is the Locomotion version more matt or that an effect of the photograph? And tHe Locomotion one also looks like it has a cast numberplate fitted, whereas on the catalogue version it is printed.

[AY Mod]

27 minutes ago, brushman47544 said:

Is the Locomotion version more matt or that an effect of the photograph?

 

They're both the same colour and finish, any perceived sheen will be due to angles of incidence of the light. Both locos include etched plates and the same detailing pack but I've only fitted that to the Locomotion model for the pics. The Locomotion model has a bit of brightwork treatment.

[rovex]

Got a real heft to it. Have one on preorder. Looking forward to seeing it when it finally arrives.

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, rovex said:

Got a real heft to it

 

Not just in appearance, it racked up about 280g on the scales with 160g of that in the diecast body. 

[The Johnster]

YYYYYEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!!

 

At last, a 94xx, and the pubs are open again in Wales.  And there was I all downhearted after seeing the interview on the virtual show link in which December was mentioned...

 

Ok, Johnster, steady on lad, get a grip.  There is still no RTR model of a BR built ‘production series’ 94xx, without the hinged plate between the frames ahead of the smokebox saddle, with the tops of the valve chests exposed like a barmaid’s t-shirt, the 94xx I’ve been waiting for since 1963.  But it won’t be too long now, and Johnster will be a very happy bunny indeed, despite being £110 (Rails’ current price for my pre-order DC 9487) poorer; the children shall not eat!

 

Thank you all for putting up with my constant and consistent moans and grumbles about this loco over the last 4 years; been a bit of a rollercoaster as dates were announced, them put back.  In 2018 the blue box rep at the Thornbury bunfight remarked, as he promised me ‘spring quarter next year, or summer’, that ‘it’s not just a box shape you know’.  
 

I told him I did know, and that that was the exact reason I was so looking forward to a good RTR representation, that the removal of the hinged plate to make a BR version was beyond me and I needed someone like his firm to sort it out for me.  But I took this as code that the production engineering process had perhaps not gone as smoothly as expected and that there’d been problems undisclosed and probably undisclosable, then there was the setback when a production slot was lost after a Chinese factory closed.  
 

All is well now though, and a month of National Rejoicing declared in the Glorious Soviet Socialist Republic of Greater Johnstria.  

[gwrrob]

1 minute ago, AY Mod said:

 

Not just in appearance, it racked up about 280g on the scales with 160g of that in the diecast body. 

 

I like the sound of that.

[The Johnster]

1 minute ago, AY Mod said:

 

Not just in appearance, it racked up about 280g on the scales with 160g of that in the diecast body. 

Good stuff!  Real 94xx alway gave an impression of being a bit of a thug...

[tomparryharry]

That lump of coal in the bunker is the wrong shape for that era....

 

Only joking. Honest, only joking.....

 

If it's Ok with everyone, I'll await until a black version comes out. 

 

What will The Johnster do now???

 

A quick scan on 'Bay shows about 20 94xx (Lima) on sale; About a tenner should buy all of them.....

 

Cheers,

Ian.  

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, tomparryharry said:

A quick scan on 'Bay shows about 20 94xx (Lima) on sale; About a tenner should buy all of them....

A good source of magnets, armatures, brushes and springs :-)

 

My Lima conversion (10 or so pages back), will probably end up literally scrapped as bits for wagon loads. Once the plates, Bachmann chassis and buffers & couplings are recovered, the rest wont even go back on a Lima chassis after all the hacking & mods

once its Black replacement arrives, and has its identity permanently swapped with Bachmanns 9487 this will despatched to the cutting drill as I doubt it will have any further resale value or parts use... I cant complain project cost me £30 in 2018.. and ive a left over Bachmann chassis to sell or reuse.

Cant wait for the new 94xx to arrive.

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by adb968008

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

 

What will The Johnster do now???

... Poor thing (the north wind doth blow and all that).  Well, he will eagerly await his 9487 from Rails, put his Limbach's number plates on it, and scrap the Lima body in much the same way as ADB968008's.  Buffers, couplings, and chassis will be returned to the eBay 57xx donor they came from, so I'll have 2 new locos for the price of one.  I won't have much cash for major projects for a month or two, so life at Cwmdimbath will settle into it's routine with an extra 57xx and shiny new 94xx.  The weight should mean that the new girl will have no trouble with the loaded coal train, which the Limbach struggles with. 

 

For the next week or so, as well as test running 9487 and converting her to 8448, I'll be finishing off the working up of an old Triang bogie utility van with a Rovex detailing kit, then I need to repaint an old Lima Siphon G that I've changed the bogies on.  After that, well, we'll see.  Plans include a new Southestern chassis for an old Wills 1854, a Comet E147 B set, and a large prairie, which I'm holding back on for now to see if the Dapol is cheaper and better than the Hornby; 'Trigger's Broom', an old Airfix large prairie on it's third chassis and with a later Hornby body, will stand in for now as 4145. 

 

There are other minor projects which will be undertaken as time and mood allow, a Cambrian small mobile crane and a Five79/Chivers pigeon van, and a stripdown and reassembly of my 2721, which needs new pickup>motor supply wires.

 

That's a brief summary of what Johnster intends to do now.  What he is going to do in the very immediate now is go to bed, to dream about 94xx...

[dibber25]

On 31/05/2020 at 11:48, The Stationmaster said:

Regrettably a load of cobblers has been spouted, and far too often repeated, regarding the 94XX and indeed various other late pannier tank designs.  The truth of the matter  is that the CME submitted a building programme fo additional 57XX class engines and the General Manager rejected the design 'because it had a dome and looked old fashioned'.  So Hawksworth went back to Swindon and did the next best thing in order to keep the GM happy and supporting the building programme and basically developed a tank engine version of the 2251 using the same No.10 Standard boiler - in much the same way that the 57XX was designed around the 2301 class boiler.

 

No serious author has ever claimed anything different and as the information regarding the rejection of an order for further 57XX engines comes from no lesser a source than Kenneth Cook - who was effectively Hawksworth's successor albeit in the somewhat different situation of BR days.  Thus the tale about them being designed as a replacements for various remaining South Wales Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts is nonsense and indeed the allocation pattern does little or nothing to further that suggestion, for example by 1951 with 78 engines in service only 12 had gone to South Wales sheds which were not originally GWR depots and that number was considerably less than the number of Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts that had been withdrawn between 1948 and 1951.  Where they did replace the Pre0Group 0-6-2Ts it was simply because they, instead of yet more 57XX, existed.  They obviously went where suitable work existed thus by 1954 the largest concentration of them, 17,  was at Duffryn Yard which had only had 7 Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 (and also had 7 x 56XX in 1954).  The second largest allocation in South Wales at that time was 11 at Llanelly - which didn't have any Pre-Group 0-6-2Ts in 1948 but had a considerable assortment of ageing GWR 0-6-0Ts.  Then among the Welsh allocations next in line were Neath and Aberbeeg with 8 each;  Neath had had one Pre-Group 0-6-2T in 1948 plus one more modern GWR engine with that wheel arrangement,  Aberbeeg had one 56XX at the start of 1948 but that had gone by 1961 although the shed had gained a 94XX by then.

 

That some 94XX replaced Pre-Group engines - both 0-6-0T and 0-6-2T is obvious - they did so because they were new and they were available in considerable numbers but it is a fallacy to suggest that they were specifically designed to replace the various remaining Welsh Pre-Group -0-6-2T classes because they weren't; they were designed and built because Hawksworth was not allowed to build the additional 57XX he wanted to build.

 

There is no mystery about the 15XX class - they were designed as 24 shunting engines with outside valve gear which obviated the need for them to go over a pit for oiling (ash might have been a different matter?) while the 16XX panniers were a straight replacement for superannuated Pre-Group GWR engines and no doubt were justified on that basis

Working entirely from memory (and it was some 20 years ago) the late Richard Strange and I investigated the whole '94XX' debacle. It was interesting because it was impossible to keep politics out of it and the inevitable conflict with Richard's political sympathies. What we were investigating was the oft-quoted story that the GWR ordered a great quantity of 94XX locos from private industry 'the night before Nationalisation". We couldn't escape the conclusion that the 94XX was largely unnecessary - certainly in the quantities that were built - with some locos going straight from construction to storage and others lasting in service as little as four years. However, against the background of post-war conditions, the need to provide employment and the desire to support manufacturers who were on the brink of financial failure due in large part to their efforts in support of the recent war, one can see how and why it happened, doubtless with quiet government approval. Perhaps, if the 94XX had not been initially a Red route restriction locomotive it might have seen the replacement of lots of older 0-6-0PTs. (CJL)

[Miss Prism]

I was nodding my head in strong agreement, Chris, until your last sentence. I think the 94xx was deliberately a big heavy red engine because its predominant purpose was to replace the knackered Welsh 0-6-2Ts. (The shed allocations for the 94xx bear this out.) Many of the old GWR 0-6-0Ts had gone to the scrapyard before 1950, and 8750s were still being built then, so I don't think the 94xx purpose was to replace blue or yellow specimens.

 

 

[The Johnster]

Surely, if the GWR had ordered 200 locos it (and the subsequent nationalised railway’s WR) didn’t need, on the eve of nationalisation and at a time of a severely restricted and government controlled austerity economy in which the private loco builders were being encouraged to build locos for export to help with the crippling balance of payments problem, then BR would have cancelled such orders by about 00.01 on 1/1/48, even if compensation had to be paid to the private builders. I can think of no other example of a pre-nationalisation design being farmed out to private builders in this way.  Cancellation would have been approved by Government because private builder capacity to build for export would have been released. 
 

Dibber and Stationmaster are knowledgeable blokes whose views I respect, but there must have been an expectation of work for these locos when they were ordered, or the government would not have allowed the order in the first place, and that expectation must have continued into the early BR years or BR would have cancelled the orders. 
 

I think that what happened is that the traffic situation altered radically and very rapidly from the early 50s, and the work that the 94s were intended to perform, transfer freight and heavy trip work (over shorter distances in South Wales than you needed an 0-6-2T for), began to dry up even as the locos were being built and delivered.  This enabled a cull of pre-grouping 0-6-2Ts, completed by 1958, but the traffic was so rapidly vanishing that there was insufficient work for the new locos as well.  ‘My’ prototype, 8448, was built in 1954 and scrapped in 1959, which looks pretty pointless and unnecessary with the benefit of hindsight but one must view the matter from a 1947 perspective before making that judgement. 
 

What is in my view a real debacle, because the stark economic lesson of the 94xx should have been learned (anyone can make a mistake, but it takes a special effort from a particular sort of fool to repeat it, or perhaps a bunch of fools), is that in the WR made a point of replacing these locos, very clearly by now surplus to requirement, with diesel hydraulics, the D95xx in 1965, ordered in 1961 IIRC.  The work for the D95xx had effectively disappeared even before they were ordered, and they should never have been built; of course, the fact that they were an operational failure didn’t help...
 

I doubt if anyone was held responsible and sacked because of it, though someone must have been responsible and probably should have been sacked because of it! 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

40 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

I was nodding my head in strong agreement, Chris, until your last sentence. I think the 94xx was deliberately a big heavy red engine because its predominant purpose was to replace the knackered Welsh 0-6-2Ts. (The shed allocations for the 94xx bear this out.) Many of the old GWR 0-6-0Ts had gone to the scrapyard before 1950, and 8750s were still being built then, so I don't think the 94xx purpose was to replace blue or yellow specimens.

 

 

Regrettably the shed allocations do not bear out that story - see my earlier post which details quite a lot about 94XX allocations into South Wales and notes in numerical terms what they replaced.

Edited November 10, 2020 by The Stationmaster

[The Johnster]

None of which will be allowed to interfere with my enjoyment of the model!