Bulleid's Leader: could it have even been successful?

[844fan]

One possibility I could say for improvement on Leader is to do away with a coal burning firebox and instead use oil fireing setups. At least the problem of a poor fireman being roasted would be delt with. I could see a improved leader being a possibility if we took some of the more problematic systems away from the equation as well.

 

Honestly I cannot see it being impossible to correct issues of drive train, Fireing and the minor things. I always have enjoyed steam locomotives and certain Diesel locomotives as well from many facets of my life my father loves all motive power finding steam to be astounding engineering wise, He knows the technical side of diesels and the odd petrol driven engine thanks to his majoring in automotive study in his collage years so they aren't quite as majestic to him but he will never bad mouth them either. My Great Uncle (My fathers Uncle) Enjoyed railways as well as my grandfather on his side though he wasn't quite as much a rail enthusiast as we three are.

 

Rails are in my blood (both metaphorically and possibility literally since all human blood is iron based)  and another person well persons I can thank for that love is the late Rev. W Awdry, His Son Christopher Awdry, Britt Alcroft (forgive my spelling of her last name if it is incorrect it is late and today was a long day for everyone in my house.) and the late and just as amazing David Mitton (Incidentally also a man I can thank for my lesser but still fascinating love of Tugs and old steamer ships) these four shaped railways into my life with a certain blue tank engine.

 

But more to the point and to bring it back to improving Leader in Awdry's supplemental books on his world of Sodor (And we all know this man knew a lot about real railways and were he a youth today would probably end up being banned from forums like this one for how passionate he was for realism) mentions the character Bo-Co a Metrovick type 2 as I'm sure you all know. Well Metrovicks were sad victims of teething troubles too but Awdry made it clear that at some point Crovan's Gate Works managed to fix his engine and electric faults.

 

Fiction yes but fiction written with a full on knowledge of what the problems were and how it could possibly be done. Now Leader is much like a Metrovick in this regard if given the chance old dangerous faults could of been fixed or removed. Maybe not a true success and indeed Leader was well too late to save steam but it could of been wonderful to see anyway what a fully realized and nonexperimental Leader could of become.

 

I guess it's just a silly dream and a possibility in a fictional story like Bo-Co's. But like the best of dreams we'll remember it long after it is gone and I for one won't stop dreaming of such a possibility.

[PatB]

As noted upthread, it's possible, even probable, the Leader could have been made to work satisfactorily, given sufficient investment and motivation. However, it seems unlikely that, even fully developed, that it would have offered sufficient advantages over an optimised Stephenson engine or a modern (in the 1950s) DE design to make the effort worthwhile. Considering just how much it would have taken, "satisfactory" wouldn't really have been good enough. It was an interesting and brave effort but would have required to be born into a different world to have been anything other than a developmental cul-de-sac.

[Southernman46]

It's all Hitler's fault ......................... the SR were on something of a roll by 1939 so Kent Coast / Weymouth / Salisbury all electrified by the late 40's etc ...................

[Nearholmer]

Americans and MUs:

 

They built zillions, having invented in short order both EM and EP control, but they are 'invisible' because they were mostly either EMUs, which enthusiast have blind spot for, or locos, which we all tend to forget were MU fitted.

 

Autotrains:

 

IIIRC the first in GB were the former Pullman cars, used by the Midland on the Nicky Line.

 

The LBSCR was also big time into the topic, adopting a very good system (once they'd removed a dangerous bug from it) that later became SR standard. The LBSCR Arrangement was arrived at after some careful comparison between steam railcard, petrol railcars, and auto trains, which they called 'motor trains'.

 

Kevin

[Coryton]

I suspect that Sentinel's extensive experience with road steam was helpful in their railway work. The demands on a road power unit are probably closer to what is required of a shunter or branch/suburban passenger unit than those on main-line locomotives.

 

 

I saw part of a manual for a Sentinel steam lorry in a museum a few years ago.

 

It pointed out that steam locomotives get lots of care and attention and that if you wanted your lorry to keep working you would do well to act in a similar manner...

[stewartingram]

Was it Sentinel that developed the underfloor horizontal steam engine similar to the AEC underfloor bus engines? I remember seeing one on the road at a rally somewhere and it was remarkably quick off the mark. Maybe that engine could have been used for a steam multiple unit?

 

From the UK Locos site (my photo has gone missing so I had to link to this:

 

http://bestieboy.smugmug.com/Trains/Buckinghamshire-Railway-Centre/i-v49rtPZ/0/M/9418%205208%20%281%20of%203%29%20-%20Buckinghamshire%20Railway%20Centre%2010.06.12%20%20%20Mick%20Tick-M.jpg

 

Sentinel 3-car steam railcar at Quainton Road.

 

Stewart

[The Stationmaster]

Was it Sentinel that developed the underfloor horizontal steam engine similar to the AEC underfloor bus engines? I remember seeing one on the road at a rally somewhere and it was remarkably quick off the mark. Maybe that engine could have been used for a steam multiple unit?

 

Here you go Roy - one Sentinel steam lorry with a reasonable view of the engine (somewhat lightened to help show the engine detail)

 

 

And now its bigger brother, regularly capable (still) of achieving a road speed of 60mph - which it could reputedly easily manage back in its working life delivering a couple of tons of steel from South Wales to a car factory in England.  I followed it on a road a few miles from us a few years back and it was making 'a decent speed' with no apparent effort.

 

 

And now an earlier model showing the 'exhaust manifold' side of the engine (albeit not very well)

 

[The Johnster]

Americans and MUs:

 

They built zillions, having invented in short order both EM and EP control, but they are 'invisible' because they were mostly either EMUs, which enthusiast have blind spot for, or locos, which we all tend to forget were MU fitted.

 

Autotrains:

 

IIIRC the first in GB were the former Pullman cars, used by the Midland on the Nicky Line.

 

The LBSCR was also big time into the topic, adopting a very good system (once they'd removed a dangerous bug from it) that later became SR standard. The LBSCR Arrangement was arrived at after some careful comparison between steam railcard, petrol railcars, and auto trains, which they called 'motor trains'.

 

Kevin

 

I have a 1960 Cardiff Valleys WTT which refers to what we call auto trains as 'rail motor trains', which I believe is the correct terminology on the WR despite everyone using 'auto' or 'push pull'.

[Nearholmer]

The GWR general appendix hedges its bets, calling them motor-car trains, and auto-car trains on different pages.

[The Johnster]

In response to the OP's question, I think it could have been made to work but there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of it ever being successful!  Important to remember the climate it was thought up in, though; Bullied was a product of the highly innovative Gresley years on the LNER, and had a hand in the 'Hush Hush', another attempt to re-invent Stephonson's wheel, and the P2s, and was influenced by Chapelon.  He had his own ideas on how things should proceed, and presumably the Southern, regarded as very modern in outlook in some quarters owing to it's enthusiastic development of electric trains from suburban carriers to express units on the Brighton and Portsmouth routes, must have known what they were letting themselves in for when they hired him.

 

The Leader project was started before it was a certainty that the railways were going to be nationalised, at a time when nobody in Europe had built a sucessful main line diesel loco for fast passenger work.  Thee were mutterings from the broadsheet reading classes who were the majority of first class punters along the lines of 'why can't we have streamlined air-conditioned diesel trains like the Americans?', but no railway had seriously considered any alternative to steam other than electrification.  The country was bankrupt as the true cost of selling our souls to the Americans to win the war became apparent, and Leader was certainly a brave experimant, but as a replacement for 0-4-4 tanks it was ridiculous; perhaps it would have had a better chance touted as a mixed traffic main line loco.

 

The railways were nationalised and Bullied was given plenty of leeway to redeem his project, but it just kept getting worse and worse, and in the end Riddles had not much choice but to pull the plug.  Things were changing very rapidly and within a short time he was out of favour himself, yesterday's man and a media sympbol of BR's backward looking attitude, to be swept away by the Great Modernisation Plan.  We'd have had a better railway sooner had that not happened in the way it did, but steam locomotives, and the type of railway they were associated with, so beloved of us modellers, were doomed whatever happened.  The tragedy is the typically British half-a*%@ed compromise that attempted to get by for half a century with diesels when electric 25kv wires were going up all over Europe.  We were not and are still not willing to pay what a decent railway costs until we are left with no choice.

[jjb1970]

Probably the most impressive steam turbine locomotive was the N&W Jawn Henry, a huge monster of a machine:

 

http://www.american-rails.com/jawn-henry.html

 

GE tried to make a modern coal fuelled gas turbine locomotive but the turbine blades didn't much like pulverised coal. It was an odd looking Frankenstein's monster of a locomotive assembled from leftovers:

 

http://matson.us/billm/prototype-rail-photos/DownloadedPhotos/union-pacific/tr_up80B.jpg

 

For a steam turbine system to work efficiently you need a very good condenser vacuum and the maximum steam temperature possible. To give an idea of the sort of steam conditions in a supercritical coal plant, steam pressure will be around 270 Bar, 593C, when I left electricity generation they were trying to push this up to circa. 350 Bar, 700C+. And the result of that is a plant efficiency of around 45%.

[jjb1970]

In terms of Europe and diesels, whilst not locomotives the DR SVT137 Flying Hamburger units entered service in the mid 30's and operated successfully for many years, achieving high speeds for their era.

[Forester]

The problem with discussions about the Leader is they always end in: "designed to fail".

The same might have been said of Bulleid's Merchant Navy had it not been most successfully rebuilt by BR.

 

So, suppose a significant number of Leaders had been built by SR, which could well have happened had they been completed a few years earlier.

Would an attempt have been made by BR to rebuild them into something useful?

 

If so, what could have been done with the frames, boiler, wheels and other major components to eliminate the unsuccessful parts of the design and produce a more conventional but useful loco?

 

Rebuilt Leader. Discuss.

[eastglosmog]

The problem with discussions about the Leader is they always end in: "designed to fail".

The same might have been said of Bulleid's Merchant Navy had it not been most successfully rebuilt by BR.

 

So, suppose a significant number of Leaders had been built by SR, which could well have happened had they been completed a few years earlier.

Would an attempt have been made by BR to rebuild them into something useful?

 

If so, what could have been done with the frames, boiler, wheels and other major components to eliminate the unsuccessful parts of the design and produce a more conventional but useful loco?

 

Rebuilt Leader. Discuss.

With tongue in cheek - ditch the boiler and motion and convert to 3rd rail electric as companions to Bulleid's CC1 and CC2 (BR Class 70)? 

[Nearholmer]

Fascinating question, but I think based on a questionable premise.

 

If war and then nationalisation hadn't happened, the SR could almost certainly have raised the capital to progress its 'Plan A', which was to electrify everything east of the Bournemouth line, bar some tiny sprigs, and dieselise the rest, tiny sprigs included, all as quickly as feasible. The SR had a very solid record of getting a rate of return on investments, and of driving efficiency in day-to-day operations, so would have been looked-upon favourably by those with money to invest.

 

Under that scenario, Leader wouldn't actually have been needed ......... in fact The Board may only have countenanced it in the first place as a 'Plan B' in case Plan A came unstuck, either because diesel technology disappointed, or fuel imports looked prohibitively expensive, or capital was only available at prohibitively high rates of interest.

 

Anyway ....... in answer to the exam question: I can't think of a good answer!

 

Kevin

Edited June 29, 2017 by Nearholmer

[brack]

Bulleid wasn't the innovative visionary from the LNER. That man should've been Vincent raven. Without raven and geddes being borrowed by the state and without the interruption of ww1 we'd have seen main line electrification half a century earlier.

[Zomboid]

It could possibly have been rebuilt with more conventional engines and a central boiler, which would have made it an odd looking but essentially fairly conventional articulated locomotive. Manual firing wouldn't have been a winner though, it would need some kind of automated system, either oil firing, pulverised coal or just a mechanical stoker.

[rodent279]

With a small dose of sentimentality, I'd say it was certainly a political decision to eliminate steam with indecent haste, especially to be replaced with untried and untested diesels.

 

As it was, Britain had already fallen behind post-war steam development by the time the decision was taken to phase it out - a look to Czechoslovakia would have shown us what "modern" steam could achieve in reality, beyond which messrs. Chapelon, Porta, Wardale & Co., could demonstrate even greater potential, had their ideas been given full reign.

 

 

To be fair though, the diesel locomotive was a known quantity by the late 1940's. There were plenty of examples in the US and in Europe of successful diesel locos, and not just shunters. The LMS twins were an early example that were successful designs. The mistake was made in throwing the doors open to competetive tendering to a range of manufacturers, some with little or no railway experience. Look at the success of the V200's and the Vt08/Vt11.5 family of locos & DMU's in Germany. Both early 50's designs that gave good service for over 30 yrs. Really what BR needed was a fleet of 20's, 37's 40's and something more powerful like the 50's. Those 4 classes would have handled all but the lightest branchline trains, the heaviest freights and the fastest expresses more than adequately.

 

The Modernisation Plan was well thought out, but the politicians got wind of it, and for them, the process was taking too long. They wanted results quicker, which is why it was torn up in favour of a headlong rush.

 

Really, the BR Standards were out of date before they were built. Vacuum brakes, no oil firing, no electric lighting, plain bearings on the drivers, plain bearings on the big ends. The German Neubauloks were streets ahead of them.

 

Yes, electrification was and always has been the real way forward. As usual, Britain was late to the game, preferring to put off the problem by pretending it doesn't exist, then suddenly waking up, panicking, and indulging in a mad rush to dieselise.

 

And still we don't learn from our mistakes.

Edited June 29, 2017 by rodent279

[Kelly]

To be fair though, the diesel locomotive was a known quantity by the late 1940's. There were plenty of examples in the US and in Europe of successful diesel locos, and not just shunters. The LMS twins were an early example that were successful designs. The mistake was made in throwing the doors open to competetive tendering to a range of manufacturers, some with little or no railway experience. Look at the success of the V200's and the Vt08/Vt11.5 family of locos & DMU's in Germany. Both early 50's designs that gave good service for over 30 yrs. Really what BR needed was a fleet of 20's, 37's 40's and something more powerful like the 50's. Those 4 classes would have handled all but the lightest branchline trains, the heaviest freights and the fastest expresses more than adequately.

 

The Modernisation Plan was well thought out, but the politicians got wind of it, and for them, the process was taking too long. They wanted results quicker, which is why it was torn up in favour of a headlong rush.

 

Really, the BR Standards were out of date before they were built. Vacuum brakes, no oil firing, no electric lighting, plain bearings on the drivers, plain bearings on the big ends. The German Neubauloks were streets ahead of them.

 

Yes, electrification was and always has been the real way forward. As usual, Britain was late to the game, preferring to put off the problem by pretending it doesn't exist, then suddenly waking up, panicking, and indulging in a mad rush to dieselise.

 

And still we don't learn from our mistakes.

 

The problem was, whilst the Germans (siemans, MAN, et al) had developed well proven diesel and electric options, it was politically too hot to consider ordering from Germany at the time, so they had to get companies to licence the technology, some of them had no diesel engine experience (NBL for example, who had the MAN licences). The LMS twins used the same engine as Bullied's 20001/2/3, but 20003 had a more powerful version and lead to the development as has been said previously in this thread of the class 40.

 

Vacuum brakes and steam heating should have really been done away with in the 40s or 50s as fast as possible as a lot of the trouble with the early diesels was the steam heat boilers. Those without steam heat boilers often (but not always) worked more reliably.

[Horsetan]

.... the BR Standards were out of date before they were built. Vacuum brakes, no oil firing, no electric lighting, plain bearings on the drivers, plain bearings on the big ends. The German Neubauloks were streets ahead of them.....

 

Significantly, the West Germans allowed steam - generally the Br.44s and 50s - to run on into 1977, nine years after BR had got rid of the last vestiges of their steam fleet (some only four or five years old when withdrawn). Even so, some of the Neubauloks were withdrawn early - both the Br.10s had gone by 1968.

 

The East Germans never really gave up steam, but their circumstances were somewhat different.

[peach james]

Probably the most impressive steam turbine locomotive was the N&W Jawn Henry, a huge monster of a machine:

 

http://www.american-rails.com/jawn-henry.html

 

GE tried to make a modern coal fuelled gas turbine locomotive but the turbine blades didn't much like pulverised coal. It was an odd looking Frankenstein's monster of a locomotive assembled from leftovers:

 

http://matson.us/billm/prototype-rail-photos/DownloadedPhotos/union-pacific/tr_up80B.jpg

 

For a steam turbine system to work efficiently you need a very good condenser vacuum and the maximum steam temperature possible. To give an idea of the sort of steam conditions in a supercritical coal plant, steam pressure will be around 270 Bar, 593C, when I left electricity generation they were trying to push this up to circa. 350 Bar, 700C+. And the result of that is a plant efficiency of around 45%.

The definitive book on Jawn Henry is "Rails Remembered Volume 4" "The Tale of a Turbine".  There is also another book, which I don't own, called "Locomotives of Future Past- the Baldwin Locomotive Works and its Turbine Engines" by Richard W. Boylan.  For reciprocating steam, "The Red Devil" is probably the best "almost" technical report out there.  I have some of the other Camden reprints (but not La Locomotive a Vapeur ) .  I'd like to think, as I hold one of the last Marine Steam certificates that will be issued in Canada (there's still 3 steamships around, but I doubt they will issue many more !), that I have a reasonable background in steam to be able to intelligently comment on topics such as this.  

 

The photos up further of the Sentinel Waggon's- they are all S type waggons.  Dad and Granddad owned 7529  (a super tractor) for 4 years (1959-1963), and then dad worked with the Lloyd Jone's brothers until we fled to Canada in 1979.  We also were involved with Charles & Roger Matthews here in Canada, who owned 4 Sentinels for 40 years. (and a few other things...).  

 

Those plant n's are high for movable plant.  I think 614T (the 4-8-4 run by Russ Roland in 1980/81) the highest n seen was 12%.  I believe that Red Devil was lower than that, not by a lot, but the 12% number is suspect as high.  With 3.5" gauge models, you can count on one hand- most of them of them one finger !  as to what the n will be...

 

James

[rockershovel]

Surely the answer to "why don't we have diesel trains like the Americans" would be (1) American railways cover vast distances in, at times, very rigorous terrain and climate, and (2) they were, at the time, major world oil producers.

[rodent279]

The problem was, whilst the Germans (siemans, MAN, et al) had developed well proven diesel and electric options, it was politically too hot to consider ordering from Germany at the time, so they had to get companies to licence the technology, some of them had no diesel engine experience (NBL for example, who had the MAN licences). The LMS twins used the same engine as Bullied's 20001/2/3, but 20003 had a more powerful version and lead to the development as has been said previously in this thread of the class 40.

 

Vacuum brakes and steam heating should have really been done away with in the 40s or 50s as fast as possible as a lot of the trouble with the early diesels was the steam heat boilers. Those without steam heat boilers often (but not always) worked more reliably.

I agree with the above, but it begs two questions, though:

 

1 we had proven diesel prime movers around in the 40's and 50's in the form of the EE engines- why was this not built on like the Germans did?

 

2 if the argument is that the Germans already had a proven line of diesels, and we didn't, then why did we not? We were after all, at the time, one of the world's leading industrial, technical and scientific nations?

[bike2steam]

I agree with the above, but it begs two questions, though:

 

1 we had proven diesel prime movers around in the 40's and 50's in the form of the EE engines- why was this not built on like the Germans did?

 

2 if the argument is that the Germans already had a proven line of diesels, and we didn't, then why did we not? We were after all, at the time, one of the world's leading industrial, technical and scientific nations?

Perhaps it was because by 1945 Britain was bankrupt with no, at that time, appreciably big enough home based oil wells, and couldn't afford importing, so the country relied on coal to both use, and export as best we could. Yes we should have dieselized with importing tried, and tested existing good designs (downsized for the British loading gauge), probably from the US, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. But all of these other 'what if's' the topic is going OT.  

Edited June 30, 2017 by bike2steam

[Nearholmer]

Time to remind ourselves of this thread, methinks http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106997-modernisation-plan-diesels/

 

It discusses all these issues, at considerable length.

 

Kevin