BR Standard steam classes - was there a proposed shunter class?

[adb968008]

She looks good but illustrates a serious problem with importing U.S. diesels. Even scaled down 7/8 she is still fills our loading gauge. Even the Continental version is too large. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSB_Class_MY I understand the eventual Class 66 is a tight squeeze. They are a The other problem was lack of foreign exchange to buy them and their fuel - we had spent it all on munitions and other supplies (we only finished paying off our war time debts to the States fairly recently). Government policy was build and buy British, so imports were out.

 

The LNER considered a high speed diesel flyer before the war from Germany, but found it wanting both in terms of first cost and capacity. Gresley produced the A4 to provide the desired service. The war put paid to further development here, but the U.S.A. still had two years of peace to continue development before entering the war.

 

The GWR had a successful series of railcars in the thirties and would presumably have built more if conditions had been otherwise. The LMS also built some.

 

The Midland/early LMS designs tended to suffer from inadequate bearings. This nonsense stopped when Stanier brought in GWR know how.

completely missed the point...

If the war had not happened, it is highly likely the Deltic wouldn’t have happened either.

 

The Deltic engine was a product of war, in 1943, the EMD 567 was a product of prewar, it already existed. Europe, not just the UK was a long way behind in diesel technology.

 

There wouldn’t be an oil, currency crisis, as there wasn’t a war, there wouldn’t be a motorway network with ex-army trucks eating the market as there wasn’t any army trucks, there wouldn’t be a BR (though i’d Wager the GWR and LMS might have merged).

 

If any of the big 4 felt the urge to move forwards from steam technology in 1938, it was already in diesel shunters, but anything above a 5MT was newly acquired, and already in place from the 1930’s, with an expected 40 year life investment... the conversation about a replacement wouldn’t have happened until the 1960’s, probably not fully implemented until the 1980’s and would most likely have taken a look at available technology of the time. The EMD567 was old, but established.. if you were CME tasked at replacing 8Ps, would you start with something new unproven from a supplier of 200hp diesel shunters, or consider something that’s been tried and tested at 100+ mph for 3 decades already, available under licence and probably cheaper due to its product age.

 

Things would have evolved slower and different.

However the original topic point... there wouldn’t have been many more steam shunters, at least from the LMS and SR and probably the LNER, which is the same glide path BR adopts in roughly the same time scales.. the Diesel shunter was already in place prewar.

Edited August 23, 2018 by adb968008

[bike2steam]

Based on the later LMS design, 13000 was built in 1952 after a small delay because of the oil crisis, which predated most of the standard steam locos.

[Nearholmer]

ADB

 

I honestly think that your assessment grossly underestimated how keen the railways were to move beyond steam, as fast as investment would permit. The SR has very solid plans to eliminate steam east of the Bournemouth line using electrification, and west of it using diesels. The LMS had a very good diesel programme. The GWR and LNER were no slouches either.

 

Kevin

Edited August 23, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Zomboid]

If any of the big 4 felt the urge to move forwards from steam technology in 1938, it was already in diesel shunters, but anything above a 5MT was newly acquired, and already in place from the 1930’s, with an expected 40 year life investment... the conversation about a replacement wouldn’t have happened until the 1960’s, probably not fully implemented until the 1980’s and would most likely have taken a look at available technology of the time.

I suspect without the economic hit of the war, steam would have gone sooner, and been replaced by electric traction more widely.

A major issue for steam was finding people willing to do the dirty jobs, and without the war and subsequent austerity period, people's expectations may well have risen faster then they did, such that maintaining steam may have ceased to be viable before 1960.

[bike2steam]

I suspect without the economic hit of the war, steam would have gone sooner, and been replaced by electric traction more widely.

A major issue for steam was finding people willing to do the dirty jobs, and without the war and subsequent austerity period, people's expectations may well have risen faster then they did, such that maintaining steam may have ceased to be viable before 1960.

 

Well according to EA Gibbins, 'Square Deal Denied' economic problems started well before WW2 - an interesting read, if you get time, try it.

[The Johnster]

It is interesting that Riddles designed the standards as a stop gap to last BR until about 1980, when he expected most routes to have been electrified and only very secondary routes to be diesel worked.  All this was simply chucked out in 1955 with the modernisation plan, as it had become clear by then that the government were not going to divvy up the readies for this; what do you think this is, Europe?  Every other European nation both sides of the iron curtain did exactly this, and their railways are in a better state than ours because of it; we might reasonably have been expected to follow suit but successive governments of both types in the 50s and 60s committed to road development on the American model.  

 

The 1955 plan is much criticised, but faced with the lack of capital faced by a railway that had to modernise to survive, what would you have done (the answer 'held on to steam until we could afford electrification is not going to fly, sorry)?

[brack]

We were not behind in railway diesel engine technology in the interwar period, we were ahead.

EMD developed the 567 in 1938 as you've said. Prior to that they tried the winton 201 and found it wanting (the 567 was principally designed to overcome it's shortcomings) Beardmore supplied Glasgow built diesel engines a decade earlier (1928) for Canadian national's Westinghouse built locos (the first passenger diesel road locos in North America). Those were 12 cylinder engines developing 1300hp with a power to weight ratio twice that of US designs of the time. English Electric's diesel engines owe a bit to the Beardmore designs.

Armstrong Whitworth were using the sulzer engines in the 20s and 30s on successful main line locos. Those are pretty much the engines that eventually powered our railways from the 50s onwards. What we didn't have was the money or motivation to use the technology (no thousand mile runs, no deserts or vast plains, no water shortage).

Funnily enough both beardmore and AW got out of the rail business in the 30s as the railways had no cash and we were rearming, so they went back to warships and munitions.

EE had supplied main line diesel locos to Brazil before Ww2.

[bike2steam]

The 1955 plan is much criticised, but faced with the lack of capital faced by a railway that had to modernise to survive, what would you have done (the answer 'held on to steam until we could afford electrification is not going to fly, sorry)?

 

That is a tough question to answer without getting too political, both national, and inter-national. Again, I would suggest reading EA Gibbins book 'Square Deal Denied'.

[Corbs]

Going back a bit, I would really like to make a model of my fictional Standard 3F. 

Does anyone have any suggestions of a RTR chassis I could use? Large wheels close together, short wheelbase.

At the moment I'm considering the Hornby J94 and re-using the motion and cylinders from the 2MT.

 

Also, if I can ask a stupid question, did the Ivatt and Standard 2MT locos have parallel or tapered boilers?

Edited August 23, 2018 by Corbs

[brack]

Taper boiler.

The J94 gives you the right size wheels for the bagnall Vulcan, I'm not sure on wheelbase. The 2MT cylinders and gear seems a good choice. You'd need a fairly short con rod so it's probably about right (Hornby spares valve gear is often handy)

[62613]

Well according to EA Gibbins, 'Square Deal Denied' economic problems started well before WW2 - an interesting read, if you get time, try it.

I would say the Britain's economic problems started well before WW1; it's just that most people couldn't see it in a rapidly expanding world economy. We have all these industrial museums because there was an awful lot of ancient machinery about to be preserved.

[Nearholmer]

Again something we’ve chewed-over here before, but a huge amount of evidence points to British industry being under-capitalised from as early as the 1870s, with American and German capital making-up a surprisingly high percentage of what investment was made in modern manufacturing capability in Britain from then until WW2.

 

The thing I’m still not sure I understand is why Britain was undercapitalised, although some good pointers did come up when we discussed it before.

[28XX]

Not a bad “what if” premise for a layout. 1979. Lots of very tired, patched and bodged standard steam locomotives, serving stations taking design cues from Birmingham International and Milton Keynes, wires going up and shiny new 87xxx starting to appear.

[The Johnster]

The British have undercapitalised and mistrusted their railways since the days of George Hudson and of the Overend Gurney collapes, which wiped out many of the very sort of middle class investors that were needed.  Any railway investment to this day is viewed with the greatest suspicion in this country, and the government are especially unwilling to spend money on railways, unlike other European countries.  France even has a proper high speed network, the real value of which is the space it frees up on the conventional network!

[melmerby]

 

Also, if I can ask a stupid question, did the Ivatt and Standard 2MT locos have parallel or tapered boilers?

They were tapered.

The LMS had virtually standardised on them from Stanier's reign (Swindon influences)

It started with Stanier's reworking of the Crab along GWR 43XX lines.

 

Keith

Edited August 23, 2018 by melmerby

[Alex TM]

Going back a bit, I would really like to make a model of my fictional Standard 3F. 

Does anyone have any suggestions of a RTR chassis I could use? Large wheels close together, short wheelbase.

At the moment I'm considering the Hornby J94 and re-using the motion and cylinders from the 2MT.

 

Also, if I can ask a stupid question, did the Ivatt and Standard 2MT locos have parallel or tapered boilers?

Hi again,

 

What about the USA tanks as a chassis?  Bash the cab and boiler from an old Hornby Ivatt?

 

Possible?

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[adb968008]

Going back a bit, I would really like to make a model of my fictional Standard 3F. 

Does anyone have any suggestions of a RTR chassis I could use? Large wheels close together, short wheelbase.

At the moment I'm considering the Hornby J94 and re-using the motion and cylinders from the 2MT.

 

Also, if I can ask a stupid question, did the Ivatt and Standard 2MT locos have parallel or tapered boilers?

9f and hack the chassis ?

[south_tyne]

It is possible that only locos with a 6xxxx number were allowed past Whitwood junction on to ex NE lines!

This is a local railway for local engines.... we'll have no troublesome interlopers in these here parts

[south_tyne]

The 1955 plan is much criticised, but faced with the lack of capital faced by a railway that had to modernise to survive, what would you have done (the answer 'held on to steam until we could afford electrification is not going to fly, sorry)?

At a very basic level, if the average lifespan for a loco is around 25-30 years then dream could have him on until the very early '80s. I would imagine the last of the BR Standard locos on heavy freight to serve industrial users (coal/steel traffic etc), focused on a small number of locations such as the North East, Yorkshire, Lancashire and South Wales. Having said that, the miner's strike would have been the ultimate death of it.

[Ian J.]

Thinking about it a bit, I reckon we should remember that there are other factors than just modernisation and ecinomics at play. There have been various clean air acts since the mid 1950s, and I have little doubt that coal fired steam locomotives would have been a target for dispensing with to help towards such acts. As it happened, the two occurred at pretty much the same time.

[62613]

The British have undercapitalised and mistrusted their railways since the days of George Hudson and of the Overend Gurney collapes, which wiped out many of the very sort of middle class investors that were needed.  Any railway investment to this day is viewed with the greatest suspicion in this country, and the government are especially unwilling to spend money on railways, unlike other European countries.  France even has a proper high speed network, the real value of which is the space it frees up on the conventional network!

More than just the railways; industry as a whole, I would have thought.

[The Johnster]

More than just the railways; industry as a whole, I would have thought.

 

Railways do seem to have borne the brunt of middle class hatred though. The British have never really come to terms with how expensive they have to be if they are any good and how long termist your investment culture must be.  We want a Pullman service for mileage rates.

[Il Grifone]

Railways do seem to have borne the brunt of middle class hatred though. The British have never really come to terms with how expensive they have to be if they are any good and how long termist your investment culture must be.  We want a Pullman service for mileage rates.

 

Just look at all the hoo-hah over HS2.

[steve1]

 

the first generation diesels were hardly a major success.

 

Not all of them were dud. Class 20s (D8000s, EE Type 1) are still working now, over 60 years after introduction. Although refurbed in a lot of cases, they are still basically the same locos.

 

steve

[Alex TM]

Not all of them were dud. Class 20s (D8000s, EE Type 1) are still working now, over 60 years after introduction. Although refurbed in a lot of cases, they are still basically the same locos.

 

steve

Hi,

 

Could the following also count as first generation successes?

 

Class 08 - eventually redundant in many places due to changing practices

Class 37 - although many refurbished as per the 20s

Class 47 - ditto (including the 57s)

 

Regards,

 

Alex.