Left hand drive?

[Guest]

Am I right in thinking that ex LMS engines , 2P, 3F jintys, 4 F 's were left hand drive in the 1950's BR period? I know the ex GWR remained right hand drive as did some of the ex LNER locos. But I have no idea on the ex LMS locos that worked on the S&D inparticular. All the books I have it's hard to tell from the photos.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, matto3868 said:

Am I right in thinking that ex LMS engines , 2P, 3F jintys, 4 F 's were left hand drive in the 1950's BR period? I know the ex GWR remained right hand drive as did some of the ex LNER locos. But I have no idea on the ex LMS locos that worked on the S&D inparticular. All the books I have it's hard to tell from the photos.

You would easily get confused by looking at ex-Midland designed locomotives on the S&DJR photos.

Why because the Midland (who supplied the locos to the S&DJR), where a RH drive railway.

On grouping, many of the classes you mentioned, had additional classes built. However, the initial batches of some were RH drive, with most being the LMS standard of LH drive.

 

The easiest way to tell, is to look at the side for the reversing rod or the regulator rodding, if you can see it on a side on photo, that is the drivers side. If you can't it will be the other side.

 

In the case of the original Lima H0 4F 0-6-0 model, they got it wrong and put one on each side!

 

Edit to add.

 

AFAIA none where ever modified from RH drive to LH drive, they remained as built.

Edited March 14, 2019 by kevinlms

[Guest]

Cheers for that info. Never understood why some companies had right hand drive,  ok it seems normal to us in the UK in a car,I don't think I could drive a left hand drive car but in a loco it seems odd when the signals are nearly always on the left and the driver is on the right. Interesting fact about the Lima ho model.

[LMS2968]

Those built right hand drive remained so, but later - the first batches stayed right hand drive - LMS built 4Fs, 2Ps and Compounds were left hand drive. ALL Jinties were built with and stayed right hand drive.

[Yardman]

Our family has seven cars, four of them are left hand drive. It's not a problem.

[TheQ]

9 minutes ago, matto3868 said:

Cheers for that info. Never understood why some companies had right hand drive,  ok it seems normal to us in the UK in a car,I don't think I could drive a left hand drive car but in a loco it seems odd when the signals are nearly always on the left and the driver is on the right. Interesting fact about the Lima ho model.

The  companies that had right hand drive generally put the signals on the right.

The  companies that had left hand drive generally put the signals on the left.

[Joseph_Pestell]

41 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

 ALL Jinties were built with and stayed right hand drive.

 

As a tank loco, they would be left hand drive a lot of the time.

[Reorte]

58 minutes ago, matto3868 said:

Cheers for that info. Never understood why some companies had right hand drive,  ok it seems normal to us in the UK in a car,I don't think I could drive a left hand drive car but in a loco it seems odd when the signals are nearly always on the left and the driver is on the right. Interesting fact about the Lima ho model.

Not sure if this was the reason or not but a right-hand drive locomotive would be easier for a right-handed fireman to fire. I suppose if you were starting from scratch with no preconceptions about which side of the road people travelled on (I believe being on the left hand side of the road was well established when railways were invented) right-hand drive with right-hand running would've been chosen.

 

Left-hand drive cars are arguably easier for most people because the bits you need your hand for - gears and handbrake - are on the right and more people are right-handed, but it's really one of those things we seem to manage to get used to easily enough. The hardest thing I found about driving abroad was judging width when sat on the other side of the car, surprisingly changing the side of the controls came naturally to me.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Reorte

[The Johnster]

The side of drive a railway built it's locos was something established in most cases very early in railway history, and was well developed and entrenched in practice before boilers and fireboxes became so big that it was an issue.  In the days before cabs, the driver could look out across the top of the boiler and see very clearly ahead, with the smoke and steam going over his head out of the tall chimney.  By the 1850s, weatherboards were starting to appear and cabs by the 1870s; drivers adopted the familiar leaning out of the cab 'Casey Jones' style to see where they were going.  By the end of the 19th century they were having to do this anyway to see around rather than over the firebox and boiler, and by the 20s steam drifting around the large boiler necessitated the use of smoke deflectors, themselves a further obstacle to forward viewing, to clear it.  

 

Signals need to be sighted a good way ahead of the train if you are travelling at any sort of speed, and can in most conditions be read adequately from either side of the cab.  You can alway ask the fireman to sight one for you if you need to, and if he knows his job he does this without being asked.  This aspect of his work, which was good practice for his later driving career, developed along with the restriction of the forward view described above.  Early firemen were called stokers and that's all they were expected to do; keep the fire going and ensure that there was enough water in the boiler.  Anyone doing more would have been regarded as overstepping his authority, and Victorian drivers were well known for being strict in such matters!

 

The critical signal if you are running fast is the distant; if it is showing clear, you can with confidence assume that all the signals that apply to you and controlled by that box are also showing clear, and can maintain speed until the next box's distant.  If the distant is on, showing 'caution', you must be prepared to stop at the next stop signal, even if you believe it will be clear by the time you can see it, and you reduce speed accordingly; this gives you more time to sight the home signal. 

[Steamport Southport]

29 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Not sure if this was the reason or not but a right-hand drive locomotive would be easier for a right-handed fireman to fire.

 

We've had this before.

 

You are firing from the back to a hole in front of you, not the left or right hand sides. Unless it's a small tank locomotive with bunkers in the side sheets where firing would be sporadic.

 

What side the fireman stands has no bearing whatsoever on firing the locomotive as he's in the middle when firing. Look where the shovel plate is and where the firehole door is. They are in the middle.

 

 

Jason

[Steamport Southport]

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

You would easily get confused by looking at ex-Midland designed locomotives on the S&DJR photos.

Why because the Midland (who supplied the locos to the S&DJR), where a RH drive railway.

On grouping, many of the classes you mentioned, had additional classes built. However, the initial batches of some were RH drive, with most being the LMS standard of LH drive.

 

The easiest way to tell, is to look at the side for the reversing rod or the regulator rodding, if you can see it on a side on photo, that is the drivers side. If you can't it will be the other side.

 

In the case of the original Lima H0 4F 0-6-0 model, they got it wrong and put one on each side!

 

Edit to add.

 

AFAIA none where ever modified from RH drive to LH drive, they remained as built.

 

Not LMS.

 

But some of the GNR/LNER locomotives did change, some were still RH in the 1950s. Flying Scotsman is an example. I think Hornby got that wrong on a couple of the models.

 

 

Jason

[Reorte]

14 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

We've had this before.

 

You are firing from the back to a hole in front of you, not the left or right hand sides. Unless it's a small tank locomotive with bunkers in the side sheets where firing would be sporadic.

 

What side the fireman stands has no bearing whatsoever on firing the locomotive as he's in the middle when firing. Look where the shovel plate is and where the firehole door is. They are in the middle.

Think about shovelling from one heap to another - where are you standing? It's not straight in a line  between them, and if you're right handed it's easier to keep the shovel to the right hand side of your body, which means standing to the left of the line (defining left as the side when you're facing the heap you're shovelling to). In a left hand drive locomotive that's where the driver is.

 

On the other hand if you've fired locos then fair play, I'll shut up :)

Edited March 14, 2019 by Reorte

[LMS2968]

I have fired locos and you stand on one side or the other, not in the middle. Over time, you learn to fire either way around if you have a mix of left and right hand drive locos to work, but firing a left hand drive loco if you're right handed does take some practice.

[Nick Holliday]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

The  companies that had right hand drive generally put the signals on the right.

The  companies that had left hand drive generally put the signals on the left.

I'm not sure this is generally true. In most instances the signal post is positioned to the left of the track it refers to, as usually this is the side there will be space for it. If located on the right hand side, then, except on single tracks, either the post will be on the far side of the opposite track, which could make things very awkward if there is another train in the way, or between the tracks, which, except on the broad gauge lines of the GWR, would require wider spacing with commensurate additional earthworks. Life would also be difficult for the fogman during emergencies. The precise siting of signals would depend on sighting considerations, and could result in occasional positioning on the wrong side of the tracks, on all lines, but a right hand drive loco policy would slightly increase the chances, but such examples seem to be few and far between.. 

I would have thought that left hand drive would suit platform operations, as most platforms would be on the left of the tracks, and the driver could then monitor the guard's signals, and he would also have a clear view of the platform starter. However, as others have said, for roughly half their services, tank engines could be running in reverse, as would a smaller proportion of tender locos, so any advantage would be lost.

It's interesting which lines seems to prefer right hand drive, the Midland and GWR are probably best known, but there were plenty of others, such as the GCR and SECR, and many lines had examples of both hands without too much moaning from the drivers, although occasionally they did revolt about having to change, so the advantages of either were probably marginal.

[jamie.dunn]

I’ve fired a couple of locos which have been LHD and RHD, I’m left handed but haven’t really had any issue it just take practice more than anything.

 

I found the hardest bit of the swing into the firebox is remembering to lift the handle higher then the blade of the showel that the coal heads down the box and not up towards the brich arch. ( I worked with a lad that just couldn’t get this right and kept getting coal on top of the brick arch... ) 

 

but that shouldn’t really be effected if your left or right handed ...

 

by trade i’m A mechanic and have driven both LHD and RHD vehicles and it’s just second nature ... ( apart from the first one were I went to release the electronic handbrake and put the window down .

Edited March 14, 2019 by jamie.dunn
Edited to adjust grammar

[Guest]

Interesting points raised here.

reason i asked is i want to add some crews to my locos , as said i model the S&D 1950's ,before i was LNER . I have several books on the S&D but it is hard to tell which side the driver was.

Im left handed but i couldnt shovel from the rh side of the cab.

I agree on the signals being on the left side 99% of the time.

So if a Jinty , 2P , 4F etc were built pre grouping by the midland , they were rh drive? and if they were was they converted the lh drive by BR?

[Marshall5]

10 minutes ago, matto3868 said:

 

So if a Jinty , 2P , 4F etc were built pre grouping by the midland , they were rh drive? and if they were was they converted the lh drive by BR?

Yes, if they were built by the M.R. they were RH drive and would have remained so.  Another way of identifying a RH/LH drive loco from a photo is which side the vacuum brake ejector pipe is on - always the driver's side. 

Ray.

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, TheQ said:

The  companies that had right hand drive generally put the signals on the right.

The  companies that had left hand drive generally put the signals on the left.

 

The Midland, which put the drivers position (i.e. the reverser, whether lever or screw) on the right, followed the common British practice of placing signals on the left-hand side of the running line to which they applied, unless sighting or clearance considerations dictated otherwise. 

[JeremyC]

In one of his books Norman McKillop (Toram Beg) suggests the following: The reason for the driver originally being on the RH side was so, before full signalling, a driver could easily warn the driver of a train travelling in the opposite direction of any problems ahead of him (however some railways, for example the NBR, were always LH drive so it wasn't a universal idea). For space reasons signals were placed to the left and as boilers became bigger sighting became problematic so it made sense to move the driver to the left. A final push seems to have been the introduction of colour light signalling  with the desire to place the signal lights as close as possible to the drivers eye level.

Edited March 14, 2019 by JeremyC
Typo

[LMS2968]

10 hours ago, matto3868 said:

So if a Jinty , 2P , 4F etc were built pre grouping by the midland , they were rh drive? and if they were was they converted the lh drive by BR?

See my post No. 4.  As others stated, the reverser reach rod and vacuum ejector were always on the dtriver's side, but not all Jinties were vacuum fitted, so no ejector.

[michl080]

16 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

I'm not sure this is generally true. In most instances the signal post is positioned to the left of the track it refers to, as usually this is the side there will be space for it. If located on the right hand side, then, except on single tracks, either the post will be on the far side of the opposite track,[...]

hmm,

 

doesn't left hand drive at railways imply that you are driving on the left track? It is like that at least on the continent. If my assumption is correct, signals wouldn't have to be located between tracks.

 

Michael

[LMS2968]

As 0on the roads, British trains drive on the left. Signals were usually sited to the left, but this depended on ease of sighting from the footplate, and particularly on curves, might be sited to the right. It all depended on circumstances.

[Nick Holliday]

3 hours ago, michl080 said:

hmm,

 

doesn't left hand drive at railways imply that you are driving on the left track? It is like that at least on the continent. If my assumption is correct, signals wouldn't have to be located between tracks.

 

Michael

You are correct that, generally, in Britain the trains run on the left track. Left hand drive here refers to the location of the driver cab. It seems to have been the usual practice, except in small shunting locos, for the driver to have control of the reverser and regulator, whilst the fireman attends to the braking, along with maintaining coal and water supplies.  On the Midland/Somerset and Dorset, as well as other lines, some of which have been mentioned, the driver's controls were located on the right hand side of the firebox, so that is where the driver stood, on the off-side of the loco. With left hand drive in the loco, positions of the controls were reversed, and the driver took station on the left side of the cab, the near side.

One situation where signal posts on the right would be found is at the end of island platforms, such as at Highbridge on the S&DJR. This would also mean that the guard would be able to see the starter, too. I assume that the guard would not show his green flag until he knew that the train had been signalled to depart.

Looking through signalling plans for the Somerset and Dorset did give  the impression that there were quite a number of signals that were on the 'wrong' side of the line, and these were mainly the distant or outer home protecting the station, as earlier suggested giving the driver early indication of how he should proceed. Midford has some interesting signal locations, but sight lines in a rather interesting location may be the driver there.

[Steamport Southport]

23 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

I have fired locos and you stand on one side or the other, not in the middle. Over time, you learn to fire either way around if you have a mix of left and right hand drive locos to work, but firing a left hand drive loco if you're right handed does take some practice.

 

Yes. Slightly to the side depending on your own handedness. I was thinking that the five foot or so width of the firebox as the centre. I didn't mean you are standing in the exact centre line.

 

But many people seem to think that the fireman always stands right at the far extremity of the cab. Which on an average locomotive is a cab that is 8 or 9 foot wide. If you can reach the Firehole from there then you must have arms about six foot long.

 

And yes I have fired locomotives including once or twice with Ray/Marshall5. But I doubt he would remember me as he was usually too busy playing with steam rollers when I was a volunteer and I normally ended up playing with the diseasels as nobody else would. Then I was a volunteer at Llangollen for a while, but life got in the way and it was too far to travel.

 

 

 

Jason

[The Stationmaster]

On 14/03/2019 at 13:59, Steamport Southport said:

 

We've had this before.

 

You are firing from the back to a hole in front of you, not the left or right hand sides. Unless it's a small tank locomotive with bunkers in the side sheets where firing would be sporadic.

 

What side the fireman stands has no bearing whatsoever on firing the locomotive as he's in the middle when firing. Look where the shovel plate is and where the firehole door is. They are in the middle.

 

 

Jason

If you're right handed its a lot easier to fire a right hand drive engine.  In fact one of the big problems for Western men when the 'Britannias; first arrived was not just that they were left had drive but also that they were left-handed to fire.  Many firemen decided to carry on firing right handed - and then upset their drivers because depending on the sort of overalls they were wearing it was all too easy to catch the blower handle.  And in any case in order to get coal out and put it in you have to stand to one side or other of the line between tender coal hole and firebox if you are to fire without constantly shuffling about.