94XX in 00 gauge.

[Barry Ten]

On 06/08/2019 at 15:11, DavidCBroad said:

I have a varied collection of 00 scale 94XX, Farish,  Farish on Triang Chassis with Romford wheels, Lima, Lima on Bachmann Chassis, Wills on Triang chassis with and without Hamblins wheels and none of them look much like a 94XX.   Grafar on Triang chassis with Romfords is probably best but embarrassingly narrow, (32mm instead of 34mm)  Lima and Wills jointly awful.

Two questions. 1)  Is the Bachmann 94XX a reality or a pipe dream.  If so is it scale width?  The Tanks and cab should be 3" wider than the footplate, very noticeable when seeing 9400 in the flesh at Swindon Museum.

 

 

 

I'm kicking myself for not looking at the Swindon 94xx when I was there on the weekend, but - without doubting your observation - is there a link to a photo that makes this 3 inch overhang obvious to the eye? I've been poring over all the pics in the 94XX ediion of "Pannier Papers" and all I can see is what appears to be a straight continuation of the footplate edge under the cabside.

 

eg:

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Paddington_Hawksworth_'9400'_0-6-0PT_geograph-2954481-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg

 

See also:

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Old_Oak_Common_Yard_geograph-2574255-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg

 

Any observations?

Edited September 9, 2019 by Barry Ten

[Miss Prism]

The lighting (and angle) isn't brilliant for the purposes of answering the 'overhang' question:

 

 

[The Johnster]

This shot from Google Images of 9400 at Swindon shows a clear overhang of the bunker, and hence the cab sides, of about 1.5" either side over the running plate.  AFAIK the Bachmann will reproduce this, but it is difficult to be definitive from the photos so far provided; in fact it is not easy to see from any angle except this sort of rear view.  Taking the cab to full width seems to have been a Hawksworth trait; he did it with the 10xx Counties as well.

[Barry Ten]

What you're seeing there is the reduced width of the buffer beam relative to the footplate.

[Darwinian]

Cab 3” wider than buffer beam so full width of footplate. The angle that normally attaches cab/bunker side to footplate is presumably either inside or it’s welded.

[Barry Ten]

This is a tight crop of part of the Ben Brookbank picture so I hope it constitutes fair use.

 

[DCB]

10 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

What you're seeing there is the reduced width of the buffer beam relative to the footplate.

 

3 hours ago, Darwinian said:

Cab 3” wider than buffer beam so full width of footplate. The angle that normally attaches cab/bunker side to footplate is presumably either inside or it’s welded.

 

Its an 8ft bufferbeam the same as 57XX etc  The cab steps are the same as a 57XX at 8ft 7" but the cab is 8ft 6" wide as against 8ft for the 57XX /66XX /d51XX.  The 94XX is noticeably wider than 57XX panniers the 94XX as wide as the tender flare on Collett  4000 gallon tenders, while the 57XX is the same width as the tank below the flare on the Collett 4000 gallon tender.  

[Barry Ten]

The Lima cab is 34mm across so 8'6" - in other words the correct width. Can we put this to be bed now?

[The Stationmaster]

On 08/09/2019 at 23:54, br2975 said:

3400 - 3409 were delivered between 31/12/1955 and 31/10/1956 and ostensibly allocated to Cardiff East Dock but were placed in store at Barry as there was no work for them.

.

Some were even dropped on Salop shed, and remained there less than a tomato season.

.

They graduated to Radyr, where they did little, other than trips to Caerphilly, shunting Aber on the way and most famously, tripping to Creigiau Quarry.

.

The GWR had already ordered its' 15101 series of diesel shunters when the initial 94xx were ordered, and there were existing, almost new 8750s that could have done the work of the proposed 94xx panniers - methinks this was possibly a case of the former GWR managers flexing their muscles one last time ?.

The story as written by several GWR internal sources was that a need was identified post-war for more pannier tanks for a variety of duties including replacing ageing Pre-Group engines in south wales.  A proposal was put to the board to order further 8750 panniers but it was rejected  'because they did not look modern enough'.  So the 94XX design was produced instead.   Now this might well have been a tale thought up by somebody to cover up the fact that the new engines were a lot heavier, and more expensive, than an 8750 would have been.  Or it might just be an apocryphal story but whether it is or not it has been retold Irwell's 'Pannier Papers'

 

But whichever it was the new class was bigger and wider across the cab than the earlier designs which led to complaints from enginemen about the difficulty of reaching teh controls.  One of the Drivers on our local branch was of fairly short stature and he carried a box  to stand on when working on the 94XX although he didn't need it on the 57XX.  

 

The diesel shunters were of course just that, shunting engines, and too slow to carry out the wide range of work which was handled by the 57XX etc panniers.  there was really at that time little in the way of an alternative to a steam 0-6- 0T to cover the wide range of work on offer and it was another decade before a suitable diesel alternative appeared.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

The story as written by several GWR internal sources was that a need was identified post-war for more pannier tanks for a variety of duties including replacing ageing Pre-Group engines in south wales.  A proposal was put to the board to order further 8750 panniers but it was rejected  'because they did not look modern enough'.  So the 94XX design was produced instead.   Now this might well have been a tale thought up by somebody to cover up the fact that the new engines were a lot heavier, and more expensive, than an 8750 would have been.  Or it might just be an apocryphal story but whether it is or not it has been retold Irwell's 'Pannier Papers'

 

But whichever it was the new class was bigger and wider across the cab than the earlier designs which led to complaints from enginemen about the difficulty of reaching teh controls.  One of the Drivers on our local branch was of fairly short stature and he carried a box  to stand on when working on the 94XX although he didn't need it on the 57XX.  

 

The diesel shunters were of course just that, shunting engines, and too slow to carry out the wide range of work which was handled by the 57XX etc panniers.  there was really at that time little in the way of an alternative to a steam 0-6- 0T to cover the wide range of work on offer and it was another decade before a suitable diesel alternative appeared.

It's getting a bit off topic from pannier tanks of whatever persuasion, but I never really understood why all the BR 350hp diesel shunters had to be built to a "dockside" wheelbase, when it wasn't needed in many (most?) of the locations where they worked.

 

I remember Exeter's 08s taking what seemed like all morning to trip a couple of vans up to Whimple and back for the Whiteway's traffic.

 

Sticking half of them on a longer wheelbase with a two-speed transmission allowing them to do 40mph or so would have provided a very handy loco for trip working that could have properly replaced elderly tank locos across a full range of duties. Basically, what the Class 14 would have done if only it hadn't arrived years too late to be of any real benefit.

 

John

 

 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Dunsignalling

[Miss Prism]

The 09s were geared for a higher speed (27.5mph!!!), so I take your point, but there was no lack of steam locos to perform faster trip workings. Hundreds of tanks were lying idle in that era.

 

[JimC]

Cook certainly tells the story that Sir James Milne said "words to the effect that in this year of grace you cannot build a locomotive with a steam dome"
To my mind though this has to be more of a good story for the book than anything else. I expect Milne did say something of the sort lightheartedly, but apart from anything else contemporary with the 94s were over 100 8750s, 16s and 74s, all with steam domes.

[The Johnster]

Indeed the 16xx post dates the first build of 94xx.

 

The 350hp shunting engines were specifically designed for use as shunting engines in marshalling yards including hump yards, and this, along with dock work, was their bread and butter until the end of steam.  They had a distinct advantage in this role, as you could keep them running 24/7.  One 350 thus replaced the 3 steam locos that needed to do the work in shifts, and released them for trip freight or local passenger work.  The passenger work was in the hands of dmus by the late 50s/very early 60s, and the need for trip working was in theory the province of Type 1 diesels after the 1955 Modernisation Plan.

 

By the end of steam, the Type 1s had either proved themselves unreliable or gone into partnership with each other to haul coal trains, and BR found itself without locos fast enough for trip work and without the capital to design and build, or outsource, any.  No Type 1s were used by the WR until the class 14s anyway.  The 350s were powerful enough, and much of the work was over fairly short distances, so they became the 'go to' for this role in order to reserve big engines for big engine work.  They were phenomenally reliable and cheap to run, and the cabs were big enough to accommodate a guard and travelling shunter.

 

Getting back to 94xx, in 1947 they were intended to replace 0-6-2T locos that were life expired in South Wales.  The 1965 class 14 in their turn were intended to replace the still new 94xx, but traffic levels were dropping through the floor even as they were being built.  A very good loco had been found for South Wales work in 1963, the class 37, though it may have been overkill on some of the shorter trips, and by 1965, the last year of steam in South Wales and the introduction of the class 14, the area was more or less wall to wall 37s with more being delivered every few days from Newton-le-Willows.  The 14s potched around the South Wales system for about 4 years, and found work on trip freights in the Hull area, but reliability issues and poor brakes (the worst thing you can have with a loaded coal train on a downhill route) made them unpopular with the crews.  A Canton driver told me a few years later that the problem was getting them to start, and if you solved that you then had the problem of getting them to stop. 

 

So, both the 94xx and the D95xx are generally regarded as poor investments with short working lives that should never have been ordered, and proof of the inefficiency and wastefulness of nationalised industry by those whose political views are opposed to it, but my view is that this opinion is informed by 20/20 hindsight.  There was a good reason to build the 210 94xx in '47 and by BR, and a fair reason to build the D95xx when they were ordered in 1962 or 3; they were designed precisely to avoid the problem of low speed 350s after the end of steam that plagued the railway for so long.  They could run at 40mph.

[martinT]

On 29th December 1967 I photographed an 08 propelling  a ventilated van thro' Montpelier, heading towards Narroways Hill Junc & Stapleton Road. I guess it had come from Avonmouth because I think intermediate stations had lost their goods yards by then, but why propelling????

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

On 20/09/2019 at 11:49, martinT said:

On 29th December 1967 I photographed an 08 propelling  a ventilated van thro' Montpelier, heading towards Narroways Hill Junc & Stapleton Road. I guess it had come from Avonmouth because I think intermediate stations had lost their goods yards by then, but why propelling????

 

 

 

 

Only immediate answer is 'because somebody was being very naughty and doing something which was not permitted'.   There might well have been a particular - and now unknown -  reason why it was bneing done and it might even have been inside a possession for some reason (following a derailment??) but propelling outside Station Limits was very definitely not permitted on that section at that time.

[timbowilts]

47 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Only immediate answer is 'because somebody was being very naughty and doing something which was not permitted'.   There might well have been a particular - and now unknown -  reason why it was bneing done and it might even have been inside a possession for some reason (following a derailment??) but propelling outside Station Limits was very definitely not permitted on that section at that time.

I hope that the vac bags were hooked up, given the gradients in that area!

Tim T

[timbowilts]

On 20/09/2019 at 11:49, martinT said:

On 29th December 1967 I photographed an 08 propelling  a ventilated van thro' Montpelier, heading towards Narroways Hill Junc & Stapleton Road. I guess it had come from Avonmouth because I think intermediate stations had lost their goods yards by then, but why propelling????

 

 

At least they’ve hung a lamp on the van hook 

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, timbowilts said:

I hope that the vac bags were hooked up, given the gradients in that area!

Tim T

Blowing it up to the max my monitor will allow shows that the vacuum bag is on the dummy, suggesting that they were indeed connected.  Propelling of this sort was only permitted when the relevant Sectional Appendix allowed it.  The lamp is a loco head lamp, not a red tail lamp; this at least is correct!

 

We had a job at Canton in the 70s, the 'E76' pilot, which worked trips from Penarth North Curve (not in Penarth, next to Ninian Park Halt) to Ferry Road and Ely Paper Mill.  The Ferry Road traffic was propelled on to the branch, and the Paper Mill was propelled right road to the Mill ground frame.  This mean that a white head lamp was placed on the leading vehicle and the 08 showed a red to the rear.  The return trip was hauled wrong road, so the 08 still showed a red lamp and the trailing vehicle a white.

 

 

[bécasse]

I have wondered whether the van was being towed by a dmu as tail traffic (not that common but it did happen occasionally, although I don't know whether it was permitted on that route) and the dmu had engine problems and the van had to be detached. The only simple way of getting the van on its way would have been to propel it as it would have been sitting on, and blocking, a running road somewhere.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

I have wondered whether the van was being towed by a dmu as tail traffic (not that common but it did happen occasionally, although I don't know whether it was permitted on that route) and the dmu had engine problems and the van had to be detached. The only simple way of getting the van on its way would have been to propel it as it would have been sitting on, and blocking, a running road somewhere.

Could be but it is going to have to be propelled quite a long way and it might have been simpler to withdraw it (unless another train was sitting around in the way although I would think that unlikely).  Mind you I'm not at all sure where any tail traffic would be attached by that date on that branch?