Imaginary Locomotives

[Northmoor]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The railways' customers in the coal industry were calling the shots here; after all, they owned most of the wagons (not that matters improved noticeably when the railway owned the wagons and both railway and coal industry were nationalised).  The way things worked was very convenient for them; they could use the inefficiency they'd inflicted on the railways with their anachronistic and poorly maintained wagons to increase the time the product was in transit, effectively providing a free stockpile for them. 

Once the railways were Nationalised, they were even less likely to have made those efficiency savings, because it would have meant quite a lot of redundancies, which wasn't the aim.

 

Beeching identified very clearly how appalling wagon utilisation was; one return journey a week was quite typical and made the point that the railways were losing money to subsidise the NCB, by acting as their as-required stockpile.

[rodent279]

I don't want to change the subject too much, but this is why Beeching is a much maligned character, who is misunderstood as the butcher of the railways. He actually did a lot to change them for the better. Freightliner was another one of his babies wasn't it?

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, Northmoor said:

and made the point that the railways were losing money to subsidise the NCB, by acting as their as-required stockpile.

 

That oughtn't to be a fundamental problem where both have the same owner. I repeat my story about Lord Yarborough, a smart statistician who nevertheless put money into the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, becoming its Chairman. His losses on the railway were more than compensated for by the consequent increase in the value of his extensive Lincolnshire estates.

[RLBH]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

I don't want to change the subject too much, but this is why Beeching is a much maligned character, who is misunderstood as the butcher of the railways. He actually did a lot to change them for the better. Freightliner was another one of his babies wasn't it?

Freightliner, block trains, merry-go-round coal trains, InterCity - all originated in The Reshaping of British Railways. The basic idea was for British Railways to stop competing with road transport in areas where rail couldn't win. That meant losing many branch lines where an empty train ran all day and the passengers caught the bus, and giving up on wagonload traffic that could be more economically worked by trucks.

 

His thoughts on road traffic (and remember that at the time, road haulage was also nationalised) are quite interesting, too, but as Chairman of the British Railways Board, he had little to no influence over it. He wasn't opposed to subsidising socially necessary services, provided these were suitably defined, but thought that it was foolish to subsidise both bus and train services where the two were in competition. Since he had no control over bus policy, the railways suffered the worst of it.

 

A lot of his thinking was actually very modern: see, for example, this quote: "In fact, in the cities, private transport is destroying public transport and is in a fair way to destroying itself as well."  The real shame is that someone like Beeching wasn't chairman of the British Transport Commission in 1947, with the authority to consider rail and road transport as one.

 

Dragging us back to imaginary locomotives - a Beeching-like review at that time, say released in 1951, would no doubt lead to some interesting traction choices. Presumably there'd be no BR Standard steam locomotives, and no Type 1 diesels, but perhaps earlier dieselisation?

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, RLBH said:

but perhaps earlier dieselisation?

 

... or electrification? Less dependent on imported fuel and materials. The Manchester-Sheffield-Wath scheme was in progress at the time. 

 

Occasional works were going on on the Derby-Manchester line - e.g. raising of footbridges - in preparation for the electrification scheme the Midland had been pondering before the Great War.

[RLBH]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 ... or electrification? Less dependent on imported fuel and materials. The Manchester-Sheffield-Wath scheme was in progress at the time. 

 

A distinct likelihood; Beeching was a big fan of electrification. In The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes he recommended that the CLC route from Manchester to Liverpool be developed in preference to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway route in part because of the possibility of extending the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electrification.

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

I don't want to change the subject too much, but this is why Beeching is a much maligned character, who is misunderstood as the butcher of the railways. He actually did a lot to change them for the better. Freightliner was another one of his babies wasn't it?

mmm....

Referring back up to the Tinsley book I posted about above, I actually had to stand by my drawing board as he was ushered through the CCE's office adjacent to platform 1 at Kings Cross by someone from Marylebone and our Chief. 

It was a very chilling experience.   He expressed no interest in what our R&D group was doing. We knew he was Motorway builder Marples's secret weapon to nobble the railways.

 

It was the first time I realised (straight out of uni at 23, doing my RIBA office practice) that the American managerial revolution was upon us. Basically it seemed to be about knowing nothing about the intricacies of an industry but being parachuted in and applying ruthless Chicago school economics. 

Any kinds of cross subsidisation, the mainstay of the industrial revolution from the Quakers like the Darbys and the Pease family to Birmingham's Chamberlain was out.

 

I believed the future was with Dutch railways (with whom we collaborated closely) role in implementing the Randstat strategy and got out as soon as I'd got my Prof Practice. 

dh

 

[Allegheny1600]

 

 

 

 

 

3

2 hours ago, runs as required said:

 

It was the first time I realised (straight out of uni at 23, doing my RIBA office practice) that the American managerial revolution was upon us. Basically it seemed to be about knowing nothing about the intricacies of an industry but being parachuted in and applying ruthless Chicago school economics. 

Any kinds of cross subsidisation, the mainstay of the industrial revolution from the Quakers like the Darbys and the Pease family to Birmingham's Chamberlain was out.

 

Now you're talking.

In my humble opinion, Milton Friedman (aka the Chicago school) is the father of modern "Disaster Capitalism" and largely to blame for the way the modern world is today. It takes no prisoners and ensures that all profits go straight to the top, leaving nothing but disaster and ruined lives in its wake.

Sorry - that's a long way O.T. but is a fascinating study in its own right. Meanwhile;

Regarding electrification, several of the early British railways studying electrification did look at high voltage AC systems, I always wondered why the higher voltages were not adopted here.

The Americans successfully used a couple of 11Kv systems since the late nineteen-teens/early twenties as did the Swiss, Austrian, Swedish & Germans with their 15Kv systems - most of which are still in use and are pretty robust in being able to deliver high current (for heavy/fast trains).

[Clive Mortimore]

High voltage electric raiwlays in Britain at the start of the 20th century ? Pure capitalism.....cheap labour and cheap coal .....loads of money.

 

Now when things become too expensive alternatives are looked at, so back to imaginary locomotives but of a more cost effective means, well it appeared that way in the 50s.

A light weight type 2 on A1A-A1A bogies from Derby works.

 

A 2700hp Co-Co from English Electric, basically DP2 with standard EE ends instead of the flat front BR demanded the 50s had.

Last thing a NBL type 4 diesel electric.

 

I may finish them one day.

[RLBH]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

A 2700hp Co-Co from English Electric, basically DP2 with standard EE ends instead of the flat front BR demanded the 50s had.

I have thoughts in the opposite direction - a standardised Deltic with Class 50 ends.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Last thing a NBL type 4 diesel electric.

 

One of the things that might have driven them into bankrupcy even sooner?

 

You could at least give it an all over coat of Photographic Grey.... 

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

 

Last thing a NBL type 4 diesel electric.

 

Livery applied during one of BR's change in corporate image periods!

[Gibbo675]

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

One of the things that might have driven them into bankrupcy even sooner?

 

You could at least give it an all over coat of Photographic Grey.... 

Hi Hroth,

 

I would have thought it obvious, the blue bit is where the two stroke engine is, and the green bit is for the four stroke engine is !!!

 

Gibbo.

[runs as required]

Where was Misha Black in all this new outbreak of mad BR ordering of diesels straight off the draughtspersons  drawing boards?

dh

[Flying Pig]

17 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Now when things become too expensive alternatives are looked at, so back to imaginary locomotives but of a more cost effective means, well it appeared that way in the 50s.

A light weight type 2 on A1A-A1A bogies from Derby works.

 

 

Aww - I thought you'd hit the nail on the head for a moment there, Clive, with a production version of 10000 - basically an EE Type 3, five years or so before it actually came along.

[Zomboid]

I like the idea that BR/ EE could have copied the Americans in more than just the styling of the Deltics, by building single engined versions on 2 axle bogies and running them back to back in multiple.

 

Semi-Deltic B units would probably have been a stretch though.

[PhilJ W]

51 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

I like the idea that BR/ EE could have copied the Americans in more than just the styling of the Deltics, by building single engined versions on 2 axle bogies and running them back to back in multiple.

 

Semi-Deltic B units would probably have been a stretch though.

Baby Deltics?

[Zomboid]

Sort of, but with the 18 cylinder engine, single ended and with full sized Deltic style cabs.

[Bloodnok]

3 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Sort of, but with the 18 cylinder engine, single ended and with full sized Deltic style cabs.

 

Now I want to set that up articulated on a tri-bo chassis in the way older Italian electrics were set up. Not sure why, but for some reason it appeals...

[DavidB-AU]

26 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Sort of, but with the 18 cylinder engine, single ended and with full sized Deltic style cabs.

 

Not that dissimilar in design to the Queensland 1200 class or New Zealand DG class built by EE, although they didn't have 18 cylinder engines.

 

BRCW also built a broadly similar design with a Sulzer engine for the Commonwealth Railways. 

 

These were test run between Smethwick and Banbury before being shipped to Australia with their narrow gauge bogies.

 

Cheers

David

Edited August 8, 2019 by DavidB-AU

[Clive Mortimore]

13 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Sort of, but with the 18 cylinder engine, single ended and with full sized Deltic style cabs.

Got a pair of 18 cylinder Bo-Bos but they are double cabbed.

 

And a Baby Deltic rebuilt with a 18 cylinder

 

I have a 8 cylinder V engined type 2, uprated class 20 engine to 1,250hp.

 

A twin engined Type 4 with two 9 cylinder engines.

 

A hydraulic deltic engined loco again two 9 cylinder engines

 

And to finish off a type 3 A1A-A1A with a 12 cylinder V engine rated at 1500hp.

 

All the above were proposals by English Electric, the information came from a couple of books about Deltics. The drawing of the hydraulic loco was even uglier than the model I made, Vulcan works modified the proposed drawing with a standard cab, with an extremely short nose.

[runs as required]

What was the rational of BR insisting on a flat front to the 50s?  I understood the nose to be US style crash protection.

Even Black (who was scathing about the prototype Deltic and the subsequent squadron of ER Deltics) incorporated a nose into his industrial design work cleaning up the WR hydraulics.

dh

[The Johnster]

Driver and secondman's forward visibility.  Locos with noses have a restricted view for about 50 yards in front of the loco, important when shunting.  Crash protection such as it is is usually provided by a strong triangular framework around which the cab is built, the main structure of the loco body being the engine room between the cab bulkheads.  On a loco with a nose there is arguably less crash protection; the nose acts as a crumple zone and absorbs the initial shock, but in a heavy collision the equipment in the nose is forced into the cab space at just about the height of the crew's legs and lower abdomens.  Most crews, if they can see it coming and have done all they can, hide in the engine room.

 

US cabs can be a lot higher and wider than ours because of their larger loading gauge, so good forward visibility can be maintained, but note that many of them have lower windows to assist the driver when shunting.

[thx712517]

I'm curious as to what a L&YR Class 5 2-4-2 would look like, if it had been mildly Swindonized with a Belpaire taper boiler. Apparently there was a Class 6 that featured a Belpaire boiler and superheater, but I've not been able to find a photograph to see what it would look like. 

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, Zomboid said:

I like the idea that BR/ EE could have copied the Americans in more than just the styling of the Deltics, by building single engined versions on 2 axle bogies and running them back to back in multiple.

 

Semi-Deltic B units would probably have been a stretch though.

 

Run top and tailed they make some sense and we did them on the old Cuts and Shuts thread that prefigured much of what has. been said (often repeatedly ) on this one.

 

 

Otherwise I think EE's Deltic fantasies were best left unbuilt.  The class 55s existed for a specific purpose: to provide Fiennes with the 3000hp single units he needed to run a competitive timetable in the absence of electrification.  Outside that, other power units could do the job more economically (and more quietly), as the Baby Deltics demonstrated quite well.