Imaginary Locomotives

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, Suzie said:

Does that mean for the modern steam loco cab interior we will need a cooking ring, a microwave oven and an electric kettle as part of the cab interior detail?

Why not?  A modern signal box does, though the Baby Bellings are looking a bit clapped.

[Northmoor]

22 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Why not?  A modern signal box does, though the Baby Bellings are looking a bit clapped.

In a signal box I can entirely understand this; it's a workplace building like any other.  I'd be disappointed to work in an office without facilities to make a hot drink (in fact I'm not sure it meets employment regulations if it doesn't have them).  

Diesel shunters, the 08s at least, have had a cooking ring, I assume since they were built in the 1950s.  I don't know about main line diesels but the early AC electrics have a urinal behind the bulkhead door....

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, Suzie said:

Does that mean for the modern steam loco cab interior we will need a cooking ring, a microwave oven and an electric kettle as part of the cab interior detail?

 

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

In a signal box I can entirely understand this; it's a workplace building like any other.  I'd be disappointed to work in an office without facilities to make a hot drink (in fact I'm not sure it meets employment regulations if it doesn't have them).  

Diesel shunters, the 08s at least, have had a cooking ring, I assume since they were built in the 1950s.  I don't know about main line diesels but the early AC electrics have a urinal behind the bulkhead door....

 

I’ve never seen it romanticised in the same fashion, but I’d long since assumed that the pile of coal in the tender served a number of welfare-related purposes..

 

 

[The Johnster]

The diesels I worked with at Canton in the 70s all had urinals in the engine rooms except 08s, and all had cooking facilities of some sort.  Most had hotplates, but the hydraulics had ‘food warmers’, small low powered ovens. They were all right for heating up a precooked pie or a pasty, but you couldn’t cook with them.  The hotplates were fine, though. 
 

AFAIK single cab locos like 20s did not have urinals, and I don’t think I ever saw one where the flush worked, so they tended not to be used.  

[Northmoor]

16 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The diesels I worked with at Canton in the 70s all had urinals in the engine rooms except 08s, and all had cooking facilities of some sort.  Most had hotplates, but the hydraulics had ‘food warmers’, small low powered ovens. They were all right for heating up a precooked pie or a pasty, but you couldn’t cook with them.  The hotplates were fine, though. 
 

AFAIK single cab locos like 20s did not have urinals, and I don’t think I ever saw one where the flush worked, so they tended not to be used.  

Understandable that you wouldn't have the "facilities" on an 08 or a 20, where you can't walk into the engine compartment, only access it through panels on the "bonnet".

[PhilJ W]

I seem to remember, in an old BTF film a diesel or electric locomotive equipped with an Elsan. Deltic prototype perhaps?

[The Johnster]

Elsans, now there's a fragrant memory, the reason my dad refused caravan holidays!  The urinals I remember were in the engine rooms and simply drained out on to the track like the coach toilets did in those days.  Assuming Deltics carried the standard English Electric urinal as a 37, is was a stainless steel affair, but even production Deltics considered themselves a cut above, double windscreen wipers, indeed!  Westerns had a complex system of pathways inside the body between the cab bulkheads, up and down steps and with dead ends, up which one of which was the urinal IIRC.  Again IIRC but I'm happy to be corrected, Peaks had rather dainty little white porcelain, well ceramic anyway, ones, Armitage Shanks?  Westerns of course should have had Twyfords.

 

I don't recall a handrail, which would have been a good idea if you consider the problems of aiming into a small receptacle with the loco bouncing around at 90+, poor lighting, and a pair of Maybachs or a 16 cylinder Sulzer banging away in close proximity.  Sorry, ladies, this is world you are not familiar with and we are not all as good as we should be in this matter as a visit to any pub urinal will confirm, though I take something of a pride in it.  Stena Felicity, a ferry that used to ply her trade between Fishguard and Rosslare and was named after a Haverfordwest lady's cat (a competition had been held in Pembrokeshire and Co. Wexford to name her, the ship not the cat), had male urinals with archery targets printed on them, a brilliant piece of psychology that no male person's 'person' could resist!  We've gone OT again, haven't we, mummy...

Edited September 5, 2020 by The Johnster

[Northroader]

I have doubts that the facilities provided were ever used, they never looked very savoury at best of times. I’m pretty sure most folks stood in the cab doorway on the blindside.

[rockershovel]

That was a welcome innovation when I switched to working on offshore rigs; no more Elsans, Porta Potties or other such appliances. I don’t know if they survived into diesel days, but I always found that American-style bib overalls were notably unhandy for such purposes...

 

[rockershovel]

34 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I have doubts that the facilities provided were ever used, they never looked very savoury at best of times. I’m pretty sure most folks stood in the cab doorway on the blindside.

 

What, at 90mph? 

[The Johnster]

I was caught short on a goods brakevan once on a return trip from Gloucester, and decided at about Arlingham that I had enough time to complete the process before we got to Chepstow.  It was night, and cold, which helped, but I just couldn't stop.  The van rolled out onto the Wye Bridge where I displayed all my little shortcomings to the entire population of Bulwark and southern Chepstow, a graceful arc of the stuff curving into the Wye below shimmering in the lights, and continued the performance through the down platform for the 'benefit' of a group of the sweetest looking little old ladies you've ever seen in your life; it was like flashing your nana and all your mates's nanas at the same time.  As soon as the van cleared the platform the torrent ceased so that it looked even more as if it was deliberate! 

 

The shame...

[rockershovel]

I started my drilling days on land rigs working for the NCB, which were survivors of a past age, even in the 1970s. One thing I quickly learned was that galvanised buckets tucked in odd corners, containing a couple of inches of diesel fuel were NOT to be used for cleaning bentonite off steel surfaces.. 

[Gibbo675]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

What, at 90mph? 

Hi Mr Shovel,

 

Last time I was caught short on a locomotive was about a month ago, out of No. 1 end driver's door of 47 593 just south of Ribblehead on the up line doing about 50mph. The flush happened to be working well at the time or to put it another way it was raining.

 

When on steam locomotives the coal was further wetted down for a stand up, thankfully I never had the need for a sit down, although I was reliably informed that should the need arise drop it on the shovel and into the fire with it.

 

 

Gibbo.

[Compound2632]

@Gibbo, I gave that "informative" only because of the lack of a "too much information" button!

[Gibbo675]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

@Gibbo, I gave that "informative" only because of the lack of a "too much information" button!

Needs must !

[PhilJ W]

I understood from a couple of old enginemen that the shovel was not to be used for the purpose described above. The reason being the shovel was used for frying bacon and eggs. Usual practice was to use some newspaper and then into the firebox with it.

[John Besley]

21 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

I understood from a couple of old enginemen that the shovel was not to be used for the purpose described above. The reason being the shovel was used for frying bacon and eggs. Usual practice was to use some newspaper and then into the firebox with it.

And the bucket was for cleaning your hands... Some 72A crews on the pilot engine used to pee in a spare bucket and chuck it on the fire going up through the tunnel between St David's and Central for the benefit of the train engine behind ....

[MikeOxon]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

... Stena Felicity, a ferry that used to ply her trade between Fishguard and Rosslare and was named after a Haverfordwest lady's cat (a competition had been held in Pembrokeshire and Co. Wexford to name her, the ship not the cat), had male urinals with archery targets printed on them, a brilliant piece of psychology that no male person's 'person' could resist!  We've gone OT again, haven't we, mummy...

 

... sign in Singapore toilet:

 

[Michael Hodgson]

Oi!   My mum was a little old lady who lived near Chepstow and my parents used to walk across the bridge up to Tutshill regularly until Dad's hip got too bad.  Mum didn't use the trains, but she did park by the line at Tescos to do her shopping.

 

...by the way whenever a guard was found dead having fallen off his brake van, it wasn't unusual to find his fly was open

[The Johnster]

I apologise most profusely, sir; I was thoroughly ashamed of myself at the time and still am.  I really thought I'd have been done and dusted by Wye Valley Junction, but it just kept coming... At least the bypass bridge and Tesco's were still in the future at the time and I was facing downstream pertaining to the Wye, so couldn't have upset your parents unless they were up on Bulwark with binoculars.

 

I felt really bad about the little old ladies though.  They really were the sort who wore bonnets to church on Sundays and and made fairy cakes; proper nanas, you just wanted to cuddle them they were so cute...

[Satan's Goldfish]

On 14/08/2020 at 07:37, rodent279 said:

Has anyone considered an 8F with a Duchess boiler and running gear? Maybe they have, but this is a long thread now!

 

As an aside, were Duchesses allowed to run to Bristol in LMS/BR days?

 

Cheers N

 

I know it's a month ago and I've probably shared it on here before, but I found this while having a tidy up:

 

 

It's 9f rather than 8f drivers. I like the way it looks but there are a couple of issues; the cylinders aren't very well aligned, and i think the trailing axles are the wrong way round to properly clear the firebox.

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, Satan's Goldfish said:

 

I know it's a month ago and I've probably shared it on here before, but I found this while having a tidy up:

 

 

It's 9f rather than 8f drivers. I like the way it looks but there are a couple of issues; the cylinders aren't very well aligned, and i think the trailing axles are the wrong way round to properly clear the firebox.

 

British based never-wazzers like this, never quite look “right” to me. The reason being, the loading gauge doesn’t permit a firebox big enough to require a 4-wheel trailing truck. US 2-8-4 and 4-8-4 designs basically revolve around bigger and bigger fireboxes to provide increased stamina at speed, as here;

 

 

You can also see clearly, the common last-generation American feature of the assymetric trailing bogie, in which the wheels of the leading axle are smaller than the trailing axle to accommodate the huge firebox. 

 

My personal belief is that the LMS and LNER 4-6-2, and LNER 2-8-2 types, and subsequent BR 4-6-2 and 2-10-0 types  represent the maximum practical limits of the British steam locomotive; locos in the 85-105 tonne range hauling 3 or 4 axle tenders holding 7-9 tons of coal. They demonstrated that they could haul trains as long, or longer than the network could cope with, over the longest routes existing within the network at the highest possible speeds. The tender size is important, because American 4-6-4, 2-8-4 and 4-8-4 types used increasingly enormous tenders to supply the huge fireboxes; without those tenders, the fireboxes have no purpose and at those sizes, mechanical stokers are essential. 

 

I can’t find any examples of British locomotives with 4-wheel trailing trucks under the fireboxes (tank locos with 4-wheel trailing bogies are common, but those are a different matter entirely) and I’m sure this is the reason. 

[Satan's Goldfish]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

 

I can’t find any examples of British locomotives with 4-wheel trailing trucks under the fireboxes (tank locos with 4-wheel trailing bogies are common, but those are a different matter entirely) and I’m sure this is the reason. 

 

I know what you're saying and that does make sense... but just in response to that last paragraph: W1

[Rockalaucher101]

7 minutes ago, Satan's Goldfish said:

 

I know what you're saying and that does make sense... but just in response to that last paragraph: W1

I thought W1 was a 4-6-2-2

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Rockalaucher101 said:

a 4-6-2-2

 

Oh dear. That conjures up an image of some sort of Steampunk Webb Compound double-Crampton...