Imaginary Locomotives

[rockershovel]

29 minutes ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

The UK was designing and building more advanced steam locos for other countries well into the 1950s. Come to think of it, the UK was exporting more advanced locos in the 1920s than it was building for domestic use in the 1950s!

 

Cheers

David

 

Your second point is the important one! 

[JimC]

23 hours ago, 313201 said:

With regards to the solo GWR Pacific, I wonder if she would have ben a better success had she been built as a 4-6-4 because I think it's main problem was the rear pony truck was too light hence it constantly derailed when the loco ran backwards.

According to Holcroft the rear end was working out too heavy, which was why his design for brake gear was left out. Also, presumably, the tiny cab. According to the weight diagram in Russell in one implementation at least there was 17t-8 on the trailing wheels which is hardly too light! 

I think the main problem with the Bear was the boiler. The tubes were simply too long, and in spite of a high heating surface area in the (also too long?) superheater tubes the steam temperature was lower than other GW classes. 

 

I've tried sketching a King boiler on the Bear chassis and I couldn't make it work. As I recall the rear driving axle ends up passing through the grate! Seems to me that chassis really has to have the wide firebox, which is unsurprising. What IMHO was needed was a combustion chamber to increase the relatively low heating surface of the box and decrease the length of the tubes. Much what Stanier and his team came up with 20 years later... 

[tythatguy1312]

8 hours ago, rockershovel said:

by the 1930s, steam traction had reached the limits of its useful development in the U.K.

I've always suspected this to be a rather unique point. The limits of the UK's infrastructure limited train lengths for both freight and passenger trains, thus creating demand only for locomotives that could pull those trains, as the UK has always been... let's just say reluctant to upgrade infrastructure. So, by all accounts, by 1935 the UK had reached its practical limit in terms of locomotive size, thus leaving room only to improve designs of those sizes.

[The Johnster]

By 1935, the die was effectively cast as far as the UK was concerned; what was needed if we were to progress, which we didn't much for 40 years, was huge investement in infrastructure in the form elongating loops and refuge sidings, and rebuilding the huge amount of goods stock to have Janney couplers on bogies.  1935 was in the middle of a world wide depression and there was fairly obviously a war coming, so any money had to be ploughed into preparing for that, so the Big 4 were not in a position to upgrade the system, and even if they could have got hold of the money, were not minded to in any case.  The war went badly for the UK economically, leaving us heavily in debt and basically only able to survive by cutting the Empire loose; the US, Russia, and ultimately Germany and Japan were all in much better positions by the mid 50s as a result of Marshall.  We stood alone for the free world between June 1940 and December 1941, and have recieved little tangible thanks from the rest of the world for it.  Our railway were not the only thing that was hobbled as a result!

 

No good turn eve goes unpunished...

[MikeOxon]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

..... the US, Russia, and ultimately Germany and Japan were all in much better positions by the mid 50s as a result of Marshall.  .....

In fact, Great Britain received about a quarter of the total funds allocated under the Marshall Plan.  The billions committed in aid effectively amounted to a generous 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product at the time.  The Soviet Union declined assistance that was offered.

[PhilJ W]

2 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

In fact, Great Britain received about a quarter of the total funds allocated under the Marshall Plan.  The billions committed in aid effectively amounted to a generous 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product at the time.  The Soviet Union declined assistance that was offered.

True, and a lot of that went into creating the NHS. 

[MikeOxon]

10 hours ago, JimC said:

According to Holcroft the rear end was working out too heavy, which was why his design for brake gear was left out. Also, presumably, the tiny cab. According to the weight diagram in Russell in one implementation at least there was 17t-8 on the trailing wheels which is hardly too light! 

....

That does look like a justification for making the engine a 4-6-4.  I never understood why Churchward chose to use inside axle bearings, since I believe another problem was overheating due to the close proximity of the firebox. 

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

True, and a lot of that went into creating the NHS. 

A great deal went down the money hole of British (dammit, Carruthers) aerospace and the nuclear deterrent.  The Americans indeed were generous with the Marshall money, and had we invested it more wisely into industry and infrastructure, like Germany and Japan did, or paying off Lease Lend, instead of frittering it on defence vanity projects at the same time as attempting to retain our 'world place' while losing the empire, like Blue Streak, Bloodhound, and TSR2 (I am not saying that these were not technologically brilliant, they were).  For many years after the war, and especially during the 50s and 60s, we took inordinate pride in technological achievements such as these and the oft-repeated mantra was that we were 'the best in the world' at this; we may have been, but the Americans did it more cheaply, quickly,  and with less complication.

 

The Comet, the first jet airliner in commercial service in the world, seems to me to typify and encapsulate the attitude.  Originally designed as a long range aircraft to connect the remnants of the Empire, it was too small and had insufficient seats to compete with the 707s and DC8s that swept all before them, especially on the core North Atlantic routes that were replacing the big liners.  Then we repeated the mistake (helped this time by the French) with the world's fastest white elephant, Concorde, believing that the future was in speed.  The aircraft never made a penny profit for BOAC/BA, nor for Air France, and again the honours went to the Americans with the 747 Jumbo.  We couldn't quite get our heads around the idea that the war had changed everything and there was no going back to the 30s, or to the glory days of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras, which is where we wanted to be.

[Ramblin Rich]

36 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

.........  We couldn't quite get our heads around the idea that the war had changed everything and there was no going back to the 30s, or to the glory days of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras, which is where we wanted to be.

And that is still the attitude of far too many that seek  to regain perceived past glory, instead of looking forwards to new opportunities.
Apologies for going off topic and into possibly political waters!

 

[Northmoor]

57 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

A great deal went down the money hole of British (dammit, Carruthers) aerospace and the nuclear deterrent.  The Americans indeed were generous with the Marshall money, and had we invested it more wisely into industry and infrastructure, like Germany and Japan did, or paying off Lease Lend, instead of frittering it on defence vanity projects at the same time as attempting to retain our 'world place' while losing the empire, like Blue Streak, Bloodhound, and TSR2 (I am not saying that these were not technologically brilliant, they were).  For many years after the war, and especially during the 50s and 60s, we took inordinate pride in technological achievements such as these and the oft-repeated mantra was that we were 'the best in the world' at this; we may have been, but the Americans did it more cheaply, quickly,  and with less complication.

 

The Comet, the first jet airliner in commercial service in the world, seems to me to typify and encapsulate the attitude.  Originally designed as a long range aircraft to connect the remnants of the Empire, it was too small and had insufficient seats to compete with the 707s and DC8s that swept all before them, especially on the core North Atlantic routes that were replacing the big liners.  Then we repeated the mistake (helped this time by the French) with the world's fastest white elephant, Concorde, believing that the future was in speed.  The aircraft never made a penny profit for BOAC/BA, nor for Air France, and again the honours went to the Americans with the 747 Jumbo.  We couldn't quite get our heads around the idea that the war had changed everything and there was no going back to the 30s, or to the glory days of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras, which is where we wanted to be.

The TSR2 failed because the government got scared of the costs but too late to recover them, when what we had was a world-beating product which should have made the F-111 a US-only aircraft.  Whether we had the skill to sell it is another thing, of course............  I worked with people who knew the stories of The Men from The Ministry arriving at Boscombe Down and destroying all the TSR2 jigs and support equipment.  They didn't just want to suspend the programme, they wanted to make absolutely sure no-one could re-start it again.  That was pure spite and effectively wrote down the entire programme to zero value, when the research and IPR could have been worth a fortune.

 

Concorde showed every sign of being reasonably successful, until the (not predicted) events that led to the trebling of the oil price in 1973 when enough pre-orders to have sustained the production line, suddenly got cancelled.  It didn't help when in America, for perhaps the first time ever,  politicians lobbied on environmental grounds against allowing Concorde to operate into New York which was going to be its key market.  These objections lasted just long enough for the production line to be closed, after which these concerns apparently didn't matter any more.  There has always been a suspicion that the lobbying was backed by Boeing and McDonnell Douglas; America likes to preach to the world about free trade but is spectacularly protectionist when it suits.  However, in the UK and across Europe, the defence industry is equally seen as a job-creation scheme first and a provider of equipment to the armed services second.

 

Apologies for the off-topic post but in over 16 years in the defence industry (much of it aviation-related) I've seen a spectacular amount of money spent on programmes much less worthwhile than the ones above.

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

A great deal went down the money hole of British (dammit, Carruthers) aerospace and the nuclear deterrent.  The Americans indeed were generous with the Marshall money, and had we invested it more wisely into industry and infrastructure, like Germany and Japan did, or paying off Lease Lend, instead of frittering it on defence vanity projects at the same time as attempting to retain our 'world place' while losing the empire, like Blue Streak, Bloodhound, and TSR2 (I am not saying that these were not technologically brilliant, they were).  For many years after the war, and especially during the 50s and 60s, we took inordinate pride in technological achievements such as these and the oft-repeated mantra was that we were 'the best in the world' at this; we may have been, but the Americans did it more cheaply, quickly,  and with less complication.

 

The Comet, the first jet airliner in commercial service in the world, seems to me to typify and encapsulate the attitude.  Originally designed as a long range aircraft to connect the remnants of the Empire, it was too small and had insufficient seats to compete with the 707s and DC8s that swept all before them, especially on the core North Atlantic routes that were replacing the big liners.  Then we repeated the mistake (helped this time by the French) with the world's fastest white elephant, Concorde, believing that the future was in speed.  The aircraft never made a penny profit for BOAC/BA, nor for Air France, and again the honours went to the Americans with the 747 Jumbo.  We couldn't quite get our heads around the idea that the war had changed everything and there was no going back to the 30s, or to the glory days of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras, which is where we wanted to be.

And we still can't quite get our national collective head around the fact that the world does not sit up and listen when we throw a tantrum because we don't get our way.

Having an Empire was in some ways the worst thing that happened to Britain. It was great during the glory days of the Victorian and Edwardian era, but British industry and British financiers were weaned on the captive markets of Empire. That was removed, and they've never really got to grips with that.

[Clive Mortimore]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

  We stood alone for the free world between June 1940 and December 1941, and have recieved little tangible thanks from the rest of the world for it.

Johnster

 

Can I draw your attention to a list of countries that were on our side, supplying men and materials in any Ian Allan ABC containing the Jubliee class.

 

In addition to them, Poles, Dutch, Norwegian, Belgium, French, French colonial troops, French Foreign Legion, Czech, Yugoslav, Greek, Palestinians (Jews and Arabs), Libyans,  Jordanians, men from The Indian Free States, Nepal, Irish volunteers, and Iraqis (Kurds and Assyrians). Were fighting alongside our soldiers, airmen and sailors.

 

The last mentioned, the Iraqi Assyrians in the RAF Iraqi Levees were an essential part of the defence of  Habbaniya, where the British forces were out numbered by the Iraqis. The battle of Habbaniya in May 1941 was the turning point in the Anglo-Iraq war, ensuring Britain's supply of oil continued. One of the lesser know battles but one of the most crucial of WW2.

 

We were not fast enough to help Yugoslavia when the Germans invaded in April 1941, but did manage to get troops to Greece in an attempt to help them. Were they not allies?

 

Another little thing, what happened on the 22nd June 1941? Didn't we get an ally that day, quite an important one.

 

Please no rubbish about the "free world", I am not sure all those counties listed in the Ian Allan ABCs would agree.

 

Apologies to everyone else for getting a tad historically political.

[The Johnster]

Good points, Clive; I get a bit ranty sometimes...

[tythatguy1312]

Ok how did we go from "GWR King class Pacific" to "what caused the economic downfall of the UK after the Second World War"

[Flying Pig]

26 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

Ok how did we go from "GWR King class Pacific" to "what caused the economic downfall of the UK after the Second World War"

 

Trying to work out why 2-12-4+4-12-2 Super Garratts with 30" cylinders never ran here I think.

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Trying to work out why 2-12-4+4-12-2 Super Garratts with 30" cylinders never ran here I think. 

First reference to Basil Fawlty must be due any minute now I think.....

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

19 hours ago, rodent279 said:

It was great during the glory days of the Victorian and Edwardian era

 

Probably not so great for the folk living in the empire, and not that great for a large number of ordinary folk here either. 

 

Great for the small number of rich and powerful. 

 

Most of whose descendants are still living pampered lives of wealth and power to this day.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Dr Gerbil-Fritters

[Michael Edge]

1 hour ago, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

 

Probably not so great for the folk living in the empire, and not that great for a large number of ordinary folk here either. 

 

Great for the small number of rich and powerful. 

 

Most of whose descendants are still living pampered lives of wealth and power to this day.

Just the same as now then - and at every time since the beginning. This is a very common historical fallacy - no one has ever lived in "olden days", everyone who has ever lived was living in modern times. The "olden days"are almost always horrible when we look back and our descendants will think the same.

[rockershovel]

The Americans reached a simple, fundamental conclusion during and after the Second World War: that aircraft were expensive, but concrete was cheap.

 

They had a lot of experience of building large and very large aircraft and operating them over intercontinental distances, particularly in the Pacific and from India to China. They knew about pressurised cabins (the B29 had them) and tricycle undercarriages. They knew about the logistics of air freight haulage. They knew about internal domestic air traffic; the great "named" trains of the pre-WW2 era were already falling victim to this, before WW2. 

 

This allowed them to correctly conclude that the post-WW2 aviation industry would be dominated by bulk carrying capacity. It allowed them to correctly posit that if they built aircraft, then operators would build air transit facilities to operate them from, and those aircraft could be as big as engineering permitted. 

 

The British didn't understand that, or wish to go in that direction. Concorde was, in many respects, derived from the Vulcan Bomber which had entered service in 1956 and was known, by the 1960s to be a thoroughly successful craft within its design parameters. As elsewhere, the British had become world experts in a niche technology which others weren't pursuing, for good and sufficient reason. 

[rockershovel]

Re Northmoor, above, it's a great mistake to regard the 1973 and subsequent 1979 "oil price shocks" as unforeseen and unpredicted. Eisenhower recognised the underlying causes, and described them at least as early as 1959; Nixon also recognised them, and sought unsuccessfully to deal with them. 

 

Oil drilling in the North Sea had started in the 1960s and production begun by 1969; the great Forties and Brent fields were known by 1971. When I first worked in the oil patch, in the late 1970s there were plenty of people still working who had foreseen the event in outline, if not in detail. 

[Gibbo675]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

The Americans reached a simple, fundamental conclusion during and after the Second World War: that aircraft were expensive, but concrete was cheap.

 

They had a lot of experience of building large and very large aircraft and operating them over intercontinental distances, particularly in the Pacific and from India to China. They knew about pressurised cabins (the B29 had them) and tricycle undercarriages. They knew about the logistics of air freight haulage. They knew about internal domestic air traffic; the great "named" trains of the pre-WW2 era were already falling victim to this, before WW2. 

 

This allowed them to correctly conclude that the post-WW2 aviation industry would be dominated by bulk carrying capacity. It allowed them to correctly posit that if they built aircraft, then operators would build air transit facilities to operate them from, and those aircraft could be as big as engineering permitted. 

 

The British didn't understand that, or wish to go in that direction. Concorde was, in many respects, derived from the Vulcan Bomber which had entered service in 1956 and was known, by the 1960s to be a thoroughly successful craft within its design parameters. As elsewhere, the British had become world experts in a niche technology which others weren't pursuing, for good and sufficient reason. 

Hi there Mr Shovel,

 

I have always thought that the B29 was a copy of the Me 264:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_264

 

Gibbo.

[rockershovel]

4 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi there Mr Shovel,

 

I have always thought that the B29 was a copy of the Me 264:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_264

 

Gibbo.

 

Nooooooo..... that Wikipedia entry correctly states that the B29 was of slightly earlier origin. It would be more correct to regard them both as parallel developments of late-1930s concepts. 

 

In any case the B29 was developed far beyond the German plane. The B29 programme cost $3bn in 1940s money, compared to the $1.9bn expended on the Manhattan Project. 

[tythatguy1312]

Ok can we get back on track (pun intended) because I have yet another debatably uninformed idea. What if Gresley had rebuilt the Ivatt Atlantics to their logical peak?

[rockershovel]

16 hours ago, tythatguy1312 said:

Ok can we get back on track (pun intended) because I have yet another debatably uninformed idea. What if Gresley had rebuilt the Ivatt Atlantics to their logical peak?

 I rather think he did, and it was called an A1 Pacific? I think the 4-4-2 type had had its day, by the time Gresley took the reins

[The Johnster]

I think the large boilered GN Atlantics were pretty much at their peak anyway as built, and the onset of the Pacifics relegated them to secondary and pilot duties where more performance was not really needed.  Rebuild to 3 cylinder specification with Gresley conjugated valve gear might have been interesting, but there is a limit to how much more cylinder capacity you can add before the demand for more steam means a larger boiler, which of course means a pacific.  In the event, the C1s were replaced by the B1s and to some extend by the B17s, neither of which were spectacularly successful but which did their work adequately enough.