Imaginary Locomotives

[The Johnster]

Big tanks have their role to play, but are a bit of a one trick pony; heavy outer suburban work.  The big LMS 2-6-4 tanks, the GW large prairies, Southern Rivers, BR Standard 4MTs, and the less successful LNER L1s were just the thing for such work and it formed the bulk of their duties.  The Rivers and big Brighton tanks were rebuilt as tender locos after Sevenoaks, but were ideally suited as tanks to the range and loadings of much of the Southern's commuter work.  BR(S), freed from the Sevenoaks 'ban', wasted no time ordering 2-6-4Ts of LMS design from Brighton in 1948, and later developing them into the BR Standard 4MT type

 

Such locos were used on banking or local freight work as well, justifying their mixed traffic power ratings by the LMS and BR, and were in some cases replaced by electrification from the 30s onwards.  It is diffiuclt to imagine steam era suburban working out of the non-electrified London termini, or the Birmingham, Manchester, or Glasgow coastal trains without them, 12 coach people shifter trains of non-gangwayed compartment stock being within their capacity. 

 

The GW large prairies were a little different (what, something different, on the GW, no, never...) in that they were originally concieved as freight locos, following a tradition of tank locos being used for heavy freight dating back to broad gauge days.  This role had been usurped by the 28xx and 30xx by the 20s, and Collett played around with wheel diameters and boiler pressure to make them more efficient as suburban passenger horses, but in the event the original Churchward no.2 boiler 5'8" concept remained in production until 1950.  The no.4 boilered versions retained the heavy freight role to a considerable extent, and were used as bankers as well, especially at Severn Tunnel Jc.

 

Big tank locos are very much a European, including British, idea, and one has to look a lot harder to find US versions.  Some US railroads are not suitable for tank locos because of the distances that need to be covered, but it is perhaps surprising that nothing like them existed on the intense suburaban traffic routes of the NYC, Pennsylvania, or Long Island RRs.  Pacifics with tenders were the usual motive power for such work.

 

The restrictive range element of tank loco work is water capacity, not coal.  Bunkers carried sufficient coal for the usual day's work, 10 to 12 hours out on the road with a crew relief in the middle of it, and the work allowed plenty of opportunity for taking water,  Some big tanks were given scoops to take water from troughs.  Tender locos of similar design were as good as big tank engines with empty tanks, with the benefit of better route availability, and some tank designs with long frames suffered from tank leakage on routes with sharp curvature.  Turntables of sufficient length restricted the use of tender locos in the UK, where restricted sites meant that there was often no room to replace Victorian 45' tables unsuitable for anything larger than 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 tender locos; there is of course no need to turn tank locos at all.

 

 

[John Besley]

16 hours ago, rodent279 said:

So if Swindon had supplied those drawings to the LMS, what would an LMS Castle have looked like? Crewe style domed boiler, perhaps tapered, with safety valves over the firebox? Outside valve gear, 3 or 4 cyls, maybe a built up smokebox as in the real Royal Scots? Horwich style cab, somewhat under proportioned Midland style tender.

 

I always think that in the end, the Jubilee was what an LMS Castle would have been. But even if they had built Castles straight off the plans, they still would have only been a stop gap for a few years. The next step up from the Castle is the King-and they wouldn't really have cut the mustard on the non-stop Scottish runs. They might have kept a lid on things for a while, but the need for the Pacifics would still have arisen.

I always thought that a LMS Princess was a LMS version of a Castle. Bear in mind a GWR 4-6-0 was far better suited to the South Devon hills than a pacific as on starting a 4-6-0 just digs in on its drivers as opposed to the weight transfer onto a rear pony truck 

[Hroth]

26 minutes ago, John Besley said:

I always thought that a LMS Princess was a LMS version of a Castle. Bear in mind a GWR 4-6-0 was far better suited to the South Devon hills than a pacific as on starting a 4-6-0 just digs in on its drivers as opposed to the weight transfer onto a rear pony truck 

 

A Princess is more an LMS version of a King.  The same reasons why a King suited the GWR rather than a Pacific still hold, no pony truck to sap adhesive load on starting.

[Flying Pig]

A previous discussion of LMS Castles.  It also mentions that the main line companies were not allowed to build locos for sale, so anything built for Sodor would need to come from one of the private builders. 

 

 

[rodent279]

11 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

A previous discussion of LMS Castles.  It also mentions that the main line companies were not allowed to build locos for sale, so anything built for Sodor would need to come from one of the private builders. 

 

 

That is a remarkably good piece of photo-shopping. Makes me want to see a real Castle painted LMS Maroon, with a suitable tender, embellishments & lettering, just to wind the purists up!

[The Johnster]

The story is that the LMS asked the GW to build them 50 Castles to the Swindon design unaltered following the success of one trialled on the WCML over Shap, at a time when the best locos the LMS had for that work were Claughtons or Hughes LYR 4-6-0s.  These were more comparable to a Churchward Star, which was supposed to be able to pull two Claughtons backwards...

 

Swindon was fully committed to building locos for it's own railway, Castles included, and unable to supply the LMS with 50 locos, so the LMS asked for the drawings to build their own, which the GW refused.  The LMS then started work on their own big 4-6-0, the Royal Scot, the problems of which are well documented but may be summed up as steaming less well than was needed and the weakness of the Midland type of axleboxes.  It was a radically different beast to a Castle, being a 3 cylinder engine, and apparently not as 'good' in practice though of comparable capacity on paper. 

 

Personally, I reckon the GW missed a trick by not allowing the LMS to use the Castle drawings.  , WCML work was hardly competitive to any of the GW's routes, and the bragging rights would have been worthwhile.  The question is, I suppose, what would the LMS have built with Castle blueprints?

 

The next question this leads naturally two is how many cylinders?  4 would have meant retaining the de Glehn jiggled frames and Stephenson valve gear, with I would imagine a domed version of the GW boiler and a similar cab to the actual Royal Scots', a sort of combination of Midland and LNWR ideas.  Left hand drive of course.  But my view is that 3 cylinders was already the preferred option on the LMS, partly at least because of Gresley's success with it on the other side of the Pennines.  This would have meant that straight plate frames could have been used on the Royal Scot, and building cost would have been reduced while strength and rigidity enhanced.  The Castle tapered boiler would have been retained, in a domed version as above. 

 

The next question is the firebox, dimensioned between the rear drivers to burn Welsh steam coal.  Do we think that the LMS are going to import such coal specifically for use with Royal Scots at Camden, Crewe, Upperby, and Polamadie?  I can't see it, and the imports would have needed to be extended at sheds that the Scots were eventually allox to on the Midland division and at Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester as well, along with facilities to coal the locos from a lower level.  So we need a redesigned firebox, shorter perhaps but certainly fatter above the axles than a Castle's, and pretty much what the actual Scot as built had.  This would have worked, possibly better than it did with the actual parallel boiler.  But I am not competent to comment on what it would have meant for the shape of the Castle boiler. 

 

A taper boiler would have allowd the locos to run without the need for smoke deflectors.  Ivatt eventually did something not unlike this with his rebuids, which transformed the Scots into locos rivalling the KIngs or Lord Nelsons, but with a new bigger taper boiler that still shortened the (now double) chimneys enought to require smoke deflection.

 

Despite having proved itself superior to a Claughton over Shap, a Castle (or a King for that matter) built to the Swindon blueprint would not IMHO have been a suitable loco in practice for the LMS because of the Welsh coal buring firebox.  A 3 cylinder version with a redesigned firebox to burn Yorkshire coal from overhead tippler cenotaphs, straight frames, Walchaerts' outside valve gear, and a Castle/King type boiler and smokebox, might have been a more successful loco for the LMS than the Royal Scots were in their actual unrebuilt form, and something similar might have been attempted for the unrebuilt Patriots.  The Jubilees are not far off this concept, and were not noted good steamers until some jiggery pokery was done to them.  The Jublilee is probably better regarded as the LMSs' version of a Castle, the go to standard general purpose express passenger loco.

 

The heaviest LMS work, through non stop Euston-Glasgow Central and the heavy Liverpool expresses, really needed something that could supply very copious amounts of steam at the expense of coal use, which means a wide bottomed firebox, which means pacifics; Gresley understood this as did Stanier.  But Stanier was wedded to the 4 cylinder de Glehn layout, and might have done better with a 3 cylinder setup and separate Walchaerts' for all 3, which worked well enough on the LMSs' 4-6-0s albeit with a clank that would have horrified Swindon...

 

Plenty of meat in this for imaginary locos, the simplest being a Castle boiler/smokebox on an unrebuilt Scot chassis/firebox/cab/running plate/plate frames, and a dome.  Nameplate on leading splasher, no copper cap chimney or continuous round-the-smokebox door handrail, LMS smokebox number plate and shed code, Fowler tender with coal rails.

[rodent279]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

The next question this leads naturally two is how many cylinders?  4 would have meant retaining the de Glehn jiggled frames and Stephenson valve gear

Would it? I'd always understood that GJC was wedded to equal length con rods, and cylinders that were horizontal, and, as far as practicable, in line with the driving axles. 

If you're prepared to diverge from the first, then you could have shorter con rods on the inside, longer on the outside, and reposition the inside and outside cyls so they are more inline (with each other).

If you're prepared to drop the requirement for the cyls to be horizontal & inline with the driving axles, you can raise them, to give increased loading gauge clearance. Which is more or less what was done on the Duchesses. So maybe an LMS Castle could have looked a bit like a 4-6-0 Duchess?

GW 4 cyl engines had inside Walschaerts gear, not Stephenson.

Edited July 4, 2021 by rodent279
Grammar correction

[Joseph the L&YR lover]

2 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Would it? I'd always understood that GJC was wedded to equal length con rods, and cylinders that were horizontal, and, as far as practicable, in line with the driving axles. 

If you're prepared to diverge from the first, then you could have shorter con rods on the inside, longer on the outside, and reposition the inside and outside cyls so they are more inline (with each other).

If you're prepared to drop the requirement for the cyls to be horizontal & inline with the driving axles, you can raise them, to give increased loading gauge clearance. Which is more or less what was done on the Duchesses. So maybe an LMS Castle could have looked a bit like a 4-6-0 Duchess?

GW 4 cyl engines had inside Walschaerts gear, not Stephenson.

would a 4-6-0 duchess look much different from a dreadnought? 

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, rodent279 said:

So maybe an LMS Castle could have looked a bit like a 4-6-0 Duchess?

 

Not really.  The LMS was a long way from building Duchesses in 1927.

 

40 minutes ago, Joseph the L&YR lover said:

would a 4-6-0 duchess look much different from a dreadnought? 

 

Assuming it was built in the same period as the actual Duchesses it would probably look like the 2A boilered 4-6-0s actually (re)built.  Whether increasing the cylinders to four would have been a good thing is debatable.

 

In an alternative timeline, the LMS standardised on a loco based on the 1920 rebuilt Dreadnoughts but with the boiler pressure raised to 250psi, multiple piston rings and other small fettlings as required to produce an adequately capable and reliable machine.  That could have been rebuilt with a boiler similar to the 2A from the 1940s onwards.

[rodent279]

9 hours ago, Joseph the L&YR lover said:

would a 4-6-0 duchess look much different from a dreadnought?

This is a good point. The LMS had a good blueprint for a 4 cylinder 4-6-0 in the L&Y machines, they just never received the improvements, presumably to valve events and draughting, that reduce coal consumption.

I've read somewhere that the Hughes 4-6-0's weren't really designed for the sort of long distance, high speed, heavy load work that they got on the WCML-they were designed for short-medium distance slogging over the Pennines. I wonder if a Castle would have been as impressive compared to a Hughes 4-6-0 on L&Y metals?

Edited July 5, 2021 by rodent279

[PenrithBeacon]

10 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Not really.  The LMS was a long way from building Duchesses in 1927.

...

Fowler did propose a compound Pacific, and Hughes did once propose very much larger engines before Grouping.

[JimC]

17 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The next question is the firebox, dimensioned between the rear drivers to burn Welsh steam coal.  Do we think that the LMS are going to import such coal specifically for use with Royal Scots at Camden, Crewe, Upperby, and Polamadie? 

According to Cox (Chronicles of Steam. p59)  on the test run he attended "[Launceston Castle's] tender was piled high with a weighted quantity of best Yorkshire coal sufficient for the round trip to Carlisle and back". and on P63 "the Castle whose steaming seemed to be little impaired by the use of Yorkshire rather than Welsh coal". I believe in both the locomotive exchanges the Castle ran with local coal. 

Having said that the Castle does seem to have been noted to be particularly vulnerable to poor coal, but I do wonder if the "must run with welsh coal" thing is exaggerated. 

'Chronicles of Steam' is also interesting in that Cox states that in discussions during one of the Castle runs the technical staff (including Anderson) had already settled on wanting three cylinders and various other features. They clearly didn't want to buy Castles from the GWR. Not their decision of course!

[Joseph the L&YR lover]

2 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Fowler did propose a compound Pacific, and Hughes did once propose very much larger engines before Grouping.

from what i've seen, the hughes locos were for goods work, and you also have to remember how much bigger a pacific or larger engine is compared to the infrastructure the lms had to work with 

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Fowler did propose a compound Pacific, and Hughes did once propose very much larger engines before Grouping.

 

True, but the compound Pacific didn't look much like a Duchess.

[Compound2632]

18 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The story is that the LMS asked the GW to build them 50 Castles to the Swindon design unaltered following the success of one trialled on the WCML over Shap, at a time when the best locos the LMS had for that work were Claughtons or Hughes LYR 4-6-0s.  These were more comparable to a Churchward Star, which was supposed to be able to pull two Claughtons backwards...

 

Swindon was fully committed to building locos for it's own railway, Castles included, and unable to supply the LMS with 50 locos, so the LMS asked for the drawings to build their own, which the GW refused.  The LMS then started work on their own big 4-6-0, the Royal Scot, the problems of which are well documented but may be summed up as steaming less well than was needed and the weakness of the Midland type of axleboxes.  It was a radically different beast to a Castle, being a 3 cylinder engine, and apparently not as 'good' in practice though of comparable capacity on paper. 

 

Personally, I reckon the GW missed a trick by not allowing the LMS to use the Castle drawings.  , WCML work was hardly competitive to any of the GW's routes, and the bragging rights would have been worthwhile.  The question is, I suppose, what would the LMS have built with Castle blueprints?

 

 

See D. Hunt, J. Jennison and R.J. Essery, LMS Locomotive Profiles No. 15 The ‘Royal Scots’ (Wild Swan, 2019) for an accurate account of events. The loan of Launceston Castle was just one factor influencing the decision to build a 4-6-0 rather than a Pacific. It would have been illegal for the GWR to build locomotives for sale to the LMS - even if the route of copying the GWR design had been a possibility, the locomotives would have been built by NBL, the only firm with the capacity at the time, just as the Royal Scots were.

 

I understand that the alleged Churchward quote is supposed to date from c. 1905 when the big expensive 4-6-0s were new, the locomotives in question being his Saint and a couple of LNWR Experiment Class 4-6-0s.

 

Sorry to come over all Stationmaster on you.

[PenrithBeacon]

2 hours ago, Joseph the L&YR lover said:

from what i've seen, the hughes locos were for goods work, and you also have to remember how much bigger a pacific or larger engine is compared to the infrastructure the lms had to work with 

 

[Michael Edge]

3 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

True, but the compound Pacific didn't look much like a Duchess.

Apart from the back end frame arrangement which was perpetuated in the Princesses and Duchesses, didn't disappear until the last two Ivatt pacifics.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Michael Edge said:

Apart from the back end frame arrangement which was perpetuated in the Princesses and Duchesses, didn't disappear until the last two Ivatt pacifics.

 

Which prompts the wonder: I wonder what was the oldest-designed component part of the latest-designed locomotive? 

[Gibbo675]

36 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Which prompts the wonder: I wonder what was the oldest-designed component part of the latest-designed locomotive? 

Hi Stephen,

 

My guess' would be:

• Midland Railway Buffers .
• Those awful live steam Injectors the LMS insisted upon using.
• Midland Railway cab fittings, brake valves steam valves etc.
• Water scoop on the tender.

Gibbo.

[PenrithBeacon]

The Gifford water injector?

Edited July 5, 2021 by PenrithBeacon

[Northroader]

The whistle?

[Anadin Dogwalker]

On 04/07/2021 at 15:28, The Johnster said:

Big tanks have their role to play, but are a bit of a one trick pony; heavy outer suburban work.  The big LMS 2-6-4 tanks, the GW large prairies, Southern Rivers, BR Standard 4MTs, and the less successful LNER L1s were just the thing for such work and it formed the bulk of their duties.  The Rivers and big Brighton tanks were rebuilt as tender locos after Sevenoaks, but were ideally suited as tanks to the range and loadings of much of the Southern's commuter work.  BR(S), freed from the Sevenoaks 'ban', wasted no time ordering 2-6-4Ts of LMS design from Brighton in 1948, and later developing them into the BR Standard 4MT type

 

Such locos were used on banking or local freight work as well, justifying their mixed traffic power ratings by the LMS and BR, and were in some cases replaced by electrification from the 30s onwards.  It is diffiuclt to imagine steam era suburban working out of the non-electrified London termini, or the Birmingham, Manchester, or Glasgow coastal trains without them, 12 coach people shifter trains of non-gangwayed compartment stock being within their capacity. 

 

The GW large prairies were a little different (what, something different, on the GW, no, never...) in that they were originally concieved as freight locos, following a tradition of tank locos being used for heavy freight dating back to broad gauge days.  This role had been usurped by the 28xx and 30xx by the 20s, and Collett played around with wheel diameters and boiler pressure to make them more efficient as suburban passenger horses, but in the event the original Churchward no.2 boiler 5'8" concept remained in production until 1950.  The no.4 boilered versions retained the heavy freight role to a considerable extent, and were used as bankers as well, especially at Severn Tunnel Jc.

 

Big tank locos are very much a European, including British, idea, and one has to look a lot harder to find US versions.  Some US railroads are not suitable for tank locos because of the distances that need to be covered, but it is perhaps surprising that nothing like them existed on the intense suburaban traffic routes of the NYC, Pennsylvania, or Long Island RRs.  Pacifics with tenders were the usual motive power for such work.

 

The restrictive range element of tank loco work is water capacity, not coal.  Bunkers carried sufficient coal for the usual day's work, 10 to 12 hours out on the road with a crew relief in the middle of it, and the work allowed plenty of opportunity for taking water,  Some big tanks were given scoops to take water from troughs.  Tender locos of similar design were as good as big tank engines with empty tanks, with the benefit of better route availability, and some tank designs with long frames suffered from tank leakage on routes with sharp curvature.  Turntables of sufficient length restricted the use of tender locos in the UK, where restricted sites meant that there was often no room to replace Victorian 45' tables unsuitable for anything larger than 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 tender locos; there is of course no need to turn tank locos at all.

 

 

The NYCs Boston & Albany subsidiary did have tank engines (2 classes IIRC) for use in the Boston suburbs on the main line out to Framingham and Worcester and the inner loop that's now mostly the light rail Green Line out to Letchmere. (Boston+Albany vol 1 Robert W Jones, Pine Tree Press). They lasted right up to dieselisation with ALCO RS2s in the late 40s.

Neill Horton

[rockershovel]

11 hours ago, Anadin Dogwalker said:

The NYCs Boston & Albany subsidiary did have tank engines (2 classes IIRC) for use in the Boston suburbs on the main line out to Framingham and Worcester and the inner loop that's now mostly the light rail Green Line out to Letchmere. (Boston+Albany vol 1 Robert W Jones, Pine Tree Press). They lasted right up to dieselisation with ALCO RS2s in the late 40s.

Neill Horton

 

4-6-6T, I believe? 

[Compound2632]

On 05/07/2021 at 19:20, PenrithBeacon said:

The Gifford water injector?

 

12 hours ago, Northroader said:

The whistle?

 

In both cases, I'm thinking in terms of a specific drawing being used. Were the BR standards fitted with a whistle to a Derby LDO drawing of 1875?

[rodent279]

42 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

4-6-6T, I believe? 

There's only one word for that-brutal. I wouldn't pick a fight with it.