Imaginary Locomotives

[rockershovel]

Why not? Was this a feature of post-nationalisation policy? Would coal-pushers not have been useful on other long-distance services, such as London-Edinburgh or London-Liverpool? Coming to the specific issue of models of imaginary locomotives, were they externally distinctive in any way?

[JimC]

There might be an element of circular argument about it. Coal pushers weren't fitted because no services required them, and no services were introduced that required them because none were fitted.  Also there must have been limited scope for such services in the UK, even if you discount the lack of innovation and imagination of BR management. The runs you mention were within the reach of hand firing.

 

[2750Papyrus]

40 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Since we are discussing the limits of hand-firing, didn't some LMS locos have coal pushers on the tenders, to reduce the work of moving coal forwards? This doesn't appear to have been thought worthwhile on the BR Standards. 

Mechanical stokers were fitted to some 9Fs but had a tendency to jam, per Terry Essery's Saltley Firing Days.

[Michael Edge]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Since we are discussing the limits of hand-firing, didn't some LMS locos have coal pushers on the tenders, to reduce the work of moving coal forwards? This doesn't appear to have been thought worthwhile on the BR Standards. 

LMR Britannias had them on the BR1D tenders, also 71000 had one. The partly rotatable bunker on the the LMS Garratts was also designed to do this.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, 2750Papyrus said:

Mechanical stokers were fitted to some 9Fs but had a tendency to jam, per Terry Essery's Saltley Firing Days.

 

Without going back and re-reading the relevant chapter, I think that was a teething-trouble, made worse by the use of inappropriate coal (wrong size/shape of lumps). But what I really don't understand is why those Birmingham-Carlisle freights didn't change engines or at least crew at Leeds - was it really necessary for one engine and set of men to work through?

[billbedford]

7 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

But what I really don't understand is why those Birmingham-Carlisle freights didn't change engines or at least crew at Leeds - was it really necessary for one engine and set of men to work through?

 

Wouldn't going to Leeds would have been taking the long way round?

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, billbedford said:

 

Wouldn't going to Leeds would have been taking the long way round?

 

It was. They did. The Midland route, via the Settle & Carlisle. It was a LMR (Midland Division) service, hence the use of Saltley engines.

[33C]

On 04/08/2021 at 11:53, Johnson044 said:

The inevitable question- did the Sea Battle class ever get rebuilt without the air-smoothed casing and with Walschaerts valve gear? In proportion maybe not too far removed from a GWR Churchward Atlantic. I don't have the heart to take a saw to a Dublo Barnstaple but possibly a starting point? Maybe the boiler a bit smaller on the Sea Battles though. Don't know the origin of the Bulleid taper boilers - GW or Stanier influence perhaps? Maybe Mainline Class 4 boiler might be about right...

In answer to the above, yes they did. Here's 21B1 / 30551 "Battle of the Atlantic" (one side) 21B11 / 30561 "Trafalgar" as rebuilt.......

Edited April 4, 2022 by 33C
added detail

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It was. They did. The Midland route, via the Settle & Carlisle. It was a LMR (Midland Division) service, hence the use of Saltley engines.

The (in)famous 'Condor' service also ran on the Midland route, from Cricklewood via Leeds and the S&C.  It had been very vigorously advertised as the railways' answer to overnight road transport door to door on the M1/A6 route, and was very competitvely priced and timed; it should have been a success.  Motive power was brand new Metrovick CoBos, class 28, double heading for reliability but these locos were so unreliable that for much of the trains' short existence, neither in either direction completed the journey and the train rapidly gained a reputation for arriving late and behind a steam loco.  My opinion is that a mechanical stoker 9F would have been capable of this job, with perhaps a loco change at Holbeck, but the 3 mechstocker 9Fs were reserved for the Birmingham service and in any case steam was not what was wanted to promote the modern image, so the chance to swap out the mechstoke tenders from the Brits and 71000 to rescue the service was not taken.

 

The trend at the time was for the railway to lose this traffic to the more powerful lorries and increasing motorway mileage that were becoming available, and this debacle was probably the balance tipper; it certainly made no friends for the railway, and was, I am sure, one of the reasons for Beechings' view that the traffic to concentrate on was bulk freigt in block trains.  The arrival of ISO containers skewed matters back into the railways' court a little, and current freight is exactly what Beeching said it would be!  Things were probably beyond rescue for wagon load general merchandise freight by 1961 anyway without the Condor being an image and public relations disaster, but residual traffic of this sort was still running in my time in the 70s between NCL depots. 

[DenysW]

 

 

"... It was. They did. The Midland route, via the Settle & Carlisle. It was a LMR (Midland Division) service, hence the use of Saltley engines."

 

I take it this was a combination of avoiding the 1:75 at Shap (I believe the Settle & Carlisle was 1:100 ruling gradient), debottlenecking the northern bits of the WCML of slow-moving freight, and using an under-used asset (Leeds-Carlisle)? The modern layout around Leeds station means it could be bypassed, and I've always been puzzled as to why. This may be (part of) the reason.

 

The 1:75 at Beattock would then have been a Scottish problem, not a Midland one.

[rodent279]

15 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Agreed, but the question under discussion is whether a BG loco could handle a load requiring SG double heading. So, would the larger BG loco with second fireman be cost-effective for that duty, and would the loco be worth building in terms of its overall cost? Might it have been viable to drop the extra fireman at, say, Newton Abbot to join a returning train? 

This is kind of what I was thinking further back. A BG 4-6-0 would be able to have a wide firebox over the rear wheels, as it could sit between them, so would that be a game changer? Would that make a BG 4-6-2 unnecessary?

Parallel to that, could a MN boiler fit witha broad gauge King chassis, without adding a trailing axle?

[DenysW]

I've seen it asserted (and I think I half believe it, but only half) that opening the door into the hearth - to shovel the coal in - disrupts the air flow, giving an easier path over the top of the bed of coal - instead of up and through it. Meaning that door-permanently-open operation does not improve the power output as much as you'd hope, even doubling the number of stokers.

 

I've also seen it stated (there was a reference I didn't note down) that the maximum output of the single stoker was 50 hp/ft2 of grate, and the maximum sensible sustained was closer to 32 hp/ft2 of grate. With a side-note that some of the peak numbers recorded might come from stokers highly motivated by attempts on records.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, DenysW said:

 

 

"... It was. They did. The Midland route, via the Settle & Carlisle. It was a LMR (Midland Division) service, hence the use of Saltley engines."

 

I take it this was a combination of avoiding the 1:75 at Shap (I believe the Settle & Carlisle was 1:100 ruling gradient), debottlenecking the northern bits of the WCML of slow-moving freight, and using an under-used asset (Leeds-Carlisle)? The modern layout around Leeds station means it could be bypassed, and I've always been puzzled as to why. This may be (part of) the reason.

 

The 1:75 at Beattock would then have been a Scottish problem, not a Midland one.

 

I think it was more about the continued survival of a pre-grouping service pattern. I don't know what happened north of Carlisle - the train was probably re-marshalled and combined with other traffic for Glasgow, Edinburgh, and elsewhere. Whether the connecting freights ran via the G&SW and NB routes - which would have been the pattern in Midland days - or not, I don't know.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Compound2632
connecting freights not frights!

[sir douglas]

14 hours ago, 33C said:

In answer to the above, yes they did. Here's 21B1 / 30551 "Battle of the Atlantic" (one side) 21B11 / 30561 "Trafalgar" as rebuilt.......

 

 

 

 

 

a "merchavy"

[DenysW]

This picture is from an articulated du Bousquet 0-6-2+2-6-0, but the cab area appears to be only slightly bigger than is typical of  pre-WW1 French tank engines.

 

The 'cafe culture' rear end does not appear to be down to loading gauge. The page I got this from had a dimensioned drawing of the 0-8-0 tanks that preceded these on La Grande Ceinture, and they were 2.8 m wide on the side-tanks and 2.9 m wide at the access steps, and did not have the coal behind the cab. So pretty close to the UK gauge, different layout. The difference appears to be the massive side tanks with the water and coal in that free up space behind the cab.

 

So:  a GWR pannier design with full-height side tanks and an observation car rear end? Significant rear vision gains, at a cost of shovelling coal, Fairlie-style out of narrow side-tanks.

 

The du Bousquets appear to have been perfectly suited to heavy goods transfers between the fairly close marshalling yards around Paris and that's where all but ten ended up. Build 1908-1910 (ish) lasted to after WW2, despite the collapse of the most of need for La Grande Ceinture in the 1930s.

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

This picture is from an articulated du Bousquet 0-6-2+2-6-0

 

More on the du Bousquet's, including a very nice model, here: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/bousquet/bousquet.htm

 

I like them and wonder if the Lanky or the Great Central might have been tempted to adapt the design.

[PenrithBeacon]

On 29/08/2021 at 00:21, The Johnster said:

The (in)famous 'Condor' service also ran on the Midland route, from Cricklewood via Leeds and the S&C.  It had been very vigorously advertised as the railways' answer to overnight road transport door to door on the M1/A6 route, and was very competitvely priced and timed; it should have been a success.  Motive power was brand new Metrovick CoBos, class 28, double heading for reliability but these locos were so unreliable that for much of the trains' short existence, neither in either direction completed the journey and the train rapidly gained a reputation for arriving late and behind a steam loco.  My opinion is that a mechanical stoker 9F would have been capable of this job, with perhaps a loco change at Holbeck, but the 3 mechstocker 9Fs were reserved for the Birmingham service and in any case steam was not what was wanted to promote the modern image, so the chance to swap out the mechstoke tenders from the Brits and 71000 to rescue the service was not taken.

 

The trend at the time was for the railway to lose this traffic to the more powerful lorries and increasing motorway mileage that were becoming available, and this debacle was probably the balance tipper; it certainly made no friends for the railway, and was, I am sure, one of the reasons for Beechings' view that the traffic to concentrate on was bulk freigt in block trains.  The arrival of ISO containers skewed matters back into the railways' court a little, and current freight is exactly what Beeching said it would be!  Things were probably beyond rescue for wagon load general merchandise freight by 1961 anyway without the Condor being an image and public relations disaster, but residual traffic of this sort was still running in my time in the 70s between NCL depots. 

The Britannia class and 71000 were never equipped with mechanical stokers. Putting aside the issues with the Co-Bo class there is every reason to think that a manually fired 9F would have done the job just fine. Particularly the double chimney examples. 

The Midland used its Compounds on its 'Scotch' fast freights. The locos were of Kentish Town shed and were stopped at Holbeck for an examination and service.

[The Johnster]

Just now, PenrithBeacon said:

The Britannia class and 71000 were never equipped with mechanical stokers.

Yes, I am easily confused in my dotage (this statement presupposes that my dotage has been ongoing for many years), and am thinking of coal pushers. which are a not inconsiderable assistance on a heavy job.  I agree that a double chimneyed 9F could have easily and reliably timed the Condor, but the point of the marketing of the service was that it was modern, smart, and efficient because it used brand new diesel power, the reason that when it turned up late because of a diesel failure in a section behind a clanking obsolete filthy steam loco that had replaced one or sometimes both of the Metrovicks en route, this was not the message or image that the marketing people wanted at all!

[Clive Mortimore]

13 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The Britannia class and 71000 were never equipped with mechanical stokers. Putting aside the issues with the Co-Bo class there is every reason to think that a manually fired 9F would have done the job just fine. Particularly the double chimney examples. 

The Midland used its Compounds on its 'Scotch' fast freights. The locos were of Kentish Town shed and were stopped at Holbeck for an examination and service.

Hi David

 

Until there was enough Peaks to take over the Condor often a Black Five would be bunged on the front when the Metro-Vics wouldn't play.

[Flying Pig]

47 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I agree that a double chimneyed 9F could have easily and reliably timed the Condor, but the point of the marketing of the service was that it was modern, smart, and efficient because it used brand new diesel power, the reason that when it turned up late because of a diesel failure in a section behind a clanking obsolete filthy steam loco that had replaced one or sometimes both of the Metrovicks en route, this was not the message or image that the marketing people wanted at all!

 

Should have gone to Radio Rentals English Electric.

[DenysW]

"More on the du Bousquet's, including a very nice model, here: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/bousquet/bousquet.htm

 

I like them and wonder if the Lanky or the Great Central might have been tempted to adapt the design."

 

(Almost) everything I know about about du Bousquets I got from that site. Especially everything numeric.

 

I fear their key disadvantage was more water than coal on the loco (only 5 tonnes of the latter), and they didn't comply with the rational British obsession with leading non-driving wheels to reduce track wear. So well suited to slow, heavy-duty trips around La Grande Ceinture at Paris (flat, limited curves, limited distances), less so for UK conditions. Now if London had joined up its sundry goods marshalling yards with a Greater London Belt Joint Railway then goods transfer during wars might have been eased, with potentially two extra Thames crossings. But it didn't.

[Flying Pig]

47 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I fear their key disadvantage was more water than coal on the loco (only 5 tonnes of the latter), and they didn't comply with the rational British obsession with leading non-driving wheels to reduce track wear.

 

There's no inherent reason why outer carrying wheels couldn't be added to the design whilst retaining the basic arrangement.  Even without, they would be no worse than the hordes of 0-6-0s and 0-8-0s being built for freight (and even mixed traffic) work in the UK in the same period, so I don't think an Edwardian du Bousquet is out of the question.  There was plenty of heavy and quite short distance work in the coalfields and industrial centres.

 

Can we imagine one ordered from Kitsons by the LD&ECR and inherited by the Great Central?  Or one with Hughes styling trundling round Merseyside?  Or even a Lickey Banker?

[Johnson044]

On 28/08/2021 at 22:36, 33C said:

In answer to the above, yes they did. Here's 21B1 / 30551 "Battle of the Atlantic" (one side) 21B11 / 30561 "Trafalgar" as rebuilt.......

Abso bloomin lutely fantastic!!!!

[DenysW]

As recently suggested,  French-style GWR  94XX, via a sloppy photoshop of a Hornby model.

 

No coal at the back,  much deeper panniers to replace this, and they stretch forwards. Yes, the tanks could do with a taper at the front end to improve visibility, but I didn't have the software skills. The French would probably have left the back open, but I think we may have more tunnels. If the driver had his/her controls duplicated at the back of the cab, I could see this design being preferentially  run funnel-backwards, but not enough to call it cab-forwards.

 

 

 

 

[ScottishRailFanatic]

Impressive idea @DenysW! Here’s a side-on edit, with some slight alterations in measurements - I couldn’t be completely accurate to the original I’m afraid.