Imaginary Locomotives

[brack]

25 minutes ago, whart57 said:

If instead of running services with a patched up Terrier a light railway had gambled on using IC power

 

That's not imaginary!

 

Trouble is, it involves a high capital investment, which by definition isn't available to a light railway. Unless the owner of Armstrong-Whitworth owns the big castle at one end of your line and his wife is a main shareholder and fancies using you to demonstrate the capabilities of it's new products, so lets you have it on hire purchase at reasonable rates.

 

As it happened, the high cost of it's repairs is why they went back to using hired in locos at the end

Edited December 27, 2021 by brack

[JimC]

29 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Would a boiler that long be very efficient?

It wouldn't. Its a nice demonstration of why simply lengthening a 4-4-0 isn't a viable design route. The whole locomotive needs to be rethought. 

[tythatguy1312]

2 minutes ago, JimC said:

It wouldn't. Its a nice demonstration of why simply lengthening a 4-4-0 isn't a viable design route. The whole locomotive needs to be rethought. 

yeah tell that to Drummond 

[Compound2632]

35 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Would a boiler that long be very efficient?

 

No!

 

29 minutes ago, Traintresta said:

Something tells me this needs photo shopping like the MR Compound that somebody did earlier on this thread, to shorted the distance between the leading and centre coupled axles.

 

Try doing that and preserving the continuous smooth curve of the splashers!

 

5 minutes ago, JimC said:

Its a nice demonstration of why simply lengthening a 4-4-0 isn't a viable design route. 

 

3 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

yeah tell that to Drummond 

 

Quite so; he was one of a number of designers of highly successful 4-4-0s who fell at the 4-6-0 hurdle. As the man says...

 

2 minutes ago, JimC said:

The whole locomotive needs to be rethought. 

 

But my advice is: don't. It's not worth the synapses!

 

As I said, it was a ten minute job, only ever intended as a joke...

[tythatguy1312]

I'd hate to imagine what could've happened if they tried Pacifics, as exemplified by Churchward it would've been a disaster by all accounts, and he was the first one to make a genuinely stellar 4-6-0. If nothing, it would make an extended GNR Atlantic look like an A1.

[Compound2632]

48 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

it would make an extended GNR Atlantic look like an A1.

 

Erm...

[tythatguy1312]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Erm...

Honestly calling the A1 "Just an extended Atlantic" feels wrong, especially as Wilbert Awdry explained the difference in rather overt detail.

[BernardTPM]

A little shorter:

 

Still looks a little lanky though. A bigger boiler wouldn't go amiss.

 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

A bigger boiler wouldn't go amiss.

 

Nooo! That's not the aesthetic we're looking for. If you really want a Johnson 4-6-0, a better starting-point would be a Belpaire or Compound; however, my idea is that if Johnson had had a few more years, he would have built a four-cylinder compound Atlantic, much as Robinson did.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Compound2632
sp.

[john new]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Why am I posting this stuff in here? Well because one of the more speculative ideas I have for model railways is what would a light railway in the hands of a true moderniser have looked like. If instead of running services with a patched up Terrier a light railway had gambled on using IC powered railcars, particularly ones with enough oomph - and braking power - to attach a coal wagon or a van.

My vague recollection is that at least one of the Irish 3ft gauge systems did that. No access to my library at present to check.

 

Update - Courtesy of a Google images search - yes the Strabane & Letterkenny - see https://rogerfarnworth.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/813674_large-e1595142510312.jpg?w=625&h=388 Image not my copyright so only the link pasted.

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by john new
Added the update.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, brack said:

 

That's not imaginary!

 

Trouble is, it involves a high capital investment, which by definition isn't available to a light railway. Unless the owner of Armstrong-Whitworth owns the big castle at one end of your line and his wife is a main shareholder and fancies using you to demonstrate the capabilities of it's new products, so lets you have it on hire purchase at reasonable rates.

 

As it happened, the high cost of it's repairs is why they went back to using hired in locos at the end

I think this is why Imaginary Railways, or at least Freelance ones, are a more interesting subject than just Imaginary Locomotives and require just as much attention to detail for "realism" as modelling a real location/railway.  It requires you to know the geography of your area and therefore, to know what types of traffic would really have operated, which drives the sort of locomotives and rolling stock that a (probably) cash-strapped railway company would need and could afford to buy in second-hand.

 

It is much more plausible for political history to be re-written (such as certain Acts of Parliament being worded differently) than to imagine that  geography is different, that there were coalfields in West Sussex or that the South Wales Valleys lines weren't sharply curved so 2-10-2Ts could be justified.  Although FWIW, I do like the Isle of Sodor concepts where you create a whole island with you imagination...... 

[brack]

42 minutes ago, john new said:

My vague recollection is that at least one of the Irish 3ft gauge systems did that. No access to my library at present to check.

The County Donegal had 20 railcars, but kept steam for freights/mixed services.

There were 'red vans' which were mostly ex clogher valley stock that was a bit lighter, they were used behind the railcars, but mostly for parcels/luggage type stuff, however the railcars, especially the later ones, could handle a few Van's and a trailer.

 

The railcars began rather small, but ended up as Walker brothers types with the cab/engine articulated from the rest of the carriage. They had a cab only at the front and bus type gearboxes, so needed turning at the end of each run. The last pair of donegal railcars ended up on the idle of man:

 

 

 

The clogher valley shared some management with the donegal, so they had a railcar, which went to the donegal upon closure.

 

 

The CIE dieselised the entire west clare in the 50s with 4 railcars built to the final donegal design and 3 bogie diesels from walkers.

I have a 7mm model of these I really ought to finish...

 

The 5'3" sligo, leitrim and northern counties had a few converted buses, plus railcar B, which was a walkers product, but had a cab at both ends.

 

 

Walkers also supplied railcars to australia and cyrenaica (libya).

 

 

A number of the australian railcars, several donegal ones, the back end of one of the west clare vehicles and SLNCR railcar B survive in preservation.

 

The key thing is that the SLNCR were about as penniless as a railway can be (they had a new coach built without lighting to save money in the 20s, and rostered it for daytime only trains, they couldn't pay for the last 2 steam locos they ordered, so they ended up running with plates saying "property of beyer peacock" on hire purchase), so if they could afford railcar B (about £10,500 in 1947) then many standard gauge light railways could, although they were basically spending their war reparations cheque, and shelling out on the railcar is probably why they couldn't pay for the locos they'd ordered!

For context, a gwr 41xx was costed at £7400 to build in 1947, although that's in house - it might have been a similar price to the railcar from an outside builder.

Bagnall priced a standard 14" 040st at £4985, the 94xx supplied to GWR at £8260 each and the standard gauge Egyptian 242t at £6900 apiece in 1948

Edited December 27, 2021 by brack

[brack]

Further to the NSR dieselisation, in 1933-4 when lady armstrong was bought, she cost £2092, but saved £255 a year compared to steam operation, or £330 per year if calculated per train mile.

Webb states that it paid off the initial cost over steam traction in 18 months, which would imply that it had cost about £500 more than an equivalent new steam loco.

Trouble is that most light railways weren't really in the market for new steam locos in 1933! Not sure how much an old terrier or similar would cost, but I imagine it'd be a lot less.

At the end of ww2 the diesel was deemed knackered beyond repair, but despite having proved it to be a cost saver vs steam, the railway reverted to hiring in locos from BR for the last few years. Lack of up front capital.

[PhilJ W]

Some 4-4-0's were developed into quite successful 4-6-0's. The GER developed the 1500 class (B12) from the Clauds. They had to be kept fairly short to fit on the GER's turntables.

[rodent279]

8 hours ago, tythatguy1312 said:

the LNER also had a Metrovick Railcar, seems rather unlike their most famous British rolling stock for looking quite nice.

Is this the Metrovick railcar, or is it one of the Irish railcars?

[sncf231e]

6 hours ago, tythatguy1312 said:

 If nothing, it would make an extended GNR Atlantic look like an A1.

Regards

Fred

[billbedford]

8 hours ago, JimC said:

It wouldn't. Its a nice demonstration of why simply lengthening a 4-4-0 isn't a viable design route. The whole locomotive needs to be rethought. 

 

Well that's exactly what Holden did with his S69s

[The Johnster]

On 21/12/2021 at 17:43, JimC said:

Another what if is that according to Felix Pole's book the LNWR execs were agitating to have the Rhymney included in the LMS.

 

The root of this is that the Rhymney had underestimated the cost of building the Caerphilly Tunnel, hitting a spring and suffering a collapse during the construction, and had run out of money.  The LNWR, which connected end on at Rhymney with a short branch from Rhymney Bridge, stepped in and bailed them out; a chance of access to Cardiff Docks could not be passed up.  The Premier Line could have absorbed ther Rhymney at that time, the 1870s, but preferred to allow the company to continue to work the railway.  They were majority shareholders, though, and you know what they say about who calls the tune...  They had a warehouse on the then new East Dock at Cardiff, and kept a loco to shunt it at the Rhymney's East Dock loco shed, a Ramsbottom 0-6-0ST named The Marchioness of Bute, nameplate nearly as long as the locomotive, and with all of the vowels of the English alphabet!

 

Cardiff had a pub of this name for many years, which would feature in quizzes and bar general knowledge contests, along with a pub which had no vowels of the English Language in it's name, discounting the prefix 'the', which is still happily with us, The Crwys.  W and Y are vowels in Welsh, the word means 'crusader'.

 

, moi...

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The root of this is that the Rhymney had underestimated the cost of building the Caerphilly Tunnel, hitting a spring and suffering a collapse during the construction, and had run out of money.  The LNWR, which connected end on at Rhymney with a short branch from Rhymney Bridge, stepped in and bailed them out; a chance of access to Cardiff Docks could not be passed up.  The Premier Line could have absorbed ther Rhymney at that time, the 1870s, but preferred to allow the company to continue to work the railway.  They were majority shareholders, though, and you know what they say about who calls the tune... 

 

There were similar situations with the H&BR and the M&SWJR, both of which were Midland proxies. When taken over by the NER and GWR respectively, the absorbing companies discovered that what they had acquired was debt to the Midland/LMS.

[DenysW]

Possibly just a variation on a much-discussed theme. Would Beyer Peacock have been better pushing smaller Garratts in the UK? The attached is from Ahrons and shows a 1915 Garratt with 14 tons/axle, and a boiler and tractive effort at about a 5F, more if the pressure had been increased from 160 psi. It's for 5'3" gauge, but both the cylinders and the the boiler diameter look OK for the British loading gauge. With 60" wheels it's freight not mixed traffic. The originals ran in Brazil for a touch under 40 years until dieselisation.

 

It also looks (to me) "right" and not massively long. It has much less wasted length under the boiler than most Beyer Garratts.

 

If they'd just built an extra one for Standard Gauge and used it as a demonstrator? Maybe on LNWR's Heads of Valleys line in Wales?

 

.

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by DenysW

[John Besley]

There still is a standard gauge Garrett at Bressingham that was used by the NCB in a colliery, think there may have been a couple of others as well, have a funny feeling there was one used in a steel works somewhere in the UK 

 

Be very nice to one day see it restored to steam

[DenysW]

I believe that's the Wiliam Francis 0-4-4-0 from Baddesley, near Atherstone. It was used to shunt empty wagons up a steep bendy track to the colliery, and brake the full ones back down. It would indeed be good to see it restored to steam - and also Monarch, the small Kitson-Meyer at the Welshpool and Llanfair, come to that. William Francis was built in 1937, by which time the Grouping companies are likely to have judged all Garrats by the LMS ones.

 

However, my main point was that Beyer Peacock, apart from wanting to do their validation work on actual orders, seem to have positioned themselves incorrectly for the British market. What was probably needed - at least until the technology was well-established -  was a somewhat more powerful (say 25%) locomotive that did bendy well and had high route-availability. What they eventually ended selling was an over-specialised banker to LNER, and a poor route-availability ultra-heavy goods loco to LMS. In both cases the purchasers made preference-engineering changes that were poor choices with hindsight. 22 tons/axle on LMS!

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by DenysW
Add text

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, DenysW said:

a poor route-availability ultra-heavy goods loco to LMS.

 

But they were intended for one specific route (Toton - Brent) so route availability was not an issue!

[DenysW]

The LMS Garratts were intended primarily for Toton-Brent, but even the initial allocation had some at Hasland, presumably for iron ore trains to York. Photos show them at Peterborough North and Rugby (both admittedly possibly on the way to London), but also at Saltley, York, Gloucester, and on the rising section of Derby-Manchester main line.

 

It looks to me like Derby were fixed on replacing two six-coupled tender engines (double-headed) with a twice-six-coupled Garratt, and didn't think the logic through that the thing's now a tank engine, and needs a first-principles design. A 2-8-0+0-8-2 at 20 tons/axle just feels like a better design for the job. With a more powerful boiler as well - what they asked for was about an 8F.

 

Correction: Hasland from 1932 (1 loco) more in 1936 and 1938. Westhouses from 1935.

Edited December 28, 2021 by DenysW

[Compound2632]

33 minutes ago, DenysW said:

The LMS Garratts were intended primarily for Toton-Brent, but even the initial allocation had some at Hasland, presumably for iron ore trains to York. Photos show them at Peterborough North and Rugby (both admittedly possibly on the way to London), but also at Saltley, York, Gloucester, and on the rising section of Derby-Manchester main line.

 

It looks to me like Derby were fixed on replacing two six-coupled tender engines (double-headed) with a twice-six-coupled Garratt, and didn't think the logic through that the thing's now a tank engine, and needs a first-principles design. A 2-8-0+0-8-2 at 20 tons/axle just feels like a better design for the job. With a more powerful boiler as well - what they asked for was about an 8F.

 

Correction: Hasland from 1932 (1 loco) more in 1936 and 1938. Westhouses from 1935.

 

Hasland and Westhouses were primarily providing motive power for southbound coal trains and returning empties.

 

To keep things in proportion, remember that there were 33 Garratts, nominally equivalent to 66 0-6-0s, as against, eventually, 772 4F and 432 3F 0-6-0s - admittedly not all on Midland main line coal trains!