Imaginary Locomotives

[PhilJ W]

An interesting question. What if the Metropolitan had been incorporated into the LNER in 1923? Would they have handed the Metro side of the operation over to London Transport in 1933? If they didn't hand it over what sort of stock would be used on the line? I would imagine the commuter stock would bear a family resemblance to to the Tyneside electrics/class 306 but what sort of locomotives would be used? Would there have been more Metropolitan Bo-Bo's or something along the lines of the NE electrics. The Metropolitan Bo-Bo's in fully lined apple green livery would be a sight to behold.

[Traintresta]

15 hours ago, brack said:

If the Midland Great Western Railway could afford to buy them, then they were remarkably cheap! You're talking about a railway than mostly ran superannuated 6 wheel coaches (as did its successor GSR and CIE) and 30-40 yr old 240s. Their main line passenger power in the 20s was a bunch of 440s rebuilt 20 years earlier from 1880s 240s.

 

The average price paid by the MGWR was £2200 per loco for their kits. Given that Woolwich had bought the boilers in at a cost of £3375 apiece 3 years earlier, then made all the wheels, cylinders, frames and other bits themselves, they were incredibly cheap for what they were.

 

I imagine other lines didn't want them as they weren't their design (CME pride), they were financially up the creek post ww1 (and indeed may have had other priorities than locos to fix - infrastructure and maintenance had taken a hammering), and had their own works and men (which they had to pay regardless) to keep busy. Hence the buyers were either the SECR/Southern, or smaller concerns with less prideful CMEs and smaller design/works departments - the Met and MGWR. The GSR looked at the new MGWR moguls they'd just inherited in the merger, then the price tag, and promptly bought another batch.

 

The southern bought way more kits than they needed, then worked out what else they could make out of them - that suggests a good deal to me. Additionally they picked up the spare pony truck bits on the cheap and used them to rebuild E1s.

That’s because as time went by the price dropped to try and offload the stock of parts. I’ve included a photo from the book about Maunsell moguls and tank locomotives classes.  

[PhilJ W]

Thats interesting that the Great Eastern would have had some if the price was right. I'm trying to imagine them with the GE cab as used on the Clauds. 

[whart57]

17 hours ago, DenysW said:

It also explains the bypassing of Worcester. It costs more to go through a built-up area.

 Maybe it does but isn't the point of a railway to go to where it can serve people?

[DenysW]

Quote

whart57 said "Maybe it does but isn't the point of a railway to go to where it can serve people?"

Yes, if you regard a railway through post WW2/post-Beeching eyes of railways-for-mass-transit.

 

If you regard railways through pre-Nationalisation (also pre-Grouping) eyes of a freight service that will also willingly take passengers wherever the freight needs to go, no.

 

70% of LMS was freight. 80% of LNER was freight. I've not seen numbers for GWR (and I've rounded the other two), and it is widely commented that only 30% of SR was freight, hence its differences and 1920s electrification. Also, as an aside, the recent comments that WW2 and WW1 freight demands wrecked SR freight services/assets more than the others.

 

The Birmingham & Gloucester Railway (and the Bristol & Gloucester Railway) were designed to make the sponsors richer(er) by transferring goods from the docks to the centres of population and manufacturing. They did not want to 'waste' money (my quotes) by diverting to take in Worcester and Tewkesbury if that would make the hilly section from the Severn catchment to the Tame/Trent catchment more costly, or by going through avoidable populated areas. The Grand Junction Railway (Liverpool-Birmingham) was very profitable. The Manchester & Birmingham Railway (via Crewe) wasn't - possibly hence their Trent Valley extension (to Rugby) that bypassed Birmingham? Hence also the Manchester Ship Canal - to improve Manchester's ability to look like a port?

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

Thats interesting that the Great Eastern would have had some if the price was right. I'm trying to imagine them with the GE cab as used on the Clauds. 

Scope for an Imaginary Locomotive? Might look quite nice in GE blue.

[brack]

5 hours ago, Traintresta said:

That’s because as time went by the price dropped to try and offload the stock of parts.

Think it's fair to say that the scheme to build locos and wagons at woolwich postwar to maintain the workforce looks more like the sort of grand initiative our current government might think up and announce without really planning or considering the consequences than a sensible, costed, thought through provision to essentially set up a state operated rolling stock builder.

 

They were also supposed to build 2000 open wagons for the NER and 500 for the GWR. After a year 30 GW and 852 NE wagons had been delivered, following which it fizzled out and there isn't much further mention - labour and material price increases sort of doomed it.

 

The initial proposed price was quoted as £10000 each in The Locomotive in 1920. Smithers' Woolwich Arsenal book states that no cost estimates were prepared when the order for 100 locos was placed, but after a few years they estimated the total cost of the project at £1.6 million. Essentially reconfiguring a munitions and weapons factory into a loco works was a lot more difficult and took a lot longer than the politicians had assumed - even once the bits had been built, they didn't actually have an erecting shop that could put them together!

 

Worth considering that in spite of excellent facilities woolwich bought in all their 18" and standard gauge locos from a variety of builders - they knew what they were and weren't good at.

 

There is a report that Romanian State Railways were interested, but the deal was quashed on the grounds that too much money was already owed to Britain by Romania, and there were concerns regarding their ability to pay. There's an interesting might have been to go with the GER one.

 

Strangely the SR purchase (at £3950 apiece) occurred a month or so after the initial MGWR sale (at £2000 each!) Presumably the price charged was adjusted on the fly according to the perceived depth of the customer's pockets!

[PhilJ W]

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Thats interesting that the Great Eastern would have had some if the price was right. I'm trying to imagine them with the GE cab as used on the Clauds. 

 

3 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Scope for an Imaginary Locomotive? Might look quite nice in GE blue.

And the Metropolitan 2-6-4's could have ended up at Stratford. A logical move (assuming the GE ones were shedded at Stratford).

[JimC]

54 minutes ago, brack said:

Think it's fair to say that the scheme to build locos and wagons at woolwich postwar to maintain the workforce looks more like the sort of grand initiative our current government might think up and announce without really planning or considering the consequences

To be fair though the war ended a lot sooner than anyone expected which threw all the planning out. 

[The Johnster]

5 hours ago, whart57 said:

 Maybe it does but isn't the point of a railway to go to where it can serve people?

In those days, the point of a railway was often primarily to connect two places, such as Birmingham and Gloucester, both already being stratgic hubs in railway terms.  Worcester's main industry was the pottery, which relied on canals and the river rather than railways; it was eventually connected to Oxford, another early hub, by the OWWR, which significantly avoided Birmingham, eventually absorbed into the GW.  There were alliances of businesses that might well prefer not to allow the use of railways they had promoted to benefit rivals, in this Birmingham manufacturers who wanted access to the port at Gloucester.

 

The point of a railway was often trade, freight, at least as much as serving people in the days when the huge majority of workers lived within walking distance of their employment, even in London, and when vested interests such as the Duke of Wellington's Tory government preferred them to stay where they were in case they got ideas.  The demand for passenger travel by the lower orders was a surprise to the Liverpool and Manchester, and fencing off of railways was not to keep trespassers out, it was to keep the great unwashed from wandering over fields and estates if the train stopped in mid-journey, as they did quite a lot then...

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

in this Birmingham manufacturers who wanted access to the port at Gloucester.

 

Just so. In the 1830s, was there the capital washing around in Worcester to invest in a railway? Birmingham was where the money was.

 

In the same vein, one might suspect the Bristol & Gloucester of being, like the Great Western, a last throw of Bristol's slavery wealth to generate trade for the city's port, which was in decline with the decline of slavery. (The Moorsom brothers, whom I mentioned in connection with the Birmingham & Gloucester, were active abolitionists.)

[burgundy]

13 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Just so. In the 1830s, was there the capital washing around in Worcester to invest in a railway? Birmingham was where the money was.

 

In the same vein, one might suspect the Bristol & Gloucester of being, like the Great Western, a last throw of Bristol's slavery wealth to generate trade for the city's port, which was in decline with the decline of slavery. (The Moorsom brothers, whom I mentioned in connection with the Birmingham & Gloucester, were active abolitionists.)

It has been pointed out that the growth of railways (and investment in them) coincides with the end of slavery, when very large sums were paid to slave owners to buy out their slaves. 

Commercial Legacies | Legacies of British Slavery (ucl.ac.uk)

Best wishes 

Eric 

[Traintresta]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

 

And the Metropolitan 2-6-4's could have ended up at Stratford. A logical move (assuming the GE ones were shedded at Stratford).

They did go to Stratford for major works once on the LNER books. 
 

The LNER would have had tender and tank locomotives to a basic Maunsell design, could have made the LNER stock a tiny bit more interesting, for me at least as I’m a big fan of the Maunsell moguls and tanks derived from it and a huge fan of the LNER. 

[brack]

It'd have been interesting - I was under the impression (but may be wrong) that the Met 264t's demise in 1948 was essentially due to them getting to the age where major bits needed replacement/repair, but they were non standard, hence spares weren't kept and they phased them out, rather than they were scrapped due to any actual flaw in the design (indeed if I recall part of the rationale for Thompson's L1 was to make something like the ex Met L2 out of LNER bits).

 

If there were more locos of related design, a pool of boilers and spares, then the assessment of whether it was worth overhauling and keeping them might well have been different.

[whart57]

16 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

In those days, the point of a railway was often primarily to connect two places, such as Birmingham and Gloucester, both already being strategic hubs in railway terms. 

 

 

Gloucester was not so much a strategic hub but the end of another line coming up from Bristol. That this line was broad gauge suggests the "gauge wars" might have been a consideration firstly why the line made a sharp right at Cheltenham to go to Gloucester, and secondly why any suggestions from Brunel were given short shrift.

 

Avoiding Worcester is strange though. It's not as if it didn't go anywhere near Worcester, the line passed only a few miles away. However, given the Severn was then navigable up to the Ironbridge Gorge, serving the Severn would have generated traffic. Goods in the 1830s required transhipment at either Worcester or Stourport from the wider boats that plied the Severn onto the narrow boats that plied the canals.

 

My guess is that railway politics played a huge part in this. From a locomotive perspective though, I'm confused. This is the B&Gs solution for the Lickey incline (from Whishaw)

 

Not what you would imagine as an ancestor of the ten-wheeled Lickey bankers and a bit surprising it is a single. Four and six-coupled locos were already in service elsewhere. The driving wheels were smaller than typical for the time though, four foot diameter, and the drivers would carry most of the weight.

[DenysW]

From a variety of sources, all individually a bit suspect ...

 

Moorsom's route included the Lickey Bank. He was told that no British locomotive could meet the specification (speed, tons). His reply was to point out that there was an American locomotive already running in the required duty (speed, tons, incline). So it wasn't a design, more selecting a locomotive with the (apologies) track record. There is a legend that Bury tried one of his locomotives, full of confidence, and failed.

 

The Lickey Bank still wasn't a good idea, but it was affordable.

[PhilJ W]

The Lickey Incline was originally to be rope hauled with stationary engines.

 https://wcrp.org.uk/bromsgrove-lickey-incline-history/

Edited January 13, 2022 by PhilJ W

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Gloucester was not so much a strategic hub but the end of another line coming up from Bristol. That this line was broad gauge suggests the "gauge wars" might have been a consideration firstly why the line made a sharp right at Cheltenham to go to Gloucester, and secondly why any suggestions from Brunel were given short shrift.

 

At the time the Birmingham & Gloucester was being proposed, Gloucester Docks were under construction and Birmingham industrialists wanted access to a port. Brunel was asked to surveyed a route but his proposal was too expensive. This was all before the Gauge War really started; indeed it being a period of tension between the Grand Junction and the London & Birmingham, the former had looked at the possibility of converting its line to broad gauge with the prospect of the Great Western's line to Birmingham cutting the latter out...

 

As to the layout at Gloucester, you need to take into account the alignment of the pre-existing Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad and on the railway-political front, the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway and in due course the South Wales Railway. As to Cheltenham, Moorsom's cheapest route avoided it but such was the outcry from the town that the promoters were obliged to ask him to take a route nearer - to the eventual advantage of the C&GWUR, of course.

[whart57]

45 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

At the time the Birmingham & Gloucester was being proposed, Gloucester Docks were under construction and Birmingham industrialists wanted access to a port.

 

 

That would be another port. The Grand Junction Railway already gave Birmingham access to Liverpool.

 

One reason why Worcester might not have been seen as a target is that it was well connected by waterways with its own canal to Birmingham (albeit with a fearsome staircase of locks to get over the Lickey Hills itself) and to the Black Country, the Potteries and further North via the Staffs and Worcester which joined the Severn only a few miles north at Stourport.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

2 hours ago, whart57 said:

One reason why Worcester might not have been seen as a target is that it was well connected by waterways with its own canal to Birmingham (albeit with a fearsome staircase of locks to get over the Lickey Hills itself)

Lest this be misunderstood, the locks were all in the same direction: 58 of them, each lifting the canal a few feet towards the elevation of Birmingham. This ascent is needed whatever route is taken, and the question for a railway surveyor is how long a distance you spread it over. For a canal, it doens't make a great deal of difference unless you use staircases (which the Worcester and Birmingham Canal didn't).

[DenysW]

A detail, I think. The Grand Junction Railway, at the height of the gauge wars, wrote a letter to its shareholders saying its routes were compatible with broad gauge. Reading its wording,  I think this was a mixed-gauge assertion, and, as is widely believed, may have been more about positioning vs. the London & Birmingham than a serious threat. So I think they were asserting they could live (profitably) with Bristol->Birmingham in broad gauge without messing-up any transfer links to standard-gauge railways.

 

After all, if the cost of widening embankments and cuttings to take the extra width was modest, and they hadn't many curves that would have to be re-profiled for the new gauge, the only expensive bits would be tunnels - and they were paying 10% dividends, so could contemplate some dualling of these.

[whart57]

20 minutes ago, Jeremy C said:

For a canal, it doens't make a great deal of difference unless you use staircases (which the Worcester and Birmingham Canal didn't).

 

I was thinking of the flight of locks at Tardebigge, but you are right, that is a load of locks in quick succession, not a staircase.

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, DenysW said:

the only expensive bits would be tunnels - and they were paying 10% dividends, so could contemplate some dualling of these.

 

The Grand Junction was without tunnels, having been engineered - or re-engineered - by Locke, who rejected the Stephensonian "summit tunnel" approach in favour of steeper gradients.

[AlfaZagato]

I had forgotten the original Lickey bankers were American.   Y'all have reverted.    Reading Wikipedia, 66's are being used to bank when needed.

 

Probably been posed before, but what would have other companies done to bank Lickey?  Would we have still seen a ten-coupled banker from Churchward or Gresley?  

[whart57]

1 minute ago, AlfaZagato said:

I had forgotten the original Lickey bankers were American.   Y'all have reverted.    Reading Wikipedia, 66's are being used to bank when needed.

 

Probably been posed before, but what would have other companies done to bank Lickey?  Would we have still seen a ten-coupled banker from Churchward or Gresley?  

 

Thinking about the Midland building a ten-coupled banker was a bit of a diversion from practice. Wouldn't triple or quadruple heading 3Fs been more the Midland way?