Imaginary Locomotives

[AlfaZagato]

Probably, and they still maintained a fleet of 3Fs or so for other banking duties.   Not every train needed Bertha.

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, AlfaZagato said:

Probably, and they still maintained a fleet of 3Fs or so for other banking duties.   Not every train needed Bertha.

 

The single 0-10-0 was not enough to meet the traffic requirements, so yes, a number of 3F 0-6-0Ts were stabled at Bromsgrove for banking duties. Assisting engines on the front, as @whart57 suggests, would have been disruptive to the traffic, given the time required to attach and detach them. In the other direction, from Saltley up towards the Blackwell summit, 3F 0-6-0s were used for banking. (In the 1950s at least, uncertain as to earlier practice.) It's interesting to speculate why tender engines were preferred for that work and tank engines for the Lickey; possibly the longer run was beyond the water capacity of the tank engines.

Edited January 13, 2022 by Compound2632

[DenysW]

Quote

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?  "

I'm not sure the original American locomotives were bankers. I get more the feel that they were intended to pull normal loads at normal speed other than on the Lickey Bank, and yet NOT need bankers on it.

 

Churchward had the South Devon Banks, and doesn't seem to have done a bespoke design. Gresley inherited the Worsborough Incline, and also the Garratt 'solution' for it.

 

Gut feel is that the Lickey Bank faced a wide variety of freight train weights, and not much in the way of passenger - routes via Worcester had become normal for this. Hence the whistle-code for how many bankers were needed, with Bertha counting as 2. Worsborough was probably closer to a standard size of coal train (it was on a freight-only route to bypass Barnsley). I don't know enough about the South Devon Banks to comment.

 

I have read that a 'Jubilee' was tested on the Lickey Bank with a 1930s-weight 5-coach passenger train - it could climb the bank, but not re-start from a stall on it.

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, AlfaZagato said:

 

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?

 

Churchward had similar banks to deal with in South Devon, and had begun his railway career on that railway, so was pretty familiar with the issues.  He used 3150 large prairies, presumably considering the 42xx 8-coupled heavy freight tanks too slow.  The traffic is different of course; the Lickey had a lot of very heavy loaded freight traffic as soon as the South Wales Railway was converted to standard gauge, though a good bit of this flow continued to use the Hereford/Worcester route, itself not exactly level and including a single track tunnel. 

 

Gresley had some very effective 2-8-0s, and perhaps a tank version of one of these would have been used.

 

Gloucester was and still is a railway hub, complicated in the early days by the gauge change and freight handling problems.  A junction between the GW's branches from Swindon and Bristol, then the Birmingham route connecting to Hudson's empire and the South Wales, soon joined by a local line from Hereford.  It was, and still is, pivotal to the waterways system, to the extent of being connected to deep water by a full size ship canal from Sharpness, and in those days with one connecting the Severn and Thames via Sapperton.  The latter had a 'fly boat' passenger service to London that took about 2 days for those who could not afford the railway.

[whart57]

6 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I'm not sure the original American locomotives were bankers. I get more the feel that they were intended to pull normal loads at normal speed other than on the Lickey Bank, and yet NOT need bankers on it.

 

 

Although Francis Whishaw has a detailed description of both the line and the locomotives and rolling stock there is no description of how it was intended to operate. At the time of his writing though the line was only open between Cheltenham and Bromsgrove. However Whishaw does cite a paper Moorsom presented to the Institute of Civil Engineers in which he describes these engines doing trials on the Grand Junction and they were running the whole way from Birmingham to Liverpool so the intention clearly was to use them as train engines and not as bankers. The speed up a stiff slope was only 15 mph though.

[john new]

2 hours 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?  

NER - given it was 1918-19 when Big Bertha was in design possibly electrify using similar Bo-Bos as those between Shildon & Newport. Given Raven’s ideas perhaps part of a longer term phased Birmingham - Bristol scheme. 
 

Metropolitan - 3rd rail electrics within a similar electrification pattern of suburban lines to what we have now.

 

Any companies with Swiss engineers/knowledge perhaps add rack engines for banking. Would that give them greater shoving power than straight adhesion?

 

Perhaps the counterfactual historians amongst us can come up with a plausible (fictional) reason why the Met became a major player in the Birmingham area and the North Eastern somehow became partners in a joint line operation through to Bristol. Perhaps all part of the suggestion made recently about the LNWR and much reduced emergence of the Midland Railway.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

I'm not sure the original American locomotives were bankers. I get more the feel that they were intended to pull normal loads at normal speed other than on the Lickey Bank, and yet NOT need bankers on it.

 

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Although Francis Whishaw has a detailed description of both the line and the locomotives and rolling stock there is no description of how it was intended to operate. At the time of his writing though the line was only open between Cheltenham and Bromsgrove. However Whishaw does cite a paper Moorsom presented to the Institute of Civil Engineers in which he describes these engines doing trials on the Grand Junction and they were running the whole way from Birmingham to Liverpool so the intention clearly was to use them as train engines and not as bankers. The speed up a stiff slope was only 15 mph though.

 

For the full story of the Birmingham & Gloucester's Norris locomotives, see D. Hunt, Midland Record Supplement No. 1 American Locomotives of the Midland Railway (Wild Swan, 1997). Whilst the challenge of the Lickey was the motivation in obtaining the Norris locomotives, the smaller ones, types B and A, along with the British copies by Nasmyth and by Hick, seem to have been used generally (21 locomotives) whereas the most powerful, the "A Extra" type, were stationed at Bromsgrove for banking (5 locomotives); they became reliable bankers after James McConnell (later of Bloomer fame) had rebuilt them as saddle tanks in 1842.

Edited January 13, 2022 by Compound2632

[brack]

2 hours ago, john new said:

Any companies with Swiss engineers/knowledge perhaps add rack engines for banking. Would that give them greater shoving power than straight adhesion?

The lickey incline is only 1 in 37.

 

I doubt anyone would be considering rack unless you're past 1 in 20 (for steam/diesel). Saluda on the Norfolk Southern (in the US) is about 1 in 20 and was always adhesion worked. For rack worked main line sections you're looking at something like the Erzbergbahn's 1 in 14 in Austria.

 

Adhesion lines mostly run with railcars can go to about 1 in 13 without too much trouble (e.g  the bernina or MOB, and I believe that non rack equipped diesel passenger railcars were allowed over the Erzbergbahn). I imagine thats down to you being able to have every axle both powered and braked.

 

 

 

[DenysW]

Rack railways 50-60 years later than the Lickey Bank.

 

What is typically omitted in discussions of rack railways is that the entire permanent way needs to be re-thought. Instead of sleepers (etc.) having to deal almost exclusively with vertical forces, they now get appreciable horizontal forces from the rack as well. You have to put together a 2D matrix to distribute these forces along the length of the rails and not just across them- getting closer to Brunel's baulk system, but maybe without the vertical pilings. Most of the rack systems (there were a lot of proprietary options) are very slow for exactly this reason - not to destroy the permanent way. Points a nightmare until/unless you can use level-enough ground to revert to adhesion for the length of the junction.

 

Hence it's cheaper to use adhesion until there's no other option, with the rules of thumb given by Brack, above.  Or go rope-hauled until more powerful adhesion locomotives are available (example: Euston).

[The Johnster]

The Cromford & High Peak worked Hopton incline, 1 in 14, by adhesion because it was cheaper to do it that way than by cable haulage.  The NCB's Big Arch bank on the Talywaun system was also 1 in 14, and TTBOMK always adhesion worked, though mostly by light engines or with loco coal empties.  Pwllrehebog (Tonypandy-Clydach Vale) was 1 in 13, and woked on a balanced cable system, but there were 3 TVR class H locomotives designed for it with tapered boilers to maintain a water level over the fusible plug and 5'3" diameter driving wheels to enable the axles to clear the cables.  They were cable hauled up and down the incline and did not climb it under their own steam, but worked 'normally' at the top of the incline, which included a zigzag to gain further height to reach the collieries.  The last of these survived until 1960, sold to the NCB for use at the Wernddu tar plant at Caerphilly.  This incline suvives in the form of a road.

 

AFAIK, the steepest incline worked by adhesion on a passenger railway in the UK was the 1 in 27 of the final approach to Nantymoel terminus in the Ogmore valley.  The line was worked with 57xx or 94xx panniers hauling two coaches until 1953, and worked for a further 5 years by auto fitted 4575s, which could manage 3 trailers.  I would like to hear of any other adhesion worked passenger line steeper than this in the UK.

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, DenysW said:

Or go rope-hauled until more powerful adhesion locomotives are available (example: Euston).

 

Also LIverpool Lime Street and Glasgow NBR to Cowlairs.

[Michael Edge]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The Cromford & High Peak worked Hopton incline, 1 in 14, by adhesion because it was cheaper to do it that way than by cable haulage.  The NCB's Big Arch bank on the Talywaun system was also 1 in 14, and TTBOMK always adhesion worked, though mostly by light engines or with loco coal empties.  Pwllrehebog (Tonypandy-Clydach Vale) was 1 in 13, and woked on a balanced cable system, but there were 3 TVR class H locomotives designed for it with tapered boilers to maintain a water level over the fusible plug and 5'3" diameter driving wheels to enable the axles to clear the cables.  They were cable hauled up and down the incline and did not climb it under their own steam, but worked 'normally' at the top of the incline, which included a zigzag to gain further height to reach the collieries.  The last of these survived until 1960, sold to the NCB for use at the Wernddu tar plant at Caerphilly.  This incline suvives in the form of a road.

 

AFAIK, the steepest incline worked by adhesion on a passenger railway in the UK was the 1 in 27 of the final approach to Nantymoel terminus in the Ogmore valley.  The line was worked with 57xx or 94xx panniers hauling two coaches until 1953, and worked for a further 5 years by auto fitted 4575s, which could manage 3 trailers.  I would like to hear of any other adhesion worked passenger line steeper than this in the UK.

Werneth (Oldham) was a passenger line and also 1 in 27. Elsewhere in Lancashire there was Chequerbent, freight only but a lot steeper than this in places, especially where it was badly affected by subsidence.

Hopton and Chequerbent were only worked by taking a run at the steep bits - Hopton is a very steep climb by bike now.

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The Cromford & High Peak worked Hopton incline, 1 in 14, by adhesion because it was cheaper to do it that way than by cable haulage.  The NCB's Big Arch bank on the Talywaun system was also 1 in 14, and TTBOMK always adhesion worked, though mostly by light engines or with loco coal empties.  Pwllrehebog (Tonypandy-Clydach Vale) was 1 in 13, and woked on a balanced cable system, but there were 3 TVR class H locomotives designed for it with tapered boilers to maintain a water level over the fusible plug and 5'3" diameter driving wheels to enable the axles to clear the cables.  They were cable hauled up and down the incline and did not climb it under their own steam, but worked 'normally' at the top of the incline, which included a zigzag to gain further height to reach the collieries.  The last of these survived until 1960, sold to the NCB for use at the Wernddu tar plant at Caerphilly.  This incline suvives in the form of a road.

 

AFAIK, the steepest incline worked by adhesion on a passenger railway in the UK was the 1 in 27 of the final approach to Nantymoel terminus in the Ogmore valley.  The line was worked with 57xx or 94xx panniers hauling two coaches until 1953, and worked for a further 5 years by auto fitted 4575s, which could manage 3 trailers.  I would like to hear of any other adhesion worked passenger line steeper than this in the UK.

Part of the Mersey Tunnel is 1 in 27, although that's been electric-worked since goodness-knows-when.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

11 hours ago, DenysW said:

Rack railways 50-60 years later than the Lickey Bank.

Blenkinsop may disagree.

 

Adding a rack does not in itself make any difference to linear forces along the rail; it merely changes which rail transmits them. However, the whole purpose of adding a rack is to allow greater forces (steeper gradients or heavier trains), and this is the reason rack railways require better anchoring than adhesion-worked railways.

[whart57]

Francis Whishaw says this about the Lickey incline

 

The  Lickey  Incline  of  1  in  37  extends  for  2  miles  3*35  chains,  and  is, we  understand,  to  be  entirely  worked  by  locomotive  engines.
If  this  is  satisfactorily  effected,  it  will  throw  a  new  and  useful  light  on the  laying  out  of  railways,  and  will  save  a  vast  original  outlay  in  future works.  We  have  long  considered  that  the  present  system  of  making  the sixteen  feet  gradient  the  minimum,  is  far  from  desirable.  The  advantages in  working  a  railway  thus  graduated  are  not  equivalent  to  the  immense original  outlay  necessarily  incurred  by  tunnels  and  overwhelming  earthworks

 

The fact that Lickey would require special arrangements to work trains up it for the first century and a half of its existence suggests that "satisfactorily effected" was not achieved. It would take an accountant to work out whether the extra operating costs were justified by the saving in initial outlay.

[PhilJ W]

The Holywell Town branch was also 1 in 27.

[Compound2632]

23 minutes ago, whart57 said:

The fact that Lickey would require special arrangements to work trains up it for the first century and a half of its existence suggests that "satisfactorily effected" was not achieved. It would take an accountant to work out whether the extra operating costs were justified by the saving in initial outlay.

 

Well, the picture seems to be that there was insufficient capital; if one can't afford the first cost of a better solution, what are you going to do? Better to have the Lickey than no railway to Gloucester at all. It evidently wasn't so great a burden to operate as to make it worth building a more easily-graded diversion later - which the Midland could easily have done later in the century, if one compares the vast capital outlay on quadrupling with easier gradients in the comparable case of the Leicester & Hitchin, also built with stiffer than desirable gradients at a time of financial stringency.

 

All these 1:27 gradients being mentioned are on branch lines of one sort or another. The best comparison to the Lickey is Shap - not as stiff but longer, which also required banking throughout the steam period. 

 

Here's a bit of variety in Lickey banking in 1902:

 

 

[Embedded link to Midland Railway Study Centre catalogue thumbnail of item 60190.]

 

- a goods train being banked by 1532 Class 0-4-4T No. 1734, at that time shedded at Redditch, and one of Bromsgrove's four 2441 Class 0-6-0Ts.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Compound2632

[Michael Edge]

5 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Part of the Mersey Tunnel is 1 in 27, although that's been electric-worked since goodness-knows-when.

It was originally steam worked though, without any problems as far as I know.

[PhilJ W]

26 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

It was originally steam worked though, without any problems as far as I know.

Apart from the smoke and fumes. It discouraged so many potential users that the company was virtually bankrupt. Fortunately for them George Westinghouse wanted to expand his electric train business into Europe and they done a deal where Westinghouse took over the railway. That is why the first electric rolling stock had a distinctive American appearance.

[The Johnster]

So, not just Nantymoel, then.  1 in 27 is a recurring figure, and seems to have been the cutoff for passneger work, which, as has been said, also seems to have been confined to branches with fairly light loads.  It is significantly close to half as steep as the steepest freight-only adhesion worked lines like Hopton and Talywaun.  Go to 1 in 13 at Pwllrehebog (say 'poolth- reh to rhyme with care- heb og) and we into cable working, balanced in this case with empties coming down counterbalancing the loadeds being brought up instead of staight cable winching. 

 

I was once invited by her driver to have an unofficial go at getting Llewellyn, a Hunslet Austerity, up Talywaun light propelling an empty 16ton mineral that had been used for loco coal; this would have been in the winter of 1969 I think, I was 17.  This is how things were on NCB lines at that time; the crews were delighted that someone was taking an interest in them.  I managed about 30 yards on a dry rail before stalling, and couldn't get her to grip to restart.  I thought the driver might have taken her back down to the bottom to restart, but he simply smiled a bit condescendingly and started again with no problem on the bank.Working this sort of incline by adhesion demanded a very high level of skill and enginemanship, and an intimate knowledge of the locos.

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

1 in 27 is a recurring figure,

 

I wonder if that is because the survey value was 200 ft per mile? The Lickey incline's 1:37.7 is 140 ft per mile; the ruling gradient on the Great Western east of Swindon is 1:1,320 of 4 ft per mile.

[Hroth]

10 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Part of the Mersey Tunnel is 1 in 27, although that's been electric-worked since goodness-knows-when.

The incline is from tunnel bottom to James Street. Goodness-knows-when is from 1903.

5 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

It was originally steam worked though, without any problems as far as I know.

From 1888 to 1903. Steam flourished for 2 years, then passenger numbers plummeted.

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Apart from the smoke and fumes. It discouraged so many potential users that the company was virtually bankrupt. Fortunately for them George Westinghouse wanted to expand his electric train business into Europe and they done a deal where Westinghouse took over the railway. That is why the first electric rolling stock had a distinctive American appearance.

The funny thing is that while the electrics and associated running gear were all American, the bodies were manufactured in the UK. Why they looked so American is odd...  They were well built, lasting in service on the Mersey Railway until the mid '50s,  and making weekend jaunts to West Kirby and New Brighton after the Wirral line was electrified by the LMS in the late '30s.

 

They were all withdrawn in 1956, replaced by a new batch of the LMS units (later Class 503).

 

Two Class 1 Mersey Railway steam locomotives still exist, Cecil Raikes in the UK and The Major in Australia...

[brack]

Remember it isn't just going up.

The local colliery branch to us had a ruling grade of 1 in 18. A loco could take 9 empty hoppers up, but only bring 3 loaded 20 tonners back down. There were a few runways and spectacular derailments in the early days.

 

But yes, a world of difference between a 3 mile ncb branch where multiple trips are feasible if needed and sticking a gradient like that on the mainline. Whilst adhesion locos might be able to best steeper grades, not economically, and not without hugely restricting train loads and traffic movements. It also necessitates disproportionate motive power per train - I believe the mersey 064t had the biggest cylinders of any loco in the country when built, but were far from hauling the heaviest trains. Keeping that amount of power going eats away at profits, so if possible you resort to banking on the steep bit. That just gives you an operational headache, a permanent requirement for shed, locos and crews on site, with all the ongoing costs of those, and delays every train that passes.

 

If you priced in the increased operating costs since opening to the present, it probably would prove to be vastly cheaper to have replaced the lickey incline with a big long tunnel, cutting or embankment to spread the climb out. Unfortunately shareholders tend not to take quite such a long view when the lines are getting built!

[john new]

1 hour ago, brack said:

Remember it isn't just going up.

The local colliery branch to us had a ruling grade of 1 in 18. A loco could take 9 empty hoppers up, but only bring 3 loaded 20 tonners back down. There were a few runways and spectacular derailments in the early days.

 

But yes, a world of difference between a 3 mile ncb branch where multiple trips are feasible if needed and sticking a gradient like that on the mainline. Whilst adhesion locos might be able to best steeper grades, not economically, and not without hugely restricting train loads and traffic movements. It also necessitates disproportionate motive power per train - I believe the mersey 064t had the biggest cylinders of any loco in the country when built, but were far from hauling the heaviest trains. Keeping that amount of power going eats away at profits, so if possible you resort to banking on the steep bit. That just gives you an operational headache, a permanent requirement for shed, locos and crews on site, with all the ongoing costs of those, and delays every train that passes.

 

If you priced in the increased operating costs since opening to the present, it probably would prove to be vastly cheaper to have replaced the lickey incline with a big long tunnel, cutting or embankment to spread the climb out. Unfortunately shareholders tend not to take quite such a long view when the lines are getting built!

Having had to make similar business decisions during my career, albeit on a much smaller scale, circumstances often prevent the best option being adopted or suggest the short term gain overcomes the long term scenario. The best may not be affordable (too expensive in year one) but if you can afford the other option which available funds can cover from the get go, and the break even point is a few years off, short-termism wins the day. 

 

Example = capital cost an extra £100,000 for the best solution which has to be borrowed or sold as shares immediately. Extra running cost, say £10,000pa (which you have calculated revenue income will cover) so then your break even point is ten years away and even after the ten years, all things being equal, the incoming revenue will still be covering the extra costs. Yes your overall profit is down ten years hence, and you can’t drop your freight rates, but at the time these lines were being built they had the big edge over very poor roads and speed over canals. 

[whart57]

As the Whishaw quote I put up earlier says, the received wisdom of the 1830s was that climbing sixteen foot in a mile (1 in 330) was the target. That and laying out long straight sections with relatively sharp curves. The civil engineers of the time had after all learned their trade during the canal building era. The Grand Junction Railway would dispense with the long straights idea - a decision that would come back to bite a century and a half later when it came to running 100 mph plus trains - and the B&G would bust the 1 in 300 gradient idea, again not without problems. Possibly the shareholders benefited from Lickey Bank - Whishaw praises Moorsom for completing the B&G at a cost within 5% of the estimate - but after that particular experiment gradients of that order only appeared on branch lines not expected to carry heavy traffic.