Imaginary Locomotives

[brack]

Out of interest, did any big railway companies recruit CMEs from industry?

The independent loco builders design departments turned out far more new designs than any one railway, often with more innovation and technologically superior to what the main line companies were turning out. When big companies were involved in designs the results were often quite good as they seemed more open to cross fertilisation of ideas and collaborating with railway company design departments (thinking about the Jones goods and the Rivers on the highland, both heavily influenced by designs for india, NBL's B17 and Royal Scot designs).

I know of plenty industry designers and engineers who moved from one builder to another or from railway works to builders, but cant think of any going the other way.

I assume Stanier was picked because the LMS had borrowed a castle, realised their locos were rubbish in comparison so pursued and acquired a man who they thought could build them something castlesque.

[The Johnster]

Well, he never really built them anything particularly Castlesque, the nearest comparison being the Jubilees, but he did build them lots of somethings Hallesque and 28xxesque, arguably his most significant contributions.  As for railway builders to railways, how about Gooch, who came down from Newcastle to set North Star up and never went back.

 

The Princess Royals were to a degree Kingesque, but with a trailing pony and a wide firebox.  I'm not sure what the LMS exactly expected from their imported Swindon refugee, and anyway it probably wasn't what they got in the event, but there doesn't seem to have been much of an instant request for Castles with outside valve gear and domed boiler, or if there was it was never met.  The top end WCML work remained in the hands of the Royal Scots until the Princess Royals appeared, those locos apparently ushering in the possibility of non-stop Euston-Glasgow working and no engine changes at Crewe and Carlisle.

 

It must have become obvious to Stanier pretty quickly that producing copies of GW locos was not going to be suitable for the LMS; the prairie and mogul proved that.  His attraction to his employers was as someone with new ideas that could pull them out of the motive power hole they'd dug themselves into, itself a result of a otherwise seemingly gridlocked management power struggle.  He proved himself adaptable and conducive to building locos for his new railway, but not straight away.  His apparent annoyance at being presented with the first of the moguls sporting a copper capped chimney suggests he was happy to be away from Swindon and had his own path to follow.

[brack]

If you think about it the grouping instantly reduced CME positions in the UK from over 20 to only 4 and 2 years later in Ireland all lines in the south were folded into the GSR meaning 4 CME positions went down to 1. Little wonder it ended up a dead mens shoes game with lots of candidates wishing for a very few top jobs.

When offered one of only 5 CME positions in the british isles on a plate he jumped, knowing he wasnt going to get his chance otherwise.

Did he already know Hawksworth was the chosen heir, or was he unsure how long Collett would go on for? - there wasnt much difference in age between them.

[melmerby]

46 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 there doesn't seem to have been much of an instant request for Castles with outside valve gear and domed boiler, or if there was it was never met.  The top end WCML work remained in the hands of the Royal Scots until the Princess Royals appeared, those locos apparently ushering in the possibility of non-stop Euston-Glasgow working and no engine changes at Crewe and Carlisle.

 

 His apparent annoyance at being presented with the first of the moguls sporting a copper capped chimney suggests he was happy to be away from Swindon and had his own path to follow.

The Scots were initially referred to as improved Castle type loco as that's what they were supposed to be emulating, however they seemed to be more of a North British product as the Lord Nelson drawings they were using as a basis were hardly adhered to. About the only thing in common was the 4-6-0 wheel layout.

 

Being pedantic it wasn't a copper capped chimney on the mogul but a Swindon style safety valve cover.

[rodent279]

Go on.....next time 2968 comes up for overhaul, someone put a Swindon style safety valve cover on, please.....if only to wind up the purists!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎03‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 20:20, melmerby said:

I thought Stanier was specifically "head hunted" with no one else particularly in the frame for the job.

The LMS'  head hunting started with the clear choice: Gresley. But he wasn't for leaving the LNER, and small wonder as the board there were a cohesive team with a chairman who gave him full support. Gresley must have had a good idea what troubles Fowler had experienced from the LMS' management warfare through their professional contact.

 

On ‎03‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 14:21, Compound2632 said:

There was some testing on Toton - Brent coal trains, the conclusion of which would appear to be that the 2-8-0s were unsuitable for such work, though I've never seen any explanation of why...

The results - whatever they may have been - have probably gone to the grave with those who conducted the testing. The comparison loco was the LNWR derived G2A, also 7F; and the subsequent build of a Midlandised 0-8-0 - the 'Austin 7' - the best indicator of the outcome.

 

Here's what I suspect. The 2-8-0 had significantly higher nominal tractive effort combined with lower mass on the coupled wheels, as compared to the 0-8-0. The lower factor of adhesion of the 2-8-0 may have made starting on a sub-optimal rail less reliable, and led to more slipping at low speed. Coal consumption was probably higher to get the boiler to steam reliably at the typical constant low speed plod when running. With the MR line's moderate well profiled gradients and a well aligned route, there was no need for a loco which could push out higher power in bursts; what was wanted was a loco to steam well at the relatively small continuous outputs required on a slow mineral haul. And a guiding leading truck wasn't required for this operation either.

[PenrithBeacon]

43 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

The LMS'  head hunting started with the clear choice: Gresley. But he wasn't for leaving the LNER, and small wonder as the board there were a cohesive team with a chairman who gave him full support. Gresley must have had a good idea what troubles Fowler had experienced from the LMS' management warfare through their professional contact.

 

The results - whatever they may have been - have probably gone to the grave with those who conducted the testing. The comparison loco was the LNWR derived G2A, also 7F; and the subsequent build of a Midlandised 0-8-0 - the 'Austin 7' - the best indicator of the outcome.

 

Here's what I suspect. The 2-8-0 had significantly higher nominal tractive effort combined with lower mass on the coupled wheels, as compared to the 0-8-0. The lower factor of adhesion of the 2-8-0 may have made starting on a sub-optimal rail less reliable, and led to more slipping at low speed. Coal consumption was probably higher to get the boiler to steam reliably at the typical constant low speed plod when running. With the MR line's moderate well profiled gradients and a well aligned route, there was no need for a loco which could push out higher power in bursts; what was wanted was a loco to steam well at the relatively small continuous outputs required on a slow mineral haul. And a guiding leading truck wasn't required for this operation either.

My suspicion is that the boiler was too small and the valve gear was very inefficient too: the 7F was notorious for having to stop for a brew-up  on the S&DJR and although it certainly had a great reputation amongst enthusiasts I'm not so sure that the LMS management was too enamoured.  

 

It's interesting that the Fowler 7F 2-8-0 was compared with the LNW 7F 0-8-0 because the Fowler had, in addition to the weaknesses described above, it had the same axle boxes as the 4F with all that this implies. By way of contrast however, Bowen-Cooke at Crewe was in the process of rebuilding all LNW 0-8-0s that were worth rebuilding with superheated boilers and, crucially, a revised lubrication system and redesigned axleboxes. The Joy's valve gear and the weak frames were left alone.

 

Continuing, and a little off-topic, there are articles in LMSJ Seven one of which quotes mileage between General Repairs of the G2, LYR 31, S&D 7F and Standard 7F as 113,087; 73, 582; 88, 734 and 99,633 respectively. The Stanier 8F was tried on the S&DJR probably with a view to replacing the S&D 7F in view of its poor maintenance record, but it was found that it couldn't stop as it should with an unfitted train. Oddly enough, the S&DJR management had come to the same conclusion with the 7F and fitted it with Ferodo brake pads, but the same thing doesn't seem to have occurred to the LMS management, so the S&DJR had to soldier on with a very distinctive but also rather poor locomotive.

 

Regards

Edited August 5, 2019 by PenrithBeacon

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

15 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

My suspicion is that the boiler was too small and the valve gear was very inefficient too...

...and the cylinder porting and clearance, and the draughting, can be stirred in as well. I really don't know which were the most significant. On the Midland line I suspect it had to be run on a relatively long cut off and small regulator opening for reliable steaming while jogging along at slow speed. What seems to have been liked on the Somerset and Dorset was the burst of power for banks. And then rest and recover boiler pressure.

[The Johnster]

The S &DJ 7Fs were used for fairly short haul work, mostly between Green Park and the collieries around Radstock, and there was something of a hill in between.  A loco with the ability to slog hard up a bank with a mortgaged boiler and hold the unfitted train in check on the other side is what is wanted, and these are different to the requirements of long distance Toton-Brent mineral ambling on easier graded goods lines where you can drift along all day once you've worked the train up to about 20mph.  We had an ex-Green Park driver at Canton when I worked there, Danny Levi, who reckoned the 7Fs were the best possible engines for their work because of their ability to brake on the downhill parts of the runs, but didn't like them on passenger trains as they were a bit rough.  One wonders how the Derby axleboxes stood up to the hammering up the banks.

 

Wasn't one given a larger boiler?.  You get the sense looking at the locos that the cylinders are a bit big for the boiler, and that a bigger one would have meant less mortgaging, but would have been harder work to fire and burned more coal of course.

 

 

[Flying Pig]

50 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The Stanier 8F was tried on the S&DJR probably with a view to replacing the S&D 7F in view of its poor maintenance record, but it was found that it couldn't stop as it should with an unfitted train. Oddly enough, the S&DJR management had come to the same conclusion with the 7F and fitted it with Ferodo brake pads, but the same thing doesn't seem to have occurred to the LMS management, so the S&DJR had to soldier on with a very distinctive but also rather poor locomotive.

 

I know it's fashionable to assume that the LMS was run by donkeys, but I find this hard to swallow: the LMS was after all in charge of S&DJR locomotive matters for several years before the 8F even existed.  Perhaps the cost of additional 8Fs with non-standard brakes for the S&DJR offset the maintenance savings sufficiently to make the project unviable.

[PenrithBeacon]

17 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

17 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

... but the same thing doesn't seem to have occurred to the LMS management,

 

I think this is poorly phrased on my part. I suspect that as Ferodo brake blocks would have been non-standard they would have been a big no-no in an organisation that lived and died by absolute standardisation. 

In spite of this there were several versions of the 8F and more than a few of the Black 5, but that was after, for the most part, Stanier had left. By then there were bigger fish to fry.

Regards

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

1 hour ago, Flying Pig said:

 

I know it's fashionable to assume that the LMS was run by donkeys, but I find this hard to swallow...

It wasn't of course. It had a great many talented people, but many of them in less than ideal positions for their abilities; and a ready made internal war from day one which was much more important than organising  the largest publically owned company ever seen for superior operational efficiency.

 

It needed a man of Josiah Stamp's outstanding capability to clear out this Augean stable, in which he succeeded mightily, and I suspect is still not generally recognised with the gratitude due this achievement. (He remains worth reading for large scale business management thinking.)

[Gibbo675]

1 hour ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

It wasn't of course. It had a great many talented people, but many of them in less than ideal positions for their abilities; and a ready made internal war from day one which was much more important than organising  the largest publically owned company ever seen for superior operational efficiency.

 

It needed a man of Josiah Stamp's outstanding capability to clear out this Augean stable, in which he succeeded mightily, and I suspect is still not generally recognised with the gratitude due this achievement. (He remains worth reading for large scale business management thinking.)

Hi 34B&D,

 

You don't get to become a director at the Bank of England for nothing !

 

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money." 

 

Gibbo.

[melmerby]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

Wasn't one given a larger boiler?.  You get the sense looking at the locos that the cylinders are a bit big for the boiler, and that a bigger one would have meant less mortgaging, but would have been harder work to fire and burned more coal of course.

 

When they were built the 6 Derby built locos had small boilers, the later 5 Robert Stephenson built ones had larger boilers but these were generally replaced with smaller ones over the years.

See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26DJR_7F_2-8-0

[Compound2632]

The first five engines had G9AS boilers, the same type fitted to the Midland and LMS Standard Compounds, though with a modification to the front tubeplate. The second five had non-standard boilers designated G9BS, which used the same flanged plates as the boiler of the Lickey Banker - these were made at Derby and sent to Stephensons, along with the chimneys which were cast at Derby. Since no spare G9BS boiler was made, Derby modified two further G9AS boilers when two of the first batch became due for reboilering, then used the repaired boilers on two of the second batch. This is all in D. Bradley & D. Milton, Somerset and Dorset Locomotive History (David & Charles, 1973). They also give details of the 1927 Toton-Brent tests; the outcome was much as described above - the valve setting was unsatisfactory and the coal consumption high. In fact the Standard 7F 0-8-0 turned out to be the most efficient of the eight-coupled engines tried, with lower coal consumption and repair costs than the G2.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Compound2632

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

It would seem to me that the most excellent standardisation system that had been implemented by the Midland Railway had reached its zenith circa 1900 and was undergoing a hearty decline by the 1920's, mainly due to a stolid dependence upon those very same components and systems utilised by locomotives that required elements that ought to have been both stronger and better engineered to provide the necessary reliability.

 

The Great Western Railway followed a very similar path about twenty years later.

 

Gibbo.

[PenrithBeacon]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

The first five engines had G9AS boilers, the same type fitted to the Midland and LMS Standard Compounds, though with a modification to the front tubeplate.

...

The boilers fitted to the 7Fs were not interchangeable with the 4P Compounds until the late 1940s when changes were made to them to allow this.

The boiler fitted to 88 currently on the WSR originally came from a Compound and, until recently, it still had a Compound's regulator.

Regards

[Compound2632]

50 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The boilers fitted to the 7Fs were not interchangeable with the 4P Compounds until the late 1940s when changes were made to them to allow this.

The boiler fitted to 88 currently on the WSR originally came from a Compound and, until recently, it still had a Compound's regulator.

Regards

 

Exactly - the extra compound boilers had to have the modification to the front tubeplate to make the fit the 7Fs.

 

Now how about a 3-cylinder compound 2-8-0 as this is supposed to be a thread for imaginary locomotives?

[The Johnster]

Perhaps that's what the Midland really needed for the Toton-Brent traffic!

[Flying Pig]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Perhaps that's what the Midland really needed for the Toton-Brent traffic!

 

A 7F with a properly sorted chassis would probably have been perfectly adequate: towing 18th Century-style coal tubs at 25mph is hardly cutting edge stuff.  Give it a decent cab, a big enough tender and a cylindrical smokebox and it could have chugged on in this undemanding role until the type 4s came along.  As it was, in later years the traffic was worked by 8Fs and then 9Fs, perhaps more sophisticated machines than were really needed, though the outside valve gear was no doubt appreciated by those who had to prep them.

 

What was really required of course was higher capacity wagons with power brakes.

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Perhaps that's what the Midland really needed for the Toton-Brent traffic!

 

A long run at a steady rate of work would be ideal conditions for efficient compound working. The tricky bit would be getting a clear path. F.W. Webb put his Class A 3-cylinder 0-8-0s to work on goods trains over Shap, though I've also seen photos of them employed on shunting...

 

8 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

What was really required of course was higher capacity wagons with power brakes.

 

... with the attendant investment in rebuilding facilities at collieries and coal depots. It's an arrangement that was only ever going to work for specific point-to-point traffic flows - and came eventually, in the form of MGR. Your average domestic coal merchant would have been aghast at the prospect of dealing with a 40 ton gondola; what he wanted was five 8 ton wagons, each from a different colliery with a different grade of fuel. 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Now how about a 3-cylinder compound 2-8-0 as this is supposed to be a thread for imaginary locomotives?

Why stop at three? Five's a good number. Paired small diameter HP and LP outside driving a common crosshead, and inside a near 4' diameter LP, all balanced for equal output at the crossheads and arranged at 120 degrees for more even torque, and a super funky six exhausts: boom, boom, BOOM, boom, boom, BOOM; per driving wheel revolution. A very special changocombinoreducoreguvalvulator gives the driver near fully automatic control. Just one lever to drive with, nothing can possibly go wrong.

[Compound2632]

Surely a five cylinder engine should be triple expansion, with separate reverser for each stage for optimum efficiency?

 

The four cylinder arrangement with HP and LP on a common piston shaft is a tandem compound - I've just been reading E.L. Ahrons on the Great Western's two experiments, standard gauge No. 7 and broad gauge No. 8. A major problem was lubricating the piston gland between the HP and LP cylinders. Nevertheless tandem compounds became quite widely used in the United States. There were also Vauclain compounds, with HP and LP cylinders side by side, piston rods connected to a common crosshead and the valves on a single shaft between the cylinders.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Compound2632

[Flying Pig]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A long run at a steady rate of work would be ideal conditions for efficient compound working. The tricky bit would be getting a clear path. F.W. Webb put his Class A 3-cylinder 0-8-0s to work on goods trains over Shap, though I've also seen photos of them employed on shunting...

 

 

... with the attendant investment in rebuilding facilities at collieries and coal depots. It's an arrangement that was only ever going to work for specific point-to-point traffic flows - and came eventually, in the form of MGR. Your average domestic coal merchant would have been aghast at the prospect of dealing with a 40 ton gondola; what he wanted was five 8 ton wagons, each from a different colliery with a different grade of fuel. 

 

All true, but the fact remains that from a train working point of view low capacity loose-coupled minerals were a pest.  Possibly the collieries were the real problem: concentration of coal delivery could perhaps have been achieved earlier with suitable commercial incentives and penalties (to the detriment of the small coal merchants of course).

 

10 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Why stop at three? Five's a good number.

 

Unambitious - the Midland had already reached eight...

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Flying Pig said:

 

All true, but the fact remains that from a train working point of view low capacity loose-coupled minerals were a pest.  Possibly the collieries were the real problem: concentration of coal delivery could perhaps have been achieved earlier with suitable commercial incentives and penalties (to the detriment of the small coal merchants of course).

 

 

Unambitious - the Midland had already reached eight...

 

That was Cecil Paget's private project, carried on in despite of Deeley's disapproval. Paget's father was the company chairman, so he could get his way. He'd been a pupil of S.W. Johnson; I rather suspect Johnson found him an irritation - he packed him off to Schenectady to oversee production of their batch of moguls. 

 

The real villains of the piece, if you're a partisan of Johnson and Deeley's proposals for 0-8-0 and 4-6-0 locomotives, are Paget and Guy Granet. Their traffic control system revolutionised the efficiency with which the Midland's traffic was handled, without need for the expense of larger locomotives and consequent infrastructure, to the delight of the shareholders.