Imaginary Locomotives

[rockershovel]

25 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Weren't they building MAN (German) designs?

 

They'd probably have fared better building American designs. For one thing they would have been Imperial rather than metric, and tolerances might have been a bit greater.

 

Wonder what a Fairbanks-Morse engined NBL Type 2 would have been like...

 

I doubt that American tolerances would have been greater. Packard had major problems trying to adapt Rolls Royce Merlin specifications to American mass production techniques - too much individual fitting and selective assembly, caused by insufficiently detailed specification of individual components. 

 

The bit about “trying to use worn out tools” sounds familiar, though. I was reading Bert Hopwood’s account of the decline of the British motorcycle industry, in which he makes similar comments about Norton, describing it as “a hobby, not a business”. 

 

There’s no real doubt that by 1945, British industry was completely exhausted by thirty years of war and depression. Nationalisation transformed the coal industry and revitalised the railways. No private venture produced trains like the HST 125. 

[PhilJ W]

The first American diesel locomotives used British Beardmore engines.

[rodent279]

I thought the problem with the NBL manufactured MAN engines wasn't so much the tolerances in the engines, as inferior quality materials used?

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, brack said:

I mentioned that on the previous page. Essentially they tried making them with ancient machinery and poor control over tolerances. It didnt work so well.

Would you actually need to re-tool to build engines to a metric design? Assuming the machine tools weren't actually worn out, is it not the measuring instruments that need to be metric? Vernier calipers, micrometers, slip gauges, drill bits, taps, dies etc?

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Would you actually need to re-tool to build engines to a metric design? Assuming the machine tools weren't actually worn out, is it not the measuring instruments that need to be metric? Vernier calipers, micrometers, slip gauges, drill bits, taps, dies etc?

 

I would guess that in the context of the times, retooling using dies and verniers not generally available in the U.K., for sterling, would be a problem. Certainly when BSA redesigned the Bantam from its DKW origins, they used all British thread sizes etc for a completely new product built on new tooling. 

 

I would also guess that much of NB plant was worn out, too.  

 

The Germans were significantly ahead of British industry in metallurgy, and the Americans in large castings. 

 

 

[brack]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

The first American diesel locomotives used British Beardmore engines.

Had we invested in Armstrong whitworth and EE's diesel locos in the early 30s, when they were building more advanced locos for export than the American builders could produce at the time, we might have established a significant lead, but we'd still likely have lost it during the war as simpler and cheaper to build steam locos were more useful, and the production facilities might well have been put onto airplane/aero engine production.

AW moved out of railways in the 30s due to overcapacity in the loco building market and they moved further towards armaments as that was where the orders were coming from. Several big uk builders shut their doors or ceased loco production in the 30s (Armstrong Whitworth, kitson, Kerr stuart, nasmyth wilson off the top of my head). Ironically AW's workshops were probably the more modern and better equipped of any of the big builders.

[Clive Mortimore]

2 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Would you actually need to re-tool to build engines to a metric design? Assuming the machine tools weren't actually worn out, is it not the measuring instruments that need to be metric? Vernier calipers, micrometers, slip gauges, drill bits, taps, dies etc?

Hadn't NBL been an international supplier of steam locomotives? I sure some would have been built to metric dimensions as specified by the purchaser.

 

It has been many years since I worked on a lathe but I could make things to either metric or imperial dimensions...I had a conversion table. 

[rockershovel]

49 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Hadn't NBL been an international supplier of steam locomotives? I sure some would have been built to metric dimensions as specified by the purchaser.

 

It has been many years since I worked on a lathe but I could make things to either metric or imperial dimensions...I had a conversion table. 

 

Different questions here. Making an item to metric DIMENSIONS is straightforward, making them to metric STANDARDS (ie dies, threads and fittings) is a different matter.  

 

A lathe can turn to any diameter, but a press can only form to the die and casting can only conform to the mould. A drill can only drill to the bit size, and a tap or die only forms the thread it is made to form. 

 

I would also suspect that an internal combustion engine requires many small parts which a steam engine doesn’t, and the tooling is completely different. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by rockershovel

[Clive Mortimore]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Different questions here. Making an item to metric DIMENSIONS is straightforward, making them to metric STANDARDS (ie dies, threads and fittings) is a different matter.  

 

A lathe can turn to any diameter, but a press can only form to the die and casting can only conform to the mould. A drill can only drill to the bit size, and a tap or die only forms the thread it is made to form. 

 

I would also suspect that an internal combustion engine requires many small parts which a steam engine doesn’t, and the tooling is completely different. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was in the army my workshop was one of these. It had a comprehensive set of Imperial and Metric drills taps, and dies. I had a vernier that had inches on the top and mm on the bottom, plus metric and imperial micrometers. And my conversion table.....I even had a ruler that was inches on one side and  cm on the other, I used it last night when I was modelling.

 

Threads I use to cut on the lathe, BSF, BA, BSW, Metric, USF and USC, even square left handed thread. So why NBL couldn't I don't know. 

 

Edit helps if you show a picture of what you are bumping your gums about.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Clive Mortimore

[rodent279]

29 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

When I was in the army my workshop was one of these. It had a comprehensive set of Imperial and Metric drills taps, and dies. I had a vernier that had inches on the top and mm on the bottom, plus metric and imperial micrometers. And my conversion table.....I even had a ruler that was inches on one side and  cm on the other, I used it last night when I was modelling.

 

Threads I use to cut on the lathe, BSF, BA, BSW, Metric, USF and USC, even square left handed thread. So why NBL couldn't I don't know. 

This is what I can't understand. Metric wasn't exactly new in the 1950's-it has been fully legal in the UK since about 1897. Surely taps, dies, drill bits etc are consumables anyway, I can't believe they were never replaced. Would it really have been beyond the wit of NBL to have made their own, or contracted Moore & Wright to make metric tools?

I can't help thinking the whole metric/Imperial thing is a red herring as regards the build quality of the NBL built MAN engines. I'm sure I've seen somewhere that it was thought that inferior quality metals were used in construction of the engines.

[Northroader]

For Sulzers, some politician thought it would be a bright idea to get the dockyard mateys at Barrow in Furness to build them under licence as an employment wheeze. They’re formed with the bed and crankcase welded up steel fabrications, and the BR Sulzer fleet suffered from weld fractures ever after.

[Clive Mortimore]

Another beauty of a RL workshop was on exercise it doubled up as a decent bedroom, two of us in the back and Cleggie in the cab, well he was the shortest. 

[Clive Mortimore]

I forgot to mention another thread, BSP, that is a great one to turn as there is a slight taper on it. That is six standard imperial threads and one standard metric thread, still cannot understand why NBL could make things in metric sizes.

[rockershovel]

I had the formative experience of being involved with the development of the North Sea, where I learnt that British management practices of the time relied far too much on the workforce working to established habit, while the management bicker about penny-pinching, focus solely on shareholders and avert their eyes from risk. I'd seen the motorcycle industry commit suicide like that in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the motor industry would follow.

 

That’s why British management find it so difficult to innovate, or make effective use of new concepts. 

 

Those habits weren’t new in the 1970s and they are still with us now. I’m afraid that I find it entirely credible that North British were an early casualty. 

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by rockershovel

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

Speaking as a former production engineer I can say that in any properly run company the tooling and labour force that is to use the tooling for any given production run is all put into place along with training for the labour force before said production starts, in the case of big jobs this may be months and even years before production starts. The term tooling is a general term and may range form specially constructed buildings to house large specially commissioned machine tools to a 1/16" drill bit, therefore certain tooling is fixed capital and other items of tooling are consumable.

 

That a company such as North British failed to transition form steam to diesel could be due to either; several minor factors all coming together at once that conspired to get the better of them or they could have been dilatorily complacent in their attitude to such a transition.

 

As far as the ability for trained engineers to be able or not to use imperial or metric units of measure I find a risible suggestion. On the subject of mensuration,  I shall say that you are either able to read your instruments correctly or you can't, should you not be able to do so, you are in the wrong job entirely !

 

Gibbo.

[rockershovel]

3 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

Speaking as a former production engineer I can say that in any properly run company the tooling and labour force that is to use the tooling for any given production run is all put into place along with training for the labour force before said production starts, in the case of big jobs this may be months and even years before production starts. The term tooling is a general term and may range form specially constructed buildings to house large specially commissioned machine tools to a 1/16" drill bit, therefore certain tooling is fixed capital and other items of tooling are consumable.

 

That a company such as North British failed to transition form steam to diesel could be due to either; several minor factors all coming together at once that conspired to get the better of them or they could have been dilatorily complacent in their attitude to such a transition.

 

As far as the ability for trained engineers to be able or not to use imperial or metric units of measure I find a risible suggestion. On the subject of mensuration,  I shall say that you are either able to read your instruments correctly or you can't, should you not be able to do so, you are in the wrong job entirely !

 

Gibbo.

 

Well, exactly. Someone has already referred to the negative effects of “speculative venture practices” in the coal industry, and one great triumph of nationalisation was to radically reform coal mining and make it a world leader, especially in technical aspects. Companies like Anderson Mavor and Dosco exported world-wide on the back of those strengths. 

 

My main background is the oil industry and it can be pretty “red in tooth and claw”, but one thing I have learned is that it is essential for governments to fully back, and where necessary protect their home players. I’ve seen Statoil go from not much at all, to a world class player. Barack Obama did his best to facilitate a hostile American takeover of BP. The Dutch have prospered from oilfield and windfarm construction by a proactive government supporting them. The Germans are out there in China, doing business and making money. 

 

British management attitudes seem to have the fundamental disadvantage of not actually working. 

 

 

[Northmoor]

13 hours ago, rockershovel said:

There’s no real doubt that by 1945, British industry was completely exhausted by thirty years of war and depression. Nationalisation transformed the coal industry and revitalised the railways. No private venture produced trains like the HST 125. 

Nationalisation of the railways and the Modernisation Plan might have revitalised the equipment used by the railways, but the rate they were losing traffic, I'm not sure it revitalised the railways per se.

[JimC]

I suspect all that would have been needed for the railways to be revitalised would be for the government to pay them everything that was owed from the wars. But the money simply wasn't there to do it. Britain was wholly engaged in paying back the yanks, and without all the overseas trade which had been lost to the Americans during the war.

[Gibbo675]

6 hours ago, JimC said:

I suspect all that would have been needed for the railways to be revitalised would be for the government to pay them everything that was owed from the wars. But the money simply wasn't there to do it. Britain was wholly engaged in paying back the yanks, and without all the overseas trade which had been lost to the Americans during the war.

Hi Jim,

 

The money has never been there it has all been majicked up by the Bank of England since 1697.

 

Gibbo.

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Jim,

 

The money has never been there it has all been majicked up by the Bank of England since 1697.

 

Gibbo.

 

That isn’t correct. The U.K. was one of the world’s greatest creditor nations prior to WW1. Much of its assets were liquidated to pay for the war, but huge volumes of overseas trade remained so there was still cash flow and profit. 

 

WW2 effectively bankrupted the country. Not only that, but it destroyed at least 70% of overseas trade by value, wrecked fixed assets on a huge scale (especially in the Far East) and precipitated the collapse of the Empire (which provided most of that trade). 

 

 

 

 

[RLBH]

14 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I had the formative experience of being involved with the development of the North Sea, where I learnt that British management practices of the time relied far too much on the workforce working to established habit, while the management bicker about penny-pinching, focus solely on shareholders and avert their eyes from risk. I'd seen the motorcycle industry commit suicide like that in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the motor industry would follow.

 

That’s why British management find it so difficult to innovate, or make effective use of new concepts. 

 

Those habits weren’t new in the 1970s and they are still with us now. I’m afraid that I find it entirely credible that North British were an early casualty. 

 

There is a story that during a particularly prolonged strike, a Soviet diplomat remarked to his British counterpart that they usually resolved such issues by sending in the security forces and having those who were refusing to give way shot.

 

The British man pointed out that such an approach wouldn't work in Britain. If you shot management, the workers would hold out hoping you'd shoot a few more. If you shot the workers, management would hold out until you'd reduced their wage bill a bit more.

1 hour ago, Gibbo675 said:

The money has never been there it has all been majicked up by the Bank of England since 1697.

We could always magic up our own money if needed, although the advisability of doing so is debated. Magicing up other people's money isn't such an easy trick, and the Americans wanted their loans paid back in dollars. It's very clear from the history books that anything which had to be paid for in dollars would only be bought if absolutely necessary, whilst anything which could be sold for dollars would be.

[62613]

9 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Jim,

 

The money has never been there it has all been majicked up by the Bank of England since 1697.

 

Gibbo.

1694, I always thought; the date of the founding of the Bank of England. It was the by-product of giving asylum to Spanish-Jewish people, was it not, after they were chucked out of Spain. You can magick money up any time you want, as long as you repay it on time. Similarly the Huguenots after the Revocation of the Treaty of Nantes in 1685. There's a lesson here we seem to have forgotten!

Edited August 21, 2019 by 62613

[Gibbo675]

8 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

That isn’t correct. The U.K. was one of the world’s greatest creditor nations prior to WW1. Much of its assets were liquidated to pay for the war, but huge volumes of overseas trade remained so there was still cash flow and profit. 

 

WW2 effectively bankrupted the country. Not only that, but it destroyed at least 70% of overseas trade by value, wrecked fixed assets on a huge scale (especially in the Far East) and precipitated the collapse of the Empire (which provided most of that trade). 

 

 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, RLBH said:

There is a story that during a particularly prolonged strike, a Soviet diplomat remarked to his British counterpart that they usually resolved such issues by sending in the security forces and having those who were refusing to give way shot.

 

The British man pointed out that such an approach wouldn't work in Britain. If you shot management, the workers would hold out hoping you'd shoot a few more. If you shot the workers, management would hold out until you'd reduced their wage bill a bit more.

We could always magic up our own money if needed, although the advisability of doing so is debated. Magicing up other people's money isn't such an easy trick, and the Americans wanted their loans paid back in dollars. It's very clear from the history books that anything which had to be paid for in dollars would only be bought if absolutely necessary, whilst anything which could be sold for dollars would be.

 

11 minutes ago, 62613 said:

1694, I always thought; the date of the founding of the Bank of England. It was the by-product of giving asylum to Spanish-Jewish people, was it not, after they were chucked out of Spain. You can magick money up any time you want, as long as you repay it on time. Similarly the Huguenots after the Revocation of the Treaty of Nantes in 1685. There's a lesson here we seem to have forgotten!

Hi Chaps,

 

Off topic alert !

 

Three years out with the date of the founding of the BoE is hardly a problem in the grand scheme of things but my question pertaining to my original comment is this:

 

Should all of the worlds debt be paid back to all of the worlds various central banks how much of the combined worlds currency would be left in circulation ?

 

Gibbo.

[AlfaZagato]

It would still be in circulation - amongst the banks themselves. 

 

 

How would the Terrier have done as a tender loco?  I know there was no need for such on the suburban work they were built for.   Did the LB&SCR have anywhere that wanted a very light, quick-accelerating loco on a longer run?

[JimC]

3 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Should all of the worlds debt be paid back to all of the worlds various central banks

 

Haven't we got enough on our plate with imaginary locos without diverting into imaginary currency manipulations?