Imaginary Locomotives

[DenysW]

I believe 25 mph (full) and 50 mph (empty) for mineral traffic may be more representative of LMS in the 1920s/30s, judging by the Garratts.

 

What they all failed to solve (due to a combination of freight rates agreed to avoid ruinous competition, inertia, and lack of capital) was conversion to braked goods to get those speeds up to 40 mph, and get more trains/hr down the congested lines into the conurbations.

[Flying Pig]

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

So I still don't think that improved UK-relevant goods designs got you a knighthood, and nor, it seems, for example, did fixing the design and maintenance practices that gave hot axle boxes on MR/LMS designs.

 

Though instituting those policies seems to have got Guy Granet one.

 

3 hours ago, john new said:

He did, and they look exactly like a West Country cos' that is the Bullied B1 equivalent.

 

Not really - the B1 was built down to a price as part of Thompson's standardisation campaign (the range of types it was initially intended to represent is listed on lner.info).  Bulleid might not have persued such a wide-ranging standardisation program, but it is unlikely the LNER,would have allowed him to build anything as outré as the West Country in the required numbers.

[john new]

8 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Though instituting those policies seems to have got Guy Granet one.

 

 

Not really - the B1 was built down to a price as part of Thompson's standardisation campaign (the range of types it was initially intended to represent is listed on lner.info).  Bulleid might not have persued such a wide-ranging standardisation program, but it is unlikely the LNER,would have allowed him to build anything as outré as the West Country in the required numbers.

The question asked was what would Bullied have built? I didn’t say the WC/BBs we’re better, just that they were officially a mixed traffic Bullied designed loco’ built for the Southern, i.e. the equivalent to the LNER’s B1, in a comparable time frame. Of the two I fully concur the B1 as a simple standard loco was what the LNER needed, the complex chain drive SR pacific arguably not so, the B1 better met the needs of the LNER. With the benefits of hindsight, and the later rebuilding programme put into place for the SR Pacific’s, it might well have better suited the SRs needs too.

[John Besley]

4 minutes ago, john new said:

The question asked was what would Bullied have built? I didn’t say the WC/BBs we’re better, just that they were officially a mixed traffic Bullied designed loco’ built for the Southern, i.e. the equivalent to the LNER’s B1, in a comparable time frame. Of the two I fully concur the B1 as a simple standard loco was what the LNER needed, the complex chain drive SR pacific arguably not so, the B1 better met the needs of the LNER. With the benefits of hindsight, and the later rebuilding programme put into place for the SR Pacific’s, it might well have better suited the SRs needs too.

 

Isnt that what the Std 5 & 4 did for the Southern?

[JimC]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

I believe 25 mph (full) and 50 mph (empty) for mineral traffic may be more representative of LMS in the 1920s/30s, j

In "Chronicles of steam" Cox talks about testing in the 1930s with "the 17mph average running speed of the working timetable" and some experimental runs  at 23mph with a lighter load.

Edited November 14, 2021 by JimC

[DenysW]

" "the 17mph average running speed of the working timetable"

 

This is absolutely true for the Garratts on the down (loaded) journey. Sixsmith quotes stops as being made at Brentingly (15 minutes) and Luton for water, and 25 minutes at Wellingborough for general engine requirements. The down running time was 7 hrs 49 minutes for 126.5 miles, but the total time start-to-stop was 10 hrs 24 minutes.

 

Care is thus needed to distinguish between running speeds, and journey-time speeds.

 

50 mph for return (empty) journey is an assertion from Wikipedia and is more likely to be running time than journey time.

[john new]

43 minutes ago, John Besley said:

 

Isnt that what the Std 5 & 4 did for the Southern?

Yes, but they were not built as MT engines (the Light pacifics official description) designed under WW2 conditions they came later. People may criticise Thompson’s locomotives but he was a very good production side engineer and saw the need to reduce variety and standardise. Riddles continued for BR what Thompson had also been aiming for namely moving towards a range of standard locomotives - Thompson’s B1 being one of the 21(?) identified types to be built/retained by the LNER going forward.

[whart57]

On 14/11/2021 at 17:24, tythatguy1312 said:

The general philosophy of UK freight locomotives should generally be "how can we move 40 wagons at 35mph more efficiently", rather than "how do we get a 100 wagon train to 35mph". I'm rather surprised turbine & geared locomotives didn't flourish under those conditions, given their efficiency at design speed, although the more variable speeds on a railway and the "good enough" mentality towards 0-6-0's ultimately explain precisely why.

The question was more "how can we stop 40 wagons going at 25mph in less than 2 miles". A powerful 2-8-0 didn't have much more stopping power on an unfitted goods than an 0-6-0 did. 

[Compound2632]

On 14/11/2021 at 19:55, DenysW said:

50 mph for return (empty) journey is an assertion from Wikipedia and is more likely to be running time than journey time.

 

That sounds highly improbable. It's still an unfitted loose coupled train with many wagons having grease axleboxes, whichever direction it's going in. 

 

On 14/11/2021 at 18:46, Flying Pig said:

Though instituting those policies seems to have got Guy Granet one.

 

Indeed; I'd assumed it was for his war work but looking it up I see he got his knighthood in 1911.

[DenysW]

(Sir) Guy Granet was an administrator and a lawyer, not an engineer. Having just exploded my brain by reading the thread about 'what would have made the Midland abandon its small engine policy', he does seem to have been a (very) competent administrator, who introduced coordinated system for goods management that reduced costs. He didn't get the knighthood for designing goods engines, or better matching what was built with what was starting to be needed. I still hold to the cynical opinion that faster passenger locos get knighthoods, and more efficient freight locos don't.

 

I agree with the previous rebuke on this that the company might have a greater need for better goods vehivles, irrespective of sexyness.

Edited November 15, 2021 by DenysW
Extra text.

[JimC]

One may also recall that in those days honours were much more readily 'acquired' than they are these days...

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, JimC said:

One may also recall that in those days honours were much more readily 'acquired' than they are these days...

 

Not after you adjust for inflation.

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

On 14/11/2021 at 19:55, DenysW said:

 

 

That sounds highly improbable. It's still an unfitted loose coupled train with many wagons having grease axleboxes, whichever direction it's going in. 

 

Two schools of thought here.  The subject under discussion being the running of loose coupled unbraked coal trans and the return empties, the trains being up to 60 wagons long on 'normal' routes and up to 100 wagons on the London runs (Severn Tunnel-Acton, Toton-Cricklewood, Peterborough-Finsbury Park and the like) where special signalling instructions  were used.  In my day on BR, loose coupled class 9 trains were speed restricted to 25mph and in practice rarely ran that fast.

 

But there was also the 'Windcutter/Annesley Runner' method, in which a through road was established over a long distance and, in the interests of keeping the couplings tight, the loco pulled consistently all the time and speed built up, to some surprising figures in the case of the Windcutters, despite the 9' wheelbase wagons, and predicated on the concept of having a long time available to gently slow the train down at the end of the adventure.  This worked well on the Great Central where traffic was light in the 60s and the method was not only possible but arguably the best use of the resouces.  Risky, though...

[Compound2632]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Risky, though...

 

... and impossible with an LMS Beyer-Garratt?

[DenysW]

Open mind. Sixsmith doesn't quote the return times (and those numbers originate from a Derby report 6 months into the trial of the first three units, thus with new-conditions locos), so that avenue is closed.

 

There was the one-off trial of using an LMS Garrett in the 1930s with a rake of passenger coaches, implying LMS didn't totally rule out using them on heavy stopping services. But it did fail due to a hot axle box and limped only as far as Leicester. So it may come down to whether you believe that the lighter-load/higher-speed (less slow?) combination caused the failure, or whether it was just a random incident of that (relatively) common problem.

 

There also seem to have been several Toton-Cricklewood routes, at least in Leicestershire, and I find it difficult to believe the riskier approach would have been available on all and for all timings.

 

oto

Edited November 16, 2021 by DenysW
Add ph

[DenysW]

Back to the imaginary ones ...

 

Would the next development for the Beyer-Garratt (and even the LMS ones once you fix the axleboxes) have been to go the turbine route with fore-and-aft turbines? On 6202 Stanier/LMS seem to have reduced the one-speed-only characteristic of turbines to manageable levels, and a Garratt design gives you the opportunity to re-engineer the exhaust pressure from the turbine to give the same suction into the chimney with half the steam. Then you can condense to recover the energy from the rear engine's steam. This overcomes the direct problems seen with the Erie triplexes. Result: more efficiency, more complexity.

 

Not sure I'd want to drive something that much of a juggling act with loosely coupled goods wagons.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

There also seem to have been several Toton-Cricklewood routes, at least in Leicestershire, and I find it difficult to believe the riskier approach would have been available on all and for all timings.

 

I'm fairly sure the standard route for mineral workings was via Trent and the Midland Counties line, rather than via Nottingham, Melton, and Manton.

[Flying Pig]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

But there was also the 'Windcutter/Annesley Runner' method, in which a through road was established over a long distance and, in the interests of keeping the couplings tight, the loco pulled consistently all the time and speed built up, to some surprising figures in the case of the Windcutters, despite the 9' wheelbase wagons, and predicated on the concept of having a long time available to gently slow the train down at the end of the adventure.  This worked well on the Great Central where traffic was light in the 60s and the method was not only possible but arguably the best use of the resouces.  Risky, though...

 

I have to ask what the point is. Coal is not a rapidly perishable commodity and if traffic on the route is light then pathing isn't a particular problem either.  Why not just turn the line into a coal conveyor run at a comfortable and economical speed?  Was it an attempt to minimise crew costs, or what?

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

I have to ask what the point is. 

 

Advantages:

• reduced turn-around time means less rolling stock - i.e. less capital tied up, reduced staff costs;
• a good run at the banks.

Disadvantages:

• higher maintenance costs;
• inability to stop safely in an emergency.

Anything else?

[The Johnster]

Not sure it was really anything more than the result of driving to keep the couplings tight, which is a highly desirable thing to do with a loose coupled train as it enables better control and less chance of couplings breaking in a ‘snatch’.  This is done by a gentle but consistent and relentless pull from the loco, inevitably resulting in a build up of speed as the train is unchecked over a long run.  The upper limit to the speed is eventually imposed by wind resistance. 
 

It is, in fact, a direct result of driving a locomotive powerful enough to pull the train comfortably and economically.  

[whart57]

It does point at one of the things we can agree is wrong with this country. The actual solution to the problems of unbraked freight trains was to fit brakes to freight vehicles. It's what everyone else did, and we did eventually. It just takes forever for those in charge to admit to themselves some unglamorous investment is required.

[The Johnster]

And for them to overcome the very deeply entrenched resistance they encountered for many years from colliery owners and the ports that handled export coal to make any improvement at all to the 7-plank 12tonner on a 9' wheebase.  Slow coal trains were a pita on main lines for much longer than they should have been, and the pages of this thread are littered with fast freight neverwazzas that were too powerful for the traffic and would never have been needed.

 

On mainland Europe, they had developed longer wheelbase wagons and, post war, gave them air brakes, and the Americans were light years ahead of us with bogie 'gondola' wagons with air brakes and Janney buckeye buffer/couplings, capable of much higher running speeds and easier to shunt, usually unloaded from bottom doors or tippled.  That the unfitted steel 16tonner was consisdered an advance on the 7-planker and was still in use in the 1980s shows how small c conservative the industry, and not just the railway part of it, was in the UK.

[AlfaZagato]

Yeah, it's sometimes hard to fathom how a bogie hopper with bottom chutes was harder to accommodate than a 7-planker.   Or the big LMS side-dumps.   I'd imagine that those could even be emptied (messily) in to a normal staithe, or the chutes I've seen for unloading the 4-wheel planked wagons.

 

Here's an imaginary loco for the thread.   LMS Garratt with 8F axleboxes, improved brakes, and a Westinghouse air pump for working automatic hopper doors.    Could manage MGR working some 30 years early.

Edited November 16, 2021 by AlfaZagato
Wrong word

[The Johnster]

The length of the wagons had an impact on the loading machinery and hoppers in the screens at the collieries, which were spaced to cope with 7-plankers, and the export trade, a very large part of the market for UK coal when we had an empire that had to be serviced by coal fired steam ships, with coal for them stored at Gibraltar, Alexandria, Aden, Bombay, Colombo, and Singapore, as well as many foriegn customers that imported coal for gasworks and factories, largely relied on 9' wheebase wagons that could be acccommodated in the hoists that tipped them into the ships' holds at the ports.  Much coal was sent by sea from the northeast of England to London by sea as well.

 

The American experience was different; with more space and  apparently limitless capital available, the collieries and ports were happy to install large and complex machinery and plant to handle the material, and to manage the big bogie gondolas.  As I say, light years ahead of us!

Edited November 16, 2021 by The Johnster

[Flying Pig]

The fragmented nature of the domestic coal trade was also a factor, with small coal merchants unwilling or unable to handle larger consignments.  This has all been discussed numerous times on RMweb though.

 

38 minutes ago, AlfaZagato said:

Here's an imaginary loco for the thread.   LMS Garratt with 8F axleboxes, improved brakes, and a Westinghouse air pump for working automatic hopper doors.    Could manage MGR working some 30 years early.

 

Nice enough, but better to do what the LMS should have done in the first place and let Beyer Peacock design the thing.