New Hornby Rocket

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, Colin_McLeod said:

Probably Network Rail Yellow

Aha that’s where NR got the idea.....

[boxbrownie]

11 hours ago, Denbridge said:

I know. In fact your post is almost word for word the same as I've posted many times in various places. I've given up on those who throw tantrums if they can't get all their carriages in exactly the same shades, particularly when it comes to roof colour!

Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly a scale model is it.......just waiting for a RC to point out there is a missing lump of coal which was shown on the original graphic etching 

[jukebox]

1 hour ago, MarkSG said:

The other thing to bear in mind about Rocket is that it was the APT-E of its day. It was designed and built as a proof of concept in order to win the trials and earn Stephenson the contract to build the production run. Which it did, very successfully. But even before the L&M had opened, Stephenson had improved on Rocket's design and the production versions differed from it.

 

All the contemporary drawings of early L&M trains in service, as opposed to the trials, show horizontal-cylindered locos, and many of them have more modern-looking tenders. This print, for example, is dated from 1831, just a year after the L&M opened, and the loco, while clearly a Rocket class, already has significant differences from Rocket. But here, too, we have to take account of possible liberties being taken by the artist.

 

That one's definitely P4.

 

[Denbridge]

11 minutes ago, jukebox said:

 

That one's definitely P4.

 

I was thinking broad gauge

[MarkSG]

19 minutes ago, jukebox said:

 

That one's definitely P4.

 

 

Or HO.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, MarkSG said:

The other thing to bear in mind about Rocket is that it was the APT-E of its day. It was designed and built as a proof of concept in order to win the trials and earn Stephenson the contract to build the production run. Which it did, very successfully. But even before the L&M had opened, Stephenson had improved on Rocket's design and the production versions differed from it.

 

All the contemporary drawings of early L&M trains in service, as opposed to the trials, show horizontal-cylindered locos, and many of them have more modern-looking tenders. This print, for example, is dated from 1831, just a year after the L&M opened, and the loco, while clearly a Rocket class, already has significant differences from Rocket. But here, too, we have to take account of possible liberties being taken by the artist.

If Brunel used this picture as his basis for doing the GWR no wonder they started with Broad Gauge.

 

No Mr Brunel I can assure you it's just a standard definition picture stretched onto a wide screen projector.

[MarkSG]

A few other possibly interesting things about Rocket. Firstly, the characteristic "crown" on top of the chimney was almost certainly purely decorative and, like the yellow livery, intended for PR purposes at the trials. No other contemporary images of L&M Rocket class locos show it, and it isn't on Rocket as preserved. So even Rocket itself may not have had it in service. I can't imagine that it would have done much good for  air flow, anyway.

 

Also, the design of Rocket was as much down to the specification set by the L&M for the trials as it was due to Stephenson. In particular, the requirement for the locos to have a maximum weight of 4 tons was a problem. That was what led Stephenson to use an 0-2-2 design with a single pair of large drivers. Previously, Stephenson had used a four-coupled design for his locos, and the other Rainhill competitors all had four equal wheels (Ericsson and Braithwaite's Novelty ran as an 0-2-2 in the trials, but was designed so that the wheels could be coupled in service for greater traction).  Stephenson realised that the best way around the 4t weight limit was to build an unbalanced loco that put most of its weight on two driving wheels - despite being lighter than Timothy Hackworth's Sans Pareil, Rocket had a significantly greater maximum axle weight. In reality, of course, it's axle weight which matters as far as track damage is concerned, but the directors of the L&M didn't foresee Stephenson's ingenious means of working around their rules.

 

What that meant, though, was that although Stephenson's design was technically superior to the other competitors in many respects (only Novelty was, arguably, as advanced as Rocket), his choice of a single driver design - which he stuck with for his later developments for the L&M - was something of an evolutionary dead end as far as locomotive design was concerned. While, taken to its peak, the single driver design later gave us the iconic singles of the late Victorian era - the Stirling Single, the Dean Single, the Caley Single - it was outdated even before they were built.

 

But, in any case, the weight limit imposed by the L&M was unnecessary. The track could (and later, did) carry locomotives that were significantly heavier. Had Stephenson not been constrained by that limit, he would almost certainly have used his typical four-coupled wheelbase, but allied to the technical advances (multi-flue boiler, non-vertical cylinders) found in Rocket. That would have resulted in a better locomotive, with greater traction, and providing a better base for subsequent development.

 

Where that would have led is, of course, a matter of speculation. We wouldn't have had the Stirling Single. But we probably would have had heavier, larger and more powerful locomotives earlier. If locomotives had got more effective, earlier, Brunel may not have felt the need to use broad gauge for the GWR. And if locomotives - and the trains they hauled - had got bigger, earlier, we may have ended up with a track gauge closer to UIC standards that would have allowed for things like double decker trains that are common elsewhere.

 

This kind of alternate history, of course, in which Victorian invention proceeded faster than it did in reality, and made key discoveries earlier than it did in reality, is the basis for the steampunk genre. So rather than being a bit steampunky itself, as has been suggested elsewhere, maybe Rocket was the thing that stopped steampunk being reality and left it confined to fiction.

[pete_mcfarlane]

6 hours ago, Hal Nail said:

I particularly like the suggestion it was probably green in service - something akin to GWR but paler perhaps? 

Quite possibly. Brunswick green was a fairly common colour in Victorian times, not just for railway engines but anything else that needed to be hardwearing. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_green#Brunswick_green

 

 

[BernardTPM]

The Planet type begat from Rocket and Northumbrian fairly quickly evolved into the Patentee and these in turn to four and six-coupled variants, so I'm not so sure things were that different simply because of Rocket only having two driving wheels.

[Coppercap]

On 07/01/2020 at 20:57, eldomtom2 said:

Regarding the coach names, the promotional images show the regular versions to be "Despatch", "Experience", and "Times". I wonder if this isn't a mistake and the two sets of coaches haven't been swapped around, as these were the names used for the Tri-ang coaches.

The 'Tri-ang' version (R3809) is stated in the catalogue as having those names, despite there being video evidence that they may well be different.

[Butler Henderson]

The reason I raised the colour question was down to my 1980s Rocket having decidedly changed colour over the years - it had gone from being yellow to quite clearly orange!

[96701]

2 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

The reason I raised the colour question was down to my 1980s Rocket having decidedly changed colour over the years - it had gone from being yellow to quite clearly orange!

It's not a GBRF Class 66 is it? (see the amount of bolleaux on the Hatton's Class 66 thread).

[newbryford]

22 hours ago, Colin_McLeod said:

Probably Network Rail Yellow

 

Waits for one to appear on ebay with Network Rail stickers on...................

[Hroth]

10 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly a scale model is it.......just waiting for a RC to point out there is a missing lump of coal which was shown on the original graphic etching 

 

Or when pictures of the engine crew mouldings become available, someone points out that neither look like Robert Stephenson...

 

[Colin_McLeod]

10 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly a scale model is it.......just waiting for a RC to point out there is a missing lump of coal which was shown on the original graphic etching 

 

The model is based on five minutes later than the etch and the missing lump of coal is now in the firebox 

[Richard Lee]

I notice that both the limited edition and the normal train pack are shown as sold-out on pre-order at Hattons.  I am glad that I got my pre-order in on time.

Edit:  I think Kernow still have some.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Richard Lee
Added info

[Pre Grouping fan]

Kernow no longer have the Ltd Ed pack. Very few of the major online retailers do now. I will need to look round the smaller shops/websites but its hard to tell if they have stock left as many of the pages just have preorder with no stock level

[Compound2632]

A middle green seems to have been the colour for both Grand Junction and London & Birmingham locomotives and hence remained the LNWR colour up to the early seventies, so it's not unreasonable in the absence of other evidence to suppose that it was also the colour of Liverpool & Manchester engines, once things had settled down. cf. E. Talbot et al., LNWR Liveries (HMRS, 1985).

 

I feel there must be some compromise in the proportions of any 00 Rocket model to fit the boiler between the back-to-back of the driving wheels. The Airfix/Dapol kit seems to get round this by having the drivers too small or the boiler pitched too high or both. The new Hornby model seems to have these in the right relationship. Has the boiler been shrunk slightly, maybe in width only?

 

It would certainly make an interesting P4 conversion:

 

 

[Robin Brasher]

My grandfather bought a static 00 gauge model of Rocket in the early 1950s. From memory the the locomotive was a copper colour while the tender was dark green. I don't know if the manufacturer did any research into the colours but I would have thought that it would have attracted more sales in yellow livery. 

[CF MRC]

The un-lagged boiler on the surviving Rocket is 3’4” diameter, so with lagging, just within the back to back measurement of 14.4mm for OO.  It has been stated elsewhere that the model is to 4mm scale.  Conversion to P4 would probably not be very difficult.  I wonder what version of Rocket is shown in the photo with the Precursor(?).
 

Tim

Edited January 10, 2020 by CF MRC

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Or when pictures of the engine crew mouldings become available, someone points out that neither look like Robert Stephenson...

 

Looks a bit like his brother George though 

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, Colin_McLeod said:

 

The model is based on five minutes later than the etch and the missing lump of coal is now in the firebox 

Is it though......is it? 

[Colin_McLeod]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Is it though......is it? 

Nah.  It's burnt now, making its pioneer contribution to global warming.

[sandwich station]

3 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Looks a bit like his brother George though 

 

Father.  

[MarkSG]

7 hours ago, Richard Lee said:

I notice that both the limited edition and the normal train pack are shown as sold-out on pre-order at Hattons.  I am glad that I got my pre-order in on time.

Edit:  I think Kernow still have some.

 

Rails of Sheffield (in Sheffield) still have the standard pack, but not the limited edition. Trains4U don't seem to have either of them, at least not on the website. Hatton's, as you say, are out of both already. Kernow have the standard pack, but not the special. Cheltenham Model Centre are out of both already.

I've placed a pre-order with Rails for the standard pack. I did have half a mind to buy the limited edition, even though I generally don't go for special collector's editions. But, in this case, half a mind wasn't enough of a mind early enough, so the standard pack it is. I think I can live without a special box.