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Panniers or saddle?


spikey
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In other words it was cheaper, and quicker to put straight panniers tanks on a loco, than fabricate a saddle-tank around the awkward shape of Belpaire firebox, and tapered boiler??

edit, I thought I'd add, regards water 'sloshing' in side tanks, didn't most tank engines have 'anti-surge' plates?? (Except the 'Rivers'!!!!)

Edited by bike2steam
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45 minutes ago, bike2steam said:

edit, I thought I'd add, regards water 'sloshing' in side tanks, didn't most tank engines have 'anti-surge' plates?? (Except the 'Rivers'!!!!)

 

Large passenger tank engines, after the Rivers. The Great Western tapered tanks on the 2-6-2Ts &c were I think originally for forward visibility but the tapering helped reduce surging; likewise the reduced height of the tanks to clear the outside motion on LMS, LNER, and BR standard 2-6-4Ts.

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1 hour ago, bike2steam said:

In other words it was cheaper, and quicker to put straight panniers tanks on a loco, than fabricate a saddle-tank around the awkward shape of Belpaire firebox ...........

Yes, but lots of industrial saddle tank locos had the tank forward of the firebox so its shape would have been of no consequence !

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43 minutes ago, Wickham Green said:

Yes, but lots of industrial saddle tank locos had the tank forward of the firebox so its shape would have been of no consequence !

But the capacity would have been severely reduced.

Ray.

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20 hours ago, spikey said:

 

Ahah!  Thanks, JImC.  So I guess the boiler is clad pretty much as usual, the panniers butt up against that with the weight taken on those supports, and the straps over the top just hold the whole shebang together.

 

Right ho - all we need to know now is what exactly takes the weight of a saddle tank full of water, and is there cladding all the way round the boiler under it?

From those which I saw in. traffic days with a tank taken off, including a 97XX in the Factory at Old Oak, the boiler was definitely clad as normal.  Obvious when you think about it because otherwise the boiler would be heating the water in the tanks - not at all helpful ;) 

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Am I right in thinking that the usual way of supporting a saddle tank is on brackets off the boiler (around which the boiler cladding would fit) whereas pannier tanks were supported on brackets coming up under the boiler from the frames, with bracing plates across the top of the boiler?

 

As far as I can make out, side tanks were typically supported by the frames on the inside and the platform angle (valance) on the outside, and stayed at the top to fixings attached to the boiler.

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6 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

The LBSCR in Craven days had a number of pannier tanks, such as this shunter that ended up on a Welsh railway.

image.jpeg.4127f72d32ac42a5b0889c5c44ba8315.jpeg

 

Photo courtesy of Dave Searle and the Brighton Circle website.

 

 

 

 

Good lord, it's got the chimney off the Triang 2721!

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4 hours ago, doilum said:

Must Google it. One I haven't heard of before before. Everyday a learning day!

Just looked. Not the prettiest is it.

No, but it was considered very advanced for it's day with it's Belpaire firebox, and was designed and built at Dowlais works.  There were several broadly similar locos built there, including an outside cylinder version and an 0-6-0.  It has obvious attractions as a basic starter 0-4-0 prototype; inside cylinders, bulky body to hide motors and gears, and the ability to negotiate no.1 curves,  Hornby have turned it out in many fictional liveries, but they've done that with the Holden 101 and Smokey Joe as well.  It is almost the epitome of a toy loco in appearance!

 

Photos of 0-6-0T 'Sandyford', named in conjunction with a Royal Visit like King George V and Queen Mary, in 1912 IIRC, and both saddle and pannier long-boilereds.  There were also the usual collection of Pecketts, Avonsides, Sharp Stewarts, Kitsons and so on.

 

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5 hours ago, bike2steam said:

In other words it was cheaper, and quicker to put straight panniers tanks on a loco, than fabricate a saddle-tank around the awkward shape of Belpaire firebox, and tapered boiler??

 

It might have been cheaper still to replace the saddle tanks with side tanks, but that would have compromised the access to oiling points between the frames that was one the desirable features of saddle tanks in the first place.  Whatever the actual advantages of Belpaires, Churchward standardised on them for all new boiler construction and this remained GW policy until the end of steam.  Some locos converted to pannier tanks reverted to saddle when spare pre-Belpaire boilers were fitted at overhauls.  Of course, a pre-Belpaire boiler could not be retrofitted to locos originally built as pannier tanks, 57xx and all subsequent.

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1 minute ago, doilum said:

The six coupled is better proportioned

No argument there, but the overhang is still huge and nobody'd call the loco handsome!  These locos were successful and in service for many years, though.

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Spikey

An injector works by condensing the steam supply to it with the feed water, if the feed water is warm/hot the condensing is less or none and there will be insufficient energy to bridge the gap between the combining cone and the delivery cone so no boiler feed. Early injectors were notoriously unreliable so locos were fitted with a pump, usually driven from the crosshead but later on as an self driven item using an auxiliary steam supply from the boiler. There are two principal reasons why British practice moved away from pumps, the crosshead pump would only feed when the loco was moving, and third party pumps, Worthington, Weir etc would attract a royalty payment which railway companies avoided like the plague. This was also the most significant element that so delayed the introduction of air braking. The other benefit of injectors is that they have no moving parts and as such should be more reliable.

Regards

Martin

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