Worst looking locomotive topic. Antidote to Best Looking Locomotive topic.

[2251]

52 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

And the suspension - what were those long rods made of?

 

I assume they were wrought iron forgings. What is peculiar is not what they are made of, but what they did. 

 

The suspension for the driver was not normal springs, but instead four rubber discs in the cylinder visible in the photo, the load from which was then transferred by the rods to the bracket mounted on the boiler. They must have deflected under load because they were in compression not tension.

 

The Engineer supplement for 16 December 1910 contains some drawings.

 

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, 2251 said:

What is peculiar is not what they are made of, but what they did. 

 

My thought was that off-axis loads would have been challenging for the materials of the day.

[The Johnster]

They probably were, but the broader gauge should  have meant that the loco rode more steadily than it would have on standard gauge, so the side to side motion at least would have been lessened.  I imagine broken springs were not uncommon all the same! 

[pete_mcfarlane]

Note how the splashers block access along the footplate to the front of the loco, so the designer has helpfully provided an almost full length footboard so the fireman can still top up the oil boxes on the move. Not sure I'd want to do that at 80mph.  

Edited November 27, 2020 by pete_mcfarlane

[rodent279]

40 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Note how the splashers block access along the footplate to the front of the loco, so the designer has helpfully provided a almost full length footboard so the fireman can still top up the oil boxes on the move. Not sure I'd want to do that at 80mph.  

I'm not sure I'd want to be anywhere near those driving wheels at anything over about a walking place.

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Note how the splashers block access along the footplate to the front of the loco, so the designer has helpfully provided a almost full length footboard so the fireman can still top up the oil boxes on the move. Not sure I'd want to do that at 80mph.  

 

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Note how the splashers block access along the footplate to the front of the loco, so the designer has helpfully provided a almost full length footboard so the fireman can still top up the oil boxes on the move. Not sure I'd want to do that at 80mph.  

 

Hence also, the railed platforms on Russian steam locomotives - required by law in Tsarist days and just kept, ever since. I don’t suppose it’s any worse than the American practice of brakesmen walking along the roofs of moving boxcars, or the sort of thing expected of shunters....

[pete_mcfarlane]

That kind of thing wasn't just dangerous for the crew. I've just finished the Bradley book on early LSWR locomotives, and he mentions a low speed crash caused by a loco working tender first into a blizzard. The crew having left the (cab less) footplate to shelter behind the smokebox and so weren't keeping a lookout. 

[HonestTom]

Some curiosities of logging railways:

 

[maico]

Bachmann US logging loco

[EddieB]

An excellent model of a very practical solution to the problem of providing power on uneven track.  Where the rigidity of a conventional steam locomotive would cause derailments, geared locomotives such as a Shay (as modelled), a Climax or a Heisler were widely used in the Americas and East Asia.  Just because they look different doesn’t make them ugly.

[The Johnster]

Things of great beauty in their way.  I would be inclined (as the originator of the thread) to not regard ‘locomotives’ clearly cobbled together to suit local conditions in remote forests with whatever happened to be at hand as being in any way ugly or lacking in style; they are as pure an example of form following (dis)function as one is ever likely to encounter, and I love ‘em!

 

What's not to love about a loco that uses old cable drums as driving wheels?  No less than 14 lumberjacks (and they’re OK) are so proud of their creation in the last photo that they have photobombed it, and surely the problem that I can’t with any certainty decide what ‘it’ is, never mind how it functions, is irrelevant set against that!!!

 

Magnificent...

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Hence also, the railed platforms on Russian steam locomotives - required by law in Tsarist days and just kept, ever since. I don’t suppose it’s any worse than the American practice of brakesmen walking along the roofs of moving boxcars, or the sort of thing expected of shunters....

That's always seemed a strange anomaly. From 1893 American law requred couplers that didn't need crews to go between the cars as they had with the former link and pin couplers*  yet brakemen were still required to run along the roof walks (in a N. American winter !) screwing down brakes,  whereas their European counterparts sat in little hutches with their brake wheel. They didn't stop fitting roof walks till the 1960s and they didn't disappear completely till the 1980s though once air brakes became standard they usually only had to go along the tops of the cars setting brakes when trains were stopped- at least that was the theory. 

 

* Still used on some British NG railways but, in the USA, replacing them with  AAR couplers reduced annual serious accidents involving coupling or uncopling cars from 11 000 to 2 000.  Apparently before then a yardman with all his fingers was quite rare.

[rockershovel]

On 27/11/2020 at 17:27, Pacific231G said:

That's always seemed a strange anomaly. From 1893 American law requred couplers that didn't need crews to go between the cars as they had with the former link and pin couplers*  yet brakemen were still required to run along the roof walks (in a N. American winter !) screwing down brakes,  whereas their European counterparts sat in little hutches with their brake wheel. They didn't stop fitting roof walks till the 1960s and they didn't disappear completely till the 1980s though once air brakes became standard they usually only had to go along the tops of the cars setting brakes when trains were stopped- at least that was the theory. 

 

* Still used on some British NG railways but, in the USA, replacing them with  AAR couplers reduced annual serious accidents involving coupling or uncopling cars from 11 000 to 2 000.  Apparently before then a yardman with all his fingers was quite rare.

 

Link and pin couplers are still common on industrial mining and tunnelling contractors’ stock, in gauges of 24” and 18”. Seen here on 24” gauge battery locos for the tunnel drives at Werrington. 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2020 by rockershovel

[Pacific231G]

45 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Link and pin couplers are still common on industrial mining and tunnelling contractors’ stock, in gauges of 24” and 18”. 

 

Indeed

In fact as I understand it the federal requirement only applies to RRs engage in interstate commerce, which would include even short lines connected to the national system but possibly not to other sorts of railways subject only to State law.

 

This is the anachronism  I most notice in westerns when trains are almost invariably coupled with AAR couplers and not link and pin.  They got it right in Buster Keaton's "The General" but that was filmed in 1925 on the Oregon, Pacific and Eastern RR that owned some suitably ancient equipment including two 4-4-0s (nos 4 & 5) These were bought by the film company and portrayed The General and The Texas (which was wrecked in the collapsing viaduct sequence). The O.P& E. was also, years later in 1972, the location for The Emperor of the North (Pole)  with Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine. I was modelling American RRs soon after that and remember the film including a pretty authentic portrayal of operating practices. Sadly the RR was abandoned in 1994 and is now part of a hiking trail.

 

This is all obviously OT for a discussion of  worst looking locomotives because IMHO those early American 4-4-0s were among the most handsome locos ever built.

[HonestTom]

The engine is just fine, but the paint job...

[auldreekie]

On 15/03/2020 at 21:17, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by auldreekie

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, HonestTom said:

The engine is just fine, but the paint job...

You think that's bad?

 

Try the 2nd video here.

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/983026020893843456

 

[auldreekie]

On 15/03/2020 at 21:17, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

 

Speaking of the Midland, how about the NCC's 3 foot gauge Atlantic tanks for ugliness? 

https://www.ballycastlehistory.com/meccano-magazine-1937.html 

 

 

 

 

I liked them well enough to make a 4mm scale (-ish) model of one,  albeit on 9mm gauge.

 

auldreekie

[rockershovel]

That yellow 4-4-0 is pretty ghastly, and the worst thing is that in those pre-vinyl days, it was probably in that form for some time..

 

I don’t think any Irish NG locos were ugly, some of them were quite handsome in a brutalist sort of way, but there are definitely a number which tend to being disproportionate, and there was a definite tendency to use wheel arrangements otherwise unknown on the narrow gauge. 

[pH]

32 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

That yellow 4-4-0 is pretty ghastly, and the worst thing is that in those pre-vinyl days, it was probably in that form for some time..

Mercifully, no. The withdrawal date shown on the ‘BR Database’ site is 5 days after the excursion. Derby works are supposed to have refused to do the repaint:

 

https://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/50s/590803dm.html

 

[HonestTom]

20 hours ago, kevinlms said:

You think that's bad?

 

Try the 2nd video here.

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/983026020893843456

 

On a fairly plain, slab-sided engine, I think that livery might not look totally awful. But the class 08 family has so many rectangular sticky-out bits that the pattern is totally lost. It just looks like a Smurf threw up.

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, HonestTom said:

On a fairly plain, slab-sided engine, I think that livery might not look totally awful. But the class 08 family has so many rectangular sticky-out bits that the pattern is totally lost. It just looks like a Smurf threw up.

 

Looks like a mobile public convenience. 

[The Johnster]

Not that mobile, it's a gronk...

[SteffanLlwyd]

GER 0-4-0 B74 looked good until cut down in conformity with LNER Y4.... kind of ‘ugly fantastic’ as a school friend used to say in the 1960s...