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Ex LNER U1 Garrett on the Lickey Incline


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14 hours ago, brack said:

There were a lot of garratt proposals for the big 4, often for passenger machines over steeply grade/slightly laid (or both) lines, such as the highland main line or the SR west of england lines. I can see an express passenger loco would have less need for change in infrastructure compared to a heavy freight loco.

The LMS Garratts used a boiler designed by Beyer Peacock and this was probably the best part of the entire engine. The running gear, cylinders and short lap / short travel valve gear was based on that of the S&DJR 2-8-0s, and was the probable cause of the high coal consumption and certainly of the high wear rates. The thirty production engines were given double exhaust ports, which helped a bit with the coal bill..

 

Although the Big Four might have considered Garratts for passenger work, problems shown by these 33 machines showed the potential issues, even without the Midland-inspired mechanical weaknesses. First off was their sheer physical size; they did not sit comfortably at any shed they visited, and the three to which they were only ever allocated, Wellingborough, Toton and Hasland, had to be somewhat modified to accommodate them. Secondly, they were too big for any turntable so they either found a triangle or ran a lot of the time in reverse. From the engines' point of view, that wasn't an issue, same as any other tank engine. But from a crew's viewpoint it was very different. No-one liked reverse running with coal dust blowing into the cab and all the controls to the driver's back. However acceptable these might have been on a slow mineral train, it would not work with an express passenger service, and the railway would have had to come up with a way to turn the engines to by chimney leading at the end of each trip, possible but an added complication.

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19 hours ago, brack said:
22 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

I fully agree, my speculation is that with highly effective garratts it might have pushed things more in that direction, at least for block movements

There comes a point where the haulage capability of the locomotive becomes limited by the strength of the drawgear on the wagons at the front of the train. Then again, with very long trains, managing them over successive changes of gradient calls for considerable skills on the part of both driver and guard to avoid drawgear damage.

 

Jim

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20 hours ago, brack said:

I might also question the use of 5'3" wheels for a loco intended for mineral haulage, though I know they were part of the same standard parts problem as much of the rest of the loco.

 

Probably just as well the driving wheels weren't smaller, the axle boxes were bad enough at it was, running the wheels faster for the same speed, would mean the RPM would be higher.

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30 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

There comes a point where the haulage capability of the locomotive becomes limited by the strength of the drawgear on the wagons at the front of the train. Then again, with very long trains, managing them over successive changes of gradient calls for considerable skills on the part of both driver and guard to avoid drawgear damage.

 

Jim

Except that was never going to happen.

 

While stronger drawbars and by their nature requiring bigger trains with automatic brakes (Air?), to make it worthwhile and safety of heavier trains, being on multiple changes of gradient at once.

The wagons were almost all 12 Ton mineral at the time of LMS Garratt construction and were almost exclusively PO wagons with a multitude of owners. The problem being that those owners, would never pay for bigger & better wagons, just so the LMS could run bigger trains, faster! Getting their wagons to Cricklewood was the railways problem, not theirs.

 

The Midland Railway had been trying to improve the standard of these wagons, since the 1870s at least, so nothing was about to change!

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46 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

The wagons were almost all 12 Ton mineral at the time of LMS Garratt construction and were almost exclusively PO wagons with a multitude of owners. The problem being that those owners, would never pay for bigger & better wagons, just so the LMS could run bigger trains, faster! Getting their wagons to Cricklewood was the railways problem, not theirs.

 

The Midland Railway had been trying to improve the standard of these wagons, since the 1870s at least, so nothing was about to change!

 

In the 30s, there would still have been a good number of pre-1923 10 ton PO wagons around and even some 8 ton wagons. True, the Midland had been leading on improved PO wagons, though really only with any success from the late 80s - T.G. Clayton, the Carriage & Wagon Superintendent, was Chair of the RCH wagon committee that produced the 1887 specification, though it could be argued that he didn't entirely help matters by standardising on an 8 ton wagon rather than a 10-tonner for mass-production by his own railway. 

 

All the LMS Garrats were doing was replacing two smaller engines with one large one on trains that continued to be worked in the same manner - probably the best that could be achieved in the circumstances.

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2 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

There comes a point where the haulage capability of the locomotive becomes limited by the strength of the drawgear on the wagons at the front of the train. Then again, with very long trains, managing them over successive changes of gradient calls for considerable skills on the part of both driver and guard to avoid drawgear damage.

 

Jim

Exactly so - which is precisely why rear end assistance would still have been required on many gradients.  the problem wasn't the weight of the train but the strength of wagon drawbars and headstocks.  it was not at all unknown on some gradients - which nowadays modern traction hardly notices - for drawbars, and occasionally headstocks,  to be pulled out of wagons when some clever clogs Driver set out to show how juat clever he was by not taking an assistant engine on the back of his train.  Something which privately owned coal wagons were particularly prone to even into the 1950s from what I was told by those who worked in such locations.

 

And in fact drawbar strength remained one of BR's particular concerns with the heaviest trains until the end of its days and in some respects continuous brakes made the problem even worse especially on an undulating road where the critical part was getting the brakes off quickly enough (one the few good points of the Class 56 diesels with the excellent compressor power which really could blow brakes off and keep them off, even after a train had parted).

 

19 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

Notwithstanding company parts bin issues, by no means all mineral train locos had relatively small driving wheels. The LNER O1 2-8-0 had 5ft 6", and the BR 9F

2-10-0 had 5' 0".

 

GWR practice seemed to be rooted in Churchward's 28xx 2-8-0 of 1912, with smallest driving wheels of this type of loco at 4' 71/2". Presumably they had different traffic needs from other companies, not having these Midlands/Yorkshire to London block coal workings requiring relative speed also. 

The GWR worked plenty of full load coal trains into the London area but the size of driving wheels didn't make very much difference with any unfitted mineral train because speeds were low and the key need was to be able to lift the train up gradients and far more importantly stop a train on a descending gradient; no one Railway could work such trains faster than any other railway.   Thanks to Churchward the GWR had plenty of mixed traffic engine for its faster freight workings.

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Now that's got me going back to D.L. Smith's Tales of the Glasgow & South Western. Possibly the most important thing was to be able to run fast enough to keep ahead of the broken-away portion chasing one down the hill, after a coupling had broken under the strain of the snatch on going over the summit.

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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Now that's got me going back to D.L. Smith's Tales of the Glasgow & South Western. Possibly the most important thing was to be able to run fast enough to keep ahead of the broken-away portion chasing one down the hill, after a coupling had broken under the strain of the snatch on going over the summit.

Unless I'm being slow, that doesn't make sense. On the climb to the summit, the couplings would all be in tension, and will remain in that state until, in simple terms, more than half the mass of the train passes the summit. At that point, the couplings will start to close up, which is hardly going to break them. I would have expected the problem to be at bottom of a dip, when the train transitions from leaning on the locomotive to hanging on the drawbar.

 

Jim

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There's a lot more to it than that, especially with a long train which might be on three opposed gradients simultaneously. Without a banker, the driver and guard should co-operate to try to keep the couplings taut all the time, not just when climbing. It isn't always achieved, but it can mean the loco being under power, if only slight, on the down grade. I've explained this before but when working the Whelley bypassing Wigan on the WCML, a banker was always taken and would do all the work, the train engine merely applying its brakes on the downgrades to keep, in this case, the buffers permanently closed up. Different situations called for different methods, but normally the driver who waited until the bottom of the dip before applying power stood a good chance of causing a break-away, and that with a 4F, never mind a Garratt! You'd start stretching them out earlier than that.

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48 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

Unless I'm being slow, that doesn't make sense. On the climb to the summit, the couplings would all be in tension, and will remain in that state until, in simple terms, more than half the mass of the train passes the summit. At that point, the couplings will start to close up, which is hardly going to break them. I would have expected the problem to be at bottom of a dip, when the train transitions from leaning on the locomotive to hanging on the drawbar.

 

The aim was to keep all the couplings taught all the time but I think what was going on was that as a portion of the train went over the summit, there could be a momentary slackening of a coupling - just a local effect as there was more weight behind a wagon from those behind it coming over the top; this coupling could be stressed again suddenly as the train accelerated, leading to breakage. Depending on where the break was in relation to the position of the rest of the train and the summit, the rear portion could roll back the way it had come or continue in pursuit of the front portion.

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6 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Except that was never going to happen.

 

While stronger drawbars and by their nature requiring bigger trains with automatic brakes (Air?), to make it worthwhile and safety of heavier trains, being on multiple changes of gradient at once.

The wagons were almost all 12 Ton mineral at the time of LMS Garratt construction and were almost exclusively PO wagons with a multitude of owners. The problem being that those owners, would never pay for bigger & better wagons, just so the LMS could run bigger trains, faster! Getting their wagons to Cricklewood was the railways problem, not theirs.

 

The Midland Railway had been trying to improve the standard of these wagons, since the 1870s at least, so nothing was about to change!

 

Perhaps before we talk about locos that might have been we need to talk about wagons that should have been..............

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13 hours ago, Ian Smeeton said:

I was just wondering who paid if a PO wagon headstock/drawgear broke in transit?

 

Railway? Wagon Owner?

 

Regards

 

Ian

The wagon owner would always pay for repairs hence they'd be caught for the cost of a pulled drawbar or headstock, which might also mean a bill from the Railway for any incidental costs.  Coupling shackles were kept  all over the place so would no doubt be replaced and a charge might not always be raised - whatever the accountancy instructions said.

 

15 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The aim was to keep all the couplings taught all the time but I think what was going on was that as a portion of the train went over the summit, there could be a momentary slackening of a coupling - just a local effect as there was more weight behind a wagon from those behind it coming over the top; this coupling could be stressed again suddenly as the train accelerated, leading to breakage. Depending on where the break was in relation to the position of the rest of the train and the summit, the rear portion could roll back the way it had come or continue in pursuit of the front portion.

Correctly handled there shouldn't be a slackening because the Guard should be getting his brake on as soon as there was insuffcient train weight still on the rising gradient to keep the couplings taut.  

 

Another problem that could cause a breakaway was a 'ruck' (some tomes pronounced 'rug') when the engine didn't apply power somoothly to pick up the coupling slack.   LMS ' Austin 7s' had a particularly bad reputation for this apparently and a good many years a former boss of mine (who was ex LMS) suggested that I should ask my new boss (who had been a Goods Guard on the LMS) what he thought of Austin 7s?   The answer was a very long way from polite and it turned out they were hated with considerable venom on the part of Goods Guards because they seemed to be incapable of smoothly 'picking up' a train (i.e gradually taking up the slack in the wagon couplings giving the Guard a very rough time and occasionally breaking wagon couplings.

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The Austin 7s were originally fitted with a double beat regulator which could open suddenly but could also be very difficult to close. They were later modified to a grid type, although I'm not sure all engines were modified.

 

They were inherited from the LNWR, the Austin 7's boiler being a development of that on the Super Ds, but I haven't heard that the Ds had the snatching problem, but the could certainly be a bu@@er to close! It has the be said that the 7s were a much more powerful engine than the Ds.

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2 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

It has the be said that the 7s were a much more powerful engine than the Ds.

 

That's interesting. They were both 7F and the Austin 7 had only slightly greater nominal TE than the G2.

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True, but power and T.E. aren't the same thing. The D's valve gear was Joys, and with good valve events for the day (late 19th Century) while the Austin 7's, despite its Derby heritage, was long lap -- long travel Walschaert's. The boiler pressure was also upped to 200 p.s.i. from the G2 / G2a's 175, and 160 for earlier types of the breed.

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On 22/06/2020 at 05:23, LMS2968 said:

Secondly, they were too big for any turntable so they either found a triangle or ran a lot of the time in reverse. 

Wasn't a special loop line built at the southern end of the MML - at Brent? - specifically to turn the Garratts?

 

Mark

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8 hours ago, MarkC said:

Wasn't a special loop line built at the southern end of the MML - at Brent? - specifically to turn the Garratts?

 

There was, but it long pre-dated the Garratts. It enabled light engines to get from the up sidings to Cricklewood shed without having to cross the running lines. It's on the 1912 OS 25" map but not the 1897 edition.

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14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

There was, but it long pre-dated the Garratts. It enabled light engines to get from the up sidings to Cricklewood shed without having to cross the running lines. It's on the 1912 OS 25" map but not the 1897 edition.

I thought it was something like that, but wasn't sure so left it to someone who would know!

 

In any case, it wasn't replicated elsewhere and the Garratts spent much running time with the chimney at the trailing end.

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1 minute ago, LMS2968 said:

In any case, it wasn't replicated elsewhere and the Garratts spent much running time with the chimney at the trailing end.

 

Presumably, if you worked a Toton-Brent chimney first, you'd be chimney first coming back but the next fellow would have the misfortune of doing the round trip bunker first. I wonder if rosters were worked out so as not to lumber one driver with all the bunker-first trips that week?

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On 17/06/2020 at 06:43, LMS2968 said:

I understand that the LNER Garratt was tried - very briefly - at the head of trains and, like Big Bertha from the Lickey, quickly returned to banking duties.

 

Colour-Rail slide BRE 140 shows just this. 69999 at the head of a goods train, said to be at Dewsnap although the background looks a little too rural for there. Anyway, it is a 4-track section and catenary appears to be in place. 

 

 

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There was no problem because they simply worked bunker first; have a trawl through web photos of them on trains to see how often this happened. No, it wasn't a problem because of the low speed, but it wasn't convenient for the crews.

 

This part of the story came up due to the Big Fours' looking at Garratts for passenger traffic, where it would have been a problem. And while there might have been triangles available, using them was an operational inconvenience. Crewe turned Pacifics from the north by sending them to Shrewsbury on a local passenger to turn on the triangle there rather than anywhere at Crewe, so they returned head north, ready for the next express to Carlisle, Glasgow or Perth. Using a triangle occupied a path, and in busy areas where large passenger termini might be sited, these weren't always easy to come by.

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