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Is this what William Stannier would have designed if he wanted a heavy goods tank engine.


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Hi all,

I was routing through my parts bins and came across a few bits and I started to think Is this what William Stannier would have designed if he wanted a heavy goods tank engine. So I thought I would have a go. So this is what I came up with. It was not too difficult to build. The steps were the worst part. It is currently a couple of mm to tall but I will correct this shortly. I would be interested In what you all think. 

DSC_0906.JPG

3mt 2.jpg

DSC_0907.JPG

Edited by cypherman
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There was a plan to produce a 2-8-4T but it didn't happen because of WW2.

 

Imagine a tank version of the 2-8-0 with equally spaced coupled wheels and a trailing 4 wheeled bogie. Then take the tanks, cab & bunker off the 2-6-4T. The boiler is the same as the 2-8-0.

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2 hours ago, cypherman said:

Hi all,

I was routing through my parts bins and came across a few bits and I started to think Is this what William Stannier would have designed if he wanted a heavy goods tank engine. So I thought I would have a go. So this is what I came up with. It was not too difficult to build. The steps were the worst part. It is currently a couple of mm to tall but I will correct this shortly. I would be interested In what you all think. Please ignore the 3mt as for some reason I cannot get rid of the picture. It just keeps reappearing.

DSC_0906.JPG

3mt 2.jpg

DSC_0907.JPG

Not bad, but maybe an 8F Chassis as well as a spare trailing truck might help? Also, it needs the LMS top-feed and the curled running-board at the front, too.

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Where is the ashpan in relation to the axles?

 

My gut feel is that the Stanier Team's response to a big goods engine brief would have looked a fair bit like a GWR 72xx, possibly with a rear bogie, rather than pony truck. Another way to look at it would be an 8F, with a bit stuck on the back, plus side-tanks. 

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3 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

There was a plan to produce a 2-8-4T but it didn't happen because of WW2.

 

Imagine a tank version of the 2-8-0 with equally spaced coupled wheels and a trailing 4 wheeled bogie. Then take the tanks, cab & bunker off the 2-6-4T. The boiler is the same as the 2-8-0.

Seen it done on a no more sophisticated basis than RTR Hornby parts, and the essential 'rightness' is present, such that many would accept it as a model of a loco that had really existed. (How about the Fowler 2-6-4T body and trailing bogie, with the mechanism from an SD&JR 7F? Not seen that done.)

 

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Hi all,

The chassis is a heavily modified 9F. Hence the 2-10-0 wheel arrangement. It was never meant to be anything more than a what if. Hence the lack of some of the more  smaller parts such as the LMS top feeds as have been mentioned earlier. Also I took one of my Wrenn 8F's and 2-6-4 tanks and found that the chassis is far too big to fit into the current body. The coal bunker would have to be substantially extended.

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16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Where is the ashpan in relation to the axles?

 

...

The design got no further than a weight diagram, and I'm not certain if that was submitted to the Civil Engineer. The would have to have been changes to the grate and/or the ashpan. It would have been the first locomotive to have had the ashpan fitted over an axle.

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16 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

It would have been the first locomotive

 

Did you mean wouldn't?

 

If so, I agree. I "grew up" with narrow-gauge things, mostly 2ft, and there it becomes a real challenge, but much less so in SG, where there is more width.

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We've been here before in Imaginary Locomotives.  My view FWIW is that route availability would have restricted the loco's usefulness if an already heavy beast like an 8F had side tanks and bunker fitted to it and an 8-coupled version of a 2-6-4T would not have had enough steam raising capacity to be much use over any sort of distance; of course tank engines are limited in range anyway by bunker capacity.  The GW 72xx was capable of loaded hauls Radyr to Exeter, Salisbury, Corby, and Shrewsbury on a bunker of coal, but had to take water at every possible opportunity; fortunately the trains were unfitted coal hauls that went inside everywhere anyway.  The 72xx was a way to use 2-8-0 tanks that were in storage; they were not worth building from scratch.

 

The GW 8-coupled tanks gave problems with tank leakage as rivetted seams were sprung by the flexing frames on the tight curves of the Western Valley, and a proposed 2-10-2T with a King boiler which was supposed to haul 35 iron ore hoppers up the valley without banking from Aberbeeg would have been a proper gusher.  In the end, 9Fs were used, banked from Aberbeeg.  It is difficult to find a job to match this or the Tyne Dock-Consetts on the LMS, though the Scottish Region of BR had the General Terminus Quay (Glasgow)-Ravenscraig haul from 1954, using WD 2-10-0s , but this had to wait for wharf expansion at General Terminus.

 

So we are left with the question of what would this loco, and similar imaginary 'this chassis under this body' proposals.  They are interesting, and good modelling challenges, but there is a reason they are imaginary; there was never any reason in reality to build them.  Super power steam has a very limited application in the UK, where the majority of routes are restricted by the size of loops and refuge sidings and signal clearances to trains of no more than 60 standard wagons in length, and this was close to the limit of the 3-link couplings used until instanters were adopted.

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