GWR King class front bogie

[johnofwessex]

On 09/02/2021 at 15:30, The Stationmaster said:

5002 had the driving wheels turned down to 6ft 6" but it was made sure that it had new tyres because turning them down that far was below scrapping size for the tyres on a 'Castle'.  the engine was run on all the 'crack trains' without any problems thus proc vinga driving wheel of that size was perfectly usable in normal service.

(Source K.J. Cook' book 'Swndon Steam 1921 - 51')

 

Then sufficient 'Kings' were built to carry out the heavier work expected of them.  All too easy to forget at this distance in time  that the 'Kings' were allowed loads as much as 40 - 50 tons greater than thoise for 'Castles'

 

Thinking about it, Bullied proved that a loco with 6ft2 whee;ls could run very fast and I am told that when a Western driver wanted speed, a Hall was the loco of choice with 6ft wheels, so what about a small wheeled Castle?  Might not have the top speed but it could make up for it in acceleration & going up hill.

[2251]

JE Chacksfield in CB Collettt -- a Competent Successor relates a story, for which no reference is given, and which may be of some interest.

 

The story is that at some point when the Kings were under consideration, Collett and CC Crump, the Running Superintendent, were travelling to Paddington on an express which was overtaken by an train running on the reliefs hauled by a 43XX 2-6-0 (they had 5'8" drivers). Crump wanted to reprimand the driver but Collett told him not to saying "This confirms a thought I have had recently."

 

After that, there was the test with 5002, Ludlow Castle.

[Michael Hodgson]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the King bogie was "designed by the tea-boy".

 

The story was that when the tea arrived in the design office it was explained to him that the heated argument was about whether the bogie should have outside or inside frames, both having problems - the rear of inside frames would foul the outside cylinders whilst the front of inside frames would foul the large inside cylinder.  And according to this story he suggested doing both, and when they had stopped laughing, somebody said it might just work.

[JimC]

2 hours ago, 2251 said:

JE Chacksfield in CB Collettt -- a Competent Successor 

The story is in Cook too. If only one could know the speeds and circumstances involved, because I understand that, with exceptions like the Cheltenham Flyer or when someone was getting one up on the LNER, GW 'express' drivers were in the habit of making a fast acceleration from a stop, but then cruising at about 60mph to the next station, and a 43 doing a bit in excess of 60mph would surely be unremarkable. 

 

I suppose, he speculated, that if maximum speed wasn't really a requirement, giving the Kings as much power as they could transmit into the rails without making them too prone to slip was the right way to get a locomotive to handle really heavy trains. 

[melmerby]

15 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

Thinking about it, Bullied proved that a loco with 6ft2 whee;ls could run very fast and I am told that when a Western driver wanted speed, a Hall was the loco of choice with 6ft wheels, so what about a small wheeled Castle?  Might not have the top speed but it could make up for it in acceleration & going up hill.

And a Grange with 5' 8" wheels could keep up with a Hall on most duties as it had more bottom end grunt to get the train moving.

 

There's a tale of an up Express from Wolverhampton arriving at Leamington(?) for a change of crew and the driver handing over said, "I'm sorry it's only a Grange but the usual Castle wasn't available." The relieving driver said "Nevermind a 68 will do nicely" and took the train on to Paddington arriving on time.

 

I don't know how true that was but the Granges appeared to be well liked.

 

EDIT

If a Castle was fitted with 6' 2" wheels, all else being the same, they would have had slightly more TE than a MN with 250psi

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by melmerby

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

And a Grange with 5' 8" wheels could keep up with a Hall on most duties as it had more bottom end grunt to get the train moving.

 

There's a tale of an up Express from Wolverhampton arriving at Leamington(?) for a change of crew and the driver handing over said, "I'm sorry it's only a Grange but the usual Castle wasn't available." The relieving driver said "Nevermind a 68 will do nicely" and took the train on to Paddington arriving on time.

 

I don't know how true that was but the Granges appeared to be well liked.

 

EDIT

If a Castle was fitted with 6' 2" wheels, all else being the same, they would have had slightly more TE than a MN with 250psi

 

'Granges' were very well liked and the cognoscenti among experienced Enginemen definitely preferred them to 'Halls' because of the extra 'bottom end' power they delivered and their far better hill climbing ability.  Everybody I ever spoke to who had worked the heavy potato or tomato trains out of Weymouth up the bank said the Grange was by far the better of the two and could run faster as well.  They had the advantage of having a larger steam chest.  I always wonder what might have happened if the original Churchward scheme proposal for a 4-6-0 with 5ft 8" driving wheels had gone ahead as we might never have seen the 2-6-0s (except perhaps in limited numbers for certain secondary lines?) or the 'Halls'

[Miss Prism]

38 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I always wonder what might have happened if the original Churchward scheme proposal for a 4-6-0 with 5ft 8" driving wheels had gone ahead 

 

4- or 2-cylinder? (I assume 2.)

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by Miss Prism

[2251]

Two cylinder. Churchward's 1901 standard design scheme can be summarised like this:

 

 

[The Johnster]

A Churchward Grange would presumbably have performed in much the same way as the Collett one did, assuming it had a similar steam chest capacity.  In the event the success of the 43xx, more than adequate in Edwardian days for it's work, rendered it unneccessary and it was put back until Collett's time, when the 43xx were beginning to find themselves overloaded a bit, and, significantly, after the success of the Saint Martin conversion had established the Hall concept as the 'go to' mixed traffic type for the GW; had it preceded this I would imaging that 300 or so more Granges would have been built and the Halls restricted to Saint rebuilds with 6' or possibly 5'8" wheels to extend their useful lives.

 

Canton men I spoke to in the 70s reckoned the Halls were good engines, but that the Granges had the edge on them, especially if there was hilly work to be done (down line, North to West).  A common comment, and the consensus, was that the Granges were 'half a coach stronger' and as fast a a Hall.  I always put this down to the driving wheels, but Mike's comment has reminded me of the importance of getting the capacity of the steam chest right as well.

 

Driving wheel size is, IMHO, a matter thar related to the recieved wisdom of the 19th century, which is when most of the 20th century's steam CMEs cut their teeth and learned the rudiments of their trade.  And that recieved wisdom was that, if you wanted to go fast, a big wheel was beneficial to keep piston speeds down and reduce wear on the big end bearings as the axle turned that much slower.  Look how readily the likes of Dean, Johnson, and Stirling, reverted to single drives with big wheels when steam sanding was available.  By the second quarter of the 20th century, it had been accepted that the previous reluctance to use 6-coupled locos for fast work had been outdated by the improvments in bearing materials and lubrication now available, but express locos still had the biggest wheels the designers could get beneath the new big fat boilers that the increased loads and speeds needed. 

 

An impasse had been reached by the outbreak of the second war, as the loading gauge permitted no upward repositioning of the boilers, which were already demanding smoke lifting apparatus because of the low height of the chimneys.  Bullied's new Merchant Navy class was introduced during the war, and claimed that it's 6'2" driving wheels justified it's being considered as a mixed traffic loco, and the following light pacifics including BR's followed suit.  Experience with the Riddles 9Fs showed that they could easily manage all but the fasted express timings, and could equal the fastest if pushed, notwithstanding a driving wheel that would have been considered on the small side for a Victorian mixed traffic 'goods' loco. 

 

One can only speculate what a Gresley A4 or Stanier Duchess might have done with 6'2"  driving wheels, and perhaps slightly bigger boilers.  The above suggests that they would still have been able to run up to the 90-100mph mark with full loads; the smaller drivers would probably necessitate a stop at Newcastle or Carlisle as coal would be getting thin by then, but all but a very few trains stopped at those places anyway.  A few locos with larger drivers for limited load non-stop flyers would have sufficed. 

 

The Hall was highly inflential and the 6' driving wheel found it's way on to the Black 5 and the B1, but earlier mixed traffic 4-6-0s, like the Urie S15s, Raven B16s, and the Highland's 'Jones Goods' had shown what could be done with Grange sized driving wheels; it may in the end have not been the best choice.  The S15 was as good as anything in the country when it was first built and for a long time afterwards as well for this sort of work, a loco that should IMHO have been more influential than it was.

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

'Granges' were very well liked and the cognoscenti among experienced Enginemen definitely preferred them to 'Halls' because of the extra 'bottom end' power they delivered and their far better hill climbing ability.  Everybody I ever spoke to who had worked the heavy potato or tomato trains out of Weymouth up the bank said the Grange was by far the better of the two and could run faster as well.  They had the advantage of having a larger steam chest.  I always wonder what might have happened if the original Churchward scheme proposal for a 4-6-0 with 5ft 8" driving wheels had gone ahead as we might never have seen the 2-6-0s (except perhaps in limited numbers for certain secondary lines?) or the 'Halls'

Does beg the question of why more Halls were built, right up to 1950, but no more Granges after 1938?

Edited February 11, 2021 by rodent279

[JimC]

31 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Does beg the question of why more Halls were built, right up to 1950, but no more Granges after 1938?

They never built all new Granges,  I've never really understood why not. They were all nominal rebuilds, which according to one source, maybe Cook, used about half of the 43. Another puzzle is that I understand that when Didcot bought their Hall they bought it rather than a Grange, because the Grange was more expensive as it had a greater amount of non ferrous metal in it so a greater scrap value. I've never heard why that should be. But if a Hall was cheaper than a Grange maybe that's why Halls were built. But as I say, I don't understand why that should be.

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, JimC said:

They never built all new Granges,  I've never really understood why not. They were all nominal rebuilds, which according to one source, maybe Cook, used about half of the 43. Another puzzle is that I understand that when Didcot bought their Hall they bought it rather than a Grange, because the Grange was more expensive as it had a greater amount of non ferrous metal in it so a greater scrap value. I've never heard why that should be. But if a Hall was cheaper than a Grange maybe that's why Halls were built. But as I say, I don't understand why that should be.

I thought they were only nominal rebuilds, in the sense that the wheels and motion were reused, and not much else. Arguably more of a rebuild than the Royal Scots though, which were essentially new locos with secondhand wheels and cabs.

Edited February 11, 2021 by rodent279

[JimC]

It would be interesting to see a price list for a locomotive back in the day... I've heard it said that the motion is one of the most expensive parts of the locomotive because of all the work needed on it.

Presumably the numbers exist for say Tornado, but I would have thought they were very different today compared to the costs for a fully equipped factory.

[D826]

Talking of Kings, I came across this.  Haven't watched it all yet, but thought provoking.

 

Best regards

 

Matt W

[DCB]

On 08/02/2021 at 19:00, The Johnster said:

 

 

*In 1950, Swindon managed to prove that a Dean Goods could out perform and out steam an Ivatt 2MT mogul, and then improved the Ivatt to be able to haul 20 coaches on the level at 60mph.  So, what, that's a reason to build more 4 cylinder de Glehn 4-6-0s over 2 cylinder modern pacifics?  Or maybe more Dean Goods' to replace Ivatt 2MTs?

 

 

To be fair the Ivatt had a better cab.   I don't remember many De Glehn's shedding their tenders or slide bars?  Maybe comparing like with like its a King with a Clan....

[JimC]

Worth remembering, though, that a Dean Goods in 1950 wasn't really all that much like it had been in 1890, it had been superheated, redraughted, increased boiler pressure, belpaire fire box, maintained with closer tolerances etc etc. Roughly the same shape cab though.

Edited February 12, 2021 by JimC

[Tankerman]

On 11/02/2021 at 16:29, The Stationmaster said:

'Granges' were very well liked and the cognoscenti among experienced Enginemen definitely preferred them to 'Halls' because of the extra 'bottom end' power they delivered and their far better hill climbing ability.  Everybody I ever spoke to who had worked the heavy potato or tomato trains out of Weymouth up the bank said the Grange was by far the better of the two and could run faster as well.  They had the advantage of having a larger steam chest.  I always wonder what might have happened if the original Churchward scheme proposal for a 4-6-0 with 5ft 8" driving wheels had gone ahead as we might never have seen the 2-6-0s (except perhaps in limited numbers for certain secondary lines?) or the 'Halls'

 

When I was a member of Falmouth Model Railway Club, very many years ago now, we were given a talk by someone from Newton Abbott shed. After his talk he asked if anybody had any questions, someone then asked for his opinion on the best locomotive the GWR had built.

 

His reply was that the best locomotive was the 47XX 2-8-0's as they could be used for anything from an express to an unfitted goods and he wished far more of them had been built. He then said that west of Exeter the Granges were superior to any other locomotive. The size of the boiler, combined with 5ft 8in driving wheels, gave them the starting power and acceleration necessary to deal with the gradients and start/stop nature of running due to the short distance between the stations.

[The Stationmaster]

11 hours ago, Tankerman said:

 

When I was a member of Falmouth Model Railway Club, very many years ago now, we were given a talk by someone from Newton Abbott shed. After his talk he asked if anybody had any questions, someone then asked for his opinion on the best locomotive the GWR had built.

 

His reply was that the best locomotive was the 47XX 2-8-0's as they could be used for anything from an express to an unfitted goods and he wished far more of them had been built. He then said that west of Exeter the Granges were superior to any other locomotive. The size of the boiler, combined with 5ft 8in driving wheels, gave them the starting power and acceleration necessary to deal with the gradients and start/stop nature of running due to the short distance between the stations.

I wonder if he'd ever fired a 47XX working hard to keep time ona passenger train?  A lot of Old Oak men who had fired on them hated them on passenger work because of the way they ate coal.  The problem being down to the lever reverse and the inability to 'wind back' the reverser or even consistently being able to shorten the cut-off on the lever because of the lack of chances for the Drib ver to do so.  Hence when running hard there was a tendency to leave them  with a long cut-off and that meant higher coal consumption and a harder job for the Fireman 

[lanchester]

On 11/02/2021 at 22:42, JimC said:

It would be interesting to see a price list for a locomotive back in the day... I've heard it said that the motion is one of the most expensive parts of the locomotive because of all the work needed on it.

Presumably the numbers exist for say Tornado, but I would have thought they were very different today compared to the costs for a fully equipped factory.

As it happens, there is a piece in the current 'Steam Railway' that quotes Black Five 5025 as costing new £5,540 which they equate to £4,067,168.80 in today's money. Now, converting values is a notorious minefield (modern labour rates are much higher, but costs for materials and techy stuff including machinery are often much lower relative to what they were) but that puts a production-series 5 in the same ball-park cost as a one-off A1 or P2 modern rebuild!

 

Certainly, manufacturing of precision parts such as motion is far cheaper nowadays - not only machining, but even forging, can be largely computer-controlled to 'right first time' standards,; much less fitting and fettling and scrapping etc.

 

Peppercorn's A1s were costed at around £14 -15, 000 in 1948/9. Using the National Archive's currency converter for 1950, £14,000 comes out at £4,369,204. Again, in the ballpark for a modern rebuild! We can conclude that modern manufacturing, even of old technology, is remarkably more efficient even if we have to pay the staff a decent wage and allowing for volunteer input and firms offering services 'at cost' as many have done for Tornado etc.; and that the write off of major capital assets less than half way through their budgeted life was absolutely scandalous, although as far as I know never challenged in the then climate (starting under MacMillan but that culminated in the Wilson govt vision of the 'white heat of technology' - of course, the decisions on the railway had been largely taken before Wilson, but the Civil Servant advisors were the same, and Wilson and the ineffable Benn did accelerate this destruction of capital).

 

Approaches to accounting for these things have, mostly rightly, changed over time (to a point - we still have 'Concorde syndrome' where we can't stop doing something expensive because we have already spent so much: you may or may not view HS2 in this light). But that commitment to future possibly unwise expenditure is a little different to deliberately abandoning assets that have already been paid for?

[JimC]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 The problem being down to the lever reverse 

Dusty Durrant tells us that one of his jobs in the Swindon drawing office in the 1950s was to design a screw reverse implementation for the 47s. He was disappointed that it never happened.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, JimC said:

Dusty Durrant tells us that one of his jobs in the Swindon drawing office in the 1950s was to design a screw reverse implementation for the 47s. He was disappointed that it never happened.

Maybe on 4709?

I don't know how exact the replica will be compared to the original locos.

[JimC]

2 hours ago, lanchester said:

the write off of major capital assets less than half way through their budgeted life was absolutely scandalous,

Ah well, that's where, I suggest,  it gets complicated. They were certainly written off partway through their potential life, but what was the budgeted life? The GWR which I study is full of examples of locomotives running far less than their potential life, but what was budgeted? Tornado, the last Broad gauge Rover, was completed in July 1888, and ran only 192,000 miles before the end of the Broad gauge in May 1892. No-one could have been under any illusion that she'd run a normal lifespan, but in the meantime the trains had to be hauled.

Its inevitable, I think, that stock built in advance of a major changeover will run a short life, but it may well be that even with a short life building new will be more cost effective than keeping a bunch of old crocks running way beyond their economic lifespan. Having said that its obvious that in the early 60s there was a major policy change, and the date for the end of steam was brought forward, but was that purely prestige, or were there also genuine economic reasons?

Edited August 28, 2021 by JimC

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, JimC said:

Ah well, that's where, I suggest,  it gets complicated. They were certainly written off partway through their potential life, but what was the budgeted life? The GWR which I study is full of examples of locomotives running far less than their potential life, but what was budgeted? Tornado, the last Broad gauge Rover, was completed in July 1888, and ran only 192,000 miles before the end of the Broad gauge in May 1892. No-one could have been under any illusion that she'd run a normal lifespan, but in the meantime the trains had to be hauled.

Its inevitable, I think, that stock built in advance of a major changeover will run a short life, but it may well be that even with a short life building new will be more cost effective than keeping a bunch of old crocks running way beyond their economic lifespan. Having said that its obvious that in the early 60s there was a major policy change, and the date for the end of steam was brought forward, but was that purely prestige, or were there also genuine economic reasons?

And you also need to define  'a normal lifespan' if you are to make any meaningful sense of the capital cost over the life of anything.    Judging by later Swindon figures for mileages between various levels of works attention I would think  'Tornado' had already undergone at least one shopping before withdrawal and would be approaching, or past, the need for major work at that sort of milage.  So avoided repair/overhaul costs will become at least as important as original capital cost and there is then the matter of reusable components and/or scrap value.

 

As far as the end oof steam is concerned there were numerous reasons.  The principal one was undoubtedly reduction of operating costs (albeit at the expense of massive capital investment) but labour problems were definitely a factor as recruitment was becoming increasingly difficult as many mre attractive jobs were appearing in the labour market.  And that meant not just the driving and firing aspect but also the large labour needed at running sheds involving a lot of unpleasant low-skilled (and therefore poorly paid) work.  i suspect, but don't know, that the cost of coal compared with gas oil/diesel was probably another factor as was the cost of moving that coal to running sheds and removing the resultant ash & clinker from them.   Decline in coal qulaity might have played a part but was perhaps a far lesser consideration.

Edited August 29, 2021 by The Stationmaster

[Tankerman]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

And you also need to define  'a normal lifespan' if you are to make any meaningful sense of the capital cost over the life of anything.    Judging by later Swindon figures for mileages between various levels of works attention I would think  'Tornado' had already undergone at least one shopping before withdrawal and would be approaching, or past, the need for major work at that sort of milage.  So avoided repair/overhaul costs will become at least as important as original capital cost and there is then the matter of reusable components and/or scrap value.

 

As far as the end oof steam is concerned there were numerous reasons.  The principal one was undoubtedly reduction of operating costs (albeit at the expense of massive capital investment) but labour problems were definitely a factor as recruitment was becoming increasingly difficult as many mre attractive jobs were appearing in the labour market.  And that meant not just the driving and firing aspect but also the large labour needed at running sheds involving a lot of unpleasant low-skilled (and therefore poorly paid) work.  i suspect, but don't know, that the cost of coal compared with gas oil/diesel was probably another factor as was the cost of moving that coal to running sheds and removing the resultant ash & clinker from them.   Decline in coal qulaity might have played a part but was perhaps a far lesser consideration.

 

Regarding the cost of coal compared to oil, I was told by someone that worked at Truro shed that the reason for Cornwall/West Devon being completely changed to diesel traction very early on was that the saving in transporting oil, instead of coal from the mines, to the various loco sheds was a very significant one.

[MarkC]

On 11/02/2021 at 20:17, The Johnster said:

 

 

The Hall was highly inflential and the 6' driving wheel found it's way on to the Black 5 and the B1

Not quite - the B1 has 6'2" drivers, which means that Network Rail's arbitrary rules, based on driving wheel diameter, limit Black 5s to 60mph, unless derogation is applied for, but the B1 can run at 75mph. (We all know that Black 5s often ran in excess of 60mph "back in the day", of course, but...).

 

Apologies for thread drift.

 

Mark