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1 minute ago, CF MRC said:

Little bit of progress since 1984...

61E9C90E-B2D6-4192-8FF8-234D41186816.jpe

photo courtesy of Pekka Siiskonen.

 

Tim

 

Those support boxes with the fold out door are just like JBS's Totnes - a great idea in theory but bally heavy!

 

Jerry

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2 minutes ago, CF MRC said:

Membership of the MRC is cheaper than a gym, Jerry. We like to see all our team match fit and honed by working out...

 

Tim

 

you know me Tim - body, temple........ gravity has taken its toll over the years!

 

Jerry

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4 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Good afternoon Richard,

 

So KING WILLIAM 111 was the same as GRAND PARADE in that it was effectively a brand new loco built (out of spare parts?) to replace one wrecked in an accident? 

 

Regarding the Crosti 9Fs, the pre-heaters were actually removed by the sixties (making them eight-and-a-halfFs), though all retained their 'hamster cheek' smokeboxes.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Tony

 

So my source tells me, yes it was.

 

I hope you and Mo are keeping well.

 

Best wishes.

 

p.s. Say hi to Geoff H from me when you next see him.

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29 minutes ago, Richard E said:

 

Tony

 

So my source tells me, yes it was.

 

I hope you and Mo are keeping well.

 

Best wishes.

 

p.s. Say hi to Geoff H from me when you next see him.

Richard,

 

We're very well, thank you; as I hope you are, too. 

 

I'll be seeing Geoff soon when he delivers more models for photography. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

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The new Hornby A2/3 is already in the process of having its identity changed................

 

1512676120_HornbyA236051206.jpg.192353073f63dde86a9bd4a77499279e.jpg

 

I thought there might have been a problem with the relative lengths of name.

 

1812993609_HornbyA236051207.jpg.15160c8f586acc014979b46b6e039b74.jpg

 

Not at all, and the original printed name gives an excellent guide for positioning. The new nameplates are from 247 Developments. 

 

991980977_HornbyA236051208.jpg.846e433e08557018e6012e1130df6670.jpg

 

The best way of telling if a numeral has been successfully removed is to photograph it.

 

1823168059_HornbyA236051209.jpg.aefb189de0503b27eba0f679ccb4c678.jpg

 

Though the replacement numeral is the right size (HMRS 'Pressfix') it's not quite the same colour. Weathering will blend it in.

 

Perhaps I should have removed al the original numerals, given that the '6' is too far to the left. 

 

The finished model will be going to Manxcat (with proceeds, at least a third, to CRUK). 

 

I'll be writing up the procedures in BRM, with................................. some moving footage! 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

I'll reserve judgement on Simon Martin's book. At one point in his writings he's referred to Edward Thompson as a 'genius'. 

 

How many CME's might that epithet refer to? Very few?

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Churchward, Stanier, Gresley, Riddles... the last for his ability to herd all the big four plants into some semblance of order,  rather like herding cats. :)

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9 hours ago, Woodcock29 said:

Hi Jesse

That looks to be a Dia 198 twin brake composite (based on my reading of the GNRS volume on Howlden Articulated Twin and Triplet Sets). I'm curious about the end of the brake coach as I would have thought it should have end windows - two narrow windows each side of the end. I presume these are built from D&S kits? In which case the end with windows should have been on the etches.

 

One pitfall to look out for is that the cast guard's duckets do not fit flush at the bottom so they need a lot of filing back to get them so and then restoration of the beading on the lower half of the duckets - probably too late for your twin as I presume they are soldered in place?

 

Here are two photos of the triplet I built early last year from D&S 6 wheelers. On the two brake ends I used etched duckets from a sheet of extra parts for GN Howlden coaches produced by Frank Davies (Chuffer Davies on RMWeb).  In the unpainted view you can clearly see the end windows.

 

325125551_IMG_0094pss.jpg.3727975d3a55f84ec844c94094ce70f8.jpg

 

1081673746_IMG_0207pss.jpg.5cf746fb142d9147cf5b6e806ce48f3f.jpg

 

Andrew  

Gorgeous set, Andrew! I'm considering doing something similar with D&S six-wheelers: have you detailed the construction of this set on a forum thread anywhere?

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1 hour ago, robmcg said:

 

Churchward, Stanier, Gresley, Riddles... the last for his ability to herd all the big four plants into some semblance of order,  rather like herding cats. :)

Not so sure about Stanier. I've always considered he, like Collett, picked up Churchward's ball and ran with it, albeit rather further.

 

Whilst not perhaps a genius (or certainly not one without flaws), I'd think  Bulleid qualifies as a magician for getting untried designs accepted when he did. Had he not gone to the SR there's a fair chance he'd have become CME of the LNER on Gresley's death and things could have been very different.

 

The P2 design and development is widely regarded as having owed at least as much to him as to Gresley, and he originally envisaged the Merchant Navy as a 2-8-2 or 4-8-2. On the LNER, I'd have expected him to persevere with the P2s and the required new heavy MT engines could well have been air-smoothed Bulleid 4-8-2's developed from them. Then he might have earned the epithet....

 

John

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The only reference I could find from Simon Martin to ET and genius was

 

‘The conversion to a Pacific wheelbase was remarkably straightforward and the more I look at it, the more I realise just what a stroke of genius it was on Thompson's or Robert Thom's part to go for the simplicity of the equal length connecting rods and cylinder setup. Half the reason it came together so quickly was because they reduced overall design time on the new front end I feel. Either way the Doncaster Drawing office should be praised highly for the turnaround, and the works too.‘

 

Someone else on the thread quoted

’I'll leave the thread for this evening with the words of R.H.N. Hardy, who was more than familiar with the full experience of operating the original Pacifics at Stewarts Lane:  "I think that, without a shadow of doubt, Bulleid was a genius."

 

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11 hours ago, Woodcock29 said:

Hi Jesse

That looks to be a Dia 198 twin brake composite (based on my reading of the GNRS volume on Howlden Articulated Twin and Triplet Sets). I'm curious about the end of the brake coach as I would have thought it should have end windows - two narrow windows each side of the end. I presume these are built from D&S kits? In which case the end with windows should have been on the etches.

 

One pitfall to look out for is that the cast guard's duckets do not fit flush at the bottom so they need a lot of filing back to get them so and then restoration of the beading on the lower half of the duckets - probably too late for your twin as I presume they are soldered in place?

 

Here are two photos of the triplet I built early last year from D&S 6 wheelers. On the two brake ends I used etched duckets from a sheet of extra parts for GN Howlden coaches produced by Frank Davies (Chuffer Davies on RMWeb).  In the unpainted view you can clearly see the end windows.

 

325125551_IMG_0094pss.jpg.3727975d3a55f84ec844c94094ce70f8.jpg

 

1081673746_IMG_0207pss.jpg.5cf746fb142d9147cf5b6e806ce48f3f.jpg

 

Andrew  

Jonathan sent me a message last night that I’d put the wrong end on. I jumped on here to comment that I built it wrong, I seen you’d replied and I knew straight away that you were about to tell me! :laugh_mini2:

 

No matter I’ll get on to it today! Live and learn! 
 

I’ll also have a look at the duckets, thanks Andrew. 

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5 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

Can't let that pass without comment!

 

There's a tendency to consider the great locomotive engineers just as engineers and judge them purely by the loco types that bore their name. But the job of the CME was so much more than that - it was other people in the team that did the actual engineering,  afterall.

 

No - Stanier's true genius was to use all his experience and diplomacy to build a team around him that was truly fit for purpose and to simultaneously 'sort' the infighting and intransigence that had dogged the LMS since its creation. That was the job he was hand-picked to do and he executed it quite brilliantly.

 

So good was the team he built that by 1937 it was largely self-driven, allowing Stanier to be subsequently seconded into vital war work.

 

Both he and Gresley were president of the I.Mech.E (at a time when that really meant something), both were knighted and Stanier went on to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, an extremely rare and distinguished honour.

 

Post-war, he was much in demand as an engineering advisor (nowadays consultant), visiting factories (not always railways and sometimes in Europe). Meanwhile, the team he built at the LMS went on to form the core of the BR locomotive design team, the so-called Cox-Riddles-Bond triumvirate.

 

I would say that was some legacy that goes far beyond a Black 5 merely being the LMS version of a 'Hall' and therefore in my book worthy of the otherwise dubious epithet of 'genius'.

 

No slur, put down or otherwise ignoring of Churchward intended in any of the above, just to be clear!

 

An excellent summary. And I don't think it's appropriate to call Bullied a genius. He was certainly a brilliant inventor but he was not a brilliant engineer. Many of his inventions were seriously flawed. The reality of engineering development is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration :)

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2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

An excellent summary. And I don't think it's appropriate to call Bullied a genius. He was certainly a brilliant inventor but he was not a brilliant engineer. Many of his inventions were seriously flawed. The reality of engineering development is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration :)

Please check your spelling for a start.

I would certainly describe the Q1 as the work of a genius.

Greatest power for the least weight.

Surely that is a great achievement in engineering terms?

Double chimneys and blast pipes, welded carriage underframes, the famous articulated sets. All Bulleid's work while under Gresley. 

But then I am biased having spent many hours at the Welding Institute where boring lectures were made interesting by seeing the name of Bulleid on a plaque on the wall.:D

Bernard

 

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The foundation of engineering genius is a machine that is economic and reliable.  Bulleid's Pacifics were not, and were comprehensively rebuilt-only stopped by dieselisaton.

 

My nomination for genius is Alfred Raworth, Chief Electrical Engineer of the SR, responsible for the line electrification, who laid down the concepts for Southern Diesel-DEMU push-pull working, and whose ideas were used for the WCML electrication.

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13 minutes ago, jrg1 said:

The foundation of engineering genius is a machine that is economic and reliable. 

 

Quite so. By that reckoning, the genius and father of geniuses was F.W. Webb. Charles Rous Marten: 

 

Over and over again I have travelled behind No. 1304 Jeanie Deans in the Scottish Corridor-diner, and in no case did she ever lose a minute of time either way between Euston and Crewe when I was on the train, although the absolutely smallest loads I noted were 256 and 264 tons ... while in all other cases the loads equalled or exceeded 300 tons.

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13 minutes ago, Woodcock29 said:

For the first time I used good double sided tape to secure the glazing - far simpler than using expoy which I've always done before. If any come loose well the roofs are removable.

Andrew, if it's good quality tape they won't come loose - well, not for the next 20 years or so anyway.

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50 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Simon's use of the word 'genius' with regard to ET was also in correspondence with me. 

 

When he visited me here, we chatted for quite some time. There's no doubt he's a Thompson fan, but he knew little (at the time) about the almost 'mutiny' which took place in Scotland when the P2s were rebuilt. Despite their flaws, the P2s were the only locos (in the country, not just on the LNER) capable of hauling the heaviest loads, unassisted, on the Aberdeen road. What's also more recently come to light is their use on enormous, overnight troop trains to Newcastle during the war. Trask is quoted as stating 'It'll take more than Thompson to sack me!'. 

 

Geoff Lund clearly puts some of the P2s' problems down to inadequate workmanship at Cowlairs (the biggest locos the works had repaired prior to the P2s were the Reid Atlantics). In his view, the giants should have always gone to Darlington or Doncaster for shopping. 

 

Apart from the need for fewer spares, there is no absolute advantage in having equal-length (short) connecting rods. In fact, longer rods are mechanically-superior. The short rods were used on the A2/2s because Thompson was committed to using as much from the P2s as he could. There was nothing of 'genius' about it. The cylinder set-up was an engineering disaster. The arrangement was impossible to keep steam-tight and the cylinders worked loose. If the same arrangement was thought to be advantageous, why, on Thompson's retirement, was a reversion made to longer outside connecting rods in the case of the Peppercorn A2s and A1s. These were far better locos than any of Thompson's Pacifics. 

 

The running department in Scotland was effectively told that 'By rebuilding the P2s into A2/2s we've solved the problems you've encountered. However, we've now introduced different, though equally-debilitating, problems. And, I'm sorry to say that the class can't do what it used to as 2-8-2s. In fact, they'll all be transferred south where the work is less-demanding, and you'll have to make do with what you've got until the Peppercorn engines come on stream'. 

 

The forthcoming new P2, with the problems ironed out at source (yes, I know hindsight is easy) will prove the full potential of the mighty 2-8-2s. The irony is (without CAD and better materials), the pony/crank axle issues could have been solved much more easily than rebuilding, even three quarters of a century ago. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Nice summary, Tony. I also gather, from the equally heated discussion on LNER Forum, that Mr Martin will be claiming the 'excellence' (his words) of the A2/2 design by making a comparison between their traffic utilisation figures compared to the original P2s. I think anyone who knows about the original deployment of the 2-8-2s, heavily union-influenced due to the prospect of men being made redundant by the reduction of double-heading, will see the fundamental flaw in that argument.

 

It certainly has been - and continues to be - fascinating to be at least partly involved in the engineering redesign work behind No.2007. Even if that raises the prospect of breaking 'Duchess' records!

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Am I allowed to nominate Andre Chapelon as a true genius of the modern steam locomotive? From my reading, his theories on steam flow and drafting provided the footprint that many others followed.

  I am reading ,again!, about Coey of the GS&WR and have on my book shelves Aspinall, Robinson ,Maunsell, Chapelon and the History of the Baldwin Locomotive Works.  For me it shines through that all these men had many different talents in railway manufacturing but the greatest strength was picking and drawing together a good team and in general managing that team.  

 We as onlookers have the benefit of that wonderful stuff hindsight and use it to make our personal and diverse conclusions.

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13 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

Nice summary, Tony. I also gather, from the equally heated discussion on LNER Forum, that Mr Martin will be claiming the 'excellence' (his words) of the A2/2 design by making a comparison between their traffic utilisation figures compared to the original P2s. I think anyone who knows about the original deployment of the 2-8-2s, heavily union-influenced due to the prospect of men being made redundant by the reduction of double-heading, will see the fundamental flaw in that argument.

 

It certainly has been - and continues to be - fascinating to be at least partly involved in the engineering redesign work behind No.2007. Even if that raises the prospect of breaking 'Duchess' records!

Thanks Graham,

 

I think most of the 'traffic utilisation' figures for the A2/2s were collated when the locos were shedded in England; hardly a fair comparison with the work expected of the P2s in Scotland. Because of (at the time) union intransigence, often P2s would spend their time idle at Dundee, burning coal just to keep their fire bars covered.

 

The definition of 'excellence' is also flawed in this case. If the design of the A2/2s was so good, why did they have the lowest mileage figures of any Pacific on the ex-LNER main lines, and were the first of the 4-6-2 type to be withdrawn? Some of the original Gresley Pacifics were at least 20 years older, and still going! Yes, it could be argued there wasn't the work for them, but why? Anyway, at no time were five of the P2s laid up for repairs at the same time, but that was the case on one occasion with the A2/2s.

 

Regards,

 

Tony.   

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6 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

Am I allowed to nominate Andre Chapelon as a true genius of the modern steam locomotive? From my reading, his theories on steam flow and drafting provided the footprint that many others followed.

 

Absolutely you are!

 

We're rather UK-centric in our debate here. I was actually thinking about Chapelon myself in the context of all this. Certainly Gresley's design work was influenced by Chapelon (much of the genius in the A4 design was about streamlining internal steam passages along Chapelon lines) and the testing of No.2001 at Vitry in 1934 was very much at the personal invitation of Chapelon. Not forgetting that the 'chap' in Kylchap also refers to the French genius.

 

You could even go so far as to say that the work of Livio Dante Porta and David Wardale in Argentina and South Africa is equally meritorious,  although far too late to have made any widespread commercial impact.

 

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16 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

Am I allowed to nominate Andre Chapelon as a true genius of the modern steam locomotive? From my reading, his theories on steam flow and drafting provided the footprint that many others followed.

 

 

Perhaps; Chapelon missed his place in history.  By the time he had "perfected" the steam locomotive, it was already on its way out.  

While his Pacifics were undoubtedly powerful and fuel efficient, they were outlived by the PLM Pacifics which in some cases were the antithesis of what Chapelon had been preaching.  Had his ideas come 10, 15 or 20 years earlier the story might have been different.  

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