What could have ended the Midland's 'small engine' policy

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

But nonetheless Stanier failed to really break the 'small engine' policy that the LMS inherited via the Midland coterie. One class of successful wide firebox power with fewer than 40 built; and a dozen first fumblings of concepts that had to be discarded, as he learned the how of something bigger. What was built in quantity was going to leave the LMS double heading many heavier services to the end of its existence.

 

The lesson did finally get home with Riddles team, which was the LMS writ yet larger: 999 BR standards, 300 odd wide firebox, a far more Gresleyesque ratio.

[kevinlms]

But nonetheless Stanier failed to really break the 'small engine' policy that the LMS inherited via the Midland coterie. One class of successful wide firebox power with fewer than 40 built; and a dozen first fumblings of concepts that had to be discarded, as he learned the how of something bigger. What was built in quantity was going to leave the LMS double heading many heavier services to the end of its existence.

 

The lesson did finally get home with Riddles team, which was the LMS writ yet larger: 999 BR standards, 300 odd wide firebox, a far more Gresleyesque ratio.

Well that's hardly fair. In case you've forgotten, Stanier got sent off to India to help investigate high speed derailments. Then by the time he got back, he was put on war preparation duties (MoS). By the time war had finished, he was well past normal retirement age, indeed he retired in 1944.

 

I consider that his main achievements were his Black 5, 8F, 2-6-4T & his Pacific's - built to total around 2000 locos. No mean achievement, when considered how much of an improvement they were to what went before them. OK, perhaps the tanks weren't better than the Fowler versions - not that traditional Midland practice was used in them.

 

The BR Standard Pacific's were all smaller than any LMS ones - one not that much smaller.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Well that's hardly fair. In case you've forgotten, Stanier got sent off to India to help investigate high speed derailments...

I think the facts on the ground bear out my assertion. Penny packet quantity of the wide firebox power the LMS could really have used. He had time enough to design unnecessary revisions to existing designs such as the 3MTT and 4MTT: couldn't improve the 3MTT, and the Fowler 4MTT was perfectly good as it stood for continued production.

 

He could have abandoned the 4-6-0 entirely for EP power and turned out an LMS wide firebox equivalent to the V2, WC/BB, Britannia for the same money as the Jubilee.

 

Not denigrating his record at all, produced very effective medium MT and freight power and did his country colossal service in many spheres. But, whatever the reasons, he was unable to follow Gresley's lead in wide firebox power, and LMS/LMR double heading went on to the end of steam with undersize firebox locos.

[DerekEm8]

Where was the need on the LMS for wide firebox locos? The Midland mainline including the S&C) which I presume you were alluding to with regard to double heading) was not built for 'heavy' locos. and was never (until BR days) cleared for locos larger than Jubilees.

The important difference between the LMS and the LNER was geographic. the LMS joined closely spaced centres of industry and population the LNER was more spread out and importantly flatter. Where on the ECML was the first significant centre of population/ industry - Leeds/ Wakefield/Doncaster and then Newcastle!  Even the GC mainline had to do with GC locos until the B2s (wide firebox successes?) and eventually a sprinkling of wide firebox A1/A3 and V2s a few years before M-S electrification.

 

I think the proper comparison should be between the Midland main line and the GC main line which were of similar profile and importance to the big two. The comparison between locos designed for high speed on longer, flatter routes and the Midland main line  (which by no stretch of the imagination was flat)  is like comparing apples with giraffes.

Edited May 22, 2014 by DerekEm8

[rockershovel]

On 18/01/2013 at 14:49, jwealleans said:

 

It's highly relevant.  Empties are required at the source of the flow and produced at the destination.  The alternative is to run the empties as unbalanced workings and then rely on the native wit of the controllers to get locos and men where they are required.  Don't forget these aren't the only loaded flows heading south.

 

I couldn't find the thread on the group this morning - I'll try to locate it again, unless anyone else reading is a member and has it to hand?

 

There's a thread about this somewhere, to do with storage and handling capacity at the pitheads - frequent, relatively short trains are preferred for this whereas loaded trains out, require the longest trains the network can handle to minimise train paths? 

[rockershovel]

On 19/01/2013 at 15:48, Sheffield said:

Given the labour rates at the time using two small locos was cheaper and more reliable than the considerable capital cost of providing larger locos and the infrastructure necessary to run them. In the days when this policy of the Midland was established the railways were able to attract the managerial talent that today would go into banking. They were not supid. However, as we are now seeing on the High Street, a business and operating model that works and is profitable will not stay that way when external circumstances change. In the Midland's time the small engine policy made sense, but when, for instance, the weight per passenger of carriages increased circumstances changed..

A recent book by Adrain Tester, A Defence of the 4F, has provided some evidence that in the haulage of slow heavy coal trains the short travel valves of the 4F may not have been a disadvantage, compared to long travel valves, that Mr Cox and others would have us believe. And their frame breakage seems no worse than more modern designs. 

 

That's an interesting comparison, considering the role of railways in the periodic share price speculation-fuelled panics and collapses of the era..

 

[rockershovel]

On 20/01/2013 at 13:17, kevinlms said:

Some other railways (notably the L&YR) had started constructing much larger wagons, often of 20 Tons capacity. They had worked out that it was cheaper for them to haul a smaller number of higher capacity wagons, than the opposite. So the question is why did other railways not follow the same practice & indeed the LMS went back to making smaller RCH based designs of 12 Tons.

 

In fact it wasn't until BR days when they built a modest number of 21 & 24 ton wagons.

 

Well, yes. It's isn't total train weight which counts, but total payload - defined by total weight minus weight of wagons (tare) - so larger wagons tend to give improved payload by reducing tare as a proportion of total weight. 

 

That's why there were multiple narrow gauge sizes between 2' and metre gauge.

 

[rockershovel]

On 25/01/2013 at 13:22, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

 There is a lot of evidence of this from various sources. The GWR had been wealthy enough to invest in optical frame alignment among much else in the way of superior engineering shop kit for precision in parts production and loco erection and repair. Swindon was significantly reaping the benefit of the resulting 'virtuous circle' of better production technique leading to subsequent reduced running and repair cost from the 1920s on. Less wealthy companies, (and the GNR and LNER certainly fall into this bracket) had to make do with older equipment and get what they could from it. The only way forward for them was a better intrinsic design, and that is the story behind much of what drove design progress at Doncaster.

 

Bill Harvey writes very interestingly on the subject of component quality as seen during his apprenticeship. One of the telling descriptions is that his chargehand erector - and those leading the other teams - would select from the batches of parts supplied the better pieces first. As a result the final locos from a typical batch run of 10 or 20 would get a concentration of the poorer components, and take significantly longer to erect due to the extra machining and fitting required. It is very likely that these machines were also the 'lemons' from the batch, performance compromised by a lot of borderline to spec components.

 

I have had considerable career experience in pushing for better manufacturing precision, often against a production director who doesn't want to make the investmetn spend in the better equipment required. Because the greatest of the savings resulting are not in his department. It's downstream in a large reduction in early life failures, much reduced ongoing maintenance costs, great economy obtained by minimal  refurbishing or remanufacturing of parts in spares support. That's what made me a student of economics: change the method of measurement of a manufactured item from what it costs to bang it off the production line, to the total life cost of the product from design to recycling; then the production director sees the value of investment in precision.

 

Packard found this, when they attempted to make Rolls Royce Merlin engines under licence during WW2. The specifications provided for supplied components were quite unsuitable for assembly line mass production using semi-skilled labour. 

[PatB]

On 28/08/2019 at 15:27, rockershovel said:

 

Packard found this, when they attempted to make Rolls Royce Merlin engines under licence during WW2. The specifications provided for supplied components were quite unsuitable for assembly line mass production using semi-skilled labour. 

I vaguely remember a similar story, regarding Bugatti being approached to build aero engines to a standard design (Merlin? The fall of France makes it seem unlikely) . The idea was, allegedly, dropped when the parent engineers noticed Ettore's habit of discussing design modifications with the machinists on the shop floor, making the odd chalk sketch on the wall, and treating the process as an appropriate system of document control :D. 

[rockershovel]

On 29/08/2019 at 12:27, PatB said:

I vaguely remember a similar story, regarding Bugatti being approached to build aero engines to a standard design (Merlin? The fall of France makes it seem unlikely) . The idea was, allegedly, dropped when the parent engineers noticed Ettore's habit of discussing design modifications with the machinists on the shop floor, making the odd chalk sketch on the wall, and treating the process as an appropriate system of document control :D. 

 

You learn something every day on this forum! https://www.bugattirevue.com/revue3/rev3-3.htm

Edited August 31, 2019 by rockershovel

[PenrithBeacon]

On 28/08/2019 at 08:27, rockershovel said:

 

Packard found this, when they attempted to make Rolls Royce Merlin engines under licence during WW2. The specifications provided for supplied components were quite unsuitable for assembly line mass production using semi-skilled labour. 

American engines were built to American standards which were (IIRC) enshrined in law. The Rolls standards didn't comply with US law and therefore the engine was redesigned so it did. In the process a good many parts of the Packard engine were sourced from US companies which further made component interchangeability impossible. The complete Packard engine was however interchangeable with the equivalent Rolls engine.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, PenrithBeacon said:

American engines were built to American standards which were (IIRC) enshrined in law. The Rolls standards didn't comply with US law and therefore the engine was redesigned so it did. In the process a good many parts of the Packard engine were sourced from US companies which further made component interchangeability impossible. The complete Packard engine was however interchangeable with the equivalent Rolls engine.

I once knew a guy who had flown Spitfires in Burma.  He reckoned that the Packard equipped ones were better to fly than the Rolls equipped ones.

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, PenrithBeacon said:

American engines were built to American standards which were (IIRC) enshrined in law. The Rolls standards didn't comply with US law and therefore the engine was redesigned so it did. In the process a good many parts of the Packard engine were sourced from US companies which further made component interchangeability impossible. The complete Packard engine was however interchangeable with the equivalent Rolls engine.

My mother lost a cousin during the war, he was flying a Halifax bomber. During my family research I obtained the maintenance sheet for the aircraft he was flying. It was a well worn Mk. III Halifax that had been cascaded down to an OTU. Since built it had had several engine changes and at the time of its loss had three Rolls-Royce engines and a single Packard engine. Although of identical power and other characteristics the Packard engine had a completely different designation. 

[Adam88]

6 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

American engines were built to American standards which were (IIRC) enshrined in law. The Rolls standards didn't comply with US law and therefore the engine was redesigned so it did. In the process a good many parts of the Packard engine were sourced from US companies which further made component interchangeability impossible. The complete Packard engine was however interchangeable with the equivalent Rolls engine.

 

During the war my father welcomed the arrival of Packard Merlins because of their PVC insulated wiring which was so much easier to work on than the traditional rubber and cotton insulation of the British built engines.  Interestingly, at least one aircraft restorer in the US, Kermit Weeks, goes to the expense and trouble of braiding modern wiring with cotton to simulate the pre-war standard.

[DenysW]

On 17/01/2013 at 21:54, scots region said:

But anyway, as a few of use will know the Midland Railway made famous use of a 'Small-engine' policy, this doctrine set out by Derby called for numerous short trains hauled by 0-6-0s and 4-4-0s, with double heading common place. This largely conservative take on Locomotive development was the famous source of the numerous delays suffered by the Midland network and of the image of vast plodding coal trains.

 

 

On 17/02/2013 at 23:28, DaveF said:

from "Midland Railway Train Control System"  Railway Gazette July 8th 1921 concerning passenger trains:

 

In 1916 total Midland Railway passenger train mileage was 17,954,450 of which 868,306 had an assisting engine, or 5% of the total.

In 1920 total Midland Railway passenger train mileage was 14,974,670 of which 287,688 had an assisting engine, or 1.9% of the total.

 

I think this juxtaposition of opinion vs. data will show that the Midland did not need a Large Engine passenger policy heading into Grouping. Double-heading was never 'commonplace', and  the Company had, overwelmingly, the right sizes of passenger locomotive for its duties. Even if that had been achieved by paying more than lip-service to more frequent, lighter trains, it was coherent and worked.

 

No data on the equivalent goods and mineral trains, but I suspect that the decision was that Toton-Brent was highly visible, but not financially important enough to change direction of locomotive policy and rebuild the London Extensions to take higher axle-weight heavier, more powerful locos.

[jjb1970]

On 31/08/2019 at 17:27, PenrithBeacon said:

American engines were built to American standards which were (IIRC) enshrined in law. The Rolls standards didn't comply with US law and therefore the engine was redesigned so it did. In the process a good many parts of the Packard engine were sourced from US companies which further made component interchangeability impossible. The complete Packard engine was however interchangeable with the equivalent Rolls engine.

 

This is still a problem with license built engines. Most big diesel engines are built by licensees such as MSE, IHI and Hyundai. In theory they are manufactured using approved drawings and production conformity procedures and should be the same. In practice it doesn't quite work out like that making spare parts interchangeability problematic.