Prototype for everything corner.

[PatB]

6 hours ago, montyburns56 said:

The worst/best bus substitution service ever?

 

Trafford Park 1989

 

 

Nicely ballasted example of a Dublo 2-rail point there.

[john new]

Did any one see the Railway Architecture programme - the shots of the track at Pilznan(?)  Plzen/Pilsen looked just like track laid on a black painted baseboard.  No screen grab sadly.

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by john new
Location name corrected. (see later post)

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, john new said:

Did any one see the Railway Architecture programme - the shots of the track at Pilznan(?) looked just like track laid on a black painted baseboard.  No screen grab sadly.

This place:

Plzen (Pilsen in English/German, from which Pilsner Urquell)

https://goo.gl/maps/FKMNeSMTBqmism8J9

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by melmerby

[nightstar.train]

38 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

 

They've made a good start, trackwork looks nice. But they need to ballast and add some scenery before they hit the exhibition circuit. Tone down the track a bit, looks fresh out the box. And some people and furniture on the platforms, they look very bare. Obviously metcalf kits. 

[Ben B]

On 11/02/2021 at 19:49, eastwestdivide said:

Eastleigh, 1988, apparently no. 828:

 

 

Always the same with those magazine part-works, you get so far along, then they stop issuing the mags with your model unfinished...

[Jollibob]

 

I found this picture online and thought, now I have an excuse to use one on a passenger train.

[LMS2968]

The photo was taken by Frank Carrier, an LMS draughtsman, and is now owned by Kidderminster Railway Museum. The engine was to run the test train from Derby to St Pancras, but suffered a hot box and had to be removed at Leicester. The tests were in connection with a proposal to use (different) Garratts on passenger work over the West Coast route. That didn't happen, and the test was not repeated.

[russ p]

38 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

The photo was taken by Frank Carrier, an LMS draughtsman, and is now owned by Kidderminster Railway Museum. The engine was to run the test train from Derby to St Pancras, but suffered a hot box and had to be removed at Leicester. The tests were in connection with a proposal to use (different) Garratts on passenger work over the West Coast route. That didn't happen, and the test was not repeated.

 

Was it fitted with vacuum for the trial?

[russ p]

17 hours ago, melmerby said:

This place:

Plzen (Pilsen in English/German, from which Pilsner Urquell)

https://goo.gl/maps/FKMNeSMTBqmism8J9

 

 

When I saw this on TV my first thoughts were if they can keep this so neat and tidy an vegetation free why can't network rail? 

 

 

[LMS2968]

35 minutes ago, russ p said:

 

Was it fitted with vacuum for the trial?

The first three from 1927 were vacuum fitted from new, and kept it to the end. 4999 was one of these. The 1930 batch was never so fitted.

 

Incidentally, the date given for the photo is 1936, but I'm struggling with that. By that time, the LMS had thirteen Pacifics, including the Turbo 6202, in service so something as big as a Garratt was hardly needed. 

[Wickham Green too]

More a question of adhesion p'raps ?

[Wickham Green too]

22 hours ago, john new said:

.......... the shots of the track at Pilznan(?)  Plzen/Pilsen looked just like track laid on a black painted baseboard. .....

Nah ! ........ sheets of black rubber foam underlay ............................ the sort they make wet suits out of - allegedly.

[john new]

15 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

More a question of adhesion p'raps ?

Or perhaps the loco design team needing to prove a point to overcome pressure from senior members in other departments, for example, we don't need a Garrett look it isn't any better than the pacific types we already have. Perhaps a trial to see if a passenger Garrett could eliminate use of banking engines over Shap and Beattock by effectively having two locos on the train to start with? It would be useful to know if the reason for the trial was ever published.

[LMS2968]

2 minutes ago, john new said:

Or perhaps the loco design team needing to prove a point to overcome pressure from senior members in other departments, for example, we don't need a Garrett look it isn't any better than the pacific types we already have. Perhaps a trial to see if a passenger Garrett could eliminate use of banking engines over Shap and Beattock by effectively having two locos on the train to start with? It would be useful to know if the reason for the trial was ever published.

Hmmm. . . The LMS Operators had always fought for smaller engines . . .

[60B]

3 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

The photo was taken by Frank Carrier, an LMS draughtsman, and is now owned by Kidderminster Railway Museum. The engine was to run the test train from Derby to St Pancras, but suffered a hot box and had to be removed at Leicester. The tests were in connection with a proposal to use (different) Garratts on passenger work over the West Coast route. That didn't happen, and the test was not repeated.

Were they designed and built with this in mind? 

[ianmacc]

20 hours ago, nightstar.train said:

 

They've made a good start, trackwork looks nice. But they need to ballast and add some scenery before they hit the exhibition circuit. Tone down the track a bit, looks fresh out the box. And some people and furniture on the platforms, they look very bare. Obviously metcalf kits. 

In all seriousness that puts our pway to shame. Impeccably tidy.  Boring to model though! We need the rotting pallets with half used tins of paint hiding in the overgrown cess!

Edited February 15, 2021 by ianmacc
Typo

[LMS2968]

No, they were an answer to the Toton - Brent coal traffic, which was always double headed, usually by 3F + 4F combination, although they did find use over a much wider geographical area. I don't know of any other time they headed coaching stock, and as said, thirty of thr 33 did not have vacuum equipment to work them anyway.

[60B]

5 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

No, they were an answer to the Toton - Brent coal traffic, which was always double headed, usually by 3F + 4F combination, although they did find use over a much wider geographical area. I don't know of any other time they headed coaching stock, and as said, thirty of thr 33 did not have vacuum equipment to work them anyway.

I can only assume that the friction surfaces were built with this in mind and not heavy WCML passenger trains. I have wondered if the Garratts would have been useful on the steep and tight routes of Scotland. Not so much raising the top speed but raising the average speed and removing the need for double heading. 

[RLBH]

The immediate thought would be whether the LMS had any thought of fitting coal wagons with vacuum brakes at the time the first batch of Garratts were ordered. This would explain why dedicated freight locomotives were fitted with vacuum equipment. Such a scheme would surely have been abandoned by 1930, between simple cost considerations and the impact of the Great Depression, so there'd have been no requirement for the second batch to be so fitted.

[Trog]

57 minutes ago, RLBH said:

The immediate thought would be whether the LMS had any thought of fitting coal wagons with vacuum brakes at the time the first batch of Garratts were ordered. This would explain why dedicated freight locomotives were fitted with vacuum equipment. Such a scheme would surely have been abandoned by 1930, between simple cost considerations and the impact of the Great Depression, so there'd have been no requirement for the second batch to be so fitted.

 

Could there have been a thought of putting some other traffic at the front of the train to improve control by providing a fitted head? Do I remember reading that the LNER did this for some of their London bound traffic using the bogie brick wagons?  Did coal wagons not stay unfitted at least in part because the collieries did not want to be bothered with the brake hoses.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, 60B said:

I can only assume that the friction surfaces were built with this in mind and not heavy WCML passenger trains. I have wondered if the Garratts would have been useful on the steep and tight routes of Scotland. Not so much raising the top speed but raising the average speed and removing the need for double heading. 

Derby specified IIRC and considered by some to be inadequate, even for the job intended.

[60B]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Derby specified IIRC and considered by some to be inadequate, even for the job intended.

Definitely a point Derby took a kicking for over on NatPres.

[hmrspaul]

By 1930 the LMS had a rake of bogie, side discharge hopper mineral wagons which were vacuum fitted. They worked from the Toton area to their Stonebridge park power station. Did the Garratts work those? Later 9Fs and 25kv electrics hauled them. 

 

Paul

[LMS2968]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Derby specified IIRC and considered by some to be inadequate, even for the job intended.

To be fair, the axleboxes were at worse marginal on the 4Fs, the theory that they ran hot on a daily basis is an exaggeration, although the numbers over time were higher than desirable. But exactly the same boxes were fitted to the S&DJR 2-8-0s, Garratts and Austin 7s, and they were definitely overloaded in all these cases.

 

I've never seen any mention or photograph of a Garratt on the Stonebridge Park trains, and as only three of them were vacuum fitted, fully or part fitted trains would not be part of the class's diagrams.

[Michael Edge]

58 minutes ago, hmrspaul said:

By 1930 the LMS had a rake of bogie, side discharge hopper mineral wagons which were vacuum fitted. They worked from the Toton area to their Stonebridge park power station. Did the Garratts work those? Later 9Fs and 25kv electrics hauled them. 

 

Paul

All the LMS era photos I've seen of these trains had an 8F on the front.