What was the roughest riding locomotive a driver could have

[APOLLO]

Crikey, that's a film title I haven't heard in probably fifty years - off to you tube to see if I can find it.

 

K

 It's on BBC iPlayer, wonderful film.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p012d0t5/tuesday-documentary-engines-must-not-enter-the-potato-siding

 

Brit15

[russ p]

It's often on BBC 4

Great film especially when the old boys are arguing in the club about what form of traction is best

[coachmann]

Interesting film.

 

"British Railways got coy and drilled holes in't shovel so we couldn't make a fry-up..."  

 

Isn't that bloody typical...

 

Rotten hours, I mean going to bed at ten-thirty in the mornin'....Wife's doin' washin'.....kids are playin' in't yard. I were just droppin' off when a fish-seller shouted 'Whooo-aaaHH'. I opened window and told him I'd wring his bloody neck if he didn't f...."

 

Aye, good 'ol days.....We'll not see 'em again ...thank fkc.

Edited April 11, 2017 by coachmann

[Buhar]

Thanks for that link, I really enjoyed it.  And a final bit of nostalgia in the credits I see Ken Morse had his rostrum camera out again.

 

Mind you, all the cab shots seemed pretty smooth.

Edited April 11, 2017 by Buhar

[russ p]

Not sure I'd ever have wanted anything cooked on a shovel as the same shovel was often used for things in the opposite spectrum of eating.....

[Tinker]

Class 33's would hunt left and right the track condition never helped, Class 73's bounced up and down on a rough track hitting the bogie going down and it was only the chains stopped it jumping off the pin on up movement, as said 47's wallowed left and right how bad, well on the down slow at St Mary Cray  through the station on a slight right curve the loco would go over to the left and as it traveled over the viaduct i could look down and see all the brickwork to the ground very slowly it came back up, Class 09's just about stayed on the track at 27-1/4 mph bone shakers to the extreme......

Edited April 11, 2017 by Tinker

[big jim]

Not sure I'd ever have wanted anything cooked on a shovel as the same shovel was often used for things in the opposite spectrum of eating.....

https://youtu.be/BjsVRIqOhGA

[jetmorgan]

Surprised no mention has been made of the SECR K & K1 2-6-4 tanks considering one of them tipped over because of their instability

[The Johnster]

Not sure I'd ever have wanted anything cooked on a shovel as the same shovel was often used for things in the opposite spectrum of eating.....

 

Then it's just as well you don't know how it was cleaned ready for cooking...

[The Johnster]

Surprised no mention has been made of the SECR K & K1 2-6-4 tanks considering one of them tipped over because of their instability

Not sure that sort of rolling is in the same order of out and out roughness that Black 5s and rebuilt Royal Scots seem to have been capable of.  A 'River' tested on the GN main line (which was a much better permanent way than the Eastern Section of the Southern) after the accident was found to ride well enough; the problem was the inability to control water surging back and forth in those big tanks, and once the motion was set up it 'self amplified' until the loco became unstable.  Ultimately it was more of a per way issue than the loco, but the loco should have of course been designed to cope with the track it was going to run on.  

 

Rebuilt as tender locos, they gave no further trouble, but the Southern never built another tank engine for fast passenger work.  LMS 2-6-4s were used in early BR days on the region with perfect success, and the BR standard 2-6-4 tanks, which were their direct descendent, were designed and built at Brighton; they also performed excellently on the Southern, but I imagine a fair bit of upgrading of the per way had been done by then!

[number6]

Rebuilt as tender locos, they gave no further trouble, but the Southern never built another tank engine for fast passenger work.  

 

The W tanks were banned from passenger work [apart from ECS] - could this have been a legacy of that too? I don't think they even appeared on any specials - unlike the H15s which did at the end of steam on the SR and were likewise not rostered for anything but ecs and freight.

[Nearholmer]

The non-building of big passenger tanks after the Rivers was largely a function of lack of need. The pace of electrification rendered big tanks surplus, which is how the baltics came to be converted to tender engines, and the Pacific tanks were demoted to the Oxted lines. It wasn't until the Atlantic tanks became clapped, and electrification was postponed by BR, that the need for the Fairburn and the 4MT arose.

 

The Baltic tanks were faster, and way bigger, than the Rivers, but were cleverly designed to obviate water-slosh (free surface action) by using well tanks. The side tanks were half-cosmetic.

 

K

[10000]

Never mind drivers in a loco some of the worst journeys I ever had were on the Greater Manchester Metro system at high speed between Bury and Manchester.

[D854_Tiger]

Would it be correct to assume with modern methods of inspection, such as the measurement trains that allow early intervention for even the smallest of irregularities, that the permanent way is in better shape nowadays, in ride (and safety) terms, than it's ever been.

 

It's noticeable how even some of the potentially roughest riding of passenger trains, like those Pacers, are actually very good over well maintained CWR.

 

Many of the comments here seem to suggest that some of the locomotives mentioned had pretty good riding but that soon varied according to track condition.

 

As a passenger, the worst experience I remember was in a XC HST heading west and approaching Cowley Junction, at speed, there was this terrible lurch accompanied by a very noticeable, albeit small, change in direction that suggested we had hit some kind of kink in the track.

[ColinK]

I wonder what it was like in the cab of Tornado at 100mph?

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

Would it be correct to assume with modern methods of inspection, such as the measurement trains that allow early intervention for even the smallest of irregularities, that the permanent way is in better shape nowadays, in ride (and safety) terms, than it's ever been.

 

It doesn't bloody feel like it.  I recall the smoothness of the GWR when it got passed for 125mph in the mid seventies - that and new HST, that was a lush ride.  By contrast, the MML today with those awful Merde Ian things is a succession of lurching, bouncing, banging, creaking and generally fatigue inducing.

 

Best ride of late?  The KCR double deckers from Guangzhou to Kowloon.  

[bbishop]

The W tanks were banned from passenger work [apart from ECS] - could this have been a legacy of that too? I don't think they even appeared on any specials - unlike the H15s which did at the end of steam on the SR and were likewise not rostered for anything but ecs and freight.

 

Do you mean the H16?  The Southern Railway painted them green and they were used on the Ascot race specials.  Whilst they were 4-6-2 tanks, I think they were quite happy in reverse.

 

Some of the bogies off the Rivers were re-cycled to the W class.  They were trialled on ecs workings but had a vicious roll at any reasonable speed.  Was the bogie an issue at Sevenoaks as well as the unbaffled side tanks and the state of the track.

 

Bill

[number6]

Yes sorry H16! Although see below an N15 is described as rough in this quote below!

 

Re the Baltic tanks on the Brighton - there is a photo in Oakwood Press' The "Brighton Baltics" A C Perryman of 328 with mock up lower tanks as a result of the roll these locos suffered. Not very attractive. The tanks themselves only came to about 1ft below the centreline of the boiler although the sidesheets were much higher.

 

A quote from Perryman in the book is quite interesting;

 

'No. 327 left Brighton Works in April 1914, and it was not long before it was in trouble. The loco was sprung throughout with helical springs, even on the bogies. During my stay at the works in 1928 to 1936 I repeatedly heard from several different men rumours to the effect that the coupled wheels used to leave the road at times and then re-rail themselves later on. They insisted that marks on the sleepers testified to this. Luckily the engine did not derail, causing loss of life, as did the later 2-6-4 "River" tank at Sevenoaks in 1927. Certainly there were tell-tale marks on the sleepers in the latter case.'

 

 

And in a later chapter relating the experiences of Jim a Fireman - who described the early Baltics as 'none too steady on the road' after lowering the centre of gravity and replacing the springs they were obviously transformed:

 

'They were also very smooth riding machines, vastly superior to the "Arthurs". At one time Jim was Posted to "King Arthur" No.797, and says it so shook him up that he was laid up for 3 months. He asked to be posted back on Baltics upon returning to duty. He considers all locos with no carrying wheels under the cab to be "rough riders".'

[The Johnster]

The W tanks were banned from passenger work [apart from ECS] - could this have been a legacy of that too? I don't think they even appeared on any specials - unlike the H15s which did at the end of steam on the SR and were likewise not rostered for anything but ecs and freight.

 

AFAIK the Ws and H16s were indeed banned from passenger (or any fast) duties after the Sevenoaks accident.  The Southern, by which I assume I mean Maunsell, took the Rivers out of service immediately after the accident, which caused some comment and press speculation, not all of which was ill informed, at the time, a bit like grounding a fleet of aircraft which is always taken as damning inditement of the type which is not necessarily always justified.  But the Ws and H16s were originally intended for transfer freight work, as were the Metropolitan Railway's Woolwich 2-6-4Ts, and the ban would hardly have caused any problems in rostering.

[The Johnster]

I wonder what it was like in the cab of Tornado at 100mph?

Pretty noisy I imagine, but pacifics tend to ride well by steam engine standards, as do atlantics.  The use of 4-6-0s which are, other things being equal, almost bound to not ride as well, is down to other factors such as adhesion; one of the reasons the GWR never went in for pacifics (apart from being disappointed with The Great Bear) is that on the West Country and South Wales main lines there are fairly ferocious gradients to negotiate, well, absolutely ferocious in the case of the South Devon, and a 4-6-0 tends to be better than a pacific at that sort of relatively low speed slogging, and much less likely to pick it's feet up!

[roythebus]

Most scary ride I had as a passenger was on the 1940s-era stock of the Waterloo and City, which seemed to tilt at an alarming angle as it took the crossover out of Waterloo. 

 

What crossover out of Waterloo? there wasn't one, unless you mean the points where the connection for the Anderson lift trailed off the down line (towards Bank). Yes, the W&C stock could be a bit lively.

 

But, by far the worst of all were the 81-86 electrics. As others have said, you could easily be thrown off the chair, lost more than half a can of tea (even worse, especially if this was going through Wembley and the next stop was Manchester). Deltics always a nice ride, 73's "lively" but firm. Yankee Tanks, bloody awful due to short wheelbase and beiny used for things they weren't designed for, i.e. passenger trains at 25 mph.

[D854_Tiger]

Pretty noisy I imagine, but pacifics tend to ride well by steam engine standards, as do atlantics.  The use of 4-6-0s which are, other things being equal, almost bound to not ride as well, is down to other factors such as adhesion; one of the reasons the GWR never went in for pacifics (apart from being disappointed with The Great Bear) is that on the West Country and South Wales main lines there are fairly ferocious gradients to negotiate, well, absolutely ferocious in the case of the South Devon, and a 4-6-0 tends to be better than a pacific at that sort of relatively low speed slogging, and much less likely to pick it's feet up!

 

Similar power though, distributed over less wheels, the King was a class 8 and the Castle class 7.

 

I also read somewhere that the GW didn't need the wider fireboxes made possible by a Pacific, thanks to the higher grade South Wales coal they burned.

 

Though that did beg the question why the other railways didn't burn it as well.

[LMS2968]

The Welsh steam coal aspect tends to be a bit overdone at times. It had a high calorific value, true enough, but so did coal from other locations. And the railways didn't have to pay to have it transported several hundred miles from South Wales -  no small cost. To that extent, the GWR did not use Welsh coal exclusively; I believe the Midlands sheds used coal from Staffordshire.

 

The other problem with Welsh coal was that it didn't take kindly to mechanical handling, so the GWR and WR stuck to manual handling to the end: no huge, concrete coaling plants on that Region!

[Edwin_m]

What crossover out of Waterloo? there wasn't one, unless you mean the points where the connection for the Anderson lift trailed off the down line (towards Bank).

Perhaps it was the crossover out of Bank.  I was only about 14 at the time...

[Liam]

A few years ago I was on the footplate of Ex GWR Hawksworth pannier tank 1501, and although not uncomfortable it jolted around quite a lot!