The Pre-Grouping Pedants Weekly

[Miss Prism]

When did the Whyte notation come into common use in Britain?

 

Except for Mogul, Prairie and Pacific, I don't think it did. It was primarily an American thing.

[tomparryharry]

As Miss P pointed out, Whyte notation came quite late in the day. Most classes of locomotives still carried their 'names' from the 1920's. For instance, you'll get a Southern LN, or perhaps, a 'Brighton mogul'.

 

What really, truly gets my goat, is calling a locomotive in a made up, or fictitious name, mostly in the beano. Taffy Tanks spring to mind. I've lost count of watching gricers walking funny with a firebar firmly inserted in the nethers. 

 

J94's is another. There were only a couple of 94's, the majority being Hunslet 18" Austerities. 

 

All because of second-rate journalism from people who really ought to know better.

 

It's not pedantry, it's fixation, dammit!

 

Ian.

[Compound2632]

Except for Mogul, Prairie and Pacific, I don't think it did. It was primarily an American thing.

 

We use it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation. 1900.

[Northroader]

Things like mogul, Pacific, prairie, ten wheeler, were all imported from American practice. Didn’t know that the Whyte notation was also an American import. You learn sumfin everyday.

[Caley Jim]

There is also the Scottish name for a tank engine, a pug. I once saw this erroneously defined as a shunting engine, but this ignored the CR's 'standard passenger tanks' (0-4-4T) and 'Wemyss Bay pugs' (2-6-4T) and the Sou' West's 'Big pugs' (4-6-4T). Some pugs did have tenders, though. Some of the CR and NB 0-4-0ST 's acquired small wooden tenders to increase their coal capacity.

 

Jim

[BG John]

Why do we count wheels, when in some foreign parts they count axles? Or do they use the same system as us, but their locos wobble about rather dramatically?

[Hroth]

Why do we count wheels, when in some foreign parts they count axles? Or do they use the same system as us, but their locos wobble about rather dramatically?

Probably just to confuse the "Anglo-Saxons"....... 

[Compound2632]

Why do we count wheels, when in some foreign parts they count axles? Or do they use the same system as us, but their locos wobble about rather dramatically?

 

The two systems converge in the case of a monorail, I suppose. The Listowel and Ballybunion engines were 0-3-0s.

 

There is also the Scottish name for a tank engine, a pug. I once saw this erroneously defined as a shunting engine, but this ignored the CR's 'standard passenger tanks' (0-4-4T) and 'Wemyss Bay pugs' (2-6-4T) and the Sou' West's 'Big pugs' (4-6-4T). Some pugs did have tenders, though. Some of the CR and NB 0-4-0ST 's acquired small wooden tenders to increase their coal capacity.

 

Jim

 

John Thomas refers to the 'Wee Puggie" he used to watch as a boy - a Holmes 0-4-0; definitely a small engine. I struggle to identify those Whitelegg behemoths with the idea of a lap-dog! 

[wagonman]

Probably just to confuse the "Anglo-Saxons"....... 

 

 

Easily done these days....

[Northroader]

There is also the Scottish name for a tank engine, a pug. I once saw this erroneously defined as a shunting engine, but this ignored the CR's 'standard passenger tanks' (0-4-4T) and 'Wemyss Bay pugs' (2-6-4T) and the Sou' West's 'Big pugs' (4-6-4T). Some pugs did have tenders, though. Some of the CR and NB 0-4-0ST 's acquired small wooden tenders to increase their coal capacity.

Jim

Once more reaching for “Coot Club”, the hero in this was William the Pug. Was the weighing machine card “resourceful and hard working”?

Edited October 12, 2017 by Northroader

[Hroth]

Something like that.....  

 

I do like the "put upon" expression on his little face!

[Compound2632]

Something like that.....  

 

I do like the "put upon" expression on his little face!

 

Not half as put upon as the Sou' West crews who had to cope with Whitelegg's Big Pugs. Mind you, they should have seen them coming - the man had form.

 

I don't think there were any standard gauge British Baltics that could really be considered a success. Their designers didn't tend to hang around long to deal with the consequences either. (Whitelegg, twice - taken over then grouped; Rutherford - grouping; Billington - grouped; Hughes - retired.)

Edited October 13, 2017 by Compound2632

[Northroader]

I liked the tale, was it in Smiths “South West Tales” of the fireman who shovelled the whole of the coal bunker into the firebox of a Baltic Tank before they set out. It strains your credulity, but it’s still a great story.

[brack]

I don't think there were any standard gauge British Baltics that could really be considered a success. Their designers didn't tend to hang around long to deal with the consequences either. (Whitelegg, twice - taken over then grouped; Rutherford - grouping; Billington - grouped; Hughes - retired.)

The BCDR ones on the broad gauge weren't any better. The only successful British Baltic tanks were on the county Donegal.

[Killian keane]

I've been reading Major J.W. Pringle's report into the accident on the Midland Railway at Bromford Bridge on 13 January 1913, which gives a fascinating insight into the working practices of the time and preserves more-or-less authentically the voices of ordinary railwaymen. One point that struck me is that one of the engines involved, a 2000 Class (Flatiron) 0-6-4T, No. 2033, is described rather cumbrously as having "six coupled wheels and a bogie under the footplate" whereas the other engine, No. 507, is described (erroneously) as a 2-4-0.

 

We've looked at carriage and wagon terminology - what about engines? When did the Whyte notation come into common use in Britain? One finds many nineteenth-century engines described chiefly by reference to the number of coupled wheels. Starting from the assumption that engines have six wheels, we find variously:

 

single = 2-2-2

four-coupled = 2-4-0 or 0-4-2 - but how distinguished?

six-coupled = 0-6-0.

 

Passenger engines with a leading bogie are distinguished by reference to that article (just as was the way with carriages - a composite, 4 or 6 wheeled, a bogie composite...):

 

bogie single = 4-2-2

bogie four-coupled = 4-4-0 - in Scotland especially, simply a bogie.

bogie six-coupled = 4-6-0.

 

The term 'atlantic' for a 4-4-2 seems to have been in use from their first introduction at the end of the century.

 

Any others?

If were being pedantic I think of a four coupled as a 0-4-0, and distinguish a 0-4-2 as a front coupled

0-6-0 bourbonnia

0-8-2 london

Now let me see what else have we, Railway wonders of the world no. 30 gives the following:

2-2-2 Jenny Lind

4-2-2 Single driver

4-4-0 American

2-4-2 columbian/double ender

4-4-2 atlantic

4-4-4 reading

2-6-0 mogul

4-6-0 american

2-6-2 prairie

4-6-2 pacific

2-6-4 adriatic

4-6-4 baltic/hudson

2-8-0 consolidation

2-8-2 mikado

4-8-2 mountain

4-8-4 confederation

0-10-0 decapod

4-10-0 mastodon

2-10-2 santa fe

2-12-0 centipede

[Regularity]

Technically, an “American” is not just a 4-4-0, but one arranged with three-point suspension, using the bogie as one point, and with a compensating beam connecting the inner ends of the driving wheel springs, arranged either side of the firebox.

In the U.K., a 4-4-0 would most likely be called a “four-coupled bogie engine”.

A 4-6-0 is a “ten-wheeler”, not a variant of American.

A mastodon is a 4-8-0.

 

Not sure about one or two others: I have seen “Adriatic” in print before, but again, only in a self-styled reference work, and not anything written by railway workers. 2-2-2s were around, as Stehpenson’s “Patentee” a long while before Jenny Lind came onto the scene: I gave Aldo seen “single driver” used for this wheel arrangement, too.

 

Same as with the internet: poor research, or the wrong definition of “original research”, can plague books just as easily...

[Regularity]

4-8-4s were usually “Northerns”, except on (usually US) roads which didn’t want to acknowledge the Northern Pacific. The New York Central called them Niagaras, the Central of Georgia, “Big Apples”.

[Northroader]

With the 0-6-0, “Bourbonnais”, you’re using the French term for a longboiler six coupled with outside cylinders, if it had inside cylinders it would be a “Mammouth”.

[Compound2632]

I think we're missing the point here with the common names for wheel arrangements. F.M. Whyte's 1900 innovation was to describe locomotives by counting the leading, driving, and trailing wheels in Thomas the Tank Engine fashion: e.g. 4-4-0, rather than the cumbrous nineteenth-century "four-coupled bogie passenger engine".

 

Over on Penlan's green LNWR uniforms topic, I noted Lt. Col. Yorke describing a couple of Caledonian 4-4-0s in such terms, as well as using the spelling "waggons", in a 1906 accident report.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Compound2632

[Regularity]

I think we're missing the point here

And this is a problem because...?

[Argos]

And this is a problem because...?

 

If you miss the point presumably you derail.............

[Hroth]

if a 0-10-0 is a Decapod

and a 4-10-0 is a Mastodon

 

What is a 2-10-0?

[Compound2632]

And this is a problem because...?

 

... my question was about when the Whyte notation - 4-4-0, 4-2-2, etc. - came into general use, displacing the former terminology of 'bogie four-coupled' or 'bogie single' etc., not about the various nicknames in use - but of course it's an equally valid question to ask when and where these names originated. I have the belief that 4-4-2s, 4-4-4s, and 4-6-2s were first notably used on the Atlantic, Reading, and (something) Pacific Railroads but what is the evidence for this?

 

If you miss the point presumably you derail.............

 

I acknowledge that it is a vain task to try to keep the pre-grouping community here on the rails!

[Regularity]

I was not being serious: Argos got the point, as it turned out...

[MarcD]

One for the true pendents here. I have just done the first day of the Furness Model railway show in Barrow and half way through the show it was pointed out to me the the label printed for my 0-9 layout "Crackpot Mine" stated "7mm Gauge" rather than "9mm Gauge 7mm scale" 

 

Marc