Roscoe Tank Locomotive "Willie"

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Guys, I work for Hansons Auctioneers and this large picture has come in to go up for sale. It is about 4ft x 3ft approx. I had not heard of this Loco before and I thought that it might be of interest to members here?

 

Cheers, Ade.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Adrian Stevenson

[Nearholmer]

James Roscoe is famed for inventing a type of lubricator, patented by him, for use on steam engines, locomotives included, but I've personally never heard of him as a designer of locomotives. He certainly hailed from Little Hulton, near/in Salford, and became a colliery owner in the area

 

John Robert Roscoe (one of James's sons possibly?), who seems to have made the drawing, had a foundry in Little Hulton, so possibly it was he that actually built the loco (or intended to).

 

My surmise is that the loco was built to shunt the colliery sidings, belonging to James and William Roscoe, by John Robert Roscoe, at his foundry ...... all in the family, all local.

 

This has some relevant content https://engole.eu/new-lester-colliery/ and explains how James Roscoe came by his locomotive knowledge.

 

This loco looks slightly unusual to me, having inside cylinders on an 0-4-0T, which poses clearance problems around the crank-axle in relationship to the ashpan. Here the clearance looks to be "a gnat's".

 

Have you floated this past the Industrial Railway Society? If anyone knows more, it will be their members.

 

Strikes me that your drawing should excite considerable interest in the local area, and ought to be in a museum collection.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Adrian Stevenson]

Thanks. Glad it was of interest.

 

I will try your suggestion.

 

We get a few Railway related items through work.

 

Cheers, Ade.

[Ruston]

I think it's a product of E.B. Wilson of Leeds. The boiler is typical Wilson/Manning Wardle style, as are the wheels and narrow, squared-off saddle tank. There is a photo of an inside-cylindered Wilson 0-4-0ST in The Locomotive builers of Leeds E.B. Wilson and Manning Wardle that looks very similar. The photo shows the loco working for the Bridgewater Navigation, at Runcorn docks. There is also a photo of the same loco working on the Durlsey & Midland Junction Railway.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Ruston
speellling mishtakes

[Nearholmer]

Interesting. I too think it has Leeds signature-features. Bridgewater collieries, and of course the canal, were very near to Little Hulton, so maybe Roscoe copied their neighbours, and bought from the same maker, or bought second-hand from them.

 

Does the one illustrated in the book have inside cylinders?

[Ruston]

7 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Interesting. I too think it has Leeds signature-features. Bridgewater collieries, and of course the canal, were very near to Little Hulton, so maybe Roscoe copied their neighbours, and bought from the same maker, or bought second-hand from them.

 

Does the one illustrated in the book have inside cylinders?

It does have inside cylinders. It also has the same right hand side only entry to the footplate. The thing that's odd about this drawing is how it's dated 1883 but the Wilson design was well over 20 years old by then. 1883 is also the same year that the Bridgewater loco was purchased from the Midland Railway.

[Nearholmer]

Hmmmm ...... James Roscoe worked for the Midland, at Leicester, before returning to Little Hulton. Maybe he brokered a sale from the MR to Bridgwater, having the loco overhauled at his family foundry on the way.

[rope runner]

It's a very slender design with the coupling rods notably outside the width of the footplate - I would agree with Ruston, features typical of EB Wilson. 

I think the exercise has been prepared as a homage to the loco or loco design - the motion is lacking behind the frames and I would suggest it is perhaps unusual to see shadows picked out on a technical drawing?

 

Paul A. 

 

 

[Wickham Green]

Arrangement of the buffer(s) is very odd too !

[Nearholmer]

That's a fairly standard contractors' adaptation, to allow the loco to work happily with "Manchester ship canal" tipping wagons, which have inside frames that also form dumb-buffers. Similar in purpose, but not form, to the strange buffers on NER goods engines, which hauled inside-framed chaldron wagons.

 

The hook on the end of the coupling chain is for the same reason: the wagons had an iron rod for their full length, terminating in a forged eye, from which a chain of two links and a hook dangled, or two such rods, and a sort of Y-shaped chain ending in a hook, rather than "proper couplings". The iron rod(s) took all the tensile forces, and the frame-members all the compressive forces.

 

Useful picture https://imageleicestershire.org.uk/zoom-item?key=QnsiTiI6MSwiUCI6eyJpdGVtX2lkIjpbMTAzNTBdfX0&pg=1&WINID=1549899856281#_MBxqd0lWb8AAAFo3Trs2Q/10350

 

Edited February 11, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Mark Smithers]

The survival of this drawing is crucial evidence in the story of the evolution of what was to become the Manning Wardle standard types. It confirms all of the assertions in my book about direct the origin of this vitally important line of locomotive evolution. Photographic evidence of the Dursley locomotive whilst working at Bridgwater (also in my book) shows that it had received a fair amount of modification from original condition (principally as a result of a rebuild and new boiler at Derby Works in 1877, but note that an injector had already been fitted by the time of the earliest known photograph in M.R. days), including a cab and stovepipe chimney. For this reason, I do not believe the Dursley/Bridgwater loco and WILLIE to be one and the same, although it is clear that the design is basically common. The likeliest explanation for the drawing of WILLIE is that James Roscoe had somehow acquired a Wilson locomotive built to the same design as the Dursley one and had rebuilt it in 1883, or planned to do so. Note that most of its mechanical features are what you would expect to find on the Wilson design as built (including the sole reliance on crosshead driven feed pumps for boiler water feed), but (apart from the buffer beams) there are two important differences of later origin. The first is the increased cylinder stroke of 18 inches. Whilst this would have been theoretically possible (see Manning Wardle 'L' and 'M' classes), it would have markedly increased the demands on the boiler. The second is the conventional side-hinged smokebox door. Close examination of the earlier (newspaper cutting) photograph of the Dursley locomotive shows it to have had a lift-up door, which is what one would have expected, given subsequent Manning Wardle practice. Mention has already been made of the lack of any representation of connecting rods or valve motion on the drawing of WILLIE and one important observation needs to be made regarding the latter. Close examination of representations of the Wilson broad gauge breakwater loco and the Maker's G.A. of the Manning Wardle 'Old I' and 'K' classes shows an arrangement whereby the drop-link arms trail the weighshaft rather than leading it as is normal practice. it is my view that the Wilson inside-cylinder 0-4-0ST and 0-4-2ST for the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway employed the same arrangement, as did the 'Crimea' class 0-6-0ST, the precursor of the Manning Wardle 'Old I' class.

In a nutshell, therefore, the original Wilson inside cylinder 0-4-0ST design would have been pretty much as the drawing of WILLIE, but without the secondary buffer beams, with 14 inch cylinder stroke and with lift-up smokebox door. Finally is there any way of tracing the present owner of the drawing as it would be vital evidence should it ever be desired to construct a full-size working replica of this important milestone in locomotive evolution?

[Mark Smithers]

I have had a chance to examine the photograph of this drawing more closely and certain additional observations need to be made. Having scaled the Derby Works diagram of M.R. 2020 (the 'Dursley' locomotive as rebuilt in 1877), I am now certain that this locomotive retained its 14 in. cylinder stroke after its rebuild as the crank throw shown on the diagram is consistent with this assertion. If one performs the same exercise on the WILLIE drawing, it is clearly evident that WILLIE'S wheels have been replaced at some stage to give a crank throw consistent with the revised cylinder stroke of 18 inches. This means that much of the locomotive below footplate level would have been renewed at some stage, such as the wheelsets, cylinders and (probably) valve motion. Given that the replacement wheels are almost certainly of Manning Wardle origin, this raises two possibilities: (1) that the engine returned to Leeds in the form of Manning Wardle at some stage for a heavy overhaul, or (2) Manning Wardle supplied components for the rebuild. One piece of evidence in favour of the former assertion is that the locomotive has been fitted with a 'warming' (tank preheater) valve. This was a common fitment on early Manning Wardle standard types but had apparently not come into use by the time of construction of O.W. & W.R. Nos. 34-5 (E.B  Wilson W/Ns 221-2 of 1853). The precise arrangement of the valve is different from those found on the M.W. 'standards' but there again, so is the tank configuration (which started to 'mature' with the O.W. & W.R. locomotives). Another feature of interest in the WILLIE drawing is the feed pump. There is a bolted flange which at first sight does not appear to have a function until one remembers that if one lengthens the cylinder stroke on this design of locomotive one needs either to replace the feed pumps altogether or extend the barrels of the existing ones to cope with the increased crosshead travel. I believe that with WILLIE, the latter course of action was taken, hence the flange.

All in all, add the information contained in the WILLIE drawing (taking account of the later alterations) to the photographs, known dimensions and Derby diagram of the Dursley locomotive, throw in what is known about the Wilson breakwater locomotives and the early Manning Wardle 'standards' and you would, with modern reconstruction techniques, have enough material to create a convincing replica of this historic Wilson design. Any takers?

[Mark Smithers]

Sadly I have not yet managed to trace the drawing, but one further thing is noticeable even from the poor resolution picture appended to this discussion - the reversing lever is of similar design to those employed on the Jenny Lind and Little Mail classes (both Wilson designs) rather than the more familiar design that we are all used to today. Another possible guide to the true age of WILLIE.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Mark Smithers
spelling error

[Barb]

I happened on this web site by "accident" tracing my Roscoe relatives, could not believe when this picture popped up, I remember it very clearly hanging on the walls, the last time I saw it was in the house of Harry Roscoe, I am assuming it went to auction when his wife Mary passed.

 

Very interesting.

 

Barbara

[Barb]

Do not know if you will receive this correctly, but I was doing research on my Roscoe family tree and this popped up, I vaguely remember this picture hanging in my Grandparents house.  Very interesting. I think it ended up with my Uncle Harry Roscoe and maybe when his wife passed, it went to auction.

 

Barbara Taylor