Imaginary Locomotives

[Compound2632]

Can I please request the script of a dialogue at LMS headquarters Euston where Sir Josiah Stamp instructs Anderson to order Gresley Pacifics to finally solve the LMS chronic lack of effective express passenger motive power?

dh

 

Stamp suggested the Gresley Pacifics; Anderson said he thought the three-cylinder layout could be improved upon if the middle cylinder was made to exhaust to the two outside cylinders... The transcript is incomplete; it is believed the lady stenographer fainted at the technical language Stamp then employed. This preceded the to the well-known episode of the Castles; as is well known the final outcome was to adapt a Southern design.

[FPH 603]

*DDIU Front Ends Update*

 

I've looked into the Destination Indicator and I've trialled a small one mounted above the windows. I have also fitted small headlights to the very top of the ends. Maybe I should make them larger...

 

Edited October 9, 2017 by DoubleDeckInterurban

[melmerby]

Stamp suggested the Gresley Pacifics; Anderson said he thought the three-cylinder layout could be improved upon if the middle cylinder was made to exhaust to the two outside cylinders... The transcript is incomplete; it is believed the lady stenographer fainted at the technical language Stamp then employed. This preceded the to the well-known episode of the Castles; as is well known the final outcome was to adapt a Southern design.

Eventually leading to the "poaching" of a Swindon man!

 

Keitgh

[FPH 603]

*Another Update!*

 

I've now trialled the pantograph to see how it will look. Really I will use an Auscision pantograph but I used this to trial how it will look. Does anyone know how long the large (46 Class) pantograph is when it's in the down position. I'd prefer not to use the small cross arm version as it will look like a later V set. The slot that it will go into is about 35mm on the model.

 

[runs as required]

Compound2632, on 09 Oct 2017 - 22:15, said:

Stamp suggested the Gresley Pacifics; Anderson said he thought the three-cylinder layout could be improved upon if the middle cylinder was made to exhaust to the two outside cylinders... The transcript is incomplete; it is believed the lady stenographer fainted at the technical language Stamp then employed. ..

But in1926 Derby had already got that compound pacific half built. Cox claims the LNER had sent Bulleid off as translator to France with the LMS team in 1925 that had researched French compound pacifics ! I'd have loved to have sight of the lady Stenographer's record of that visit

 

Eventually leading to the "poaching" of a Swindon man!

Stamp should have broiled some of his own lot before poaching W.A.S.

dh

[DavidB-AU]

I've now trialled the pantograph to see how it will look. Really I will use an Auscision pantograph but I used this to trial how it will look. Does anyone know how long the large (46 Class) pantograph is when it's in the down position. I'd prefer not to use the small cross arm version as it will look like a later V set. The slot that it will go into is about 35mm on the model.

As far as I can work out from this diagram, about 12'3".

 

 

It's a Metrovick 20P if anybody has more accurate measurements anywhere.

 

Cheers

David

[FPH 603]

As far as I can work out from this diagram, about 12'3".

 

46.png

 

It's a Metrovick 20P if anybody has more accurate measurements anywhere.

 

Cheers

David

If that's right then the slot may need to be bigger or I may need to scratchbuild the pantograph too.

 

INSET: Enlarged pantograph slot.

 

Edited October 10, 2017 by DoubleDeckInterurban

[FPH 603]

*Update!*

 

I've made a decision for the front end of my model!

 

 

EDIT: There's potential for a roller blind inside the destination indicator, like those old double decker buses you see in the LT Museum.

 

P.S. See the link attached below for the sounds of my train (actually a red rattler!)

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6dtxtER1d0

Edited October 10, 2017 by DoubleDeckInterurban

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Eventually leading to the "poaching" of a Swindon man!...

 Who fairly briskly came to realise that Gresley Was Right, and that he too had better have a go at designing pacifics. And so the wheel comes full circle...

[runs as required]

 Who fairly briskly came to realise that , and that he too had better have a go at designing pacifics. And so the wheel comes full circle...

but with 4 cylinders rather than 3  so the wheel comes full circle... back to ...The Great Bear?

As you say Gresley Was Right

   dh

[Hroth]

 Who fairly briskly came to realise that Gresley Was Right, and that he too had better have a go at designing pacifics. And so the wheel comes full circle...

It might be said that the Princess Royals were merely Kings with an added set of castors at the back....

 

If the GWR had needed a Pacific, they may well have done a class just after WW2, Hawksworth was certainly doodling Pacifics on his blotter (as it were), but the company was well served by its numerous 4-6-0 classes before the war and these underwent continuous development to keep them "fit for purpose" so a burning requirement didn't drive calls for the development of a heavy duty passenger lugger.

 

Unlike the LMS, hag-ridden by the ghost of the Midland with its worship of tiny locomotives.

[Corbs]

Hawksworth Pacific?

 

[Hroth]

Hawksworth Pacific?

 

fullsizeoutput_1f70.jpeg

Crikey!!!!

 

No name I see, "Ursa Major" perhaps?   The route availability woud be terribly limited, it'd definitely be a Double Red....

[Corbs]

Rather unimaginatively called 'Suddery Cathedral'.

 

'Westlin' was built mostly from the leftover parts.

 

[Compound2632]

Unlike the LMS, hag-ridden by the ghost of the Midland with its worship of tiny locomotives.

 

I ought to ignore that and let it pass but it's getting under my skin - in a not to serious way, I should say, as we're discussing the might-have-beens of a century ago, so rally not very important.

 

For a very long time, Midland engines were not small, certainly not tiny. The standard 8'0" + 8'6" wheelbase for six-wheeled engines goes right back to Matthew Kirtley's time, the 1860s - his engines were certainly large for their time.

 

Johnson's standard goods engines, with 18" x 26" cylinders and boilers pressed to 160 psi in the later batches, were bigger than most contemporary 0-6-0s. Going round the other 'big four' pre-grouping companies:

 

LNWR: Webb built engines with 7'3"+8'3" wheelbase, 17" x 24" cylinders, and boilers at 150 psi (Coal Engines) and 18" x 24" cylinders (Cauliflowers);

 

GWR: Dean's standard goods engines were 7'3" + 8'3" wheelbase with 17" x 24" cylinders and boilers at 140psi; 

 

NER: T.W. Worsdell's Class C/C1 were 8'0" + 8'6" wheelbase, but the non-compound engines had smaller cylinders than the Midland engines, 17" x 24"; little brother Wilson's Class P mineral engines of 1895 were 7'9" + 8'0" with 18" x 24" cylinders, though his Class P1 engines of 1898 did revert to Class C dimensions and with larger cylinders - 18 1/2" x 26" (According to the LNER encyclopedia website, all these NER engines were pressed to 160psi, but it's unclear if that was as built or in LNER/final condition).

 

From the point of view of developing power, boiler pressure and cylinder volume are the key factors. It has to be bourn in mind that with the materials technology of the time, higher boiler pressure meant heavier engines.

 

Johnson continued building nineteenth-century engines up to the end of the century; with the advent of corridor carriages on express trains around 1899, he switched to building twentieth-century engines. The Belpaires and Compounds were very large and powerful engines for their time - certainly when the first two Compounds were introduced, they were the most powerful engines working into Carlisle Citadel. In his last three or four years before retirement, designs for 0-8-0 mineral engines and 4-4-4T passenger engines were taken to an advanced stage. The desire to produce larger locomotives didn't die out when Johnson retired, as is evidenced by the S&D 2-8-0s. One major mistake was made: James Clayton was passed over for chief draughtsman in 1914 and moved to Ashford - to Richard Maunsell's and the Southern's great benefit. The real reason that Midland engines didn't get significantly bigger in the run up to grouping is, I think, due to a combination of factors:

 

Infrastructure limitations: a very considerable investment in bridge strengthening and locomotive facilities would have been needed to accommodate heavier, larger engines. (There was quite a lot of work done on bridge strengthening, e.g. to permit Belpaires west of Birmingham).

 

Superheating: enabling an increase in power within the existing size constraints, leading to the 483 Class and Class 4 goods engines.

 

Operation: the way the Midland system was operated meant that the existing engines were adequate and economical for the tasks in hand.

 

The last point carries forward to the adoption of Midland designs for the LMS standard 2P, 4P and 4F. They were adequate and economical for many parts of the LMS system - and welcomed by enginemen as a significant improvement on what they had, especially in Scotland. Yes, there was a problem with providing suitable engines for the West Coast expresses, but that had been a problem since at least Webb's day. Do I have to mention double heading again?

 

When it comes to pacifics, I'm with the Fat Controller: "I never liked these big engines, always going wrong".

Edited October 10, 2017 by Compound2632

[lanchester]

Stamp suggested the Gresley Pacifics; Anderson said he thought the three-cylinder layout could be improved upon if the middle cylinder was made to exhaust to the two outside cylinders... The transcript is incomplete; it is believed the lady stenographer fainted at the technical language Stamp then employed. This preceded the to the well-known episode of the Castles; as is well known the final outcome was to adapt a Southern design.

My understanding is that the railway companies were legally disbarred from manufacturing locomotives for external customers, including other railway companies. But an interesting line of thought - if that hadn't been the case, what plausible instances are there where one company might have been tempted to buy the products of another?

[Compound2632]

My understanding is that the railway companies were legally disbarred from manufacturing locomotives for external customers, including other railway companies. But an interesting line of thought - if that hadn't been the case, what plausible instances are there where one company might have been tempted to buy the products of another?

 

Yes, but that didn't mean they couldn't pass drawings over. My understanding is that that was exactly what didn't happen with the Castles: after one was tried out, the LMS operating department said "we'd like fifty of those for next summer's timetable", the GW was approached but declined to lend drawings (there would be no question of Swindon building the engines), so the LMS asked the Southern for a set of Lord Nelson drawings, which were forthcoming; they then went to NBL who had the capacity to do the detail design as well as build fifty engines on a short timescale. Of course by using the Lord Nelson drawings as a starting point a circle was being closed as James Clayton had left Derby for Ashford with a large roll of Midland drawings under his arm!

 

See also the previous discussion about the French (Highland) Castles and Belgian Dunalastairs.

[TheQ]

In 1926 The LMS asked GWR for some Castles, failing that the drawings of, since they didn't get that either, they got Stanier in 1931

[Joseph_Pestell]

Crikey!!!!

 

No name I see, "Ursa Major" perhaps?   The route availability woud be terribly limited, it'd definitely be a Double Red....

 

Why? With an extra axle to carry the weight, Red should be possible.

[Compound2632]

In 1926 The LMS asked GWR for some Castles, failing that the drawings of, since they didn't get that either, they got Stanier in 1931

 

My understanding is that the LMS asked for, and didn't get, a set of drawings. As far as I'm aware, there was never a request to supply locomotives.

[Corbs]

Why? With an extra axle to carry the weight, Red should be possible.

Well it's based on a Princess Royal.

 

Princess Royal Axle load: 22.50 long tons (22.86 t)

GWR King Axle load: 22 long tons 10 cwt (22.9 t)

 

(according to Wikipedia)

[The Johnster]

There has always been a lot of 'what if' talk about the semi mythical Hawkworth/Mattingley pacific, but the truth of the matter is that it was very unlikely to have ever been built, even in an economic climate better than post war Britain's.  The sketches show a massive locomotive a little like a Swindonised Princess Royal, a locomotive itself with some Swindon attributes designed for fast long distance work on the WCML.  What would this monster have been for?; the GW had no work comparable to the WCML, needing to run fairly quickly along a relatively level route as far as Newton Abbott and then have the adhesion to tackle the ferocious South Devon banks, short but precipitous, in order to get to Plymouth.  A pacific has many advantages, not least being able to carry a big boiler and heat it with a big firebox unrestrained in width by the rear driving wheels, but adhesion with heavy trains at low speeds on very steep sharply curved banks actually not designed originally for conventional loco haulage at all is not one of them!  Thus 4-6-0s were preferred, and since the ones that the railway already had worked well enough, more were built.

 

The GW's other main lines generally featured much shorter runs before the banks were reached; Cardiff, Wolverhampton, and so on, where locos could easily be changed.  Significantly, when a light pacific design was allocated to the WR in the 1950s, it was not regarded as successful except at Canton, where the work suited it's fast mixed traffic 6'2" driving wheel format perfectly; a slog from the bottom of Severn Tunnel with 16 on up to Badminton and about 80 to Paddington, or down line work to Swansea or beyond for higher mileage engines that could climb a bit better.

Edited October 10, 2017 by The Johnster

[scots region]

Speaking of LMSR Castles... sorry Mr Jones. Here is what it might have looked like. 

 

First the overall look.

 

 

Then a Derby variant 

 

 

And if Horwich had been in charge.

 

[Zomboid]

I'm sure the GW would have found a use for some pacifics if they'd wanted to. After all the Southern/ BR(S) managed to build about 150 of them for a smaller selection of routes.

 

Edit: though maybe they didn't need quite so many, given some of the duties they ended up on...

 

Edit 2: on that note, didn't Mr Bulleid initially intend the MNs to be 4-8-2s? Those would have been quite something.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Zomboid

[The Johnster]

Speaking of LMSR Castles... sorry Mr Jones. Here is what it might have looked like. 

 

First the overall look.

 

LMSR Castle.jpg

 

Then a Derby variant 

 

LMS Castle Derby.jpg

 

And if Horwich had been in charge.

 

LMS Castle Horwich.jpg

 

 

I'm impressed with how believable this looks overall!