Imaginary Locomotives

[JimC]

Another what if is that according to Felix Pole's book the LNWR execs were agitating to have the Rhymney included in the LMS.

[RedGemAlchemist]

7 hours ago, whart57 said:

If, say, the government created a London and Home Counties Railway out of the SECR, LBSCR, GER, Metropolitan and the suburban lines of the LSWR and the lines going north.

As much as I am a born and bred Norfolk boy and a huge fan of Holmes, Gresley and Raven... Brightonised GER locos would probably look really nice.

Edited December 21, 2021 by RedGemAlchemist

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, JimC said:

Another what if is that according to Felix Pole's book the LNWR execs were agitating to have the Rhymney included in the LMS.

 

The root of this is that the Rhymney had underestimated the cost of building the Caerphilly Tunnel, hitting a spring and suffering a collapse during the construction, and had run out of money.  The LNWR, which connected end on at Rhymney with a short branch from Rhymney Bridge, stepped in and bailed them out; a chance of access to Cardiff Docks could not be passed up.  The Premier Line could have absorbed ther Rhymney at that time, the 1870s, but preferred to allow the company to continue to work the railway.  They were majority shareholders, though, and you know what they say about who calls the tune...  They had a warehouse on the then new East Dock at Cardiff, and kept a loco to shunt it at the Rhymney's East Dock loco shed, a Ramsbottom 0-6-0ST named The Marchioness of Bute, nameplate nearly as long as the locomotive, and with all of the vowels of the English alphabet!

 

The GW would have very strongly resisted an attempt to group the Rhymney into the LMS.  They'd managed to hold the LNW off at Nine Mile Point and in the Eastern Valley, and already lost the battle at Swansea, where the LNW and, worse, the hated Midland, were present, and moreover had running powers between Worcester and Brecon into the bargain!  The LNW was keen to promote the various attempts to build a tunnel beneath Mynydd Machen between 9 Mile Point and Machen on the Brecon & Merthyr, along with schemes to run down to Cardiff through the lower Rhymney Valley from Machen to Cardiff Docks, but these were usually thwarted by the geological instabilities under Mynydd Machen and the difference in altitude of the railway on each side of the mountain.  A 150' rise in less than a mile on the map from Machen to 9 Mile Point would have made the tunnel a hellish place to work steam trains through.

 

9 Mile Point takes it's name from tramroad days, when it was the exact halfway point between Tredegar and Newport.  They changed the horses there and there were stables and a blacksmith's.  On South Wales tramroads, the horses had to pull downhill against brake pressure to prevent the loaded drams running them down, and 9 miles was about enough for the beasts.

 

Cardiff had a pub called Marchioness of Bute for many years, which would feature in quizzes and bar general knowledge contests, along with a pub which had no vowels of the English Language in it's name, discounting the prefix 'the', which is still happily with us, The Crwys.  W and Y are vowels in Welsh, the word means 'crusader'.

 

, moi...

Edited December 21, 2021 by The Johnster

[PhilJ W]

The original intention of the grouping was to create the 'Big Five' by grouping all of the Scottish companies into the fifth company. Then it was realised that an all Scottish company was not financially viable so it was divided up between the LNER and the LMS (or LMR as it would have been). The LMS got the better part of the deal as their share  included the heavily industrialised parts around Glasgow.

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

The original intention of the grouping was to create the 'Big Five' by grouping all of the Scottish companies into the fifth company. Then it was realised that an all Scottish company was not financially viable so it was divided up between the LNER and the LMS (or LMR as it would have been). The LMS got the better part of the deal as their share  included the heavily industrialised parts around Glasgow.

 

That's a little hard on the North British, which certainly had its fair share of a look-in on the Clyde. 

 

Back in the 1880s/90s, a MR / G&SWR merger was very much on the cards - at its closest, it only failed in Parliament because its opponents (the LNWR and CR) made much of the lack of physical connection between the two companies at Carlisle. What would such a company have been called? (London) Midland & Scottish? There were also discussions between the MR and NBR, the latter being unhappy with its East Coast partners at the time - especially the NER which was in cahoots with the CR for Glasgow-Newcastle traffic. The midland put up the largest share of the capital for the Forth Bridge Company... So, potentially, there could have been a Midland group already in existence, with a West Coast group - LNWR / CR / GWR? - along with a purely English Eastern group. 

[Compound2632]

On 21/12/2021 at 16:42, rodent279 said:

A GW & GC merger would also have created something similar to XC-did the GC have running powers to York & Newcastle?

 

On 21/12/2021 at 17:30, The Johnster said:

No, but I think they handed over the NE at Leeds.  My great uncle Ted, bit of a character and in the catering corps during WW1, worked as a steward on the Barry-North Shields 'Port to Port Express' (from 1919 to about 1927, after which he developed a professional bad back) for which the GW and the NE provided stock, a 'double home' job with the stock and crews overnighting and working back the following day. 

 

The train ran via Banbury, where the GC provided a locomotive, and Sheffield, so if the GC loco did not come off there it must have worked through on the Midland, or a Midland loco provided Sheffield-Leeds, which seems unlikely as the Midland were in competition on this route.

 

Not Leeds, to which the Great Central had no easy access - Bradford was, I believe, served via the L&Y from Penistone. The North Eastern provided the locomotives between Newcastle and York, and I think York to Sheffield. The route south of York was over the Swinton & Knottingley (NE & Mid. joint) then onto the Great Central Sheffield & Mexborough line (parallel to the Midland line), to a reversal at Sheffield. Early LNER period description here. 

 

Of course the route may have changed in later years.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Compound2632

[rockershovel]

On 21/12/2021 at 09:30, Compound2632 said:

 

The Vale of Rheidol had been bought by the Cambrian in 1913, which is how it came to pass into the hands of the Great Western at Grouping. Likewise the Leek & Manifold was worked by the North Staffordshire and then the LMS - I'm unsure whether it formally became the property of either. Of course the LMS was the owner of an extensive narrow-gauge system, and joint owner of even more, in Ireland.

 

So, a narrow-gauge railway that was already part of a pre-grouping company inevitably passed to a grouping company and hence, if it survived long enough, BR.

 

The Lynton & Barnstaple case is unusual. Perhaps the proprietors were pleading for it to be taken off their hands...

I don't know who actually owned the L&M when it closed, but what IS certain is that the LMS immediately lifted the track and demolished some of the structures, so that there could be no question of reopening. 

[DenysW]

A question really ...

Was Turbomotive (LMS 6202) not actually an attempt to save coal and water compared to a reciprocating engine, but really an under-the-radar step on the way to a 150 mph steam engine? Put into simplistic terms, 7' wheels = 22' per revolution, and 22'/sec is 15 mph. This then means 10 revolutions per second for 150 mph, which mean all the slidey bits all have to go forwards and backwards 10 times a second, the steam valves have to full-open and full-close much faster than 10 times a second so that the steam can pass easily, even the steam has to accelerate and stop in some pipes 10 times a second. Worse as the wheels get smaller.

 

Maybe Stanier thought that this was all more than the reciprocating technology could be asked to achieve, and that 150 mph reliably meant turbines, warts and all. This would also help explain it being dropped after WW2: the targets for the then-foreseable future (say 10 years) did not include 150 mph steam trains.

 

6202, designed at 2000 hp at 75 mph, then makes sense as a proving ground for the ability to use turbines to go fast with appreciable loads - and possibly explore some energy efficiencies.

[whart57]

Ten times a second is still only 600 rpm and internal combustion engines do a lot more than that. Of course the difference is that the pistons and valves in an IC engine are a lot smaller, lighter and travel much shorter distances. Still,the argument holds as high speed today is not done by locos with reciprocating engines in them.

[Northmoor]

You are right about removing (BIG) reciprocating forces, but 150mph steam was a fantasy on infrastructure that in most places wasn't capable of being operated at 100mph.  Not just the P.Way but the signalling, imagine the braking distances of vacuum-braked passenger trains operating at that speed?  The driver would have been no worse off applying in writing to stop at the next station.

[DenysW]

While I have to agree with the technical logic behind Northmoor's and What57's comments, it doesn't explain what LNER were doing with 'braking trials', or LMS were doing competing with them and smashing the crockery coming into Crewe. To me there are also questions whether the 1930s coaches and the couplings were up to much more than 100 mph in routine service, and this is also before the smoother modern ride of welded rails.

 

6202 still feels like an exploration of doing more to beat LNER (and the Germans) than adding go-faster stripes onto the Duchesses. Presumably one change of the gearing between the steam turbine and the wheels would have been enough for the locomotive, but only been the first big step of several big steps.

[whart57]

I wonder if the fact that diesels and electrification were beginning to be seen as threats to the gurus of steam traction had something to do with it. Diesel hauled premier trains were running in Germany, the Netherlands and even Thailand, and south of the Thames the Southern's "tramway" network (as at least one Northern engineer dismissively called it) was seen as more efficient, cleaner and frankly more modern.

[john new]

Possibly drifting but I think there were several forces in play in the 1920s through to WW2

• engineering - can these experiments prove useful?
  • high pressure steam
  • Various alternative valve gears
  • turbines
  • the early main line electrification proposals/costing exercises
  • diesels
• economic - added into the above 
  • If yes can our existing personnel and workshop facilities deal with them
  • on the mundane, can we do more, e.g. the Jazz trains on the GER section with steam
  • electrification on some suburban systems
  • loss of key trade in the slump.
• Marketing/PR
  • desire to show progress - the fastest trains in the world etc.
  • desire to satisfy the up-market sector of the pax on long haul.

Each influenced in different ways with different engineers as the two decades led up to WW2; arguably only Bullied kept the serious innovations going through the 1940s mainly with steam. Mixed successes.

 

Edited December 25, 2021 by john new

[DenysW]

And with the Marketing/PR aspects (a very strong influence in LMS), do you want to tell them you're working on 150 mph steam in 1935-ish, only for them to tell the world (without asking you) that it'll be ready by 1937-ish. With the gruesome examples of the PR fanfares over GWR's Great Bear, and the extra couple of years to get the LMS Jubilees right, still in the memory.

[AlfaZagato]

Merry Christmas, y'all

[rockershovel]

Successive British governments were well aware from about 1865 onwards, that their version of free-market capitalism was being technically surpassed by the twin threats of unlimited resources (America) and Dirigism (Germany). The problem was that they chose not to act on this knowledge. 

 

Both competitors understood how to make use of railways. The Americans deployed armies of then-unprecedented size  while the Prussians administered a trouncing to the French within a matter of weeks. 

 

By 1939 the Americans had cracked main-line diesel haulage and electrification. The Germans were well down the electrification path. The Americans would go on to demonstrate how to deploy the greatest military force ever seen, and thereby end up owning all the money in the world. 

 

We weren't, and didnt and the rest of the story has already been discussed... 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by rockershovel

[whart57]

British governments did act, they went for something called "imperial preference", basically isolating the then extensive British empire from competition

[rockershovel]

47 minutes ago, whart57 said:

British governments did act, they went for something called "imperial preference", basically isolating the then extensive British empire from competition

They did, but that's not the complete answer. Even at the apogee of Pax Britannia, the Royal Navy depended on Krupp armour plating because the British steel industry couldn't match it. The revolutionary introduction of the all-big-gun, turreted battleship was forced through against fierce opposition. On the railways, there was no reason the British Empire could not have embarked upon a policy of electrification - think of the returns from producing electrification hardware on a continental scale! - but did not. The British controlled the oilfields of the Middle East but never seriously began dieselisation. 

[whart57]

All that is true, but I think the point is that moving away from free trade and competition towards a closed imperial market was to encourage conservatism. That's often the case with protectionist policies. The Royal Navy might have needed Krupp steel for armour plating but none of the railway and road bridges being built in the empire did. Why would steel companies invest heavily to supply steel for half a dozen battleships when they were doing quite nicely supplying steel to a captive market.

 

I'm interested in the railways of Thailand, and Thailand - or Siam as it was - is interesting because it is one of a mere handful of Asian and African states that avoided colonisation by Europeans. Siam played Europeans off against each other when modernising the country. The first railway was in fact built by Danes, and it was the Germans who landed the first orders for locomotives and other hardware. (On my layout I can actually use Viesmann DB semaphores for the signals). The British didn't get a look in until a line was built south to link up with the railways in Malaya and orders for British locomotives peaked from 1916-20 after Siam's entry into WW1 on the Allied side. That shut off German competition. After WW1 though no more British railway equipment went to Thailand until the delivery of some Class 158 DMUs in the 1990s. British companies weren't building the right sort of locos, they didn't need to.

 

 

[john new]

But the UK government also faced the political problem pre-WW2, that finally hit home post-war, of what to do with a whole massive sector of the economy and society geared up to make things and work things a certain way (mining, coal firing, heavy industry etc.,) and running right through from the financing top level down to the lowest paid in the shovelling classes; even education was still geared to producing school leavers to fit the mould when I went though it in the late 50s and 60s. Boys were being taught metalwork, woodwork, technical drawing etc., with a few selected for more brains related skills but a trade-skill apprenticeship expected for most. 

 

Hindsight suggests that if the change had been more gradual the unrest of the Thatcherite era might have been eased, but the world had moved on more quickly than the UK. I won't comment further on many of those reasons, like cheaper overseas labour, as it becomes heavily dependent on political viewpoints as to how you argue it.

 

 

[DenysW]

In case we're drifting OT into geopolitics (etc. etc.) I give you a (re?)post of an early 4-6-0 in Midland livery, courtesy of Compound2632:

 

 

I wish the Midland had duplicated the nameplate on either side of the number instead of as-shown, but as this, clearly, was a prototype I think they can be forgiven. Less forgivable is their use of vertical pickets on the fence instead of Midland diagonal.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

I wish the Midland had duplicated the nameplate on either side of the number instead of as-shown, but as this, clearly, was a prototype I think they can be forgiven. Less forgivable is their use of vertical pickets on the fence instead of Midland diagonal.

 

The nameplates follow the example set on the LNWR with Webb's 2-2-2-2s which had e.g.  JOHN on one splasher and HICK on the other. I'm afraid I don't know who BEATRICE BEATRICE was, though.

 

The original photo may have been taken at a LT&SR location. Anyway, the diagonal paled fencing was not as universal as is sometimes assumed; the LMS carried on with it and installed it at Midland locations renewing older fences of different designs.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Compound2632

[rockershovel]

Those splashers make me sea-sick just looking at them! 

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Those splashers make me sea-sick just looking at them! 

 

Known as Nessie to the enginemen.

[Northmoor]

Beatrice Beatrice married the manager of the Corris Railway, Humphrey Humphries and they settled in Baden Baden.