Imaginary Locomotives

[DenysW]

But debating real-life LMS doesn't answer whether Sao Paolo-style 2-4-0+0-4-2 Garratts, marketed effectively in Britain by a demonstrator engine, would have sold following WW1 for steep bendy mineral-dependant branchlines. The ones that really do not like 2-8-0s, and need their 0-6-0s banked.

[brack]

William Francis was the last of a class of 4 industrial garratts - the first was built in 1924 for vivian & sons copper works. Others went to sneyd colliery (1931) and guest, keen & Baldwin's (1934).

 

The LMS locos were ruined by interference from Derby in many aspects of the design. They were the heaviest garratts in europe and had the biggest axle load of any garratt, but were not particularly powerful. They achieved a saving of 1 loco crew and a slight saving in coal over the pairs of 060s previously used. In hindsight, beyer might have done better to refuse to build such compromised locos as they were as anyone looking at those wouldn't really want to order their own. However the size and value of the order talks - it'd be a brave manager/salesman who'd turn that down or jeopardise it. But really you could've build a big 280 on a 21t axle load and got the same tractive effort as the LMS garratts.

 

The lms garratts were within 1" of the overall wheelbase of the LNER garratt and pretty close on rigid wheelbase too, building them as 280-082 would've made a lot more sense in many ways.

 

The LNER loco would've done better without its enforced standardisation with existing 2-8-0s, but was perhaps not ideal to use just as a banker, but too powerful to use elsewhere. Either way, it lasted 30 years in service which seems pretty good for a one off, not succumbing until 1955 when many non standard steam locos were being purged. Essentially its boiler was about done, the route it was built for had been electrified, theyd tried to send it elsewhere but the crews didn't like it.

 

Beyer can't be faulted for trying - there are tons of outline proposals produced for railways in the british isles, I know of several for each of the GWR, LMS and a couple for the LNER.

 

Eg.

http://www.beyergarrattlocos.co.uk/bgpix/gwr460-064.jpg

 

http://www.beyergarrattlocos.co.uk/bgpix/gwr280-082.jpg

 

(From the excellent http://www.beyergarrattlocos.co.uk/Proposals.html)

 

A pre ww1 proposal for the cork, bandon & south coast (080-080 I think) and the 1924 Sligo, leitrim and northern counties 262-262 are interesting - bendy lines with 12t axle load restrictions where a garratt could have double loadings without breaking couplings. What surprised me when I saw the slncr proposal is it was an all new design - I'd assumed BP would've borrowed heavily from the standard gauge FC Entre Rios garratts they were building at the same time - 260-062 and 442-244 with a 12t axle restriction.

 

Truth is most lines in the uk were built rather too solidly, could take high axle loadings and didn't need much more than a black 5.

 

Although the garratt proposal for passenger working over the highland (a double pacific) might have shown what could be done. The LMS also asked about a 6 cylinder compound 442-244 (double midland compound), beyer suggested instead a 4 cylinder simple double pacific based on the first Algerian locos and spanish 462-264 instead (both licence built), which would've been somewhat more useful. For reference, those spanish garratts had 5'9" wheels and a 15t axle load - there wouldn't have been much of the network they couldn't get round.

 

Algerian AT

 

RENFE 462

 

Post ww2 beyer and the LMS spoke again, with 2 types of double pacific proposed with different wheel sizes for freight or express passenger use.

 

Nothing of course came of it all. Bottom line is that if you can get away with a single conventional loco, you're better off with it than an articulated one, and there weren't many lines in the uk that had to have routine double heading, where a garratt might have answered the need.

 

The lines garratts were most suited to tend to have been long, single lightly laid lines, where maximising train weight is needed. The UK's adherence to tiny unmarked 4w boxes and archaic chains for coupling put a huge restriction on train length and weight, such that there was little call for more powerful locos than were provided.

 

Durrant sketched out a 4-10-2 + 2-10-4 developing 102000lb t.e. within the br loading gauge on a 21t axle load, as an exercise in what could've been done. Exactly what it would have pulled, what couplings it'd need and how long the loops would need to be is a different question.

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, John Besley said:

There still is a standard gauge Garrett at Bressingham that was used by the NCB in a colliery, think there may have been a couple of others as well, have a funny feeling there was one used in a steel works somewhere in the UK 

 

GKN East Moors steelworks, Cardiff, again for a specific shunt involving a flyunder with sharp curves and steep gradients enforced on it by lack of space (see, it's not just modellers).  It was very similar if not identical to the Atherstone Colliery Garratt.  These locos were a standard B-G design for heavy shunting, and not really fast enough or with sufficient water/coal capacity for main line work.

 

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

 

However, my main point was that Beyer Peacock, apart from wanting to do their validation work on actual orders, seem to have positioned themselves incorrectly for the British market

 

Or, put another way, with full order books and a culture of building locos for export that goes back to the original 2' gauge example being sent to Tasmania, about as far from Gorton as you can get without starting to come back, they were not interested in the home market, and the home market by and large wasn't interested in them either.  If you consider that the larger pre-grouping railways, and some of the smaller ones for that matter, built thier locomotives 'in house', this dictates that those smaller railways that bought off the peg from outside manufacturers were the smaller ones, less likely to have traffic demands that might require a Beyer-Garratt solution.  The shorter distance heavy coal haulers like the Hull and Barnsley or the Barry were doing ok with the rigid framed 8-coupled locos they already had. 

 

This is because the normal length of a train in the UK was 60 standard length wagons, and loops and layby sidings were laid out with this length plus two locomotives and a brake van in mind, as were the safety overlaps of signalling sections and blocks.  There were longer trains, usually in connection with the London house coal traffic, and these included the Toton-Brent coal workings, but special signalling regulations had to be employed and 'double block' to ensure clear runs through shorter sections.  The trains were of 90 or 100 wagons, close to the limit of the capacity of the 3-link couplings on the leading wagon.

 

Another area where longer trains were allowed was on the South Wales Main Line between Severn Tunnel Jc and Cardiff Tidal Sidings, and the trains had to have a guaranteed clear road through Newport High Street station and the tunnels, a situation repeated and duplicated at Cardiff when the Port Talbot-Llanwern iron ore trains began operating in the 1970s.

 

The 'usual suspects' for very heavy haulage in the UK are the Tyne Dock-Consett, Newport Docks-Ebbw Vale, and Clydebank-Motherwell iron ore trains, all loaded up steep gradients and in the case of Ebbw Vale, around some fairly tight curves (this line was an upgraded tramroad).  All of them eventually featured 10-coupled engines, the WD 2-10-0s in the case of the Motherewells, and are potential B-G work but none of the railways responsible for the traffic seemed interested; perhaps the LMS Garratts had been such a dissappointment that it affected their thinking. 

 

The GW never really solved the problem of adequate power on the Ebbw Vale trains, and adopted a system of working where the trains were banked from Aberbeeg, and upon being unloaded at the steelworks, sent back down the valley to Aberbeeg with the banker as the train engine and the original train engine acting as a steam powered brake van,  35 loaded hoppers could be managed like this with a 9F and a 94xx banker. an improvement over 29 with a 42xx and 57xx.  The banker-now-train-engine came off at Aberbeeg and the loco and brake van run around for the run back down to Newport.  The 8-coupled Churchward tanks suffered from excessive tank leakage caused by frame flexing on the sharp curves, so the proposed GW 2-10-2T would not have fared any better. 

 

Compare this to the Newport-Dowlais iron ore trains, which loaded to 15 hoppers and were double headed and banked, 3 56xx from Bargoed.  A mid-sized Beyer-Garratt would have been very useful here!  Dowlais steelworks was built in that postion, halfway up a mountain, because when it was built there were sources of iron ore, limestone, and coking coal to hand and supplied by tramroads, but once these were worked out only the limestone was still available locally, so a new works was built at East Moors in Cardiff, though Dowlais continued in production for some time, and had to be supplied with loaded iron ore trains up the very steep Bargoed-Dowlais section of the Brecon and Merthyr.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by The Johnster

[Northmoor]

2 hours ago, brack said:

Nothing of course came of it all. Bottom line is that if you can get away with a single conventional loco, you're better off with it than an articulated one, and there weren't many lines in the uk that had to have routine double heading, where a garratt might have answered the need.

 

The lines garratts were most suited to tend to have been long, single lightly laid lines, where maximising train weight is needed. The UK's adherence to tiny unmarked 4w boxes and archaic chains for coupling put a huge restriction on train length and weight, such that there was little call for more powerful locos than were provided.

 

Durrant sketched out a 4-10-2 + 2-10-4 developing 102000lb t.e. within the br loading gauge on a 21t axle load, as an exercise in what could've been done. Exactly what it would have pulled, what couplings it'd need and how long the loops would need to be is a different question.

Perhaps (and it's a big perhaps), the Somerset and Dorset met the description above.  However, presumably it would have come up against the same barrier as the 9Fs did on the line in the 1950s: ASLEF.  It was the loco crews who blocked the introduction of 9Fs to the S&D because it wiped out huge amounts of overtime earned on crewing the double-headers.  By the time the dispute was settled, another chunk of business had already left the railway.

[DenysW]

I think that this is ambling back off into the stereotype of the Garratt as the ultimate muscle-machine, especially the biggest loads for bendy and/or light-bridge lines.

 

To me, the question was, however, was there a need for 5F or 6F locomotives immediately post WW1 that can accept 'normal' turntables and/or run bunker-first, and otherwise fit into the niche filled by e.g. LMS 0-6-0 4Fs with an 18 tons/axle loading. The Black 5s fail this on axle loading.

 

So a bit stronger for a bit heavier or somewhat faster freight services - not a lot stronger for game-changing loads or ultra-specialist slopes. If there had been 20 or 30 of them trundling around the L&Y (say) by 1922, would Horwich's suggestion of Garratts for one of the new LMS Standards after Grouping failed? Open mind. Probably down to purchase price from Beyer Peacock - the patents got an extension to 1928, so there wasn't a choice of Garratt supplier, and Meyers and Mallets were even less of an easy sell in the UK.

[brack]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Compare this to the Newport-Dowlais iron ore trains, which loaded to 15 hoppers and were double headed and banked, 3 56xx from Bargoed.  A mid-sized Beyer-Garratt would have been very useful here! 

Trouble is a 56xx has a 25000lb tractive effort, which isn't that mid sized!

So if we looked at a 262-262, max axle load would be a little lighter than a 56xx, same 4'7" and a bit wheels, make the coupled wheelbase shorter to help on the curves (maybe 6' +6' or 5'6" +5'6", rather than 15'3" on the 56xx), 200lb boiler pressure, 18" x 26" cylinders, about 50000lb tractive effort.

 

In many ways you're looking at a smaller wheeled version of the other Sao Paulo garratts:

 

They had 5'6" wheels and were intended for express passenger work, and were pretty rapidly rebuilt with 4w leading bogies for better performance at speeds of 60mph+.

I'd drop the wheel diameter and increase the fuel/water capacity a bit, might need to reduce the cylinder diameter a touch for the uk loading gauge, although 9Fs got away with 20" cylinders. The boiler is 6'9" diameter, same as the LMS garratts, so the whole lot should quite easily rearrange to fit within the loading gauge.

 

For comparative purposes, the pair of 56xx it's based on would have 2700 sq ft heating surface and a 40 sq ft grate, so you'd get 25% more grate area and 33% more heating surface, but in a much better proportioned boiler/firebox. It might have been a bit better than a pair of collet's ungainly tanks.

 

 

This is the drawing to start from (sadly I haven't got a pre pacific rebuild drawing).

I'd also look at the LMS loco for boiler/cradle mounting, as the boiler diameter is the same.

 

http://www.totonsidings.com/IMAGES/HISTORY/garratts/Garratt drawing of bunker.jpg

 

To get within the same loading gauge as the 56xx we need to lose 18" in width and 1'2" in height, but we're 6.5" less in gauge, and 4" down in diameter over both cylinders, so it isn't as hard as that might sound. Height wise, we're dropping 10" in wheel diameter, so it isn't too tricky either.

 

Is this the 'useful garratt' you're after Johnster? 

[rockershovel]

Given the results achieved by the LNER, and the success of the type overseas, the obvious question seems to be why there was no overall attempt to develop an 8F / 9F 2-8-2 in the inter-war years? 

[brack]

54 minutes ago, DenysW said:

So a bit stronger for a bit heavier or somewhat faster freight services - not a lot stronger for game-changing loads or ultra-specialist slopes.

Trouble is, you can use a conventional loco for that, and you already have turntables on most termini and many sheds. In fact you can cascade old pregrouping types for many of these tasks (or build obsolete pregrouping types for it, if you're the LMS).

An articulated loco has twice as many cylinders and valve gear, flexible steam joints and pivots to maintain. It's more expensive to build than a conventional loco.

It isn't a choice you'd make if you didn't absolutely have to.

Gresley spoke to a gathering of CMEs in 1922 expressing relief that articulated types were not needed for british conditions. Presumably he was rather surprised 18 months later to find the wath banker proposals on his desk.

[DenysW]

Quote

Brack said: 

Gresley spoke to a gathering of CMEs in 1922 expressing relief that articulated types were not needed for british conditions. Presumably he was rather surprised 18 months later to find the wath banker proposals on his desk.

Brunel assured the Gauge Commission that there was no need to change train between London termini. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes.

 

Also: the small Sao Paolo-type Garratt is usable with existing turntables. So you trade having four accessible cylinders and two sets of Walschaerts gear against multiple cylinders, some inside, and one set of gear. I think it comes down to price.

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, brack said:

Trouble is a 56xx has a 25000lb tractive effort, which isn't that mid sized!

So if we looked at a 262-262, max axle load would be a little lighter than a 56xx, same 4'7" and a bit wheels, make the coupled wheelbase shorter to help on the curves (maybe 6' +6' or 5'6" +5'6", rather than 15'3" on the 56xx), 200lb boiler pressure, 18" x 26" cylinders, about 50000lb tractive effort.

 

In many ways you're looking at a smaller wheeled version of the other Sao Paulo garratts:

 

They had 5'6" wheels and were intended for express passenger work, and were pretty rapidly rebuilt with 4w leading bogies for better performance at speeds of 60mph+.

I'd drop the wheel diameter and increase the fuel/water capacity a bit, might need to reduce the cylinder diameter a touch for the uk loading gauge, although 9Fs got away with 20" cylinders. The boiler is 6'9" diameter, same as the LMS garratts, so the whole lot should quite easily rearrange to fit within the loading gauge.

 

For comparative purposes, the pair of 56xx it's based on would have 2700 sq ft heating surface and a 40 sq ft grate, so you'd get 25% more grate area and 33% more heating surface, but in a much better proportioned boiler/firebox. It might have been a bit better than a pair of collet's ungainly tanks.

 

 

This is the drawing to start from (sadly I haven't got a pre pacific rebuild drawing).

I'd also look at the LMS loco for boiler/cradle mounting, as the boiler diameter is the same.

 

http://www.totonsidings.com/IMAGES/HISTORY/garratts/Garratt drawing of bunker.jpg

 

To get within the same loading gauge as the 56xx we need to lose 18" in width and 1'2" in height, but we're 6.5" less in gauge, and 4" down in diameter over both cylinders, so it isn't as hard as that might sound. Height wise, we're dropping 10" in wheel diameter, so it isn't too tricky either.

 

Is this the 'useful garratt' you're after Johnster? 

It's getting on in the right direction, for sure, but we need something that equates to 3 x 56xx for the Dowlais iron ore train, and it would seem reasonable to want to increase the load, say to 35 hoppers, as well, and now we are talking about 4 x 56xx. 

[billbedford]

7 hours ago, DenysW said:

What they eventually ended selling was an over-specialised banker to LNER, and a poor route-availability ultra-heavy goods loco to LMS.

 

The banker was what the LNER bought, however the original proposal from the GCR was for two locos using the existing 8K (O4) engine frames with BP designing the boilers. Since the grate area of the boiler was 56 sqft I has been suggested that it was possible that these locos would have been fired with colloid fuel following Robinson's experiments. 

 

It's likely that a fleet of these locos were intended for both Wath - Motram and Wath - Immingham coal trains, but the purchase of cheap ex-ROD locos and a falling off of coal exports from Immingham put paid to such schemes. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by billbedford

[john new]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Given the results achieved by the LNER, and the success of the type overseas, the obvious question seems to be why there was no overall attempt to develop an 8F / 9F 2-8-2 in the inter-war years? 

Perhaps because the LNER freight 2-8-2, the P1s, proved the really big freight loco wasn't the answer as it could haul trains too long for the existing infrastructure. That infrastructure, passing/refuge loops etc, limited the trains to what an existing 2-8-0 could pull so why build anything bigger. 

 

When the BR 2-10-0s did come about had the track rebuild/remodelling/dualling etc., needed during WW2 done away with a lot of those loop length restrictions or were they likewise hampered by track layouts in what they could pull (and satisfactorily stop) on some routes? 

 

The converse perhaps with diesels, the ex-Fawley oil trains IIRC dropped from 50 to 25 wagons when the D65xx/Cl 33s replaced the 9Fs.

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by john new
Typos corrected

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, Northmoor said:

erhaps), the Somerset and Dorset met the description above.  However, presumably it would have come up against the same barrier as the 9Fs did on the line in the 1950s: ASLEF.

 

I thought the objection to 9Fs on the S&DJ was that they were not fitted with steam heating and thus only of any use in the summer, which was when the through traffic was heaviest anyway.  Of course, fitting steam heating to 9Fs would not have been beyond the wit of man...  But I would not at all be surprised if ASLEF did not have a hand in this; protectionism was not unusual in unionised workplaces in those days and there was a cultural imperative to try to 'save' as many jobs as possible.

 

But there were, I think it is fair to say, other factors mitigating against the use of 9Fs on the S&DJ in the late 50s.  9Fs were still being delivered until 1960, and were not so thick on the ground as to be easily spared from their 'normal' work, and there was reluctance to use 5' wheeled engines on fast passenger work (and the S&DJ ran up to 70mph) until the locos had proved themselves.  Summer work on the line with them depended on seasonal drop in the house coal traffic elsewhere, so that the locos were available to 'borrow' for the summer.  

 

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

 

To me, the question was, however, was there a need for 5F or 6F locomotives immediately post WW1 that can accept 'normal' turntables and/or run bunker-first, and otherwise fit into the niche filled by e.g. LMS 0-6-0 4Fs with an 18 tons/axle loading. The Black 5s fail this on axle loading.

 

If there had been such a need (and, with the prevalence of unbraked loose coupled wagons in most goods and all mineral trains in those days I am not sure there was), the railways were awash with fairly modern (post 1890) 0-6-0s that could do the work, possibly not with the best possible efficiency, but this is a matter of cost-effectiveness and for the bean counters, whose world I do not understand.  I am aware, though, that the cost-effectiveness of new locomotives that are able to haul bigger and thus more profitable trains at higher and thus more profitable speeds has to be balanced against the cost of building them when you have older locos that are still capable of work that they would be put out of if you build new ones.  If the increased profitablility of the new engines is less than the money lost by scrapping older ones which are not yet redacted and have useful service left in them, it is better to hang on to the old engines.  Profitability is the bottom line, more so than actual profit even, because it is your assessed future profits, not your present ones, that govern your share price and the value of your railway.

 

If you look at the macro-economics of the post WW1 era, the cost of the war had led to investent capital being expensive compared to the pre-war era throughout what was now a completely interdependent world economy, which resulted in the tendency of smaller companies to amalgamate or consolidate into bigger ones, the first step on the road to the multinationals of modern times, when individual companies and people like Musk or Zuckerberg are wealthier than fair-sized modern industrial nations.  The idea behind this was that larger conglomerations would be better able to access capital for investement, but the scale of capital needed usually defeated them.  The Grouping, despite it's political aspect, was very much in line with this.  The capital famine continued and eventually caused the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression; even coming off the gold standard in 1933 failed to release the depression's grip on world trade, and only a war saved us, at the cost of somewhere between 60 and 100 million dead.

[john new]

10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

I thought the objection to 9Fs on the S&DJ was that they were not fitted with steam heating and thus only of any use in the summer, which was when the through traffic was heaviest anyway.  Of course, fitting steam heating to 9Fs would not have been beyond the wit of man...  But I would not at all be surprised if ASLEF did not have a hand in this; protectionism was not unusual in unionised workplaces in those days and there was a cultural imperative to try to 'save' as many jobs as possible.

 

But there were, I think it is fair to say, other factors mitigating against the use of 9Fs on the S&DJ in the late 50s.  9Fs were still being delivered until 1960, and were not so thick on the ground as to be easily spared from their 'normal' work, and there was reluctance to use 5' wheeled engines on fast passenger work (and the S&DJ ran up to 70mph) until the locos had proved themselves.  Summer work on the line with them depended on seasonal drop in the house coal traffic elsewhere, so that the locos were available to 'borrow' for the summer.  

 

 

If there had been such a need (and, with the prevalence of unbraked loose coupled wagons in most goods and all mineral trains in those days I am not sure there was), the railways were awash with fairly modern (post 1890) 0-6-0s that could do the work, possibly not with the best possible efficiency, but this is a matter of cost-effectiveness and for the bean counters, whose world I do not understand.  I am aware, though, that the cost-effectiveness of new locomotives that are able to haul bigger and thus more profitable trains at higher and thus more profitable speeds has to be balanced against the cost of building them when you have older locos that are still capable of work that they would be put out of if you build new ones.  If the increased profitablility of the new engines is less than the money lost by scrapping older ones which are not yet redacted and have useful service left in them, it is better to hang on to the old engines.  Profitability is the bottom line, more so than actual profit even, because it is your assessed future profits, not your present ones, that govern your share price and the value of your railway.

 

If you look at the macro-economics of the post WW1 era, the cost of the war had led to investent capital being expensive compared to the pre-war era throughout what was now a completely interdependent world economy, which resulted in the tendency of smaller companies to amalgamate or consolidate into bigger ones, the first step on the road to the multinationals of modern times, when individual companies and people like Musk or Zuckerberg are wealthier than fair-sized modern industrial nations.  The idea behind this was that larger conglomerations would be better able to access capital for investement, but the scale of capital needed usually defeated them.  The Grouping, despite it's political aspect, was very much in line with this.  The capital famine continued and eventually caused the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression; even coming off the gold standard in 1933 failed to release the depression's grip on world trade, and only a war saved us, at the cost of somewhere between 60 and 100 million dead.

 

Financing things is always the bottom line - even on a small scale in the office environment I worked in - when computerising functions through the late 80s & early 90s  we often had to lease new IT gear rather than buy out right even though leasing was more expensive overall. Reason = a ban from on high on capital account purchasing new assets outright and out of the already agreed revenue account budget for routine equipment purchase and maintenance and sundries etc., you could get IIRC five PCs on lease (leasing for some reason was allowed) for the price of one had we been able to buy it outright. Therefore in year one you got the job done and three or four years down the line the leasing outgoing £s were embedded in the budget to lease their replacements.

 

On the macro scale as mentioned in a post above that is why there were the accountancy locomotive rebuilds etc., - a way pragmatic staff got around arbitrarily imposed financial regulations and restrictions.

 

The above was all legitimate, even if on the borderline,  sadly it is the essence too of criminal money laundering - finding an enabling way to do something monetary that the rules/laws prevent.

 

Updated: late night typing ended up using incorrect accountancy terms. 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by john new
Correction of wrong accountancy phrase (capital account)

[JimC]

5 hours ago, john new said:

were the accountancy locomotive rebuilds etc., - a way pragmatic staff got around arbitrarily imposed financial regulations and restrictions.

With time and study, though, I'm moving to the opinion that the accountancy rebuilds, on the GWR at least, weren't nearly as dubious bits of financial gamesmanship as I used to think.

Yes, it's recorded that the renewal fund was healthy and revenue was not, so putting a locomotive through a renewal saved the cost of the heavy General it would otherwise have required. In the event the end of steam truncated the life of all the 1930s renewals, so it's impossible to do a real analysis, but there's some evidence, looking at the large Prairies in particular, that the renewals would have still been in service long after their unaltered cousins had disappeared. So if a locomotive half way through its normal working life had a renewal costing half what a new build would cost, and the renewed locomotive went on to run a normal full life, and also had various small enhancements making it cheaper to run or more capable, then it seems to me the renewal would be sound business practice. 

But between the end of steam truncating locomotive lives, and the difficulty of extracting exact costs from surviving records - beyond me I fear - I'm not sure it's possible to make a definitive evaluation. 

 

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, john new said:

On the macro scale as mentioned in a post above that is why there were the accountancy locomotive rebuilds etc., - a way pragmatic staff got around arbitrarily imposed financial regulations and restrictions.

 

I don't think that's likely. I'm pretty sure it would be better to say that it was company policy to renew stock via renewal rather than revenue. As a procedure, it would have to have the approval of the board and the company accountant.

[DenysW]

The original railways capitalised everything, and assumed everything had an infinite life. This has proved fairly true for the bulk of their civil assets - bridges, cuttings, embankments, stations - but not true for their mechanical assets (track, rolling stock, especially locomotives). This really meant that mechanical assets in this accounting system should be replaced out of revenue (i.e. it wasn't the fiddle it's often described as) because otherwise you are raising capital twice to end up with a single asset.

 

Modern accounting (I was told, set in modern tax laws) typically allows you to write down the cost civil structures over 60 years and mechanical and electrical investment over 25 years. I read that, by the early 1900s, locomotives were written down over 50 years. Early write-off has to be taken out of profit.

 

So yes, there's a complex balance between the costs of propping up old junk because it isn't yet old enough to scrap without generating a loss, and the saving of having new.

 

On the original question, I don't think the sweeping assertions that there were enough 5Fs and 6Fs post WW1. Yes there were lots of 2F, 3F and 4Fs around, and quite a few cheaply-built ex-ROD 2-8-0s 8Fs that were not expected to last long. There was a -hole filled in 1934 onwards by 842 Black 5s, for instance, despite their poorer route availability. If one of the pre-Grouping companies had had an articulation-friendly CME (as Webb was for compounds, and Sturrock for tender-drives), I could a see a fleet of small Garrats. And then, once the companies understood them, the big ones might have been more successful in this country, and constrained by our Loading Gauge.

[john new]

31 minutes ago, DenysW said:

The original railways capitalised everything, and assumed everything had an infinite life. This has proved fairly true for the bulk of their civil assets - bridges, cuttings, embankments, stations - but not true for their mechanical assets (track, rolling stock, especially locomotives). This really meant that mechanical assets in this accounting system should be replaced out of revenue (i.e. it wasn't the fiddle it's often described as) because otherwise you are raising capital twice to end up with a single asset.

 

Modern accounting (I was told, set in modern tax laws) typically allows you to write down the cost civil structures over 60 years and mechanical and electrical investment over 25 years. I read that, by the early 1900s, locomotives were written down over 50 years. Early write-off has to be taken out of profit.

 

So yes, there's a complex balance between the costs of propping up old junk because it isn't yet old enough to scrap without generating a loss, and the saving of having new.

 

On the original question, I don't think the sweeping assertions that there were enough 5Fs and 6Fs post WW1. Yes there were lots of 2F, 3F and 4Fs around, and quite a few cheaply-built ex-ROD 2-8-0s 8Fs that were not expected to last long. There was a -hole filled in 1934 onwards by 842 Black 5s, for instance, despite their poorer route availability. If one of the pre-Grouping companies had had an articulation-friendly CME (as Webb was for compounds, and Sturrock for tender-drives), I could a see a fleet of small Garrats. And then, once the companies understood them, the big ones might have been more successful in this country, and constrained by our Loading Gauge.

And is where the modern way of splitting up stock from operations means items go off lease and/or get scrapped  so can’t be pressed into service on the peak needs weekends. 
 

Back in the day once they were written down if an elderly set of coaches sat in a siding for a while, provided it was fit to roll to the coast on a few summer Saturdays, off it went then back into semi-retirement.  The siding and stock were already paid for, all the fares needed to cover was the direct cost of the trip. These days any spare unit sits out of use and unavailable because the TOC would have to hire it full time.  

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

The original railways capitalised everything, and assumed everything had an infinite life. This has proved fairly true for the bulk of their civil assets - bridges, cuttings, embankments, stations - but not true for their mechanical assets (track, rolling stock, especially locomotives). This really meant that mechanical assets in this accounting system should be replaced out of revenue (i.e. it wasn't the fiddle it's often described as) because otherwise you are raising capital twice to end up with a single asset.

 

26 minutes ago, john new said:

Back in the day once they were written down if an elderly set of coaches sat in a siding for a while, provided it was fit to roll to the coast on a few summer Saturdays, off it went then back into semi-retirement.  The siding and stock were already paid for, all the fares needed to cover was the direct cost of the trip. 

 

The 19th century approach of renewal of assets becomes apparent in the numbering systems (or apparent lack thereof) used by many pre-grouping railway companies. Locomotives built as renewals took the numbers of ones they replaced but renewals were frequently not in the order in which the original engines had been built... Only locomotives built as additions to stock - new capital assets - would take new numbers. The Midland was particularly good at this, until the great renumbering in 1907. Even after that things went to pot a bit as not all 4-4-0s were renewed as 483 Class and not all Class 2 0-6-0s were renewed as Class 3 (aka 3F). Derby works having limited capacity, large orders for goods engines as additions to stock were placed with the locomotive building firms, leaving Derby to build small batches of passenger engines on renewal account. The LNWR had a similar policy; there not only numbers but names were passed down the generations.

 

Then there's the whole question of duplicate stock - stock that had been renewed as capital assets but were retained "off the books". On the Midland, duplicate locomotives could still be doing front-line work, e.g. the Kirtley 800 Class 2-4-0s, which were all put on the duplicate list (with an A suffix) between 1899 and 1903 but mostly gave a further quarter-century of service. Locomotives could even move to and fro between capital and duplicate list. The same system applied to carriages and wagons - in December 1905, the Midland had 5,390 carriages and 117,583 wagons in capital stock and 853 carriages and 10,318 wagons in duplicate stock - nearly 14% of carriages and 8% of wagons. The railway companies had to make returns of working stock in their reports and accounts to their half-yearly shareholders' meetings and to the Board of Trade; this included only capital stock. From 1913 this was changed to an annual  return of accounts and statistics, including all stock, so there's a discontinuity between the numbers you'll see for Dec 1912 and Dec 1913.

[sncf231e]

On 27/12/2021 at 22:13, sncf231e said:

Regards

Fred

And the other way around:

Regards

Fred

[PhilJ W]

56 minutes ago, sncf231e said:

And the other way around:

Regards

Fred

Swap the fireboxes over otherwise you end up with an asthmatic Pacific and an Atlantic that uses far to much coal.

[tythatguy1312]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

you end up with an asthmatic Pacific

now where have I heard that one before...

[LNWR18901910]

On 27/12/2021 at 21:13, sncf231e said:

Regards

Fred

I think I may be getting RWS Awdry vibes just by looking at it. If anyone is clever enough to make this beauty a reality, I can only wish them the very best of luck!

[LNWR18901910]

On 02/04/2021 at 17:27, Gilwell Park said:

Some time ago I was watching my granddaughter driving James, very fast, round my layout. I realised that James is a very unusual locomotive, apart from his ability to speak that is. He is an inside cylinder 2-6-0. I have only found 2 such classes in the UK, One on the Caledonian & one on the Glasgow & South Western plus one in Ireland. I thought that it could be regarded as the goods equivalent of the 4-4-0. I read somewhere that James Holder of the GER considered a small wheeled Claud Hamilton for mixed traffic work, supplementing the E4 2-4-0 but never went ahead. I therefor present the LNER K10 class. An A. J. Hill development of the B12. A better loco for MT work than his heavy freight J20. It is built on a Hornby 0-6-0 chassis with a 3F footplate & original B12 cab, boiler & smokebox with front footplate attached . I have assumed that LNER rebuilt them with a round topped boiler as they did the B12/1 & the J20. 21mm Romford driving wheels are fitted. It is numbered in the unused 640xx series between the 2-8-0 & the 0-6-0. With a very old X04 motor it is a very useful engine.  Roger.

Totally impressive, Good Sir! Why, if only we can make such a fine mixed-traffic locomotive ourselves! Would it look nice in GER Royal Blue or LNER Apple Green or lined black?

[PhilJ W]

11 hours ago, LNWR18901910 said:

Totally impressive, Good Sir! Why, if only we can make such a fine mixed-traffic locomotive ourselves! Would it look nice in GER Royal Blue or LNER Apple Green or lined black?

A 2-6-0 version of the Claud with J15 size wheels would be a very useful locomotive. But there's not much it would be able to do that the J15's couldn't do.