Imaginary Locomotives

[DavidB-AU]

Thinking more about the concept of a high speed streamlined tank engine hauling a short non-stop service, another destination that jumps out is Cambridge. Think of a streamlined 4-6-4T based on the B17 hauling either the same formation as the East Anglian or a similar formation of articulated twins like the Coronation (something like Brake Third/Open Third, Kitchen First/Open First, Open Third/Brake Third). It should be able to run non-stop from Kings Cross or Liverpool Street to Cambridge in an hour.

 

Cheers
David

[whart57]

6 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

Thinking more about the concept of a high speed streamlined tank engine hauling a short non-stop service, another destination that jumps out is Cambridge. Think of a streamlined 4-6-4T based on the B17 hauling either the same formation as the East Anglian or a similar formation of articulated twins like the Coronation (something like Brake Third/Open Third, Kitchen First/Open First, Open Third/Brake Third). It should be able to run non-stop from Kings Cross or Liverpool Street to Cambridge in an hour.

 

And then it clutters up the platforms while it runs round its train. Oh, but being streamlined it needs to go and find a turntable because despite being a tank engine it can only work in one direction. It needs water and time for the fireman to clean the fire, all of which add time to the turn round. These were the reasons why the DR 61 concept didn't work and why it didn't survive the outbreak of war in 1939.

 

Let's assume there is the demand for a high speed service to Cambridge. Steam would not be the answer. From the mid 1930s on this sort of short non-stop, or limited stop, service was being filled by diesel multiple units like the Fliegender Hamburger and the Dutch DE3 and DE5 sets. If the "High Speed Dons" - as no doubt non-stop services from London to Oxford and/or Cambridge would quickly be dubbed - were proposed in BR no doubt someone from Southern Region would pipe up and say "did you ever here of this thing called the Brighton Belle?". Because London to Brighton is the same sort of distance and the Belle was serving the same sort of upper middle class clientele.

 

BR did come up with the Blue Pullman, but that was in 1960. For the Flying Don c 1951 something more basic would be needed. And a perfect example already existed on the British Isles. These were the AEC railcars that the GNR(I) put into service between Belfast and Dublin. They were successful four car units and the CIE bought more for use on Dublin to Cork and eventually all over Ireland. They were a postwar development of the GWR railcars with Park Royal bodies so would overcome all late 1940s objections against buying from abroad.

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, whart57 said:

And then it clutters up the platforms while it runs round its train. Oh, but being streamlined it needs to go and find a turntable because despite being a tank engine it can only work in one direction.

 

Why can't it have a streamlined bunker?

 

But wait - that's prompted an awful thought: how about a streamlined double Fairlie?

 

Why not? There were both-ways streamlined Beyer-Garratts in Algeria:

 

 

[Embedded link]

 

I note 75 mph is mentioned - the old French speed limit of 120 kph introduced under the Second Empire - was that really fast enough for the reduction in air resistance to become significant?  

[whart57]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I note 75 mph is mentioned - the old French speed limit of 120 kph introduced under the Second Empire - was that really fast enough for the reduction in air resistance to become significant?  

 

Possibly a long run through the desert meant it could face adverse headwinds for long distances

[DavidB-AU]

37 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Why can't it have a streamlined bunker?

 

Why not? There were both-ways streamlined Beyer-Garratts in Algeria:

 

Not only could they operate bunker first at high speed, they had dual controls to avoid the need for turning.

 

EDIT: The original idea for the NSWGR "AC38" was based on the Algerian BT and was to have dual controls.

 

 

Cheers

David

Edited July 26, 2022 by DavidB-AU

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Let's assume there is the demand for a high speed service to Cambridge. Steam would not be the answer. From the mid 1930s on this sort of short non-stop, or limited stop, service was being filled by diesel multiple units like the Fliegender Hamburger and the Dutch DE3 and DE5 sets. If the "High Speed Dons" - as no doubt non-stop services from London to Oxford and/or Cambridge would quickly be dubbed - were proposed in BR no doubt someone from Southern Region would pipe up and say "did you ever here of this thing called the Brighton Belle?". Because London to Brighton is the same sort of distance and the Belle was serving the same sort of upper middle class clientele.

 

There was already a diesel train operating into Cambridge in1939 in the form of the LMS articulted unit working services from Oxford (dons squared).  I've always thought it a pity that the war prevented further builds and development of this design as it seems to have been quite promising.  The most detailed description I can find online is at Disused Stations:

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/cambridge/index7.shtml

 

[MikeOxon]

Imagine if Churchward had stayed with the 'Kruger' concept - then 'Albion' 4-4-2 might have turned out like this:

[rockershovel]

21 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Imagine if Churchward had stayed with the 'Kruger' concept - then 'Albion' 4-4-2 might have turned out like this:

Now I can't unsee that...

[MikeOxon]

44 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Now I can't unsee that...

Sorry about that.  Perhaps you should seek treatment for PTSD.

 

Mike

[tythatguy1312]

On 26/07/2022 at 12:29, MikeOxon said:

Imagine if Churchward had stayed with the 'Kruger' concept - then 'Albion' 4-4-2 might have turned out like this:

I've seen a surprising amount of messed up stuff in my 18 years of life and this is certainly up there

[33C]

On 23/07/2022 at 09:27, PhilJ W said:

There's no photo.

Here you go, the "Sea Battle" class....And something for the South Devon banks.

Edited July 28, 2022 by 33C
added photo.

[rockershovel]

On 25/07/2022 at 15:13, whart57 said:

 

In 1950 they probably did think steam would be around until 1980. By the late 1950s it was pretty clear that wouldn't be the case though. We've mentioned before the severe recruitment problems the railways had, and then there is the fact that every water tower, ash pit and coaling stage was taking up space that then couldn't be used for diesel and electric locomotive maintenance. The economic outlook was more benign too which meant buying oil to fuel diesels wasn't eating up scarce foreign currency reserves as it would have been in the late 1940s. Apart from the known technology aspects, another reason for building steam locos is that Britain had plenty of coal but North Sea oil was more than thirty years away in the future.

It's not only the working conditions involved in operating a large-scale steam railway, but the disincentive of recruiting for a trade which takes years to learn but is being actively run down and dispensed with. Why tolerate the early years of cleaning and shovelling ashes on shift work, when you know your promotion prospects will disappear faster than you can progress? 

 

The NCB could recruit miners until the very end, because their career structure remained intact until closure; new facilities like Selby were still opening in the late 1970s and power stations were taking all they could dig well into the 1990s. 

 

The working and living conditions in the early North Sea years were pretty bad (absolutely awful at times) but it always had people queueing at the doors, because of the money and the whole "great national adventure" aspect; the construction industry could never manage that 

[DavidB-AU]

On 26/07/2022 at 00:13, whart57 said:

In 1950 they probably did think steam would be around until 1980. 

 

The 1955 Modernisation Plan explicitly said this. it envisaged over 7,000 steam locos would still be in service in 1970. The rebuilt Bulleid Pacifics were intended to be in front line passenger service until slidey rail reached Exeter around 1980. The BR Standards were intended to have a working life of 25 years, meaning Evening Star was intended to be retired in 1985.

 

EDIT: It's also worth noting that steam was far from dead for industrial use. Hunslet kept building Austerities until 1964 and Castle Donington Power Station used steam until 1989.

 

Cheers

David

Edited July 28, 2022 by DavidB-AU

[DenysW]

Seeing @33C's splendid GWR/BR Garratt prompts me to share a thought. Churchward's last huzza was the 47xx 2-8-0 Night Owls - a technical success (40 years+ working life), but a commercial failure (too heavy at 19 tons/axle for most of GWR's network).

 

Instead, should he have gone with the Sao Paulo-type 2-4-0+0-4-2 Garratts at marginally higher boiler pressure (175 psi from 160 psi). They'd need more coal and water capacity, but there's some wiggle room as the basis-design came in at 14 tons/axle and 60' length. Their key oddity was that Beyer Peacock slid the front engine further back than usual, making them less wasteful of length.

 

Where they are lesser machines is in heat exchanger area. Sadly this make me think that GWR would have put a Standard 7 boiler onto the Garratt frame and made only marginal improvements on the 47xx axle loadings.

[whart57]

2 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

The 1955 Modernisation Plan explicitly said this. it envisaged over 7,000 steam locos would still be in service in 1970. The rebuilt Bulleid Pacifics were intended to be in front line passenger service until slidey rail reached Exeter around 1980. The BR Standards were intended to have a working life of 25 years, meaning Evening Star was intended to be retired in 1985.

 

EDIT: It's also worth noting that steam was far from dead for industrial use. Hunslet kept building Austerities until 1964 and Castle Donington Power Station used steam until 1989.

 

What the 1955 Modernisation Plan got wrong could be a whole new topic. In particular it failed to see that the future of wagon load freight was limited, door to door delivery by lorries was already eating in to it. But the Modernisation Plan pushed for massive marshalling yards for that traffic. Nor did the plan predict what massively increased car ownership would do to the branch network. The Beeching Report was only seven years away, the first stretch of the M1 four years away, the first motorway in Britain - the Preston by-pass, now part of the M6 - only three years away. In other words while the planners at British Railways were drawing up the modernisation plan, civil servants in another part of the Department of Transport were planning Britain's motorway network. And ne'er did the twain meet it would seem.

 

To be fair, if you compare contemporary pictures of life in the late 1940s with that of the early 1960s then you see what a revolutionary decade the 1950s actually were. The 1955 Plan was out of date before the ink was dry, as the decision to bring Beeching in just six years later proved. Had the 1955 Plan been less conservative, if it had conceived the network that would eventually - painfully - emerge half a century later of high speed long distance passenger, high capacity short distance passenger around London and the major cities and block trains of freight, then a lot of money would have been saved, and, more importantly, less cynicism generated around Whitehall regarding railway investment.

[Flying Pig]

36 minutes ago, whart57 said:

What the 1955 Modernisation Plan got wrong could be a whole new topic.

 

For the locomotive aspects see upthread and also:

 

 

[whart57]

The Modernisation Plan was not just about locomotives though. The main problem with it is that it was written by railwaymen visualising the railway they would like to run, not the railway that would actually meet the needs of the nation in the 1960s and 70s.

[PhilJ W]

1955 Modernisation plan, 1956 Suez Crisis. The latter must have had an effect on the former.

[rockershovel]

6 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

1955 Modernisation plan, 1956 Suez Crisis. The latter must have had an effect on the former.

A transformative decade. 

 

The end of rationing after over a decade. The ending of Identity Cards (interestingly enough, as the result of a private legal action asserting that the Government was exceeding its authority).

 

The (unannounced) end of full employment as government policy. The development of public resistance to National Service and the sending of those conscripts to fight in the remote, futile wars marking the end of Empire. 

 

My late parents (who were there, after all) always said that "no return to the 1930s" was the great public sentiment of the time. Suez, and Modernisation Plan were amid the carillon of death knells of that great unfolding of the Law of Unintended Consequences

 

[Northmoor]

7 hours ago, whart57 said:

The Modernisation Plan was not just about locomotives though. The main problem with it is that it was written by railwaymen visualising the railway they would like to run, not the railway that would actually meet the needs of the nation in the 1960s and 70s.

Having worked in the Requirements Engineering field, it is what usually happens when you only ask the existing user what they need.  The reply will always be a newer version of what they already have, with the faults ironed out.  This is generally what the Standards were, pre-war designs with some improvements to ease maintenance (acknowledging the growing difficulties in recruitment and retention).

As well as asking the person funding the work, the correct question to ask users is, "What is the job you want to do"?  The solution is usually something very different from what the user expects.

[whart57]

25 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Having worked in the Requirements Engineering field, it is what usually happens when you only ask the existing user what they need.  The reply will always be a newer version of what they already have, with the faults ironed out.  This is generally what the Standards were, pre-war designs with some improvements to ease maintenance (acknowledging the growing difficulties in recruitment and retention).

As well as asking the person funding the work, the correct question to ask users is, "What is the job you want to do"?  The solution is usually something very different from what the user expects.

 

The iconic Routemaster bus - the original not the Boris bus montrosity - was much the same. London Transport crews were asked to contribute requirements and the expected answer came back - a larger RT with a better seat for the driver.

 

Then at the 1955 Commercial Vehicle Show the past and the future came together. LT and their partners AEC and Park Royal exhibited the prototype Routemaster, while a little bit down the hall Leyland exhibited their prototype Atlantean.

[DenysW]

The RM. Correctly described by the museum in Covent Garden as the ultimate development of the horse bus in terms of where the motive power went, and where the passengers got on and off.

 

The steam train the ultimate development of the ox cart?

[The Johnster]

No, that would be the Ford Transit V4. 
 

The steam locomotive is the ultimate development of the horse, as used to pull mine drams in wheel ruts. 

[JimC]

On 28/07/2022 at 09:13, DenysW said:

(too heavy at 19 tons/axle for most of GWR's network).

Surely the 47s, being red RA, were no more restricted on weight than Castles, Halls, Granges, 94xx etc . There were a few extra restrictions related to cylinder width and fixed wheelbase, but my understanding is they were mostly odd sidings and loops, not actual routes. Cook states that the Traffic department put in a request for more 47s, but Collett elected to build Castles instead as being more versatile, if more expensive. 

Later correction: I should have checked this better. The 47s had restrictions on a good number of lines as listed in various working timetables. Nevertheless they were sufficiently highly regarded that BR built a new set of ten Std 7 boilers in 1955/7, and a new superheater design was introduced in 1957.

Edited August 8, 2022 by JimC

[The Johnster]

The 'few extra restrictions' were enough to keep the 47xx away from the South Wales, OWW, North to West, and the Birkenhead road beyond Wolverhampton, a considerable chunk of the network denied to the class.