Imaginary Locomotives

[tythatguy1312]

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The Prince of Wales class was introduced in 1911, with the last batch appearing in 1922. Barring a handful of survivors to 1946-7, withdrawal dates were between 1933 and 1937, with operating lives of between 15 and 26 years - really not very long by any standards.

that may have been partially due to a surplus of Black 5's. Other pre-grouping 4-6-0's on the LNER and SR made it to the early 50's (including 1 class designed by Drummond, no less), such as the already mentioned GCR 8Fs. The NER S Class is of particular note as the first was constructed in 1899 and the last didn't go until 1951. This can be neatly contrasted with the LMS, who had literally hundreds of Black 5's & Jubilees to replace pre-grouping 4-6-0's in every conceivable role. It wasn't due to the flaws with the locomotives but the sheer success of Stanier's designs, otherwise the comparatively successful Highland Railway 4-6-0's (namely the Clan & Clan Goods) would've made it to the 60's.

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

that may have been partially due to a surplus of Black 5's.

 

As I said a few posts back:

 

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

But by 1930 there was a clear need for an "Improved Prince of Wales", which in due course appeared as the Class 5MT.

 

You're rather putting the cart before the horse. The Black 5s were conceived as a replacement for the Prince of Wales. It certainly wasn't a case of "Oh, we've built to many Black 5s, we'd better withdraw the Prince of Waleses".

[rockershovel]

34 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

didn't know the Listowel & Ballybunion was on the table for imaginary machines but I know at least 3 people who believed that their locomotives didn't actually exist, at least until I elaborated. To be fair those contraptions are closer to my sleep paralysis demon than a locomotive.

To be fair, "Ballybunion" sounds like a background joke from "Father Ted"

[billbedford]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The Prince of Wales class was introduced in 1911, with the last batch appearing in 1922. Barring a handful of survivors to 1946-7, withdrawal dates were between 1933 and 1937, with operating lives of between 15 and 26 years - really not very long by any standards.

 

Yes, but when did daManagement decide not to build any replacement boilers for these locos?

[tythatguy1312]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

 

Yes, but when did daManagement decide not to build any replacement boilers for these locos?

probably around the time of the 100th Stanier 4-6-0's completion, though Compound2632 did point out that the 5mt was directly intended to replace the Prince Of Wales. It just replaced anything which even smelled like a pre-grouping 2-6-0/4-6-0 as well

Edited December 9, 2022 by tythatguy1312

[rodent279]

9 hours ago, rockershovel said:

To be fair, "Ballybunion" sounds like a background joke from "Father Ted"

Sounds like something requiring surgery to me!

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, billbedford said:

Yes, but when did daManagement decide not to build any replacement boilers for these locos?

 

I'm sure that there was a pool of boilers to get the engines through the works as quickly as possible, in the usual economical Crewe style. The LMS did fit Belpaire boilers to some of the class, in the 1920s - I'm not sure but I think the Tishys were built that way, so it may have actually been a Beames innovation.

[Yarravalleymodeller]

11 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Do you actually mean a Decade?  A loco with an operating life of only a decade really would be a failure, it would be withdrawn once the first boiler overhaul was due.  Locomotives were expected to operate for 30 years plus.

Well over a decade means... well over a decade. The actually bad ones lasted much less, the ones that find alternate use cases last much longer, the ones that are superseded with no practical other place to go or potential buyers end up gone. 

 

There is no hard and fast rule of life expectancy for a good loco. That is a modern apparition. There's what made sense to each railway for each loco or class at that point. 

[billbedford]

9 hours ago, tythatguy1312 said:

probably around the time of the 100th Stanier 4-6-0's completion, though Compound2632 did point out that the 5mt was directly intended to replace the Prince Of Wales. It just replaced anything which even smelled like a pre-grouping 2-6-0/4-6-0 as well

 

I would say that the decision to not replace the Prince of Wales boilers came between the appointment of Stanier in 1931 and the withdrawal of the first loco in 1933. Though it would than more than a little research into the archives to find a definite answer. 

[DenysW]

2 minutes ago, Yarravalleymodeller said:

There is no hard and fast rule of life expectancy for a good loco. That is a modern apparition.

The tax-man has an opinion ( a very strong opinion) on what can be used as an acceptable depreciation rate. Depreciation is pre-tax; write-off is post-tax.

 

Problem is, it's changed at least twice since George Stephenson. So the original finances allowed you to capitalise everything, including replacement rolling stock - you see little snide notes where Companies chose to buy new rolling stock out of revenue instead, rather than recognising this was probably more honest. Following that period, steam locomotives were depreciated over 40 years, so writing off the remainder of the life early would be visible to the Board. Modern UK practice (from at least as far back as 1980 when I started having to care about this) is civil structures 60 year depreciation; Mechanical & Electrical 25 years depreciation.

 

So it surprises me when I read of far shorter lives, such as for Webb's uncoupled Compounds once he quit, or the 1890s Balwin/Alco 2-6-0s to MR/GCR/GNR. I would have expected "mothballing", or "strategic reserve" use or other weasel words when you aren't going to use an asset, but don't want to take the hit of writing it off.

 

I also feel that dieselisation might have been less fashionable if the diesels had been given a more realistic15-year mean life expectancy against steam's 40 years.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

So it surprises me when I read of far shorter lives, such as for Webb's uncoupled Compounds once he quit, or the 1890s Balwin/Alco 2-6-0s to MR/GCR/GNR. I would have expected "mothballing", or "strategic reserve" use or other weasel words when you aren't going to use an asset, but don't want to take the hit of writing it off.

 

As to the Webb compounds, the issue was their unsuitability for the changed traffic conditions of the new century. They were also much less numerous and more expensive to maintain than the hordes of Webb simple 2-4-0s, so the latter were the choice to keep for secondary duties. Anyway, the 30 Experiments and 40 Dreadnoughts, built 1882-8, were withdrawn in 1904/5, an average lifetime of twenty years, so doing just about as well as the Prince of Wales class! That accounts for 70% of the uncoupled 3-cylinder compounds. The 10 Teutonics, built 1889/90, were withdrawn 1905-7 - average 16 years; the 10 Greater Britains, built 1891-4, were withdrawn over the same period; while the 10 John Hicks, all but the first of which were built in 1898, were mostly withdrawn in 1909/10, so barely making 11 or 12 years. But in LNWR terms, this is a very small number of locomotives. [Ref. B. & D. Baxter, British Locomotive Catalogue 1825-1923 Vol. 2B (Moorland, 1979).]

 

But I think you'll find that very few of the top express passenger locomotives of the 1890s cut the mustard in the new century - they were killed off by the corridor carriage. The Teutonics are in fact the exception, with Jeanie Deans working the first proper corridor train, the 2pm Anglo-Scottish express, day in, day out between Euston and Crewe from 1893 to 1898. 

 

I believe the situation with the Baldwin* moguls was rather different. They were built on the American principle that the lifetime of the locomotive was determined by the lifetime of the boiler, so there was no point in designing other components to last longer. So they were withdrawn once their boilers were life-expired. In any case, the distance between the inner faces of the bar frames was less that the standard 4' 1" of Midland plate frames, so standard Midland boilers could not be used. [Ref. S. Summerson, Midland Railway Locomotives Vol. 4 (Irwell Press, 2005).]

 

*As far as I'm aware, the GC and GN examples were all from Baldwin; the Midland had 30 from Baldwin and 10 from Schenectady. Alco (like NBL) did not exist at the time, being a new-century amalgamation, including the Schenectady** company. Another sign that railway growth was at an end...

 

**But I'll forgive you writing Alco rather than Schenectady as I have to look up how to spell the latter, every time!

[Northroader]

I gather the materials used in construction were cheaper wherever possible, cast iron rather than steel, frinstance

[The Lurker]

3 hours ago, DenysW said:

The tax-man has an opinion ( a very strong opinion) on what can be used as an acceptable depreciation rate. Depreciation is pre-tax; write-off is post-tax.

 

 

 

 

The tax man in the uk has such a strong opinion that book depreciation is ignored entirely. No deduction is given for it or for a write off of a fixed asset. Instead there is a system of tax depreciation known as capital allowances. This developed out of earlier replacement allowances. Historically anything on Capital Account was outside the reach of the tax man, whether it was income or expenditure. I suspect but don’t know for sure that this was the reason some engines were designated as rebuilds when to all intents and purposes they were new builds; some of the Uris / Maunsell H15s were nominally rebuilds of Drummond’s less impressive 4-6-0’s for example. The availability of a replacement/ wear and tear allowance no doubt softened the blow of taking the cost to Revenue account 

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

Historically anything on Capital Account was outside the reach of the tax man, whether it was income or expenditure. I suspect but don’t know for sure that this was the reason some engines were designated as rebuilds when to all intents and purposes they were new builds; some of the Uris / Maunsell H15s were nominally rebuilds of Drummond’s less impressive 4-6-0’s for example. 

 

Surely the point was that a locomotive was part of the capitalisation of the company; once the locomotive was worn out, it was renewed.

[Yarravalleymodeller]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Surely the point was that a locomotive was part of the capitalisation of the company; once the locomotive was worn out, it was renewed.

The idea that you're paying to replace the whole loco with new materials is also a bit misleading, in the case of crewe they were more than capable of taking a loco, scraping it internally and reprocessing most of the materials. They had on site their own steel processing and much more, even their own brick works. 

 

In the case of locos purchased from other sources yes it may represent more of a loss but ultimately when you have that much in house expertise your costs on just about every process are basically labour and energy if you are scrapping and reprocessing for the most part.

[The Lurker]

47 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Surely the point was that a locomotive was part of the capitalisation of the company; once the locomotive was worn out, it was renewed.

The key word you've used is "renewed". There is a world of difference (in tax terms at least) between a renewal (or repair) and a replacement. Modern (ish) tax case law makes it clear that any repair that has an element of improvement cannot be a repair (and so cannot give rise to a revenue deduction) unless the element of improvement is more or less unavoidable due to changes in technology; so replace your broken single glazed window with double glazing - element of improvement so not a repair - but replace your broken double glazing with new double glazing with equal sightlines is probably a repair, even though there is an element of improvement. Going a little further back, before capital allowances, companies could claim tax deductions for renewals -but  they had to be ostensibly at least like for like. A new boiler was clearly a renewal (and presumably tax deductible because it was wholly, necessarily and exlcusively for the trade of the company) but if you turned an E14 into an H15 you could also get away with that being a renewal, even when the main resemblance between the two was the wheel arrangement and the water-cart tender. But if this could not be done - for whatever reason, including the board authorising the construction of x new engines, the new build would likely be to the capital account.

 

 

[AlfaZagato]

I know the concept is vilified a bit here, but there is an aspect of ego present in some short lifespans on locos.   Loosely unrelated to the direct conversation here.   I was reading yesterday, though, of changes in loco policy on the NER from Worsdell to Worsdell.   Some of the changes amounted to the later Worsdell disliking habits of the former.

[JimC]

I'm not sure that's the way it worked with the GWR, although I am quite ignorant of the tax implications. Renewal seems to have meant both replace with new and repair like new, and this was quite obvious in the 19thC. Ahrons uses the phrase "all that was reused was the space between the wheels".  In the immediate post grouping period the term was used very freely, and there are, for example, Welsh 0-6-2Ts going off to Stephenson's and being "renewed" for about half the cost of a new locomotive.  The phrase 'using such parts as are suitable for reuse'  appears. By the 1930s renewals certainly were not always like for like, with a number of smaller locomotives being replaced by few larger ones, but renewal as a eupehamism for a really thorough overhaul was apparently no longer permitted, with, for instance, 2-6-2Ts not being upgraded on renewals account unless there were major changes like different wheel size. I imagine its possible, even probable, that changes in tax law or accounting rules affected this. 

[DK123GWR]

The 71xx, a Manor-based tank engine, has been imagined several times before on this thread. I've always liked the idea and had a poorly Airfix Large Prairie, so when a Bachmann Manor with a Hornby Grange chassis underneath turned up cheap on ebay, I decided to give it a go. This is where we stand so far (there's a bit more tidying up to do, but then it'll be time to paint, after which it might look considerably worse).

 

[62613]

On 08/12/2022 at 21:32, tythatguy1312 said:

that may have been partially due to a surplus of Black 5's. Other pre-grouping 4-6-0's on the LNER and SR made it to the early 50's (including 1 class designed by Drummond, no less), such as the already mentioned GCR 8Fs. until The NER S Class is of particular note as the first was constructed in 1899 and the last didn't go1951. This can be neatly contrasted with the LMS, who had literally hundreds of Black 5's & Jubilees to replace pre-grouping 4-6-0's in every conceivable role. It wasn't due to the flaws with the locomotives but the sheer success of Stanier's designs, otherwise the comparatively successful Highland Railway 4-6-0's (namely the Clan & Clan Goods) would've made it to the 60's.

The S (B13) class had all gone pre - WW2, apart from one retained for a special service, the S1 class (B14) only 5 locos, 1928 - 1931, both due to declining traffic. The last survivors of the S2 class (B15) lasted until 1947. The S3 class lasted until the great cull of steam at the end of 1962, although some of them had been considerably rebuilt.

The G.E.R. 1500 class, (B12) was not an emlarged Claud, due to having to build an engine more powerful than them within weight limits. The boiler was larger, as were the cylinders.

Edited December 10, 2022 by 62613

[62613]

On 09/12/2022 at 09:54, DenysW said:

The tax-man has an opinion ( a very strong opinion) on what can be used as an acceptable depreciation rate. Depreciation is pre-tax; write-off is post-tax.

 

Problem is, it's changed at least twice since George Stephenson. So the original finances allowed you to capitalise everything, including replacement rolling stock - you see little snide notes where Companies chose to buy new rolling stock out of revenue instead, rather than recognising this was probably more honest. Following that period, steam locomotives were depreciated over 40 years, so writing off the remainder of the life early would be visible to the Board. Modern UK practice (from at least as far back as 1980 when I started having to care about this) is civil structures 60 year depreciation; Mechanical & Electrical 25 years depreciation.

 

So it surprises me when I read of far shorter lives, such as for Webb's uncoupled Compounds once he quit, or the 1890s Balwin/Alco 2-6-0s to MR/GCR/GNR. I would have expected "mothballing", or "strategic reserve" use or other weasel words when you aren't going to use an asset, but don't want to take the hit of writing it off.

 

I also feel that dieselisation might have been less fashionable if the diesels had been given a more realistic15-year mean life expectancy against steam's 40 years.

I've seen somewhere, in UK practice, 30 years for an express passenger loco, 40 for a mixed traffic type, and 50 for freight and mineral enines; which seems to tie in with typical dates to traffic/withdrawal. There were exceptional circumstances, of course.

[tythatguy1312]

29 minutes ago, 62613 said:

The G.E.R. 1500 class, (B12) was not an emlarged Claud, due to having to build an engine more powerful than them within weight limits. The boiler was larger, as were the cylinders.

who's saying that the S69's were simply enlarged clauds? Yes it's a direct evolution, but they are quite different. Generally I don't know why the S69's worked so well considering every 4-6-0 other that directly evolved from a 4-4-0 seems to have been either rather mediocre or a dismal, catastrophic failure of locomotive design.

Edited December 10, 2022 by tythatguy1312

[62613]

7 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

who's saying that the S69's were simply enlarged clauds? Yes it's a direct evolution, but they are quite different. Generally I don't know why the S69's even worked considering every 4-6-0 other that directly evolved from a 4-4-0 seems to have been either rather mediocre or a dismal, catastrophic failure of locomotive design.

S69 (LNER B12): bigger boiler, bigger cylinders, smaller driving wheels, big piston valves instead of slide valves. Superheated from the off Not really a development, but completely new design, with, in late LNER days a lower RA. I think the firebox was over the middle coupled axle. The firebox being in the postion it was led to the long cab.

Edited December 10, 2022 by 62613

[tythatguy1312]

4 minutes ago, 62613 said:

S69 (LNER B12): bigger boiler, bigger cylinders, smaller driving wheels, big piston valves instead of slide valves. Superheated from the off Not really a development, but completely new design, with, in late LNER days a lower RA. I think the firebox was over the middle coupled axle. The firebox being in the postion it was led to the long cab.

the general layout of the S69 was based on the clauds though. Yes the boiler & cylinders were enlarged and 3 sets of smaller drivers were used instead of 2 sets of larger wheels, but the boiler, cylinder & frame designs were based on the Claud Hamiltons, as well as the general layout of the design. The LNER also modified the S69's and the Clauds in ways which were exceedingly similar, though said modifications were standardised.Whilst it's inaccurate to simply call the S69's "enlarged Clauds" it's also inaccurate to call them a clean-sheet design. The biggest giveaway that they're a proper evolution is simply looking at the 2 of them together. Notice the similar boilers, running boards and general appearance.

[tythatguy1312]

you know what, just for fun, considering that the B12's are an evolution of the Clauds most prominent for their lengthening, imagine if that was taken to its logical conclusion