Imaginary Locomotives

[Northmoor]

I suspect the locos would have been quite boxy and functional in appearance, though any express passenger types might have had some effort put into styling them, particularly in the streamliner era.

 

Would the GWR have user copper for the pans? Could you just stick pans on 10000 for the LMS design?

"Locomotives the Never Were" has a painting of a very Swiss-looking imagined LMS electric.  I plan on using myTrix DB Cl.144 as a basis for something similar.

 

Of course very similar bogies to LMS 10000 ended up under the EM2.....

Edited May 2, 2018 by Northmoor

[The Johnster]

And the D600 Warships as well, but in AIA-AiA form.

[runs as required]

I suspect the locos [GW or LMS mainline electric locos] would have been quite boxy and functional in appearance ...

I came across this, to my eye 'beautiful' machine while googling yesterday - with that ecclesiastical skyline it could almost pass for a British lineside scene.

It is an Indian metre gauge battery electric from Madras of the early inter-war era. There were also broad gauge battery electrics designed to go beyond the wires - or where the wires would be considered unsightly.

Note its battery tender - isn't that a good idea? I'd like one on an electric car to reassure me about getting back home.

 

I do like the possibility of the fireman  second man getting out on the front balcony and playing that searchlight around over the jungle ahead.

dh

Edited May 4, 2018 by runs as required

[PhilJ W]

I came across this, to my eye 'beautiful' machine while googling yesterday - with that ecclesiastical skyline it could almost pass for a British lineside scene.

indian battery electric loco.jpg

It is an Indian metre gauge battery electric from Madras of the early inter-war era. There were also broad gauge battery electrics designed to go beyond the wires - or where the wires would be considered unsightly.

Note its battery tender - isn't that a good idea? I'd like one on an electric car to reassure me about getting back home.

 

I do like the possibility of the fireman  second man getting out on the front balcony and playing that searchlight around over the jungle ahead.

dh

Puts me in mind of the three BTH Diesel Electrics that were provided for Fords Dagenham works in 1932.

[Zomboid]

Puts me in the mind of a Baldwin steeplecab. Though in fact it doesn't look very much like one.

 

I like it though. Those early electric locos are great.

[PhilJ W]

Very similar locomotives were built by English Electric for Japan c. 1930, a couple are known to survive.

[Coryton]

I came across this, to my eye 'beautiful' machine while googling yesterday - with that ecclesiastical skyline it could almost pass for a British lineside scene.

indian battery electric loco.jpg

It is an Indian metre gauge battery electric from Madras of the early inter-war era. There were also broad gauge battery electrics designed to go beyond the wires - or where the wires would be considered unsightly.

Note its battery tender - isn't that a good idea? I'd like one on an electric car to reassure me about getting back home.

 

I do like the possibility of the fireman  second man getting out on the front balcony and playing that searchlight around over the jungle ahead.

dh

 

Battery tender? That's what the IETs need.....

[runs as required]

Very similar locomotives were built by English Electric for Japan c. 1930, a couple are known to survive.

Thank you

According to this Wiki page English Electric was an inter war consolidation of many original English electrical companies - including Siemens at Stafford - that eventually were re-capitalised in 1930 with Westinghouse of the USA.

This 1926 advertisement is from Graces guide dated 1926

 

[rockershovel]

This one is rather a corker, too..

 

 

... so, it seems that we had the technology but let others make use of it. Sounds familiar.

[Compound2632]

A club member had the Piko HO model of the PKP class EU06 on our test track last week - an equisite model. Built by English Electric and based on their Class 83 for British Rail. Although only 20 were built in 1962, they formed the foundation of the Polish State Railways' electric locomotive fleet, the very numerous EU07 being based on them and built in Poland under licence. In fact the EU07 alone outnumbered British Rail's entire 25 kV locomotive fleet by 3:2.

[PhilJ W]

Thank you

According to this Wiki page English Electric was an inter war consolidation of many original English electrical companies - including Siemens at Stafford - that eventually were re-capitalised in 1930 with Westinghouse of the USA.

This 1926 advertisement is from Graces guide dated 1926

 

The one top right is the one I spoke of. Note the very similar New Zealand example, and the same gauge too (3'6").

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

This one is rather a corker, too..

 

B868253E-BF0B-42DC-88B4-98518FBA1F93.jpeg...

 Well there we are, so now we see that the body styling EE applied to DP1 had deep roots.

 

... so, it seems that we had the technology but let others make use of it. Sounds familiar.

The UK's railway owners were deeply conservative, and generally only adopted new tech when it was vital to their immediate interest. Continuous brakes for passenger stock is a good example. Electrification had obvious advantages and was proven in the UK by the date of that unit: the Southern had gone that road because it was the only way to make their commuter service practical. Everywhere else, on-board boiling water was still sufficient.

[rockershovel]

Well there we are, so now we see that the body styling EE applied to DP1 had deep roots.

 

 

The UK's railway owners were deeply conservative, and generally only adopted new tech when it was vital to their immediate interest. Continuous brakes for passenger stock is a good example. Electrification had obvious advantages and was proven in the UK by the date of that unit: the Southern had gone that road because it was the only way to make their commuter service practical. Everywhere else, on-board boiling water was still sufficient.

I suppose the core problem is the phobia regarding investment which has plagued British industry since at least the 1870s, and continues to do so.

 

I was reading a book about Scott’s expeditions, a while ago. It was depressingly familiar to read that one of HIS ships, built to order in Dundee because no other yard still had the technology or skills to build such a vessel, had quite serious problems of workmanship resulting in (among other things) serious leaks along the keel which, combined with a seriously defective pumping system, almost sank the vessel in the Southern Ocean.

 

Scott appeared quite sanguine about the leaks when they appeared at Sea Trials, commenting morosely that “it seems quite impossible to get the British workman to take a proper view of the quality of his work” or something similar

[The Johnster]

I agree about the reluctance of the British investing classes to stump up for railway projects, and the prevalence of get rich quick idealism since the 80s has more or less holed what little desire there was here for long term investments below the waterline and flooded enough compartments to take her down.  I think the rot set in in the 1840s with the Hudson scandal, and the failure of Overend and Gurney sealed the deal; reluctance to stump up the necessary for a decent railway has been bred in to the British DNA for a very long time.

[runs as required]

Come on! You are all getting depressed about our railways on a wonderful warm May holiday week-end.

How many continental European nations depended on private investors for their railways - were they not mostly State operations ?

 

So here is something to cheer you: by accident I came across this delight via googling - actually posted earlier on this thread back in 2012 (before I even knew RMweb existed)

 

 

I admired the way Bernard TPM returns with pride to tweak his design with edit  from time to time

dh

[BernardTPM]

Come on! You are all getting depressed about our railways on a wonderful warm May holiday week-end.

How many continental European nations depended on private investors for their railways - were they not mostly State operations ?

 

So here is something to cheer you: by accident I came across this delight via googling - actually posted earlier on this thread back in 2012 (before I even knew RMweb existed)

 

LNER diesel.jpg

 

I admired the way Bernard TPM returns with pride to tweak his design with edit  from time to time

dh

Thanks, though some of those edits were correcting my typing!

 

That Spanish English Electric O.H. electric loco is featured in a superb cutaway in my old 'Book of Knowledge' the railway pages of which were well-thumbed over the years. They also built similar, though perhaps even more handsome, electrics for the Victorian Railways in Australia, the L class.

[DavidB-AU]

This one is rather a corker, too..

B868253E-BF0B-42DC-88B4-98518FBA1F93.jpeg]

 

... so, it seems that we had the technology but let others make use of it. Sounds familiar.

Very similar to the Victorian Railways L class built by EE in 1952-53.

 

http://www.railpictures.net/photo/278350/

 

Cheers

David

[Zomboid]

That styling goes back at least as far as 1937s EMC EA/EB locos. Maybe earlier.

[rockershovel]

Handsome thing, though, isn’t it? Much better than the Armstrong-Whitworth box-on-wheels.

 

Re #3364 above, the reluctance to stump up for investment probably goes back to the very beginning of the modern banking structure, with periodic delusions like the South Seas Bubble recurring. I tend to attribute it to the British having a landed, moneyed class which had no real idea of HOW their investments actually worked, whereas the Germans have moneyed families with names like Krupp, Thyssen and Siemens.... the Americans had names like Getty, Weyerhaeuser and Ford, Edison and the like, people who had MADE their money and were respected for it.

 

There’s a sub-plot in one of the Aubrey/Maturin books, which involves Jack Aubrey becoming involved with a “projector” who essentially defrauds him of considerable sums in supposed pursuit of a plan to revive disused lead mining sites on Aubrey’s land. As Maturin (who doesn’t believe a word of it) remarks, “it lacks only a canal at a thousand pound a mile..”. This sort of thing was quite common at the time and in some ways, still goes on.

 

I’m presently working for a Dutch company, who are engaged in constructing landfalls for cables from offshore wind farms (mostly owned by Danish and German companies) and a French scheme to construct cross-Channel electric grid connections between England and France. You can draw any conclusion you like from this, but British acumen in making profitable investments in developing technologies doesn’t reallyspring to mind..

Edited May 6, 2018 by rockershovel

[melmerby]

British acumen in making profitable investments in developing technologies doesn’t really spring to mind..

I thought most British investments today were made by the Bank of Beijing!

 

Sad really.

 

Keith

[rockershovel]

I thought most British investments today were made by the Bank of Beijing!

 

Sad really.

 

Keith

Well, quite so. I’ve never really understood why, if The City are so utterly marvellous, whenever we need actual, real money to spend on actual, real things, we don’t appear to have any..

[iands]

Well, quite so. I’ve never really understood why, if The City are so utterly marvellous, whenever we need actual, real money to spend on actual, real things, we don’t appear to have any..

Isn't that financial utopia - you get what you want but get someone else to pay for it?

 

Regards, Ian.

[rockershovel]

Isn't that financial utopia - you get what you want but get someone else to pay for it?

Regards, Ian.

I’d always understood that it consisted of getting a percentage of something you had no involvement in, or understanding of, without risk or investment; but I suppose the concepts are quite similar.

[ColinK]

A club member had the Piko HO model of the PKP class EU06 on our test track last week - an equisite model. Built by English Electric and based on their Class 83 for British Rail. Although only 20 were built in 1962, they formed the foundation of the Polish State Railways' electric locomotive fleet, the very numerous EU07 being based on them and built in Poland under licence. In fact the EU07 alone outnumbered British Rail's entire 25 kV locomotive fleet by 3:2.

When I was over in Poland a few years ago, one of them was painted in BR electric blue.

[Compound2632]

When I was over in Poland a few years ago, one of them was painted in BR electric blue.

 

In fact EP07-1051.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Compound2632