Imaginary Locomotives

[Gibbo675]

32 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Why stop at three? Five's a good number.

changocombinoreducoreguvalvulator

Hi 34B&D,

 

And that folks, is how many attempts it took for me to pronounce said word !!!

 

Gibbo.

[PenrithBeacon]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Exactly - the extra compound boilers had to have the modification to the front tubeplate to make the fit the 7Fs.

 

....

This is the first I've heard that it was the tubeplate that was different and I find it difficult to believe that the LMS would change at least 145 Compound boilers to suit the very small number of 7F locomotives. I think it's much more likely to be the other way around. I'll try to find a reference for the modification to the 7F boilers.

 

One  of the drivers for the withdrawal of the large boilers off the second batch of 7Fs was the steady withdrawal of early Midland Compounds making available many good, some almost new, boilers for use on the S&D locomotives.

 

 As an aside the preserved 1000 has a tender off one of the first batch of 7Fs and I think, but I'm not sure, that one of the preserved 7Fs has a Compound tender.

 

Regards

 

[Flying Pig]

7 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Their traffic control system revolutionised the efficiency with which the Midland's traffic was handled, without need for the expense of larger locomotives and consequent infrastructure, to the delight of the shareholders.

 

Once the low apples had been picked by correcting the gross inefficiency of 19th Century traffic working, not continuing the process by addressing the wastefulness of double-heading the mineral traffic seems in retrospect a bad mistake.  Certainly by the mid 1920s the working methods were archaic.

 

So, Austin 7 with a Horwich cab and a bigger tender anyone? It would probably look like the big Lanky 0-8-0 

 

1 minute ago, Gibbo675 said:

And that folks, is how many attempts it took for me to pronounce said word !!!

 

Wasted effort, sadly.  The word is obviously French (who else would develop such a device) and badly misspelled.

[runs as required]

2 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

The word is obviously French (who else would develop such a device) and badly misspelled.

Nah - Its obviously Gorman hinnie

We got larnt t'say "electrischestrassenbahnfuhrer" by our Austrian teacher - weren't there Golsdorf compounds - or even more exotic ost-Europe mult-domed jobbies ?

dh

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

This is the first I've heard that it was the tubeplate that was different and I find it difficult to believe that the LMS would change at least 145 Compound boilers to suit the very small number of 7F locomotives. I think it's much more likely to be the other way around. I'll try to find a reference for the modification to the 7F boilers.

 

 

Sorry, that's a misunderstanding. A small number of G9AS (compound) boilers were modified to provide a pool of spares for the 7Fs. On my reading of Bradley & Milton, p. 161, initially just two, fitted to Nos. 84 and 85 in late 1929. The boilers taken off these engines were overhauled and put on large-boilered engines Nos. 89 and 90 in early 1930 - these engines this gained the saddle insert. This gave five large G9BS boilers between the three engines Nos. 86, 87 and 88 but no suitable spares for the seven engines now carrying G9AS boilers, so a further pair of compound G9AS boilers were modified to fit the 7Fs. So only four compound boilers were modified. 

 

As has been mentioned, and as Bradle & Milton state, by 1947 "free exchange of boilers was established" - surely by modification to the smokeboxes of the small number of 7F locomotives, not to the large number of standard G9AS boilers.

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, runs as required said:

weren't there Golsdorf compounds - or even more exotic ost-Europe mult-domed jobbies ?

 

 

See his 4-cylinder compound 2-12-0 - second photo down, here. They made use of his patent radial coupled axle. His atlantics were rather handsome in their way, though I suspect enginemen cursed those front steps when oiling round. Imperial and Royal Austrian State Railways Class 108:

 

 

You're possibly thinking of the even more exotic locomotives of the Royal Hungarian State Railways, such as this 1906 2-6-2, about which I know as much as I do of the Hungarian language:

 

 

What I do know is that Hungary was a kingdom, specifically excluded from the Austrian empire, so the Imperial title was not used for Hungarian state institutions, whereas both titles were used throughout the rest of the Austrian territories - "kaiserlich und königlich" or in Austrian Poland (largely now Ukraine), "cesarski in kraljevski".

Edited August 6, 2019 by Compound2632

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

50 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi 34B&D,

 

And that folks, is how many attempts it took for me to pronounce said word !!!

It's usually pronounced 'lever'.

 

Yours ever, Shibboleth Featherstonehaugh

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Your average domestic coal merchant would have been aghast at the prospect of dealing with a 40 ton gondola; what he wanted was five 8 ton wagons, each from a different colliery with a different grade of fuel. 

 

I recently came across this £30 new hardback at a railex

 

It caught my eye because the cover photo was a cropped and coloured revamp of my old BR (ER) CCE boss's original 1960s b+w photo. I bought it because I discovered the content to include a great many of his detail recollections of the yard's technical design that I'd completely forgotten.

It reminded me of  Dowty in 1961 making detail presentations to CCE AK Terris and the to the General Manager GN (to which we were allowed in) advocating their system's potential to replace freight locos altogether to make single van dispatch and deliveries across the pre-Beeching rail network.

While loose wagons wandering around the nation system with minimal headway controlled by plungers accelerating and braking wheels was anathema to the 'real' railwaymen present, they were nevertheless won over to agreeing Dowty's installation at Tinsley, albeit retaining the hump already committed to.

 

But just suppose the oil leakage and punched card failings of the time could have been resolved - might this have anticipated Amazon's drones?

dh

Edited August 6, 2019 by runs as required

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A long run at a steady rate of work would be ideal conditions for efficient compound working. The tricky bit would be getting a clear path. F.W. Webb put his Class A 3-cylinder 0-8-0s to work on goods trains over Shap, though I've also seen photos of them employed on shunting...

 

 

... with the attendant investment in rebuilding facilities at collieries and coal depots. It's an arrangement that was only ever going to work for specific point-to-point traffic flows - and came eventually, in the form of MGR. Your average domestic coal merchant would have been aghast at the prospect of dealing with a 40 ton gondola; what he wanted was five 8 ton wagons, each from a different colliery with a different grade of fuel. 

Whatever else you blame the Midland and it's unhealthy influence on the early LMS for, the blame for unfitted short wheelbase coal wagons lays firmly at the doors of the colliery owners, whose washeries were constructed to deal with such wagons and the loading chutes spaced accordingly.  This carried over into the entire system of distributing the product, to the loading hoists at docks for export.  Vacuum brakes were resisted because the bags got in the way when you were shunting, and were also resisted.

 

The railways' customers in the coal industry were calling the shots here; after all, they owned most of the wagons (not that matters improved noticeably when the railway owned the wagons and both railway and coal industry were nationalised).  The way things worked was very convenient for them; they could use the inefficiency they'd inflicted on the railways with their anachronistic and poorly maintained wagons to increase the time the product was in transit, effectively providing a free stockpile for them.  The GW under Sir Felix Pole made strenuous efforts to increase the payload of the wagons, including offering reduced rates for using the bigger 21ton wagons, and some progress was made with steelworks traffic, but we were still trundling around at 25mph with unfitted 9' wheelbase wagons in the 70s where MGR had not managed to make inroads.  MGR would have been ideally suited to steelworks traffic, but was never used in that role AFAIK.

 

The collieries constantly complained to the railways that the supply of empties did not meet their requirements; they needed empty wagons to load into to keep the underground galleries working and didn't have room to stockpile at the pits, especially in South Wales where the pits generally occupied restricted sites in narrow steep sided valleys.  But they were more than happy for loaded wagons to spend as much time as possible in storage or marshalling yards getting in the railways' way.  Most of them didn't have siding space for the empties they said they wanted anyway!

[RLBH]

10 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

The railways' customers in the coal industry were calling the shots here; after all, they owned most of the wagons (not that matters improved noticeably when the railway owned the wagons and both railway and coal industry were nationalised).

It is of note, here, that the NER was able to work slightly differently for much of its' coal traffic, with railway-owned hoppers transporting coal from the collieries to what were - in effect - an early form of coal concentration depots, and to the export ports. As a result, they standardised on larger hopper wagons, and even had bogie hoppers running on some flows. Even there, small collieries dictated that the humble 9-foot wheelbase four-wheel wagon was required, but the NER was able to persuade the larger collieries at least to fit loading equipment that could handle better wagons.

 

See also the GCR's notions of running trainloads of 40-ton bogie coal wagons (though not hoppers!) from Wath to Immingham behind a gigantic American-inspired 2-10-2 or 2-10-4, or the handful of side-emptying hoppers built by the LMS to supply their own power station. That coal wasn't being handled efficiently wasn't due to the railways not knowing how to do it, they were perfectly willing and able to do so when opportunity presented itself.

[Flying Pig]

21 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

but we were still trundling around at 25mph with unfitted 9' wheelbase wagons in the 70s where MGR had not managed to make inroads.  

 

Vehicles which were in some respects more primitive than the ones in use 200 years earlier in the Great Northern Coalfield. And weren't intermodal coal wagons being operated in Nottinghamshire prior to 1610?

[The Johnster]

Indeed; the early 'chauldron' wagons had sloped sides to make unloading easier.  There is some reference in the Gauge Commission reports (fascinating reading, but book a week off because it'll take over your life) of intermodal type working of coal traffic in what are described as basket containers to be transferred from standard to broad gauge wagons and vice versa, with the inevitable problems of returning the empties.

[john new]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A long run at a steady rate of work would be ideal conditions for efficient compound working. The tricky bit would be getting a clear path. F.W. Webb put his Class A 3-cylinder 0-8-0s to work on goods trains over Shap, though I've also seen photos of them employed on shunting...

 

 

... with the attendant investment in rebuilding facilities at collieries and coal depots. It's an arrangement that was only ever going to work for specific point-to-point traffic flows - and came eventually, in the form of MGR. Your average domestic coal merchant would have been aghast at the prospect of dealing with a 40 ton gondola; what he wanted was five 8 ton wagons, each from a different colliery with a different grade of fuel. 

Exactly, today we have the same scenario with road deliveries.

 

Because it suits the hauliers to run mega trucks on the primary road network said trucks are too big for many of the roads surrounding the final drop off points. The same transhipment issues from large vehicle to small vehicle as scuppered the broad gauge, still present in road haulage. It costs and is expensive so doesn't happen; despite improvements such as pallets and Hi-hab grabs on the truck - understandably, consumers want the goods cheaper. You just have to hope it isn't your vehicle that gets its bodywork scraped/wing mirrors knocked off when an oversize vehicle comes to deliver a handful of bricks or a bag  of cement to your next door neighbour!

Edited August 6, 2019 by john new

[RLBH]

7 minutes ago, john new said:

You just have to hope it isn't your vehicle that gets its bodywork scraped/wing mirrors knocked off when an oversize vehicle comes to deliver a handful of bricks or a bag  of cement to your next door neighbour!

Of course, the difference between this and the railway wagon situation is that we optimise for the trunk haul and try to force oversized vehicles over inadequate infrastructure, the railways took the other path and did the trunk haul in vehicles that would fit the infrastructure. The equivalent would be replacing every articulated lorry with four or five vans!

 

Such musings still leave me with the vision of a Fowler Compound 2-8-2 dragging a train of LMS 40-ton side-emptying hoppers down to Brent Sidings. There are about a dozen reasons why this wouldn't happen, but it's a pleasant thought anyway.

[john new]

1 minute ago, RLBH said:

Of course, the difference between this and the railway wagon situation is that we optimise for the trunk haul and try to force oversized vehicles over inadequate infrastructure, the railways took the other path and did the trunk haul in vehicles that would fit the infrastructure. The equivalent would be replacing every articulated lorry with four or five vans!

Partially agree. It is the local delivery that becomes the issue, even where stuff has come from a local transhipment point (local builders merchants around here are a prime example) the final vehicle chosen is often too big for the lane/estate road it gets sent down.

[Flying Pig]

52 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

There is some reference in the Gauge Commission reports (fascinating reading, but book a week off because it'll take over your life) of intermodal type working of coal traffic in what are described as basket containers to be transferred from standard to broad gauge wagons and vice versa, with the inevitable problems of returning the empties.

 

I was thinking more of the wagons used on the Wollaton Wagonway, which was active in the early years of the 17th Century, predating the Gauge Commission by more than 200 years.  Somewhere I've seen reference to coal wagons with demountable bodies that could be transferred to barges, but I can't find the information right now and it's quite possible I'm confusing two different systems.

 

This is well OT though, as they didn't use locomotives, imaginary or otherwise.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Flying Pig

[The Johnster]

IIRC the system described in the Gauge Commission reports concerned gauge transfers at Oxford, and there were 4 baskets on a standard gauge wagon and 6 on a broad gauge one (it was one of the claimed advantages of the broad gauge, that less wagons were needed to carry the same amount of coal; this was of course delusional as the gauge break imposed at least 50% more wagons to carry the same amount of coal from point to point). This suggests something that needed to be mechanically hoisted between the wagons (which were presumably flats or 1 plankers that could be used for other purposes when they weren't in the coal trade), as the capacity must have been in the order of 2-2½ tons per 'basket', beyond the capacity of of manual handling I'd have thought.  But a lot of this is assumption on my part.

 

The main gauge transfer points for freight traffic (and passengers, but they were much less of a problem as you needed to stop for refreshments and toilets anyway in those days, and they were self-propelling between trains) seem to have been Oxford, Gloucester, and later Bristol when the B & G converted to standard gauge.  The result everywhere seems to have been utter chaos, amplified at Gloucester by intense inter-company rivalry which occasionally resulted in staff brawling on the platforms and acts of sabotage.  At Bristol, a Joint Committee oversaw things, continuing into the grouping era I believe.

 

It probably didn't matter in many ways which gauge 'won out', although it was always going to be Stephenson's standard gauge in practice.  The vital point was that all the main line railways were compatible in terms of gauge, wheel profile, loading gauge, and coupling/buffer specifications, an ambition never more than 'largely' achieved in the UK and complicated by different automatic brake systems in the later 19th century as well.  

 

There were, digressing slightly, some interesting comments made by some interesting people at the Gauge Commission hearings.  McConnell of the LNW, he of Bloomer fame, responding to Brunel's claims of higher speed at higher stability, reckoned that he could 'easily' run his trains at 100mph if the track was good enough; given the mechanical and structural limitations of his stock, and the occasional need to stop the unbraked trains from such a speed within less than about 10 miles, it is IMHO probably just as well that the track wasn't good enough...

[The Johnster]

46 minutes ago, RLBH said:

Of course, the difference between this and the railway wagon situation is that we optimise for the trunk haul and try to force oversized vehicles over inadequate infrastructure, the railways took the other path and did the trunk haul in vehicles that would fit the infrastructure. The equivalent would be replacing every articulated lorry with four or five vans!

 

Such musings still leave me with the vision of a Fowler Compound 2-8-2 dragging a train of LMS 40-ton side-emptying hoppers down to Brent Sidings. There are about a dozen reasons why this wouldn't happen, but it's a pleasant thought anyway.

The difference is that railways were obliged by the Acts of Parliament that authorised their construction to act as common carriers, and could not refuse any traffic so long as it was within the gauge.  Parliamentary passenger rates, a penny a mile, had to be available to passengers on at least one train every day over a route, serving all stations, and similar rates were imposed by government on mineral and mileage freight traffic.  Of course, this meant that railways were keen to promote more expensive goods services involving collection, handling, and delivery by railway staff in railway vehicles, and special wagons or vans for particular traffic.  AFAIK the canal companies were under similar obligations.

 

In the case of mineral traffic, the railway is obliged by it's Act to carry the stuff whether it wants to or not, and by market conditions to reduce the charges on carriage using higher capacity wagons that the customer doesn't want, and has to hope it can make a profit out of the savings in running costs and operating efficiency.  As these sorts of returns are questionable at best in many situations, especially domestic fuel coal and other individual or small number wagon traffic, there is not much motivation for the railway to do much about updating the traditional method of moving coal around the place, despite having to design locos especially for this purpose, lay relief or goods lines to keep it out of the way of faster traffic, and it generally being a pain in the *rse.  Despite this, many railways were built with the original intention of making profits out of mineral traffic, and did so successfully for many years.  

 

Perhaps it is arguable that they were too successful for too long.  The Taff Vale for example, the classic coal carrier, made some of the highest percentage dividends paid out to shareholders in corporate history; they were doing ok thank you very much so why bother changing things and interfering with the golden egg laying goose?  So, instead of addressing the wagon problem, which it was in a dodgy position to do anyway because there were plenty of others locally who wanted the traffic and the collieries owned the wagons, it quadrupled it's main line south of Pontypridd, and built a new branch to approach the new docks being built at Cardiff from a Northeasterly direction, the Roath Branch, with some impressive flyovers at it's southern end.  This was justified because in those days the railway was being strangled by excess traffic and the traffic was growing exponentially; there was plenty for everyone.  

 

A road haulier or fleet owner can cherry pick any traffic he/she wants, and so can the post Beeching railway.  

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

At Bristol, a Joint Committee oversaw things, continuing into the grouping era I believe.

 

 

The Midland station at Temple Meads was joint with the Great Western.

 

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

McConnell of the LNW, he of Bloomer fame, responding to Brunel's claims of higher speed at higher stability, reckoned that he could 'easily' run his trains at 100mph if the track was good enough; 

 

Whatever I've read about McConnell gives me the impression that he was well clued up. I think he'd understood the fundamental theoretical flaw in Brunel's arguments for the greater stability of the broad gauge. For a vehicle with a given centre of gravity, the narrower the gauge, the greater the proportion of the force of the vehicle on the rails is exerted vertically, in the direction the track is strongest. He had probably also understood the advantage of a more yielding road - the stiff baulk road was another mistake. I've been reading E.L. Ahrons on the broad gauge (in Vol. 4 of his Locomotive & Train Working in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century). He had practical as well as anecdotal experience as a Swindon apprentice in the early 1880s. He reckons, or says it was reckoned, that the broad gauge engines were "two coaches better" on a transverse sleepered road.

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Compound2632

[The Johnster]

I’m not doubting the veracity of his claim; he was after all a successful railway engineer and as experienced aa anyone in those days.  He was actually obliquely referring to a Fundamental Truth, which was that the locos were limited by the track, and anyone who’d attempted that sort of running was asking for trouble!

 

Brunel was not really at the top of his game as a railway CME; that was Gooch’s job.  He was as good as it got as a CCE, though.   

[Gibbo675]

8 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Whatever I've read about McConnell gives me the impression that he was well clued up. I think he'd understood the fundamental theoretical flaw in Brunel's arguments for the greater stability of the broad gauge. For a vehicle with a given centre of gravity, the narrower the gauge, the greater the proportion of the force of the vehicle on the rails is exerted vertically, in the direction the track is strongest. He had probably also understood the advantage of a more yielding road - the stiff baulk road was another mistake. I've been reading E.L. Ahrons on the broad gauge (in Vol. 4 of his Locomotive & Train Working in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century). He had practical as well as anecdotal experience as a Swindon apprentice in the early 1880s. He reckons, or says it was reconed, that the broad gauge engines were "two coaches better" on a transverse sleepered road.

 

Hi Stephen,

 

Aspinall of the L&Y wrote a paper about the merits of a high centre of mass regarding the Atlantics of his that had high pitched boilers. I would think that the principals were along similar thinking.

 

Gibbo.

[Compound2632]

Their nickname - Highflyers - tells you everything you need to know - high-pitched boiler and fast withal, though the claims of 100 mph are a bit far-fetched.

[Gibbo675]

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Their nickname - Highflyers - tells you everything you need to know - high-pitched boiler and fast withal, though the claims of 100 mph are a bit far-fetched.

Well we wouldn't want the City of Truro and the Flying Scotsman embarrassed by a locomotive from a provincial railway that was on a train between Wigan and Liverpool, worse still one that was painted black now would we ?!?!?!

[The Johnster]

At least it wasn’t crimson lake...

[Compound2632]

59 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

At least it wasn’t crimson lake...

 

... rather striking, actually.

 

The only class of atlantic tender engine inherited by the LMS; the LNER inherited ten.