Imaginary Locomotives

[The Johnster]

The LMS and GWR were both years behind the game in terms of coaching stock at nationalisation, with the LMS producing nothing new since the 30s and still in a 57/60’ timewarp.  Bulleid and Thompson were well up to the mark, and my view, which is about as relevant as a budgie at a shark fishing competition, is that Bulleid, with end vestibules, had the edge but that Thompson’s rode better on the Gresley bogies.  I have had frankly alarming rides on Bulleid stock on anything but perfect track!  
 

The name of the game in 1948 was resistance to telescoping in a crash, and bow ends were a good idea.  They were a better idea if they were accompanied by buckeyes, and it was a good thing all round if they were 64’, which meant less coaches overall to carry the same number of passengers.  As well as the obvious cost efficiency and potential to improve perfomance from this, it meant that, overall, you were less likely to be sitting in the telescope-vulnerable area of the coach  if an accident happened; your chances of survival without injury were statistically increased. 
 

This may have been as well; the early BR period was notable for bad accidents. 

[melmerby]

13 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

The name of the game in 1948 was resistance to telescoping in a crash, and bow ends were a good idea.  They were a better idea if they were accompanied by buckeyes, and it was a good thing all round if they were 64’, which meant less coaches overall to carry the same number of passengers. 

Even better if they were 70'

The GWR had bow ends and 70' carriages and buckeyes (Lot 1308 of 1922).

(Actually one end buckeye, other screw link for trial purposes)

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I would say that the all steel K-type Pullman was the most advanced carriage design in Britain for quite some time from the lat 1920's onwards being of monocoque all steel construction with buckeyes and Pullman gangways.

 

As an aside, Britain's first all metal carriages were of course built by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway with the Manchester to Bury electric stock.

 

Gibbo.

[The Johnster]

Yes, the Pullman at Sevenoaks demolished the two coaches in front of it.  70 footers are always going to be to be route restricted and 64’ was a good all round general length for UK use.  The K type pullman was too expensive and heavy for normal use but the gangway plates found their way into normal use very effectively. 
 

[JimC]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

tinkering with large prairies and moguls with 5'6" and 5'3" drivers that made little practical difference.  

 

No, but it made financial sense. As Cook tells us the Churchward Prairies were getting to the age where they needed a really major overhaul, new cylinders and the like, more than a normal heavy general. By rebuilding them as new classes with different performance characteristics the work could be done on the renewals account, which was healthy, and not out of revenue, which was not. Its noticeable that the renewals ran several years longer than their sisters that weren't updated: it wasn't just a financial trick..

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

  The no.14 was probably a mistake, but the Grange's no.1 made it too heavy for secondary routes and and the moguls were not powerful enough.  Perhaps a pressure increase or 3 cylinder layout... 

I don't think that would have helped. Cook again: he reports that the Std 4 boiler couldn't keep up with the cylinders on the 43 with bigger loads on fast freight trains, because the coal consumption was rising above 100lb per sq foot of grate per hour.  So the need was mixed traffic engines with a bigger grate. The Granges were excellent, but too heavy for blue routes, so there was really no choice but to build a new boiler. 

[melmerby]

12 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Yes, the Pullman at Sevenoaks demolished the two coaches in front of it.  70 footers are always going to be to be route restricted and 64’ was a good all round general length for UK use.  The K type pullman was too expensive and heavy for normal use but the gangway plates found their way into normal use very effectively. 
 

Depends how wide they are

Mk 3 & 4 coaches are 75' 6" over buffing gear 4' 0" more than a GWR 70 footer.

 

 

Edited May 21, 2020 by melmerby

[rodent279]

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

IMHO the Collett era could be generally described as "Steady Progression" with one or two hiccups along the way.

There was nothing groundbreaking and his "finest hour" was the King which was a bit of a mish-mash.

The desire to squeeze the most power out of the 4-6-0 layout led to something that didn't have much in the way of standard components and a very limited roure availability.

 

The GWR did tinker with buckeyes but never adopted them, maybe if they had the LMS would have had to follow suit as the "odd man out"

So-would the King have been a better machine, from the RA perspective at least, if it had been built as a Pacific?

[The Johnster]

No.  It would have to have had a longer, heavier, boiler, and proportionally longer and heavier smoke and fire boxes, something like a Princess Royal, which was also too heavy for most of the GW, and the thinking was that a pacific would not have the adhesion for the South Devon banks.

 

There is a reason that the GW, and the Southern for many years, avoided Pacifics and why the WR tried it’s best to wriggle out of having Britannias.  

[rockershovel]

I could quite see a GWR Crocodile.... that, or an Armstrong Whitworth Rod-drive 1-Co-1 double unit? 

[PenrithBeacon]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

...

 

There is a reason that the GW, and the Southern for many years, avoided Pacifics and why the WR tried it’s best to wriggle out of having Britannias.  

An invalid reason, more of an excuse for very conservative thinking

[rockershovel]

8 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

An invalid reason, more of an excuse for very conservative thinking

 

I’d always understood that the GWR, having a combination of steep gradients and easy access to Welsh Steam Coal, made the 4-6-0 type work very well in their particular circumstances, which didn’t apply elsewhere. 

 

Rather like the NYC and associated lines developing the high-speed 4-6-4 for their easily graded, four-track raceway while the Union Pacific developed real monsters for relatively high speed freight across the Great Plains, and the Appalachian Lines favoured huge Mallets for drag freight over the mountains 

[john new]

22 hours ago, brack said:

I suspect the financial state of the railways plays a part.

 

Raven had successful electrification decades earlier, but when the infrastructure needed replacement/repair in the 30s shildon-Newport was deelectrified and given back to pregrouping steam locos as the LNER couldnt afford to renew it.

Armstrong was building far superior diesel locos than US builders in the early 30s, but coal and labour was cheap and water plentiful here, so the railways saw little need to change and couldnt afford the investment. The southern did electrify quite a bit of territory.

Where did the armstrong diesel electric locos go? Colonies without native coal reserves, arid regions.

The N&W persisted with steam in the US as coal/water were in rich supply, it was labour costs that pushed them to dieselise in the end. The swiss electrified because they had no native fuel but vast hydroelectric potential.

The circumstances surrounding railways have a bigger influence than the ideas and practises of management: The Junin railway on the altiplano had double fairlies, not because they were innovative, but because the line was steeply graded and twisty. They dieselised in the 1930s not because they were forward thinking but because it ran through a desert and they had no water.

English builders produced electric locos to export around the world and even to canada (EE and Beyer Peacock built box cabs for Montreal harbour) in the 20s and 30s. They didnt use them here because there was no pressing need or finances to do so - indeed the harbour board took the wires down as it was too expensive and sold the locos to CN, who ran them until the mid 90s.

The technology and capabilities were here, but the finance wasnt, and there was a huge amount of existing infrastructure built up around steam and the existing operating arrangements - the NER tried 40t bogie hoppers and automatic couplers in the 1900s, but colliery and staith facilities were designed around existing 4w hoppers, so they fell out of use. Can you imagine the cost of trying to reequip the uk railway system with fully braked bogie wagons and knuckle couplers at any point between 1900 and 1950? It would only be possible if everyone did it, and there was little likelihood of the various lines agreeing to something that costly.

We only began to move slowly away from Victorian wagon design after all the traffic it was built for disappeared and the wagons were withdrawn and not replaced in the 60s.

 

The Shildon scheme was also delectrified because the coal flow had shifted to other areas and away from Shildon to the Tees.

[PhilJ W]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I could quite see a GWR Crocodile.... that, or an Armstrong Whitworth Rod-drive 1-Co-1 double unit? 

Armstrong Whitworth did design a diesel locomotive for the GWR in the 30's. It never got any further than the drawing board. It was a 4-4-0 box cab with a short bonnet over the leading bogie  which IIRC contained a smaller diesel engine for starting purposes. If anything it looked like half of a Swiss Crocodile.

Edited May 21, 2020 by PhilJ W

[PenrithBeacon]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’d always understood that the GWR, having a combination of steep gradients and easy access to Welsh Steam Coal, made the 4-6-0 type work very well in their particular circumstances, which didn’t apply elsewhere. 

...

Class 7 & 8 Pacifics have been putting up performances on the Devon banks that are by a long way better than anything the GWR engines managed.

That could have happened during GWR days if the company had wanted it to, the technology was available, it chose to ignore it. The quality of the available coal is irrelevant.

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Class 7 & 8 Pacifics have been putting up performances on the Devon banks that are by a long way better than anything the GWR engines managed.

That could have happened during GWR days if the company had wanted it to, the technology was available, it chose to ignore it. The quality of the available coal is irrelevant.

It's pointless comparing things now with then.

When the GWR existed the 4-6-0 did everything that was required and was economical on coal.

There was no need for Pacifics.

 

 

 

[PenrithBeacon]

So they routinely double headed over the Devon banks. The need was clear enough but a profoundly conservative management couldn't see it.

[AlfaZagato]

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Armstrong Whitworth did design a diesel locomotive for the GWR in the 30's. It never got any further than the drawing board. It was a 4-4-0 box cab with a short bonnet over the leading bogie  which IIRC contained a smaller diesel engine for starting purposes. If anything it looked like half of a Swiss Crocodile.

Do you know if those drawings are floating around?  That could be a fun build.

[brack]

9 minutes ago, AlfaZagato said:

Do you know if those drawings are floating around?  That could be a fun build.

There are side elevations and dimensions in the back of the RCTS/Lightmoor Brian Webb Armstrong Whitworth book for the following GWR proposals:

450hp bogie railcar power unit, 250hp 044 branch line loco, 80-95hp 040 to replace 1361 class, 160/195hp 040 to replace 1101 class and 350hp 060 to replace 57xx class.

 

The railcar is a bogie design, the others all jackshaft drive. Diesel electric transmission for all.

 

There is also a table of contemporary (30s) gwr diesel proposals from other manufacturers.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, PenrithBeacon said:

So they routinely double headed over the Devon banks. The need was clear enough but a profoundly conservative management couldn't see it.

You could say much the same about the LMS banking trains over Shap; why didn't they simply use more powerful head-end power?

 

Perhaps using a larger, more water and coal-hungry boiler over the easier stretches of the GWR would have out-weighed the savings of not double-heading a few services over the Devon banks.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

You could say much the same about the LMS banking trains over Shap; why didn't they simply use more powerful head-end power?

 

Perhaps using a larger, more water and coal-hungry boiler over the easier stretches of the GWR would have out-weighed the savings of not double-heading a few services over the Devon banks.

Quite

 

Even BR did it in the diesel era, sometimes even triple heading.

There was sufficient power to get to Devon but more was needed over the banks.

 

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

Do you know if those drawings are floating around?  That could be a fun build.

 

3 hours ago, brack said:

There are side elevations and dimensions in the back of the RCTS/Lightmoor Brian Webb Armstrong Whitworth book for the following GWR proposals:

450hp bogie railcar power unit, 250hp 044 branch line loco, 80-95hp 040 to replace 1361 class, 160/195hp 040 to replace 1101 class and 350hp 060 to replace 57xx class.

 

The railcar is a bogie design, the others all jackshaft drive. Diesel electric transmission for all.

 

There is also a table of contemporary (30s) gwr diesel proposals from other manufacturers.

It was basically an AW 350hp jackshaft drive shunter with the rearmost drivers replaced by a four wheel bogie. I have an illustration somewhere that shows a similar locomotive but not proposed by AW, appologies for the confusion as I mixed the two up. This was also put forward to the GWR at the same time but differed in having a box body with a cab at each end. 

Edited May 21, 2020 by PhilJ W

[PenrithBeacon]

5 hours ago, Northmoor said:

You could say much the same about the LMS banking trains over Shap; why didn't they simply use more powerful head-end power?

 

Perhaps using a larger, more water and coal-hungry boiler over the easier stretches of the GWR would have out-weighed the savings of not double-heading a few services over the Devon banks.

With respect I think you're trying to shift the argument.

The LMS Pacifics were designed to power trains over Shap single headed and this they did. All Pacifics of Class 7& 8 have demonstrated for years now that they can run single headed over the Devon banks in contrast to the King which has been known to stall on the northern fells and is usually double headed in Devon.

Basically the King should have been a Princess and the Cathedrals should have been built.

[Northmoor]

2 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The LMS Pacifics were designed to power trains over Shap single headed and this they did.

But were they greatly over-powered for the rest of the route (I don't know, I'm asking)?  

 

2 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

All Pacifics of Class 7& 8 have demonstrated for years now that they can run single headed over the Devon banks in contrast to the King which has been known to stall on the northern fells and is usually double headed in Devon.

Basically the King should have been a Princess and the Cathedrals should have been built.

How do train lengths compare between then and now?  I seem to remember trains like the CRE were rather longer than today's excursions, and stalling on banks is hardly the unique preserve of the Kings.  Tangmere stalled on Dainton not so long ago.....

 

I agree with Johnster, the King's biggest problem was their route restriction, which a GWR Pacific wouldn't have solved.

[The Johnster]

With respect, it's hardly comparing like for like when you take into account the steepness of the banks to equate the South Devon cliff faces with the relatively easy though admittedly longer Shap or Beattock.  South Devon is more comparable with the Lickey, and nobody seems to have objected to any driver requesting assistance there.  I'm sure the Cathedrals would have been splendid locos, but they have been at least as restricted as the Kings and 47xx.  

 

I'm not for a second denying or decrying the work of preserved pacifics in South Devon, but don't forget that FS disgraced itself not long ago on the West Somerset!  Preserved loco performances with locos in perfect condition that haven't come all the way from Paddington with one fireman, who is therefore less tired and less likely to have to cope with clinkered up ashboxes and such, and has had less time on the loco for injectors or poor coal to bother him, hardly replicate the experience of working everyday on steam  locos, some high mileage and in poor condition, with drivers of variable ability and attitude.  Most (not all) WCML trains changed locos at Crewe and Carlisle, relatively fresh for their banks, and the best locos were kept for the non-stop diagrams.

 

There has been a successful pacific on the WR, the Britannia, only acceptable to Newport Division and Canton shed which eventually took on the entire WR allocation.  There was a lot to be said for Brits at Canton, which had always argued that Kings were needed for their heaviest jobs (they got them, briefly, in 1961).  South Wales-Paddington trains were more generously timed than West of England ones, because the loadings were much heavier and speeds west of Stoke Gifford lower.  A 2 cylinder slogger with 6'2" driving wheels and a free steaming boiler that could manage 14 bogies (16 with assistance) from Severn Tunnel bottom to Badminton without dropping below 30mph was an asset at a shed whose work also included the hilly North to West route and some fairly impressive banks west of Cardiff as well (for which high mileage locos were preferred; there were plenty of speed restrictions and tyres worn down to about a 6' wheel diameter helped on the banks.  Particularly Skewen, which started straight off the platform at Neath and corkscrewed around a 180 degree turn immediately.  But a Brit burned a ton and a half more than a Castle on the non-stop Newport-Paddington, which some poor sod had to shovel for no extra money!  AFAIK the WR Brits used the longer WR shovels, 7lb not 5 as elsewhere to enable the fireman to get coal to the front corners of the box; that extra 2lb must have hung heavy after a while.  

 

And there wasn't much letting up after Badminton on the up non stops either; you'd inevitably have lost time, more so if you'd had assistance to Pilning or Stoke Gifford, and the loco had to be kept steaming down the hill to Wooton Bassett and given the beans from Swindon up to make right time at Paddington; many firemen told me stories of firing hard all the way to Southall or coming in from Slough on coal dust and an empty tender.  

 

That said, I remember the Brits at Canton, and they would waste a good 5 or 6 minutes of their 15 minute running time to Newport getting their trains clear of the platforms at Cardiff; there is a slight rise and a sharp curve over the Canal Wharf bridge and wheelslip was normal even on a dry rail.  I was expecting fireworks from 70000 last year in the same place, but the loco took it's train out, admittedly cautiously, but without losing it's footing at all.  A few months later I watched Tornado contemptuously lifting 13 bogies and a 47 out of platform 3, despite wet conditions.  OTOH, a Castle would simply open the regulator and go, chuff chuff CHUFF CHUFF, no fuss, and the tail light would be out of sight within a minute; they do this in preservation as well.  So did 73050 when it visited, and the last steam hauled service timetable Paddington I ever saw here, a Modified Hall with 12 on in 1964 deputising for a failed 47, did as well, a scratch loco from East Dock shed.  Something to be said for the way 4-6-0s grip, perhaps? 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by The Johnster

[AlfaZagato]

As Johnster says above, my understanding was the 4-6-0 was held to start the often-inclined exits from GWR stations better than a Pacific.  Also look to the fact that Churchward went straight to a third driving axle, instead of fiddling around with Atlantics like any company northwest.

 

Speaking of the other companies, I believe any Grouping Pacific tested in the Exchanges was found to slip horrendously out of Paddington.   I can't source that, though.   Been years since I read it.

 

I think the GWR would have electrified before they adapted a Pacific.   A nice, heavy boxcab does what the GWR was looking for better than a Pacific would.   I believe, much earlier in the this thread, a GWR idea for an electric was discussed.

Edited May 22, 2020 by AlfaZagato