Imaginary Locomotives

[JimC]

The trouble is a big Mallett on the UK loading gauge would be a nonsense. The boiler would look like a pipe cleaner. I've very crudely and quickly hacked a weight diagram to give some kind of idea. On the UK gauge the only articulated config that makes sense, to my mind, is a Garratt. Imagine it as a proper Mallet with a tender and its even more ludicrous...

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by JimC

[Michael Edge]

This one would have worked though - probably with a leading pony truck added, as it is it fits on a 60ft turntable.

Outline design from Horwich in 1923, alternative to the LMS Garratts. Within loading gauge and a fairly well proportioned boiler, the ashpan might have been a bit restricted though.

[tythatguy1312]

3 hours ago, JimC said:

The trouble is a big Mallett on the UK loading gauge would be a nonsense. The boiler would look like a pipe cleaner. I've very crudely and quickly hacked a weight diagram to give some kind of idea. On the UK gauge the only articulated config that makes sense, to my mind, is a Garratt. Imagine it as a proper Mallet with a tender and its even more ludicrous...

 

 

 

strictly speaking, nobody's saying you can't have 2 boilers...

[cctransuk]

10 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

strictly speaking, nobody's saying you can't have 2 boilers...

 

Go on then - I'll bite - what the h*ll is THAT ?

 

CJI.

[tythatguy1312]

11 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Go on then - I'll bite - what the h*ll is THAT ?

 

CJI.

Some Obscure Belgian prototype locomotive for the Franco-Crosti boiler, an utterly bizarre 0-6-2+2-4-2-4-2+2-6-0 locomotive with 2 Boilers, 2 Cabs bisected by the Dual Firebox and the preheaters on separate units to the boilers, surrounded by the water tank. To think that they say Quintuplexes were merely a dream of Union Pacific.

courtesy of the guy who compiled seemingly all the commonly known info on that thing,
http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/francocrosti/francocrosti.htm#b
 

Edited April 2, 2022 by tythatguy1312

[Miss Prism]

No branchline would be complete without one of those.

[cctransuk]

22 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

No branchline would be complete without one of those.

 

...... on an autocoach!!!

 

CJI.

[rodent279]

25 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

No branchline would be complete without one of those.

... Even if it does take up the whole length of the line....😜

[tythatguy1312]

57 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

... Even if it does take up the whole length of the line....😜

They say 1 End was 3 towns over from the next

[The Johnster]

8 hours ago, john new said:

An attempt at humour (Obviously it failed).

I sometimes take things a bit too literally, John, please accept my apologies for my slowness on the uptake...

Edited April 2, 2022 by The Johnster

[rockershovel]

I'm unable to identify any prototype or equivalent  for the late John Allen's 4-10-0, #34

[DenysW]

At the risk of re-stating an entrenched position, I think We Brits look at articulated designs and try to go as big as possible (within the UK loading gauge) and then find out either there's no need for something that size, or that our designs fail at first visual inspection. Instead, for this iteration of the discussion, I suggest starting at Uintah Railroad's No's 50 and 51, 2-6-6-2 Baldwin non-compound Mallets, which had 42,000 lb starting tractive effort and 15 tons/axle for 36" gauge track using 19" cylinders. I feel that it's likely that Baldwin could have scaled up to UK loading gauge more easily from this that we can scale lengthways from a standard gauge starting point.

 

It's only a move from 3 or 4 driving axles restricted by the maximum rigid wheelbase to 3+3 articulated, and also from 2 or 3 cylinders to deliver the power to 4 cylinders. Much more possible.

 

Beware the HO scale model of No. 50. It was made HO by multiplying all the dimensions of the 36" gauge drawings by 56.5/36 and is a mega-machine indeed.

[tythatguy1312]

40 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I feel that it's likely that Baldwin could have scaled up to UK loading gauge more easily from this that we can scale lengthways from a standard gauge starting point.

I feel like Baldwin might’ve had to scale the design down in some areas, as 3ft Gauge locomotives could get rather large in their own rights. I also don’t exactly know what it would do, as whilst mineral trains on the GWR and LNER sound tempting, both had their own designs for the job. Using off-the-shelf locomotives was exceedingly rare for the Big 4 before WW2.

[DenysW]

Agreed on scaling issues, as I haven't been able to check the Uintah loading gauge. But that is why I gave the cylinder size - you can get outside 19" cylinders into British gauge, although it's towards the limit.

 

These were also bespoke by Balwin's standards, and fitted into their logging portfolio, although Uintah was primarily a mineral railway (gilsonite, a coal-like mineral).

[JimC]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

 feel that it's likely that Baldwin could have scaled up to UK loading gauge more easily from this

I was idly looking at Cape gauge the other day, and the example loading gauge I found (Malaysia - https://twitter.com/malayanrailways/status/1201281457294954496) was very much the same size as UK standard gauge - 9'3 across. So there wouldn't actually be much, if any scaling up possible.  But it gets worse, because if the frames are widened to standard gauge is there enough room for the cylinders? , Rail to platform  is 2'10.75 on Malayan Railways, but 730mm (2'4.74") on Network Rail.

 

[John Besley]

21 hours ago, tythatguy1312 said:

They say 1 End was 3 towns over from the next

There are some stations on the LT at Canary Wharf where the stops are almost a train length apart... Bit like some model railways I've seen...

[TerryD1471]

On 17/03/2022 at 15:43, The Johnster said:

All of which seems a cromulent explanation of why the 56xx was never given 5'2" driving wheels.  I was thinking of something like a Swindon version of the Rhymney P class, in much the same way as a 56xx can be regarded as a Rhymney R class built out of Swindon standard parts.  'Swindonised' Rhymney Ps were handsome beasts, and used Swindon standard no.2 boilers which were not pitched ridiculously high.  Finding space for the valve chests is the limiting factor in this line of putative development, and it is interesting to note that, AFAIK in all cases in which Collett altered the driving wheel size of previous designs, Saint to Hall, 54xx to 64xx/74xx, 61xx to 81xx, 3150 to 1938 31xx, it was to reduce it in order to increase T.E.  Hawksworth effectively reduced the driving wheel diameter of the 2251 to achieve the 94xx, and it is I think fair to say that the 2251's boiler is pitched about as high as you'd like to go for comfort in regard to centre of gravity.

 

What seemed to me to be a natural Collett progression from the original 56xx to a passenger version is, as you have all proved, not as simple as it looks.  A loco with 5'2" driving wheels does not feel like a passenger engine in many places outside the South Wales Valleys of course, but several of the local independent pre-grouping companies had come up with 'passenger' 0-6-2Ts of this sort.  The accepted wisdom was that you had 0-6-2Ts with 5'+ drivers for passenger work, 4'6" or so ballpark for mixed traffic and general goods, and 4'+ for the heavy mineral jobs, and there were plenty of those...  The Taff Vale only had one section, between Radyr and Crockherbtown Jc, that could sustain 70mph running, and the fastest speed anywhere on the Barry was 50mph.  The Rhymney had fast sections south of Ystrad Mynach to Crockherbtown, restricted to 50mph between Aber Jc and Wernddu. 

 

Not that particularly high speeds were achieved with passenger trains even where they were permitted; uphill was a slog and the frequent station stops prevented much in the way of blowing out the cobwebs on the downhill runs; in any case the timings did not require much more than 50mph or so, and the 56xx were easily capable of that.  So my 76xx is not so much a neverwazza as a neverevenlikely! 

 

Canton might have found a few useful for the short haul main line Pontypool Road runs with Manchester or Liverpool trains, which changed engines there; large prairies and 56xx did this work in reality.  The other possibility is the daily Porthcawl-Cardiff and Swansea commuter services, the 'residentials'; Tondu had 3100, a Collett 1938 large prairie with a no.4 boiler and 5'3" drivers that could accellerate the 5-coach train away from the main line stops to keep out of the way of faster traffic.  This loco was invovled in a 'heavy impact' with the stop block at Porthcawl in 1958 and, after a few weeks of potching about as an Ogmore Junction yard pilot while the damage was assessed, was withdrawn at Swindon despite being only 20 years old. 

 

Hardly enough work to justify a separate class, but, having said that, there were only 5 of the Collett 1938 31xx.  More were intended and this class was to be the standard for all new large prairies, but the war intervened and Hawksworth built 5101s instead.  These proposed 31xx would have done the work of my 76xx, and the 41xx series did in reality.

I do enjoy your posts, but I have to ask what the word "cromulent" means? It ain't in my Oxford English documentary. Could it be credible, or am I jumping to concatenations?

 

 

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, TerryD1471 said:

I do enjoy your posts, but I have to ask what the word "cromulent" means? It ain't in my Oxford English documentary. 

 

But it is.

[PhilJ W]

48 minutes ago, John Besley said:

There are some stations on the LT at Canary Wharf where the stops are almost a train length apart... Bit like some model railways I've seen...

Some metro systems have closely spaced stations, Paris for example. The service runs like a bus or tram service with a similar frequency.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, John Besley said:

There are some stations on the LT at Canary Wharf where the stops are almost a train length apart... Bit like some model railways I've seen...

Pedantic point, but I think you mean the Dockland Light Railway (DLR) stations either side of Canary Wharf.  Jubilee Line stations either side of Canary Wharf are on opposite sides of the river.

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, TerryD1471 said:

I do enjoy your posts, but I have to ask what the word "cromulent" means? It ain't in my Oxford English documentary. Could it be credible, or am I jumping to concatenations?

 

 

 

Thank you, Terry, glad you enjoy my posts!

 

The word 'cromulent' originates from 'The Simpsons' of which I'm a fan.  An episode in which the town of Springfield, the Simpson's home town, is celebrating the 200th anniversary of it's founding by Jeremiah Springfield, who turns out to have been a rogue and a pirate, and nobody anyone should be proud of, has a sub-plot featuring the sort of words that are peculiar to many American small towns but are not found anywhere else but in that particular town.  There is a statue of Jeremiah Springfield in the centre of of the town with the motto on the plinth 'A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man'.

 

This leads to Lisa's teacher Edna Krabapple, who hails from the next town, Shelbyville, to question the validity of the word 'embiggens', to which Bart's teacher Seymour Skinner comments 'why not, it's a perfectly cromulent word'.  This context provides the definition of 'cromulent'; validated, acceptable, legitimate, allowable.  I was so delighted by this that I have taken it upon myself to insert the word here and there now and then, in the hope that it will become accepted into common and concatenational usage, and I believe it has now been included in the OED. 

 

Such is the power of American cartoon shows...

 

 

[John Besley]

10 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Pedantic point, but I think you mean the Dockland Light Railway (DLR) stations either side of Canary Wharf.  Jubilee Line stations either side of Canary Wharf are on opposite sides of the river.

 

That's the one 

[TerryD1471]

10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

Thank you, Terry, glad you enjoy my posts!

 

The word 'cromulent' originates from 'The Simpsons' of which I'm a fan.  An episode in which the town of Springfield, the Simpson's home town, is celebrating the 200th anniversary of it's founding by Jeremiah Springfield, who turns out to have been a rogue and a pirate, and nobody anyone should be proud of, has a sub-plot featuring the sort of words that are peculiar to many American small towns but are not found anywhere else but in that particular town.  There is a statue of Jeremiah Springfield in the centre of of the town with the motto on the plinth 'A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man'.

 

This leads to Lisa's teacher Edna Krabapple, who hails from the next town, Shelbyville, to question the validity of the word 'embiggens', to which Bart's teacher Seymour Skinner comments 'why not, it's a perfectly cromulent word'.  This context provides the definition of 'cromulent'; validated, acceptable, legitimate, allowable.  I was so delighted by this that I have taken it upon myself to insert the word here and there now and then, in the hope that it will become accepted into common and concatenational usage, and I believe it has now been included in the OED. 

 

Such is the power of American cartoon shows...

 

 

Nice one, and as you say, if enough people use it, the OED will adopt it. It still doesn't explain how I wrote "documentary" when I meant "dictionary." You only spot these things after you have committed them to print!

[TerryD1471]

On 02/04/2022 at 14:35, rockershovel said:

Since someone mentioned a 4-8-0, I seem to recall that the Americans experimented with them but gave them up on favour of 4-8-2, 2-8-2 and 2-8-4 types

I've always had a sneaking regard for the 4-8-0 arrangement, since it potentially gives you a lot of adhesive weight without overly heavy axle loading. The outstanding examples are the Chapelon rebuilds of PO narrow firebox Pacifics, probably the most powerful locos (HP per ton) of any. They produced about 30% more IHP than any British loco while still being only about the same size & weight as our largest pacifics. There were some in eastern Europe too, but having a tall loading gauge they were able to put a wide grate on top of the driving wheels (a la 9F). It would have been interesting to see a British outline one. Also a British outline 2-8-2 with perhaps a better route availability than Gresley's P1 and P2.

[6990WitherslackHall]

On 02/04/2022 at 21:51, Miss Prism said:

No branchline would be complete without one of those.

That and Big Bertha