Imaginary Locomotives

[The Johnster]

A 1,200 ton train of 4 wheeled fitted wagons would have been over 60 standard wagon length units (BWU or SLU) long, probably around 75 of them, and as '60 for length' was the limit on most routes, imposed by the length of loops and layby sidings and the signalling and allowing for 2 locomotives in case of double heading and the brake van, would have required special signalling authority provided in the Sectional Appendix (to the Rules And Regulations).  The same would apply to a train of 26 coaches; 20 64 foot coaches equals 60 wagon lengths.  A 60 wagon train is usually around 900-1,000 tons including the brake van but not the loco; the trailing load as presented to the driver by the guard on his 'Driver's Load Slip' and the driver's signed authority from the guard to proceed with the train.

 

A passenger train will usually stop quicker and from a higher speed than a loaded freight of equivalent length, as it is lighter.

 

How quickly it would stop or slow up will depend on how fast it is going, 60mph for 4 wheeled express freight fitted vehicles in steam days reduced to 45mph in the late 60s, but, speed apart, the overall length or weight of the train makes little difference as the ratio of brakes to wagons is the same.  There is an anomaly in which empty wagons have less braking power than loaded ones because of their greater tendency to slide on the rail.  Vacuum brakes exhausted their air from the connected pipe fairly quickly, each vehicle exhausting individually, so the train should be able to stop from it's maximum speed in any rail condition within the distance imposed by the signal sighting.  Releasing the brakes to get going again is a different story, as the vacuum must be created by pumping the air out of the system by only one pump, or ejector, or the loco.  A steam loco was better at this, and could blow the brakes off faster and more efficiently than a diesel or electric loco.

[runs as required]

They're not a group of of locos that I've ever been drawn to, so I was unaware of the ins and outs of their design language.  Generally speaking they were hit with the ugly stick until it broke!  The Metrovic design was so heroically ugly that it has always had a peverse attraction.

 

I must admit that the snub-nose of the Type 4 suits the face rather better than the lopped off appearance of the Type 2s, but they're something that only their designer could love - perhaps it was a racehorse designed by a committee job,

I think I recall Misha Black lecturing us Liverpool University students on 'Industrial Design' in 1957/8 and using the NBL design as his examples of the worst kind of draughting office practice.  MB's first loco design was the NBL Class 4 Warship he 'cleaned up' as a baby V200 DB, followed by the Western .

I was never convinced by those  Design' advocates promoting their competence at designing everything from scent bottles and toasters through  railway locomotives to Millionaires yachts.

dh

[Coryton]

I was never convinced by those  Design' advocates promoting their competence at designing everything from scent bottles and toasters through  railway locomotives to Millionaires yachts.

dh

 

Like Kenneth Grange?

[Joseph_Pestell]

Like Kenneth Grange?

or Raymond Loewy?

I also googled Paul Arzens to reply to this question but it seems that he only did cars and trains. What I had not known was that he was also a railway modeller. Several photos of him with three model railways (apparently different scales 0, HO + ?) built one above the other.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Joseph_Pestell

[Hroth]

Possibly giving rise to an alternate universe in which there was no need for the Duchesses, and double heading of 4-4-0s could continue.  AAaaargh!  I think I'll go and shoot myself....

Perhaps not double-headed 4-4-0s, but the Claughtons might have proved more than adequate with less killer gradients.  Of course, once the ex-Midland policies kicked in after Grouping, we might have seen double-headed Compounds on a more easily graded WCML. No need for nasty big black passenger express locos...

 

Don't shoot yourself, just imagine an alternate universe where the pre-Locke route went ahead and Midland drones didn't get hold of the levers of power after Grouping.

 

The LMS still might have got Stanier, and he might have built Duchesses, but for a fiendishly accelerated service to blow the socks off the LNER!

[brack]

Possibly giving rise to an alternate universe in which there was no need for the Duchesses, and double heading of 4-4-0s could continue. AAaaargh! I think I'll go and shoot myself....

That's not an alternative universe, it's just the LMS until the 1930s

[runs as required]

or Raymond Loewy?

I also googled Paul Arzens to reply to this question but it seems that he only did cars and trains. What I had not known was that he was also a railway modeller. Several photos of him with three model railways (apparently different scales 0, HO + ?) built one above the other.

The Streamline Age Raymond Loewy approach to stylistic "wrapping paper" I find suspect;

Jack Howe, Kenneth Grange, Paul Arzens are more functionally analytical in constructing their designs. We had an old Welsh tutor who would ruthlessly discard our design efforts with too many components - shouting Simplify! Simplify!.

I think the dodgiest are characters like Phillipe Starck (is this a table cigar lighter? No its a model of a 40 storey hotel)

and Rafael Vinoly (the Walkie Talkie building in the City)

 

dh

[Pacific231G]

I thought the Box Tunnel sunrise on Brunel's birthday had long ago been proven to be a happy coincidence (it's not like the railway is on the wrong alignment to achieve it)?

 

Presumably by no tunnels, you mean the WCML and not London - Southampton as there are two tunnels south of Basingstoke.

I've never really understood why the two short tunnels just north of Micheldever Station (Popham no 1 and no 2. tunnels) were actually needed.

 

Photo © Graham Horn (cc-by-sa/2.0)

 

I suppose the southern tunnel may have been cheaper than a deep cutting and a bridge to carry the Andover Turnpike (now the A303) over it but over the northern tunnel there is only a bridleway. 

[Compound2632]

Joseph Locke's presence in this thread is justified in that his low-cost, gable-profiled lines were designed with imaginary locomotives in mind - he was confident in that the steam locomotive would develop beyond the Bury 2-2-0.

[Budgie]

I'm a mathematician. For me it has to be an I class, not a J class.

[FPH 603]

Attempt No.2 of getting this thread back on track:

 

You might not like it, you might not agree with it, but I've done it!

 

I HAVE ESTABLISHED THE IMAGINARY BOARDROOMS FOR YOU PEOPLE!

Edited November 25, 2017 by DoubleDeckInterurban

[Budgie]

Hmmm.   The Norfolk and Western J class were 4-8-4s, reckoned to have the highest TE of any of that type without a booster.  What were the I class?

Who cares? They were imaginary.

[standardblue]

What were the I class?

As an engineer, I would assume they are a current class.

 

Sorry...

[Zomboid]

To be truly pedantic, the imaginary class should be i or j, not I or J.

[Coryton]

To be truly pedantic, the imaginary class should be i or j, not I or J.

 

We do need that groan button.

[RAF96]

You can't get much more 'loco that never was' than these two locos set up to entertain the grandkids. Their camera work.

 

RAF Police Class 37 with Blues and Twos

 

Apologies to any purists out there, especially those who have never seen an electric loco with a diesel engine. We get them all the time on my layout.

 

Rob

[Regularity]

Oh, and none of the competition get close to Robert Stephenson in terms of the breadth of his output, his success or his influence and legacy. His obituary in The Engineer described him as foremost among engineers (bear in mind Brunel had died just a few weeks earlier). Though he, Brunel and Locke were good friends, great engineers and contributed immensely to the development of the nation and the world's railways and bridges, it is clear which was regarded as preeminent in their own time.

I believe IKB also rated his friend Robert Stephenson as the best engineer of their era.

 

But without wishing to detract from RS, wasn’t it Henry Booth who suggested the key development that was ultimately the foundation of the modern steam engine, imaginary or not: the multi tubular boiler? Not only did it increase the heating surface area, but also forced the drought, producing a hotter fire, effectively turning the steam locomotive boiler away from an externally fired to an internally fired engine?

 

And to all those 16mm ng modellers, a centre flue gas-fired boiler is externally fired, as the draw on the fire is unrelated to the exhaust steam partial vacuum. Internal - i.e. “inside” - does not mean internally!

[Pacific231G]

I'm a mathematician. For me it has to be an I class, not a J class.

Ugh. In either case that implies a three phase electric loco- which could be interesting .(For an electrical engineer the square root of  -1 tends to be  j not i because i has already been pinched for current though in my distant memory of electrical engineering  (aka "magic") lectures I'm sure it was lower case  i with current always capital I ) 

 

Getting back to imaginary locos from real locos fuelled by imaginary numbers, did any electric locos in Britain actually use a three phase supply- in industry perhaps? There could be scope for some real beasts there. F.S. in Italy used to have three phase OHE on some lines and there are some wonderfully "early electric"  3 phase locos built in 1912 on the La Rhune rack railway in the French Pyrenees but they're not imaginary.

 

© Superbass / CC-BY-SA-3.0

 

On a damp misty day the imaginary numbers must go wild up there with phase vectors all over the place.

Edited November 26, 2017 by Pacific231G

[talisman56]

Who cares? They were imaginary.

 

They were?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Western_Railway_class_J_(1903)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Western_Railway_class_J_(1941)

[Regularity]

 

They were?

 

Those are J class, not j class...

(For an electrical engineer the square root of  -1 tends to be  j not i because i has already been pinched for current though in my distant memory of electrical engineering  (aka "magic") lectures I'm sure it was lower case  i with current always capital I ) 

 

Ah. [square root of -1] see.

[Budgie]

They were?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Western_Railway_class_J_(1903)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Western_Railway_class_J_(1941)

I was talking about the I class.

 

Incidentally, the January 2018 Model Railroader has a review of the Bachmann model of the 1941 J class.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

If you like that, go to Youtube and search for 'Norfolk and Western modern steam power'. Really good quality cine, worth watching on wide screen television. See the J class 4-8-4 streamliner - with all of 5'10" drivers -  with the speedo reading 110mph...

[runs as required]

Going back to 3 phase (and not being a lekky engineer, just O level  Ohm's Law), is it true the Italian hill climbing 3 phase systems were simply arranged (geared?) to run at three fixed speeds: i.e. crawl, walking and an av running speed?

If so was there a considerable jolt in switching between phases?

 

I ask because I understood that the Midland had hoped to go the 3 phase route with Siemens after the Heysham 1908 trial.

 

dh

[Suzie]

3-phase meant that the motor was synchronous and ran at fixed speed, unless there was some switching to adjust the field coil arrangement. Reversing was done by swapping over two of the phases. Electrically very simple which made it attractive with none of the brushes and commutator required by a DC motor to be maintained.

[cctransuk]

Going back to 3 phase (and not being a lekky engineer, just O level  Ohm's Law), is it true the Italian hill climbing 3 phase systems were simply arranged (geared?) to run at three fixed speeds: i.e. crawl, walking and an av running speed?

If so was there a considerable jolt in switching between phases?

 

I ask because I understood that the Midland had hoped to go the 3 phase route with Siemens after the Heysham 1908 trial.

 

dh

 

I travelled on an old Swiss style electric mountain railway in SW France - (La Rhune ?) - a few years ago, and there were most definite jolts as the pushing loco started and was 'notched-up'.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.