Imaginary Locomotives

[Michael Edge]

The better format for UK articulated standard gauge steam is as a result the Beyer-Garratt scheme. This enables a more ideally proportioned locomotive boiler with a large ashpan for superior draughting within our teeny weeny loading gauge, and was both well proven, and there were two well known designs actually in service on UK standard gauge.

 

It is sobering to realise that the LNER U1 2-8-0+0-8-2T was too powerful as built for economic loading as a road engine in the prevailing conditions of the UK steam railway, and had development potential on that wheelbase to exceed 4,000 hp continuous output in main line (22T axleload) service.

 

Likewise the LMS 2-6-0+0-6-2T actually built as a road engine, limited by engine design to circa 1,500 hp continuous and that only for as long as the bearings held out; the development potential on that wheelbase would be for 3,000hp. (Had Beyer's been given free hand in the original design, the LMS would have probably got a 2,000 hp continuous output goods loco very well suited to the steeply graded sections that carried heavy freight traffic,)

As far as I know the U1 was only tried on a train once and it stopped short of steam at Crowden on the way up to Woodhead, not exactly a success. The British Garratts must have been a great disappointment to Beyer Peacock.

[FPH 603]

The British Garratts must have been a great disappointment to Beyer Peacock...

...Unlike in Australia, which they were a roaring success. Some of which still impress crowds today.

[Corbs]

Hi Corbs

 

I am thinking of having a go at making the 2-10-0.

 

Can I ask what parts you needed and used on the loco please.

I thought about it at one point, I think you'd need 2xQ1 bodies as the boiler, smokebox, tender and cab are all stretched (so you'd need to cut and shut it together).

5 x Q1 driving wheel sets

Cylinders, pony truck and connecting rod/slidebar from a west country.

Tender bogies from a King Arthur I think.

 

Essentially you would need to slice a Q1 like a loaf of bread and blend the segments in!

[Corbs]

Oh yes good point, you'd need to throw the Q1 chassis away as the spacing is so large

[The Johnster]

The nominal difference is 1 inch diameter, which suggests that, if the model were to dead scale and there was a smidge over a scale 1 inch clearance between the outer edge of the flanges of a 9F, the Q1 wheels would fit.  But matters are not that simple; most RTR wheels are oversized at the flanges, and at the same time many are slightly undersized to fit into scale splashers with these oversized flanges (I am aware that neither 9Fs nor Q1s have splashers).  Undersizing of wheel diameters is acceptable as the tyres of real locos wear, and the nominal measurement only applies to brand new tyres, and the tyre wear can reduce the wheel diameter by anything up to 2 inches, not far off a 'thin' millimetre in 4mm.  But the matter would be a close run thing.

 

I suspect the only way to find out would be to attempt to put Q1 wheels into a 9F chassis and see if they clear each other, including on the inside radius of the sharpest curve the loco is to negotiate; somebody with 2 spare Q1s and a spare 9F would be needed.  Incidentally I see no reason why the proposed Q1 based 2-10-0 should not have inside cylinders identical to the parent loco's  (driving on the second axle), which would make the conversion easier.

[Satan's Goldfish]

Would some Q1 style inserts/overlays for the 9f wheels not be easier to create the look if the size difference is that of a worn tyre anyway?

 

Edit: check that, if you're cutting up 2x Q1s anyway then you'd have the spare wheels. My bad. I'll finish my cup of tea before I try and think again.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Satan's Goldfish

[Corbs]

You'd only need the bodies and wheels I think

[JimC]

The 9F wheel spacing is 5ft5, so the Q1 wheels ought to fit. You'll probably have to completely wipe and reinvent brake gear though. Need a competent man with a lathe to remove some wheel flanges so Mr Goldfish' suggestion of BFP overlays might be more practical. How much work would it be to partially or completely scratchbuild a longer Q1 boiler casing from plasticard? Must be one of the simpler things to make mustn't it? Could you get away with reusing the 9F cab, adding a Bulleid boiler casing over the 9F boiler and subtracting the footplate? Here's the next photo challenge - what does Bulleid boiler casing on a 9F look like?

 

Ideally I suppose you do want it to be a Bulleid 3cyl with West Country cylinders though.

Edited December 15, 2017 by JimC

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

As far as I know the U1 was only tried on a train once and it stopped short of steam at Crowden on the way up to Woodhead, not exactly a success. The British Garratts must have been a great disappointment to Beyer Peacock.

 It needed a power stoker is at the bottom of it. The design intent as a banker was to provide a moving stop block against a breakaway, and assist rather than replace the train engine efforts to avoid them disturbing their fires. Even on this duty which it performed successfully it was known to be on the limit of what a typical fireman could manage. I have been on the footplate of a very similarly proportioned Garratt tackling the 1 in 40 of the Niagara falls escarpment with a thousand and more tons of train behind, and it needed all the efforts of two very fit young men to keep the grate supplied; and they didn't have choking smoke filled tight bore tunnels impeding their respiration either...

[rockershovel]

... surely the point is that 8 and 10 coupled non-articulated steam locomotives were well established as providing motive power up to the limits of available loading and traffic pathways, and there was no useful role for articulated units?

[Corbs]

Still fun to imagine, though!

[Michael Edge]

 It needed a power stoker is at the bottom of it. The design intent as a banker was to provide a moving stop block against a breakaway, and assist rather than replace the train engine efforts to avoid them disturbing their fires. Even on this duty which it performed successfully it was known to be on the limit of what a typical fireman could manage. I have been on the footplate of a very similarly proportioned Garratt tackling the 1 in 40 of the Niagara falls escarpment with a thousand and more tons of train behind, and it needed all the efforts of two very fit young men to keep the grate supplied; and they didn't have choking smoke filled tight bore tunnels impeding their respiration either...

 

I wouldn't disagree with any of that, the U1 was unpopular at Mexborough because the firemen (rightly) reckoned that they were being asked to the work of two men. At Bromsgrove it was oil fired but was till unpopular for other reasons. Even so many of the faults with the garratts in Britain were the result of LNER and LMS management interfering with B-P design, not least of which was the totally unnecessary provision of 6 cylinders on the U1. Ultimately though I don't think British railways ever needed more power than could be provided by a 9F, just about within the capability of one fireman.

[Corbs]

I recall hearing an audio recording of an ex-BR fireman describing how best to fire different locos. When it came to 9Fs, he said 'it didn't matter how you did it, you just kept shovelling it in!'

[The Johnster]

Getting back to the Bullied 9F, I would agree that overlays are probably by far the simplest way to go for the wheels!

 

British Garratts were a mixed bunch, if you can call 2 main line locos a bunch.  Industrial 0-4-0+0-4-0s for the NCB and others were highly successful, and GKN's Cardiff East Moors steelworks one was well regarded.  The LMS beasts, for all their limitations, solved a double (sometimes triple) heading issue on the Toton coal workings, but one could argue that beating the performance of a couple of Midland 0-6-0s was hardly an achievement and that 8-coupled locos did similar work on the other railways with success.  

 

The heaviest British freight trains were mineral hauls, coals to London or iron ore to the likes of Consett or Ebbw Vale, uphill.  Except under special instruction in the relevant Sectional Appendix, lengths were limited to 60 wagons by the size of loops or layby sidings, and signal overlaps were determined by this length.  Speeds were generally around the 20-25mph mark in steam days, so locos with driving wheels around the 4'6"-5 foot mark were fast and powerful enough.   For many years there was no need for 10-coupled power, and it is significant that the successful Riddles 9Fs appeared late enough on the scene to be used on (relatively) fast block trains.  They were, at the same time, fast enough on 5' wheels to be used on the Birmingham-Carlisle via Leeds express freight turn, reckoned the toughest in the country at the time with 60mph running and heavy loadings of around the 900 ton mark unassisted over Ais Gill.  This Saltley turn was provided with mechanical stoker locos.

 

The forte of the Garratt design was very heavy traffic on colonial railways with long single line sections, often lightly laid and tightly curved; long trains had to be hauled to save paths.  This situation was not dissimilar to that which led to the adoption of articulated superpower in the US west, and the 'Big Boys'.  Length and weight of the train was less of an issue here than paths.

 

So there was never much of need for Garratts in the UK, or 10 coupled locos until after the Second World War.  What were needed were 8-coupled engines, and it is a shame the Midland never realised this in the 20th century, as they built some very good ones for the S & D, small enough in the firebox to be manually fired and fast enough for the slow traffic.  Mixed traffic locos with 6' wheels did most of the express freight work, and the many 0-6-0s took up the slack for the rest.

 

A Bullied 2-10-0 would have been handy for the wartime traffic to the South Coast ports from 1944 on, but there were plenty of 8-coupled Austerities and S160s in the event.  What the Southern would have done with them after the war ended is anyone's guess; probably sold them to the LNER, an interesting imaginary loco livery!

Getting back to the Bullied 9F, I would agree that overlays are probably by far the simplest way to go for the wheels!

 

British Garratts were a mixed bunch, if you can call 2 main line locos a bunch.  Industrial 0-4-0+0-4-0s for the NCB and others were highly successful, and GKN's Cardiff East Moors steelworks one was well regarded.  The LMS beasts, for all their limitations, solved a double (sometimes triple) heading issue on the Toton coal workings, but one could argue that beating the performance of a couple of Midland 0-6-0s was hardly an achievement and that 8-coupled locos did similar work on the other railways with success.  

 

The heaviest British freight trains were mineral hauls, coals to London or iron ore to the likes of Consett or Ebbw Vale, uphill.  Except under special instruction in the relevant Sectional Appendix, lengths were limited to 60 wagons by the size of loops or layby sidings, and signal overlaps were determined by this length.  Speeds were generally around the 20-25mph mark in steam days, so locos with driving wheels around the 4'6"-5 foot mark were fast and powerful enough.   For many years there was no need for 10-coupled power, and it is significant that the successful Riddles 9Fs appeared late enough on the scene to be used on (relatively) fast block trains.  They were, at the same time, fast enough on 5' wheels to be used on the Birmingham-Carlisle via Leeds express freight turn, reckoned the toughest in the country at the time with 60mph running and heavy loadings of around the 900 ton mark unassisted over Ais Gill.  This Saltley turn was provided with mechanical stoker locos.

 

The forte of the Garratt design was very heavy traffic on colonial railways with long single line sections, often lightly laid and tightly curved; long trains had to be hauled to save paths.  This situation was not dissimilar to that which led to the adoption of articulated superpower in the US west, and the 'Big Boys'.  Length and weight of the train was less of an issue here than paths.

 

So there was never much of need for Garratts in the UK, or 10 coupled locos until after the Second World War.  What were needed were 8-coupled engines, and it is a shame the Midland never realised this in the 20th century, as they built some very good ones for the S & D, small enough in the firebox to be manually fired and fast enough for the slow traffic.  Mixed traffic locos with 6' wheels did most of the express freight work, and the many 0-6-0s took up the slack for the rest.

 

A Bullied 2-10-0 would have been handy for the wartime traffic to the South Coast ports from 1944 on, but there were plenty of 8-coupled Austerities and S160s in the event.  What the Southern would have done with them after the war ended is anyone's guess; probably sold them to the LNER, an interesting imaginary loco livery!

[Joseph_Pestell]

Another option for suitably small boxpok wheels would be HO ones from old (cheap) 141Rs.

[Corbs]

For the sake of completeness, here's the full set of Q locos I knocked up a while back.

Not sure why I didn't number the 2-8-0

 

 

[Northroader]

There’s nothing like an Atlantic?

[Corbs]

Sorted

[Lu4472ke]

Q1 tank engine?

[Lu4472ke]

how about a Q1 mogul?

[talisman56]

The '9F' Q1 looks seriously impressive...

[rue_d_etropal]

I seem to remember seeing various proposals in one of the books about Bullied. Given that he grew up in what would become LMS territory(East Lancs), got his first job working for Gresley , which would become LNER, then transferred to the Southern Railway, having I think done a spell for Westinghouse also service in WW1(something to do with railways), the only one of the big four he had no connection with was the GWR, and according to accounts he would visit Swindon on many occasions, and annoy station staff by just walking off end of platform and along the track.

I always put his creativity down to having grown up round her in Accrington, which over the years has produced engineers and designers not afraid to try doing something different.  Maybe at the end he was trying to be too creative, but he did go onto to design some good DMUs for the CIE in Ireland. I had thought his skills had possibly been more successfully used with passenger rolling stock. 

 

By the way does anyone do smaller versions of the wheels fitted to the Q1. Looking at about 14-15mm diameter. I had forgotten about the French loco models, odd given the way French design influenced Bullied. 

Edited December 16, 2017 by rue_d_etropal

[DavidB-AU]

How about the 2-8-0 and 2-10-0 with WD lettering?

 

Cheers

David

[asmay2002]

 What were needed were 8-coupled engines, and it is a shame the Midland never realised this in the 20th century, as they built some very good ones for the S & D, small enough in the firebox to be manually fired and fast enough for the slow traffic. 

It is also a shame that people still keep trotting out the same old rubbish about the Midland.  Derby drawing office designed several 8 coupled designs during both Johnson and Deeley's times as well as a passenger compound 4-6-0.  The reason they were never built was the weight limit on the London Line imposed by the Civil engineers. The Civil engineers were obsessed with "weight per foot run" until the 1920s (the Highland CME also ran into the same problem with his “Rivers”).  The LMS Garratts got away with it because they spread the weight over a very long length in the same way as a pair of 4Fs.  Even the "Royal Scots" weren't allowed on that part of the Midland until well into the LMS era.

Edited December 16, 2017 by asmay2002

[The Johnster]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound as if I was Derby-bashing; the Midland 0-6-0s were good robust reliable eager little horses, big enough in the wheel for secondary passenger work and capable of most of the Midland's local freight needs; in fact, typical Victorian mixed traffic 'goods' engines.  But they were out of their depth on the long haul mineral jobs by the First World War, and the use of 8 coupled locos on every other railway with mineral traffic to London while the Midland was floundering with double or triple headed trains, apparently oblivious to the running and labour costs because of it's generous provision of locos.  

 

0-6-0 inside cylinder tender locos were produced by all the big 4 up to and including the Second World War, when outside cylinder moguls would have been much better, and with hindsight it is difficult to see why beyond the need to replace like for like time expired Victorian museum pieces with modern, easily assembled and maintained locos.  The insistence on the inside cylinder 0-6-0 in the UK beyond the grouping showed a reluctance to adapt to modern conditions and a contempt for the men who had to go between the frames to prepare or dispose the locos; the same might be said of the 4 cylinder layout between the frames of GW locos, well outmoded by 1923.  The De Glehn layout was originally conceived for outside Walcheart's, not inside Stephenson's.  British loco design was hampered by a Victorian attitude for too long, while being overtaken by pretty much every other nation with any tradition in loco design.

 

All of which is debatably fact, but beyond doubt my opinion.  Nobody is compelled to take any notice of it, and other opinions are probably available, and may be better, though of course I think mine is best...