NER Bevel Drive Locomotive

[RichardT]

Just some thoughts from online searches plus my home library.

 

1. The photo of the drawing upthread is useful in that it shows more of the drawing than the illustration in Ken Hoole’s Oakwood book, which excludes the drawing title, number and dates.  
 

2. It is significant that this is a weight diagram, not a design/production drawing.  Weight diagrams are operational documents, not design or concept drawings.  They are issued to area civil engineers and pway engineers as well as local operating superintendents as a reference for the basic dimensions of vehicles that may have to operate over lines in their areas.

 

3. The drawing is annotated with precise axle weights for the vehicle and a length over buffers expressed to the nearest fraction of an inch.  None of these measurements are annotated “estimated”.  This all implies to me that these measurements have been taken from an actual vehicle. A weight diagram wouldn’t normally be formally issued unless the vehicle existed. 
 

(Concept/proposal sketches of this date do not, to my knowledge, show axle weights, just wheelbase dimensions - there are several in the Hoole book for comparison.)

 

4. The design drawings for the bevel drive loco don’t survive at the NRM but their existence is recorded in the surviving Darlington drawing office register, quoted by Hoole in his book. Hoole says that the first drawing was numbered 9500 and titled “Bevel Drive on Tender 1525”, followed by several more major component and detail drawings. Hoole quotes that drawing number 9500 was issued on 23 Jan 1920.  The NRM list of surviving Darlington drawings has a gap between drawing 9497, also dated 23 Jan 1920 and titled “proposed electric box (sic) 4-6-4 type” [is “box” a typo??] and drawing 9508 of 3 Feb 1920 for an injector. This gap may be where the other bevel loco drawing numbers were originally allocated.  Hoole just says they were all prepared in 1920 - irritatingly vague!

 

5. Tender 1525 was withdrawn at Hull on 12 Aug 1919 (Hoole), so was already available for conversion several months before these drawings were prepared.  Raven at this time was lobbying the NER board to be allowed to electrify the York-Newcastle ECML.  He was given permission to go ahead with 4-6-4 No.13 in Dec 1920.  All the surviving production design drawings for no.13 had their numbers issued from Jan 1921 onwards (the five drawings from 1920 are all “proposed” arrangements), and the loco itself didn’t enter stock until 1922. 
 

6. So, the design drawings for the bevel drive loco pre-date the start of the production design process for no.13 by a year, and pre-date the weight diagram for the bevel loco (dated August 1921 remember) by 20 months. I think it’s legitimate to infer that the bevel drive vehicle is some part of the experimental work prior to the construction of No.13, built in 1920 before authority was given for no.13, and which was being used out on the network for experiments in 1921 during the design phase for no.13.

 

7. The vehicle on the weight diagram is lettered “Chief Mech Engrs Dept”, again implying it was intended for experimental/departmental use (as Hoole says).

 

8. I think we can regard Ken Hoole as a reliable witness on NER loco history. Unfortunately, like most popular railway historians then and now he often doesn’t reference his sources.  Hoole’s quoted recollections of his conversation in 1975 with the ex-Darlington Works staff member are quite detailed and specific about the bevel drive vehicle being used as an electrical load bank for a steam loco on the Shildon line. Hoole is also quite specific about what the interior photo he discovered showed, Frustratingly he then says that his Works informant recollected seeing the bevel drive loco standing out of use a “few years afterwards” - but no date - and then even more frustratingly mentions that the vehicle was “officially” recorded as being cut up on 29 Nov 1923 - a very precise date,  but he gives no reference to where this official record can be found! However, it’s difficult to imagine the LNER creating an official record for cutting up a mythical vehicle…

 

So, overall not as solid a body of evidence as you’d like, but it’s not nothing, and this is all just from desktop reading.  I would say that the balance of probability is that the loco WAS built, as a short-lived electrical experimental vehicle. Pending getting access to Hoole’s papers (and the photograph!!!) when North Road reopens, and a visit to Search Engine, that’s the best I can do.

 

Well, that was longer than I planned!

 

RichardT

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by RichardT
So many typos…

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, RichardT said:

2. It is significant that this is a weight diagram, not a design/production drawing.  Weight diagrams are operational documents, not design or concept drawings.  They are issued to area civil engineers and pway engineers as well as local operating superintendents as a reference for the basic dimensions of vehicles that may have to operate over lines in their areas.

 

I don't dispute your overall argument but I question this point. There is, for example, a well-known weight diagram for the LMS Fowler Pacific. This shows that a weight diagram could be used as part of the design process, for example for consultation with the Chief Civil Engineer, without the locomotive depicted ever actually being built. 

[RichardT]

24 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I don't dispute your overall argument but I question this point. There is, for example, a well-known weight diagram for the LMS Fowler Pacific. This shows that a weight diagram could be used as part of the design process, for example for consultation with the Chief Civil Engineer, without the locomotive depicted ever actually being built. 

Oh b*gger.  This is what happens when you try to turn a small pile of evidential crumbs into a convincing narrative cake...  I'm standing by my hypothesis in this instance but just waiting for the weight of contradictory evidence to flatten me!

 

RichardT

[Johann Marsbar]

58 minutes ago, RichardT said:

Just some thoughts from online searches plus my home library.

 

1. The photo of the drawing upthread is useful in that it shows more of the drawing than the illustration in Ken Hoole’s Oakwood book, which excludes the drawing title, number and dates.  
 

2. It is significant that this is a weight diagram, not a design/production drawing.  Weight diagrams are operational documents, not design or concept drawings.  They are issued to area civil engineers and pway engineers as well as local operating superintendents as a reference for the basic dimensions of vehicles that may have to operate over lines in their areas.

 

3. The drawing is annotated with precise axle weights for the vehicle and a length over buffers expressed to the nearest fraction of an inch.  None of these measurements are annotated “estimated”.  This all implies to me that these measurements have been taken from an actual vehicle. A weight diagram wouldn’t normally be formally issued unless the vehicle existed. 
 

(Concept/proposal sketches of this date do not, to my knowledge, show axle weights, just wheelbase dimensions - there are several in the Hoole book for comparison.)

 

4. The design drawings for the bevel drive loco don’t survive at the NRM but their existence is recorded in the surviving Darlington drawing office register, quoted by Hoole in his book. Hoole says that the first drawing was numbered 9500 and titled “Bevel Drive on Tender 1525”, followed by several more major component and detail drawings. Hoole quotes that drawing number 9500 was issued on 23 Jan 1920.  The NRM list of surviving Darlington drawings has a gap between drawing 9497, also dated 23 Jan 1920 and titled “proposed electric box (sic) 4-6-4 type” [is “box” a typo??] and drawing 9508 of 3 Feb 1920 for an injector. This gap may be where the other bevel loco drawing numbers were originally allocated.  Hoole just says they were all prepared in 1920 - irritatingly vague!

 

5. Tender 1525 was withdrawn at Hull on 12 Aug 1919 (Hoole), so was already available for conversion several months before these drawings were prepared.  Raven at this time was lobbying the NER board to be allowed to electrify the York-Newcastle ECML.  He was given permission to go ahead with 4-6-4 No.13 in Dec 1920.  All the surviving production design drawings for no.13 had their numbers issued from Jan 1921 onwards (the five drawings from 1920 are all “proposed” arrangements), and the loco itself didn’t enter stock until 1922. 
 

6. So, the design drawings for the bevel drive loco pre-date the start of the production design process for no.13 by a year, and pre-date the weight diagram for the bevel loco (dated August 1921 remember) by 20 months. I think it’s legitimate to infer that the bevel drive vehicle is some part of the experimental work prior to the construction of No.13, built in 1920 before authority was given for no.13, and which was being used out on the network for experiments in 1921 during the design phase for no.13.

 

7. The vehicle on the weight diagram is lettered “Chief Mech Engrs Dept”, again implying it was intended for experimental/departmental use (as Hoole says).

 

8. I think we can regard Ken Hoole as a reliable witness on NER loco history. Unfortunately, like most popular railway historians then and now he often doesn’t reference his sources.  Hoole’s quoted recollections of his conversation in 1975 with the ex-Darlington Works staff member are quite detailed and specific about the bevel drive vehicle being used as an electrical load bank for a steam loco on the Shildon line. Hoole is also quite specific about what the interior photo he discovered showed, Frustratingly he then says that his Works informant recollected seeing the bevel drive loco standing out of use a “few years afterwards” - but no date - and then even more frustratingly mentions that the vehicle was “officially” recorded as being cut up on 29 Nov 1923 - a very precise date,  but he gives no reference to where this official record can be found! However, it’s difficult to imagine the LNER creating an official record for cutting up a mythical vehicle…

 

So, overall not as solid a body of evidence as you’d like, but it’s not nothing, and this is all just from desktop reading.  I would say that the balance of probability is that the loco WAS built, as a short-lived electrical experimental vehicle. Pending getting access to Hoole’s papers (and the photograph!!!) when North Road reopens, and a visit to Search Engine, that’s the best I can do.

 

Well, that was longer than I planned!

 

RichardT

 

 

 

My guess is that the "box" in point 4 really means a boxcab configuration 4-6-4 loco.

[Wickham Green too]

Don't forget that everyone at that time knew that a 'locomotive' had a round boilery thing on the top 'cos that's all they'd ever had .............. make something completely different and you'd have to call it what it looked like - a 'box' on wheels !

[Michael Edge]

3rd rail shoes would’t have been much use on the Shildon line.

[Nearholmer]

21 hours ago, D7666 said:

No more a chocolate teapot loco than a 2-2-2 kettle is.

An absolute chocolate teapot if a 1A1.

A pathetic 12 tons of adhesive weight, which wouldn’t permit it to shift anything that might be called “heavy”.

 

If you study the history of 2-2-2 locos, you will find that they died out as train weights rose above “very light”.

 

21 hours ago, D7666 said:

Bevel drives exist in many locos

Yes, bevel drives are often used to achieve a single change of drive axis (and in i.c. locos often to create a reversing box in the process), but they are very rare as a means in themselves to achieve multiple driven axles in an electric loco (I mentioned the mining loco niche before). With no evidence of either jack-shaft and coupling rod drive, or chain drive, to achieve more than one driven axle we are back to what I pointed out earlier:

 

- one driven axle, yielding pathetic tractive effort; or,

 

- a lay shaft with bevels to drive multiple axles, which would result in “fighting” between gearing and suspension.

 

21 hours ago, D7666 said:

If it were a regen test bed, every single arugment about bevel drives equally applies -

I agree. I only floated the possibility of it being a load bank because I couldn’t see (still can’t) how it could be any use as a loco. It would be a rubbish load bank too!

 

The fact that history records that it was a failure rather bears out the points that I’m making, the only mystery being  why anyone would build it in order to discover that it wouldn’t work ….. which is what is so intriguing.

 

Either we are missing some vital facts about the drive train (something that would give a viable drive to all axles), or someone didn’t think hard enough before building it, or it had some experimental purpose, other than being the shunting loco that it looks like, that we aren’t aware of.

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Tom Burnham]

The original proposal for the York Newcastle electrification was to use a protected third rail (possibly at 1500V DC, cf the contemporary SE&C plans) with overhead collection only in stations and yards. There were some experiments with a section of third rail laid on the Scarborough line out of York and 4-4-4T with pick-up shoes to assess the mechanics of third rail collection at high speed.  I wonder if the aim of the loco under discussion might have been to investigate the effect of conductor rail gaps on a short vehicle, rather than any intention to use it as serious motive power?  Just an idle thought...

[Johann Marsbar]

I did find this about the York to Newcastle scheme on some "Alternate History" site last night, but this section seems to be a mention of a real report for the NER, rather than some of the fanasy stuff on there!

 

The Newcastle to York Scheme of June 1919

This was report was called, "The Report on the Proposed Electrification of the Main Line, York to Newcastle with Intermediary Feeders. The intermediary feeders were the line froms from Ferryhill to Northallerton via Stockton and from Newport to Middlesbrough. A map in the report shows the Tyneside Electrification, Shildon to Newport Electrification and the Proposed Electrification. The text of the map says that it includes all main and independent lines, and the entrance to all relief sidings, and Longlands Junction to Northallerton.

209 steam locomotives (54 passenger and 155 freight) costing £1,731,400 were to be replaced by 109 electric locomotives (29 passenger and 80 freight) costing £1,291,200.

397 track miles were to be electrified on 1,500V DC. 282 miles would be equipped with third rail and the remaining 115 miles with overhead wires. The report did not say how many route miles were to be converted but my estimate using the NER's 1915 distance tables is 119 route miles with the southern terminus at Holgate (Excursion).

The cost of the line equipment was £1,302,800 (£2,850 per mile of third rail and £4,340 per mile of overhead) plus a further sum of £93,800 for the cost of alteration to existing automatic signalling and track circuits. The alterations were due to the necessity of working the signals and track circuits by alternating current, which means the provision of transformers, in order to avoid interruption in their operation owing to the proximity of the high voltage current in Third Rail or Overhead Wire. The total cost, therefore of the Line Equipment was £1,396,600.

After providing for depreciation the estimated saving in favour of electric working was £110,620, which including interest of 5% on Capital Construction charges, was the equivalent to a return of about 13% on a capital expenditure of £1,396,600.

The last 3 paragraphs of the report also said.

It must be noted that in making our comparison of working we only credited the Electric Locomotive with dealing with the same train loads as the Steam. At present the load of Freight trains between Darlington and Heaton is 50 wagons, the length being governed by the accommodation for clearing the main line at Bradbury, Ferryhill and Central Station Newcastle. If additional accommodation is provided at Bradbury and Ferryhill, and Low Fell Yard considerably enlarged including the provision of the Workhouse curve, we should be enabled to run 80 wagons right through from York to Low Fell, working a shuttle service therefrom to Trafalgar and Heaton with Electric Locomotives. The Engineer estimates that this would allow for a reduction in trains between Darlington and Newcastle of about seven each per day, which we estimate would shew a saving of about £12,500 per annum, giving a good interest on the outlay.

In consideration of the facts as shwen in this Report, we strongly recommend that the proposed further electrification should be agreed to, and in order to get full advantage of the loads which can be taken by the Electric Locomotives that he necessary additions be made at Low Fell, Ferryhill and Bradbury.

It is estimated that a Scheme of this magnitude should not satisfactorily completed within a period of less than 2½ years, and it is therefore important that and early decision be arrived at.

I don't know when or why it was abandoned, but work on the scheme continued until at least 1921. By then 1,500V DC overhead was to be used throughout the scheme and it had been split into two phases which would take a total of 5 years to complete. Phase 1 was for the electrification of the line from Newcastle to Darlington and would take 2 years to complete. Phase 2 would take 3 years to complete. Some of the locomotives which would work the Newcastle to Darlington section were EF-1 locomotives that had proved surplus to the requirements of the Shildon to Newport scheme.

 

[Wickham Green too]

10 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

...  I wonder if the aim of the loco under discussion might have been to investigate the effect of conductor rail gaps on a short vehicle, ...

The - unknown - mechanics of the vehicle might have included a flywheel to reduce the risk of gapping .............. an idea adopted by Bulleid in his electric locos ( Presumably with his LNER background he would have known about this thing.)

[New Haven Neil]

It's not as easy as that.....

[Wickham Green too]

14 minutes ago, RichardT said:

... the drawing calls it a “locomotive”. ...

Spelled V-E-H-I-C-L-E.

[RichardT]

53 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Spelled V-E-H-I-C-L-E.

Quite right - complete brainfade on my part confusing the thread title with the drawing title.  I’ve hidden my erroneous post and this is the last contribution I’ll make to this thread.

 

RichardT

[Tom Burnham]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The - unknown - mechanics of the vehicle might have included a flywheel to reduce the risk of gapping .............. an idea adopted by Bulleid in his electric locos ( Presumably with his LNER background he would have known about this thing.)

Although OVSB had been on the Great Northern before Grouping so wouldn't necessarily know about a short term trial on the North Eastern.

[Nearholmer]

Except that the boosters were electrically Raworth’s design, and if you look at the work his father had done, which he assisted on, I’d be 100% convinced that was where the thinking came from, not via OVSB.

[Wickham Green too]

Does the Booster principal come under 'electrical' or 'mechanical' ? ......................... discuss !

[Artless Bodger]

Following up on some of the above - perhaps just a transmission trial vehicle?

 

The BBO 1570 used single axle drives with vertical motors with bevel drive to hollow axles - quote from the below wiki page -

Für die Reihe 1570 entwickelten die Österreichischen Siemens-Schuckert-Werke nach französischen Vorbildern einen eigenen Vertikalantrieb, bei dem die stehend angeordneten Motoren über eine Kegelradübersetzung die Achsen antrieben. Das Großrad sitzt dabei auf einer trommelförmigen Hohlwelle, welche über eine gelenkige Kupplung mit vier Kugelköpfen mit der Achse verbunden ist.

 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBÖ_1570

 

So to try out such a transmission only a single axle need be powered. There were other transmission types considered, including gearless (like the Milwaukee Bipolars), No 13 eventually went with the quill drive, but there were also the Buchli and Tschanz drives. One Swiss loco was powered via 2 such different transmission types as a trial, Be2/5.

[Nearholmer]

Now that sounds plausible.

[2251]

Indeed. The thing smacks of something constructed for experimental purposes, built using what was to hand. The fact it is described as a "bevel drive vehicle" certainly lends considerable support to the view that the purpose was to test the practicability of bevel drive (as opposed to something else).  

[bigherb]

On 18/01/2023 at 09:26, Nearholmer said:

It’s a very niche form of drive for electric locos, because of the problems of accommodating vertical movement of the axles.

 

Not that hard to achieve by allowing the pinion to rise and fall on splines on the motor shaft.

[Nearholmer]

Which would deal (not brilliantly, I think) only with the motored axle. The point I keep trying to get across is that bevel drive from a single shaft to multiple axles is challenging (the same applies to worm drive). As someone pointed out above, it is do-able using cardan shafts, but I’ve never seen that used for multiple axles from a single electric motor, probably because there are easier ways of achieving the same result, although it was used on diesel mechanical railcars (I think the AEC ones, e.g. for GWR, were like that).

[Artless Bodger]

3 hours ago, bigherb said:

Not that hard to achieve by allowing the pinion to rise and fall on splines on the motor shaft.

That's one way, the Austrian approach was to drive a hollow axle mounted in the frame, the axle carrying the wheels ran inside this, connected by articulated linkages - quite common for frame mounted motors but unusual in using a vertically mounted motor rather than co-axial motor(s). 

 

Maybe of interest, the BBO 1670, with SSW vertical drive was said to be susceptible to machinery damage if towed, and the problems with the locos were partly remedied by conversion of the drive (to what not stated), as related in https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/BBÖ_1670, both 1570 and 1670 classes needed an extra crew member to monitor the lubrication, so, perhaps it is not surprising the 'bevel drive locomotive' was short lived.

 

[D7666]

On 19/01/2023 at 14:45, Nearholmer said:

Except that the boosters were electrically Raworth’s design, and if you look at the work his father had done, which he assisted on, I’d be 100% convinced that was where the thinking came from, not via OVSB.

Indeed Bulleid had all but SFA to do with the electric locos. Raworth did the electrics, Bolland did the bogies, and anyone in the drawing office can do a flat underframe.

 

20003 electrics was IIRC more Cock too (no that is not a joke I refer to Mr.Cock the SR engineer). 10201/2 electrics were all EE no-one at Brighton had much to do with it, and again, Bolland bogies, the 1Co is a mod of the Co from 20001.

 

Indeed, the same is true of EMU and of carriages that are described as Bulleid stock.

 

There is too much of a habit everywhere of putting down anything on any railway that appeared during the tenancy of any CME as being designed by them. None of Maunsell or Bulleid or Fowler or Stanier or Collett or Churchward did all that is attributed to them, they merely over saw the department. The names of Clayton (at Derby then Ashford) and Holcroft (Swindon then Ashford) and (well before he became a CME) Hawksworth and the name I forget of the Crewe man who did 8F and 5MT are seldom quoted. 

 

If Bulleid had ever had any interest in anything electric then Leaders would have been steam-electric; it was the obvious solution to an all adhesive double ended locomotive. And then not needed those massive bogies and complexicated drives.

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by D7666

[D7666]

Getting back to the subject of bevel drive, I do think those who are dismissing the subject in the basis of no photographic evidence are being unrealistic to expect that 100.0000 % of every glass plate of that era survived, even if made in the first place. There are numerous examples of mods made to individual locos of numerous classes that have not survived; it is entirely reasonable that something that looks like it might have been an experimental test rig built out of ad hoc materials on hand and maybe never completed probably never got to be photographed. Or maybe there are images of the kit that do exist somewhere filed  in an archive somewhere but no-one knows what they are because it just shows say a motor mounted in something.

 

The other thing about this project is if it was 1921 then grouping was pending. Whatever NER were up to may have been axed in the run up; in 1921 all the companies knew they were to be grouped and senssible management would have made economies; not every project was open then stopped around this time then axed happened post 1/1/23.

 

[MarkC]

I think that it's fair to say that the NER might well have hoped that its electrification plans would have gone ahead, as it was a pretty wealthy Company, & had Grouping not occurred then this may well have happened. However, post 1923 its resources were then used by the new LNER as a whole, & also, of course, the new Group CME wasn't as ahead of the game, electrification wise, as the NER's Raven had been.