NER Bevel Drive Locomotive

[drmditch]

9 hours ago, MarkC said:

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.

 

I think the NER still expected their business to 'return to 'normal'' after WW1.

There is a tendency for humans and their organisations to cling to what they think is 'normal'.

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, drmditch said:

 

I think the NER still expected their business to 'return to 'normal'' after WW1.

There is a tendency for humans and their organisations to cling to what they think is 'normal'.

True enough - but there is a difference between WW1 and Grouping...

 

Still, had the proposed electrification happened, we wouldn't have seen the likes of the A4s & subsequent Pacifics, so...

[Artless Bodger]

1 hour ago, MarkC said:

True enough - but there is a difference between WW1 and Grouping...

 

Still, had the proposed electrification happened, we wouldn't have seen the likes of the A4s & subsequent Pacifics, so...

Would that have been such a loss? However presumably initially pacifics would have been used south of York. Seeing what transpired overseas with mainline electrification, it may have been a very interesting time.

 

One question about the use of the bevel drive loco as a load bank - there would need to be a supply of electricity to the loco to excite the motor for it to act as a generator? I presume it might also be used to investigate rheostatic braking too given the putative resistors behind the grilles?

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Artless Bodger said:

there would need to be a supply of electricity to the loco to excite the motor for it to act as a generator?

Not necessarily, although having a separate excitation supply allows different forms of control to be exercised.

 

The ‘universal machine’, which can be used as a motor or a generator, often called a dynamotor in the early days, was arrived at in practical form in the early 1870s and the “big hurrah” at the time was because it is ‘self exciting’. What we call wound-field d.c. motors and dynamos/generators are the same thing, often optimised (brush angles etc) for one function or the other, but sometimes balanced for both jobs as when used for things like lifts, colliery hoists, escalators etc.

 

If it was used as a load bank (and we don’t know that it was, that was merely me floating a thought), it would be in rheostatic-braking mode, but the presence of resistors doesn’t make that use a certainty, because resistors would also have been used to control a motor.

 

Once you have a ‘universal machine’, some resistors, and some switches/contractors, all sorts of motoring and braking tunes can be played.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Wickham Green too]

3 hours ago, drmditch said:

... There is a tendency for humans and their organisations to cling to what they think is 'normal'.

Only natural in the absence of a time machine or functioning crystal ball  to see into the future ! ☹️

[kevinlms]

12 hours ago, MarkC said:

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.

This is very true, because 12 years later, Gresley was VERY keen to prove that he could build a steam locomotive, that could perform better than a German rail car!

[Artless Bodger]

 

2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

This is very true, because 12 years later, Gresley was VERY keen to prove that he could build a steam locomotive, that could perform better than a German rail car!

 

A bit ot but following the mention of the German diesel train, the first part of this film; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=figiSSgjvk0 covers the construction of the Fliegender Hamburger and similar sets, including assembly of the diesel motors. Of interest to me was the mounting of the diesel motors on the unpowered bogies rather than on the vehicle frames (which appear to be very light weight), electric motors on the articulating bogie.

 

And now back to the topic - sorry!

 

[Octavius1862]

Hello,

Sorry to once again revive this topic, but after some more digging the North Eastern Railway Association archives has provided another quite curious drawing.

Titled by the drawing as "NERly 4-6-4 'diesel' loco", the drawing is not marked for having been produced by the company. However, it does appear to depict a similar drive system to what I assume the bevel drive locomotive would have employed. The design is oddly a departure from what the NER designed as far as goes with the electric engines. This is also somewhat bigger, but not when you consider the NER's EE1, which has the same wheel arrangement. I assume in some way this must have been a prototype for the EE1? but I would rather not speculate in a matter I'm not all to versed on, that being locomotive design.

Thank you.

[Compound2632]

39 minutes ago, Octavius1862 said:

after some more digging the North Eastern Railway Association archives has provided another quite curious drawing.

Titled by the drawing as "NERly 4-6-4 'diesel' loco", the drawing is not marked for having been produced by the company.

 

What is the context in which this drawing was found? What was it filed with?

 

Is it, stylistically, a NER Loco Drawing Office diagram?

Edited April 5, 2023 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

It has the look of Armstrong-Whitworth about it, and the engine is so huge that my instinct is that it is quite early.

 

What is interesting is the drive train, which I read to be fully mechanical, rather than electrical, although it’s a bit hard to guess what form it might take - some sort of fluid couplings and epicyclic gearboxes maybe??

 

Has anyone got a copy of of the history of A-W rail traction work, because if it is their work, I’d bet it is mentioned in that.

[Michael Edge]

Where would the crew be at the gearbox end with all those massive bevel gears?

[Octavius1862]

The drawing was by itself. There was no notable information with it.

Having studied a number of NER drawing office diagrams, I would be inclined to say it does not line up with their standard drawing practices - Namely formatting is an issue. Their drawing offices tended to carefully number each drawing in sequence,  as well as clearly marking their initials in a much bolder text and stating the office responsible for the drawing.

[Nearholmer]

15 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

Where would the crew

Yes, even by the “ships engine room” standards of the day, both cabs on this one look particularly dreadful places to be stationed.

 

I wonder if it’s a concept sketch based on particular constraints, a “see what we could manage using our standard eight cylinder engine and 21 ton limit on axle loading” sort of thing, possibly with a length constraint in there too.

 

Intriguing, whatever it is.

 

im away from my books at the minute, but if I get time later I will see whether it’s mentioned in Brian Webb’s history of British IC locos.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Further musing: if this is as early as it looks, and I’d guess a window 1912-22, the engine would have been of what we would now think of as surprisingly low power for its weight and volume. As a guess, maybe c40 to 50hp per cylinder.

 

[I was thinking four stroke when I typed that; see below]
 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Back with the books:

 

Webb gives a thumbnail description of a Hawthorn Leslie design for a 2-C-2 with mechanical transmission and Jack shaft drive, dating from the early 1920s “which turned up among BR material at York …… supposedly for the North Eastern Railway”. He doesn’t give the drawing, but I think we can fairly conclude that it is the one above.

 

He does give an outline drawing for a preceding 1-D-1 H-L design, “incorporating a Wilson unit incorporating epicyclic gears brought into action by braking the respective drums”, which is exactly what I reckon the animal under discussion here has.

 

He says that the engine type for the 2-C-2 hasn’t been identified, but that the 1-D-1 was to have an Atlas giving 800hp from six-cylinders, so an impressive 134hp/cyl.  Atlas were possibly ahead of most of the competition in the early 1920s, but looking at figures in Rose, “Diesel Engine Design” 1919 I do wonder about that given the space/weight available in a locomotive*. I will try to find numbers for an eight cylinder engine of feasible size/weight.

*Aha! Looking deeper, and I should have remembered, the Atlas-Polar was a two-stroke, and Rose gives a frustratingly not-dimensioned GA of it. It was indeed 800hp. These marine engines were/are reversible, and that loco doesn’t have reversing facility in the bevels, so it was probably meant to be driven like a boat, stopping the engine to reverse, although my iffy understanding of epicyclic gear systems suggests that it is possible to get reverse out of three in a row.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[The Stationmaster]

Looks like the engine which went in to the 1933 Armstrong Whitworth diesel-electric so I wonder if it migh  have been an earlier proposal from them?

 

https://www.derbysulzers.com/aw.html

[Nearholmer]

I too think it could well be a Sulzer engine, given its layout, although there are other candidates, but I’m now convinced that the loco is the Hswthorn Leslie that I identified above, rather than A-W.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Nearholmer

[D7666]

Has anyone considered that this diesel drawing might have been a concept try out of a drastic rebuild FROM the EE1 no.13 electric TO diesel ?

 

I do mean drastic, like just using the main underframe, so directly comparing wheelbase etc won't necessarily work.

 

If you consider the many many drastic steam loco rebuilds that used to be done, altering wheel arrangements while retaining main frames, or lengthening or shortening or altering in some other way, as a accountancy rebuild rather than new build it is not so far fetched.

 

You only have to look at GWR 68XX from a 43XX to get such an example of a drastic rebuild, and there are many more examples.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by D7666

[Michael Edge]

The bohie wheelbase is the same, although it shows bigger wheels than the EE1, but the coupled wheelbase is different so there wouldn't be all that much to rebuild. I've just noticed also that the diesel diagram shows a form of divided drive, very early for this idea and something only done on one UK loco - the SR/Paxman 11001 0-6-0DM.

[Wickham Green too]

Looks to me like the connecting rods are adjacent to the wheels and the first coupling rods outside them - just like on Fowler's compounds .... if that's what you're referring to as 'divided drive'. 11001 had the con rods outside the coupling rods and driving the centre axle, didn't it ?

[Michael Edge]

You're right, it's not divided, just a bit peculiar, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the connecting rod shuldn't have been outside the coupling rods - 11001's drive is though, there is no coupling rod between the two leading axles, the first axle is driven from the end of the connecting rod rather than the middle axle.

[Compound2632]

35 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Looks to me like the connecting rods are adjacent to the wheels and the first coupling rods outside them - just like on Fowler's compounds .... 

 

This was the arrangement of the connecting and coupling rods of W.M. Smith's 3CC compound of 1898, perpetuated in 1902 with the Smith-Johnson compounds and subsequently the Deeley and LMS Standard compounds - it keeps the 19 in diameter outside cylinders within the loading gauge. So it originates in the Gateshead Loco drawing Office!

Edited April 6, 2023 by Compound2632

[Wickham Green too]

2 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

... 11001's drive is though, there is no coupling rod between the two leading axles, the first axle is driven from the end of the connecting rod rather than the middle axle.

OK, the leading coupling rod is jointed from the connecting rod rather than from the trailing coupling rod as on other locos ( Mr.Bulleid didn't know whether to joint leading from trailing or trailing from leading anyway ! ).

[t-b-g]

2 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

You're right, it's not divided, just a bit peculiar, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the connecting rod shuldn't have been outside the coupling rods - 11001's drive is though, there is no coupling rod between the two leading axles, the first axle is driven from the end of the connecting rod rather than the middle axle.

 

Malcolm Crawley once explained that such arrangements existed where there was a possible problem with the forces being applied to the crankpin. Having the drive nearer the wheel where the force was greatest was for engineering reasons and less likely to bend or shear the crankpin than having the greatest force on the outside.

 

Many locos managed without it but perhaps the forces involved weren't as great, or the crankpins were stronger.  

[Michael Edge]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

This was the arrangement of the connecting and coupling rods of W.M. Smith's 3CC compound of 1898, perpetuated in 1902 with the Smith-Johnson compounds and subsequently the Deeley and LMS Standard compounds - it keeps the 19 in diameter outside cylinders within the loading gauge. So it originates in the Gateshead Loco drawing Office!

Yes but there aren't any cylinders to worry about, it did eliminate knuckle joints in the rods though.