GWR front Banker/Pilot policy - was it really necessary to have the banker/pilot behind the train engine?

[OnTheBranchline]

Were the risks of buffer lock that significant to justify this policy? 

 

To read it, it seems highly time inefficient. 

[Steamport Southport]

More the vacuum brake pressure I believe.

 

It only applied to certain classes such as Kings, Castles, Stars and 47XXs. If you put a smaller loco on the front it couldn't produce enough pressure to work the brakes.

 

The other companies and BR didn't have the same problem as they used a lower pressure.

 

 

Jason

[Wheatley]

Surely the risk of buffer lock was the same whichever way round they were ? I've always just put it down to the GWR doing it differently to everyone else because ... well, just because. 

 

I certainly don't recall reading any accounts of the LMS having problems by (for example) coupling 2Ps ahead of Jubillees. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Wheatley

[The Johnster]

It wasn't about buffer locking, which would be highly unlikely on the easy curvature of a running line.  The GW held to the principle that the driver in charge of the train was responsible for sighting signals, and that therefore the train locomotive should be at the front and any assisting loco should be coupled between it and the train.  Bankers were coupled in this way on the South Devon banks and in the Severn Tunnel, where assistance could be provided to Pilning, Stoke Gifford, or Badminton in the up direction.  In other places the procedure was not followed, and local instructions permitted, for example, banking uncoupled at the rear of the train from Abergavenny Jc to the summit of the bank at Llanvihangel Crucorney and from Swansea High Street to the summit at Cockett.  The loco simply fell away from the train at the summit, and came to a stand in a position to run through the trailing crossover to go back down the bank for the next job.

 

Elsewhere, particularly in South Wales and the West Midlands, freight trains were banked uncoupled in the rear, but between Aberbeeg and Ebbw Vale the banker was coupled in rear so that it could act as the train engine back down to Aberbeeg after the iron ore hoppers were discharged at Ebbw Vale steelwors, the train engine acting as a steam-powered brake van to control the train on the descent. 

 

Banking was largely carried out uncoupled at the rear of the train everywhere except the instances mentioned on the GW, including at Lickey, Shap, Beattock, Worsborough, and Consett.  It was always authorised by local instructions in the relevant Sectional Appendix.

[The Johnster]

8 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

Surely the risk of buffer lock was the same whichever way round they were ? I've always just put it down to the GWR doing it differently to everyone else because ... well, just because. 

 

I certainly don't recall reading any accounts of the LMS having problems by (for example) coupling 2Ps ahead of Jubillees. 

 

The GW had suffered an accident at Loughor, between Swansea and Llanelli, in 1901, when the poor riding of a saddle tank loco that had been coupled ahead of the train engine as a pilot working back to it's shed to save a path derailed at high speed.  I do not know what, if any, bearing that accident might have had on the 'coupled inside' practice at Severn Tunnel and on the South Devon banks.  A 2P is probably a better riding loco than a Jubilee, and of course it's driver will have signed for route knowledge, so he would be equally capable of correctly sighting and reading signals to the train engine's driver.  The GW practice was predicated on the concept of the train engine driver alone being responsible for the correct sighting and reading of signals, and for that reason he was placed at the head of the train.  Incidentally, a pilot engine coupled in the leading position was involved in the Harrow & Wealdstone disaster, but not in any way that it or it's crew could be held responsible for the accident; the initial collision happend in front of them and they had no chance whatsoever to avoid the further collision. 

 

Btw, the GW did not do anything differently to everybody else, everybody else did it differently to the GW...  I'd agree that it was an uneccessary and time wasting practice, except perhaps in the Severn Tunnel when the leading engine's steam would obscure the forward view, but the principle of 'train driver and train loco at the head of the train' was adhered to nonetheless.  Banking uncoupled in the rear preserves this principle, of course, but in the case of a pilot engine, which may be provided to increase haulage (very often on the Midland and LNW) or simply to save a light engine path, the GW held that the pilot be coupled inside, between the train engine and the  train.  Little time would be lost in this case because the locos would be coupled together before leaving the shed, but in the case of the South Devon and Severn Tunnel bankers, the train engine had to uncouple, draw forward, then the banker would couple to the front of the train, then the train engine couples to the front of the banker, and then a brake continuity test must be performed, and even if everyone involved (loco crews, signalman, and guard) are on the ball, this is going to take about 5 minutes, and another 5 when the banker comes off the train.  Timetables allowed for this, as the time lost by the slow running of an unassisted loco and it's possible stalling or running out of steam is greater than the time lost in the engine movements and coupling and uncoupling

 

This was the reason that the 'Cornish Riviera Limited' was a limited load train, as the load was determined by what a single King could haul over the South Devon banks unassisted and non-stop and to the time allowed.

[pH]

38 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

Surely the risk of buffer lock was the same whichever way round they were ? I've always just put it down to the GWR doing it differently to everyone else because ... well, just because. 

 

I certainly don't recall reading any accounts of the LMS having problems by (for example) coupling 2Ps ahead of Jubillees. 

 

The NBR generally coupled assisting engines inside the train engine, too.

[Siberian Snooper]

ISTR that pilot engines with a leading bogie were allowed on the front of the train engine, but everything else had to go inside. Hence photos of bulldogs and manors on the front, west of Newton.

 

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, pH said:

The NBR generally coupled assisting engines inside the train engine, too.

 

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The GW held to the principle that the driver in charge of the train was responsible for sighting signals, and that therefore the train locomotive should be at the front and any assisting loco should be coupled between it and the train.  

 

For this same reason.

 

[I know this from reading Nock, I think, so it probably needs fact-checking.]

 

A question, if I may?

 

Where, on the South Devon, were the assisting engines attached and detached? If at booked station stops, I doubt the time taken for this manoeuvre was the limiting time - station business would take longer. It's well-known that when a Great Western train stopped at a station, it stopped.

 

The Settle-Carlisle is the locus classicus for Midland use of pilot engines; there the pilot engine was detached as a service, rather than station, stop, so time was of the essence - 60 seconds from stop to start. [According to Nock, again.] In most other instances of Midland double-heading, the assisting engine worked through - as also on the LNWR, the other great double-heading line.

[Poor Old Bruce]

Where there were undulating gradients on a line where banking engines were used (i.e. at the rear of the train) it was common practice or even a requirement to couple to the rear of the train so that it could not get separated. Thus the use of attached banking engines through the Severn Tunnel. It also applied between Rowsley and Peak Forest where freights were regularly piloted AND banked. I believe the trains would stop short of the summit to detach the pilot and uncouple the banking engine which would then give the train a last push over the summit before dropping off.

[The Stationmaster]

Can we look at the facts please instead of well worn, inaccurate, nonsense spouted forth in some cases over many years often by folk who should know better and frequently by those who haven't bothered to check the facts or even look at photographs.

 

Biggest piece of nonsense - 'the train engine always had to go on the front'.  

While it did apply in certain specific situations and when certain engine wheel arrangements were involved it was far from bring a general rule or principle.  So in many respects, and the vast majority of situations, it's little more than someone's imagination at work conjured out of I don't know where by goodness only knows who and perpetuated by far too many folk who have never bothered to think things through even if they haven't got the necessary reference material or bothered to look at photos

 

I posted the facts below 11 months ago  (applicable from at least the 1930s onwards although in some respects unaltered from the 1920s) on RMweb although it wasn't in a subject under this heading so might have been missed and I will copy it here (I hope)  to save folk digging back through a page to find it.  I have higlighted some words in bold - just to help a bit.

 

Stationmaster

RMweb Gold

 42.4k

RMweb Gold

Edit

Posted March 11, 2022

Can we please cut out the oft repeated nonsense about engines assisting front on the GWR having to be marshalled inside the train egine,.  I don't know who started it off but it's been kicking around for years and it is a load pf rubbish.  

 

Assisting Passenger Trains from the bottom to the top of an incline - any engine with driving wheels greater than 4'6" diameter may be used to assist at the front and must be coupled in front of the train engine

 

Assisting or double heading passenger Trains on level or falling gradients.  This also applied where the assisting engine would 'run some distance'  before or after the  ascending incline

a. Any 4-6-0  or  4-4-0 type may be used and must be coupled in front of the train engine.  Normally engines of these wheel arrangements should be used to assist in such circumstances.

b. Additionally in various nominated locations/sections of route any 2-6-0 or 2-6-2T with a driving wheel  diameter of at least 5'8" could be used to assist front (again coupled in front of the train engine unless it was a 'King' ).    Assistance in this manner was permitted in either direction through the Severn Tunnel.    In some cases only a 2=6-0 or a 2-6-2T was permitted to be used in this way.  

 

Note however that there were various additional restrictions in respect of assisting 60XX 'King' class engines.

 

c. Until October 1948 in addition to a and b above any engine which was not a 4-6-0 or 4-4-0 which assisted a passenger train had to be marshalled inside the train engine.  From October 1948 this instruction was revised to permit any engine with a leading pony truck to be marshalled in front of the train engine provided it was more powerful than the train engine.  If the train engine was the more powerful of the two then the assisting engine had to be marshalled inside the train engine.

 

At some date between 1948 and 1960 the status of 4-4-0s as assisting engines onpassenger trains was changed and they were lumped in with the general listing of engines with leading pony trucks except on the Cambrian where 'Dukedogs' were permitted, still, to assist front when coupled to a 'Manor'.   This all otherwise remained unaltered right up to the end of WR steam.

 

BUT these instructions were subject to amplification or alteration in the Sectional Appendices.  Thus for example in some places passenger and parcels train were permitted to be assisted rear over a continuously rising gradient. For example while parcels trains were subject to the same Instructions as passenger trains a parcels train could be assisted rear from Totnes to Rattery by an engine which was not coupled to the train.

 

Assisting Freight Trains from the bottom to the top of an incline - any engine with a driving wheel diameter greater than 4 feet was permitted to be used.  The position in which the assistant engine was marshalled was noted in the various (Sectional) Appendices to the WTT

 

Assisting or double heading Freight Trains on level or falling gradients.  This also applied where the assisting engine would 'run some distance'  before or after the  ascending incline -

 

a. If the assisting engine was not of the same type as the train engine or was not a 4-6-0 or a 4-4-0  it had to be marshalled between the train engine and the train.

 

b. Partly Vacuum Fitted Freight trains were not permitted to be assisted except from the bottom to the top of an incline or through the Severn Tunnel

Mike.

The Stationmaster

 

Any questions?

Edited February 2, 2023 by The Stationmaster
now bold re Severn Tunnel assisting to correct misinformation from someone else.

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Where, on the South Devon, were the assisting engines attached and detached?

Generally passenger train pilots [i.e. on the front] were attached at Newton Abbot and worked through to North Road and vice-versa. Goods bankers [i.e. on the back] worked from Aller junction down Plymouth goods loop [where there was a spur with a water tank at the downhill end] to Dainton, and again from Totnes. The other way there was a goods banker from Tavistock Junction Yard up Rattery and again from Totnes to Dainton. The Aller-Dainton banker was usually a large Prairie until the end of steam in the area, after which it was usually a D63xx [I used to see it regularly on my trips from Torquay to NA trainspotting in the early 1960s].

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

Generally passenger train pilots 

 

It was passenger train assisting engines I was primarily thinking of, fully covered in Mike's reminder of his previous posting on the subject. (Is it too much to ask that those posing a question search for previous discussions?)

 

Taking the OP's topic title at face value, surely a banking engine was always behind the train engine; in fact, behind the whole train?

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It was passenger train assisting engines I was primarily thinking of, fully covered in Mike's reminder of his previous posting on the subject. (Is it too much to ask that those posing a question search for previous discussions?)

 

Taking the OP's topic title at face value, surely a banking engine was always behind the train engine; in fact, behind the whole train?

The term 'banking engine'  - as you rightly say - obviously must mean an engine at the rear of the train.  If it was ever an official term it vanished a long time ago - definitely not included in the RCH standard Rules (149 and 150) in 1911/13 in the Rule Books, of two different Companies, which I have from that period.  But I would put good money on the vernacular being used - incorrectly - in some lower level railway documentation even a generation after that.  But officially there was no such term with the correct term being assistant/assisting engine - irrespective of which end of the train it was assisting..  

 

Similarly the term 'pilot engine', often used in the vernacular, to describe an engine assisting at the front end of a train was also no longer used by the 1910s  (if it ever had been?) and in fact meant something completely different more than a century ago.  Alas as so often on the railway, and no doubt elsewhere, sloppy use of the vernacular can not only cause confusion but at times can be positively dangerous - misuse of the word 'pilot engine' in connection with train working being one of the potentially worst examples.  (Station and yard pi,ots area very different thing of course)

[LMS2968]

Something to consider, though, is that these terms were not easily dismissed and would linger on in bits of infrastructure as well as in common language. One of the maps to the report on the Chapel-en-le-Frith collision of 1957 specifically points out the "Stop Board for Bank Engine".

[B15nac]

I no they weren't overly keen on putting 6024 in behind on a double header as it increased the chance of axle box's overheating on the leading driving Axle.

 

Regards Neil 

[Compound2632]

43 minutes ago, B15nac said:

it increased the chance of axle box's overheating on the leading driving Axle.

 

How so?

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Similarly the term 'pilot engine', often used in the vernacular, to describe an engine assisting at the front end of a train was also no longer used by the 1910s  (if it ever had been?) and in fact meant something completely different more than a century ago. 

 

Do you mean there, the light engine running a few blocks ahead of the royal train?

[The Stationmaster]

49 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Do you mean there, the light engine running a few blocks ahead of the royal train?

That is (or rather was) one example)  The really dodgy mix up could come with a pilot engine being used during Single Line Working.  Just imagine some body asking where the pilot engine was and being told that it was on the train - and taking that to mean the the SLW pilot engine  was therefore attached to the train and it could proceed onto the single line.  

 

Yes, plenty of other things also needed to be done before allowing a train onto the single line but there could be considerable confusion is somebody is inquiring about the single line pilot engine and someone else takes that to mean an assistant engine is being inquired about.

[phil_sutters]

7 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

ISTR that pilot engines with a leading bogie were allowed on the front of the train engine, but everything else had to go inside. Hence photos of bulldogs and manors on the front, west of Newton.

 

 

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

The really dodgy mix up could come with a pilot engine being used during Single Line Working.  Just imagine some body asking where the pilot engine was and being told that it was on the train - and taking that to mean the the SLW pilot engine  was therefore attached to the train and it could proceed onto the single line.  

 

If I've understood correctly, in this case a pilot engine conveying the pilotman back over the section to enable him to conduct two service trains in the same direction successively?

 

But wouldn't all this be done by staff and ticket - and indeed isn't the pilotman (or his distinguishing armband or whatever) the single-line token himself?

[tomparryharry]

If a passenger locomotive required 'assistance' then sometimes the Loco Arranger would have a fresh pair of locos at various points on the system. To expedite the move, the new loco(s) was-were stabled ahead of the train, and the original loco was run forward & away from the train. The fresh loco(s) then backed on, brake test, and away.

 

Some top link drivers wouldn't take assistance  under any circumstance, especially on mileage jobs. as the driver had the say, it was his word, and, responsibility.

[Rivercider]

48 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

If I've understood correctly, in this case a pilot engine conveying the pilotman back over the section to enable him to conduct two service trains in the same direction successively?

 

But wouldn't all this be done by staff and ticket - and indeed isn't the pilotman (or his distinguishing armband or whatever) the single-line token himself?

The chance of something going badly wrong increases as soon as there is a move away from normal working.

During my railway career I heard about two cases involving misunderstandings about a pilotman during single line working. 

In one the pilotman was wearing a jacket over his armband and other staff did not realise pilot working had been implemented. On the other the pilotman tried, unsuccessfully, to make permanent way staff aware that single line working was to be introduced. Fortunately there were no casualties or damage in either case. 

 

cheers

Edited February 2, 2023 by Rivercider
Clarification.

[Rivercider]

When GWR services worked through to Ilfracombe they were at the mercy of the owning company,

either LSWR or SR. Assisting engines were often required over the banks up to Mortehoe and Woolacombe

especially during the summer. It seems to have been common practice for the GWR 43XX to be assisted front

by a N class 2-6-0, or M7 class 0-4-4T, (running either chimney or tender/bunker first)

 

cheers 

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Some top link drivers wouldn't take assistance  under any circumstance, especially on mileage jobs. as the driver had the say, it was his word, and, responsibility.

 

The Midland system, as introduced by Paget and Granet, removed that liberty from the driver. The problem then became what happened when no assistant engine was available and the driver was compelled to take a train over the set weight limit for his engine, as at Aisgill in 1913.

[The Johnster]

As I understand it, pilot engines (but not in the sense of an SLW pilot, which is something quite different and, as has been mentioned, requires a degree of concentration and clear thinking to operate safely), are not the same thing as assisting engines, bankers, wherever they are coupled in the train.  Pilot engines are ordered by control for traffic purposes, whereas banking engines are provided at known locations and used at the request of the train's driver.  The method of their use is predicated on local instructions in the relevant Sectional Appendix. 

 

Double and triple heading is not quite the same thing as pilot engines, in that the train has two or three locomotives (driven in multiple if they are diesel or electric) throughout it's journey, and is usually booked in order to cope with heavy loading. 

 

As Mike Stationmaster points out, the use of the term 'pilot' on the railway is multifaceted and fraught with possibilities of confusion, and is not official vernacular, but has survived in railway and enthusiast/modeller vernacular nonetheless.  Accidents can be caused by this irregular use, but as a working railwayman one found it commonplace and unavoidable.

 

It was not impossible in terms of the vernacular to have what was described as a pilot engine aboard which were described as traction and route pilot drivers as well as the driver, and an SLW pilotman, and the word 'pilot' was used colloquially for all of them on what would be by then a pretty crowded footplate where not everybody might be clearly hearing what was said (quiet cabs are not just a matter of driver comfort), so one had to trust that the correct outcome was ensured by the context in which the word was used.  Not safe, lazy sloppy speech, and you had to keep your wits about you to stay out of trouble sometimes.  Some drivers, and an SLW pilotman I encountered in Newport once ('it says Pilotman on my armband, that should be good enough for you, stop nitpicking about what I call myself!) did not like being challenged or questioned on the matter, and considered it a point of semantics.  I thought, and still think, that this could be potentially dangerous in some circumstances.

 

There was a head on collision at night between trains on a single line at Delabole in Cornwall back in the 19th century caused by the tragi-comic result of a Signalman shouting 'Right Away, Dick' to a guard, who promptly gave the 'right away' signal to his driver, who correctly started into the next section.  Unknown to the signalman, the guard of a train in the other direction was also called Dick, and he assumed that the signalman's instruction was intended for him, so promptly gave right away to his driver, who set off into the section without checking the starter signal, much like a buzz-buzz go SPAD, with disastrous consequences.  You have to be careful what you say and who you say it to, sometimes...

 

Modern procedure is to use set scripted wording in such conversations, and is much better!

Edited February 2, 2023 by The Johnster