Were the Hawksworth coaches as big a step away from previous GWR practices as the County locos were?

[bécasse]

Given post-war material shortages, the inter-union dispute may have been a useful excuse for delays in the construction of vehicles that they wouldn't have been able to build (or at least complete) anyway. Concentrating on the refurbishment of war-weary existing stock (which would have required a much small input of items in short supply) was clearly the sensible way forward even if it failed to bolster someone's vanity.

[VIA185]

There's a photograph of the accident involving a 'Britannia', an up excursion of a women's club from South Wales (IIRC) near Didcot in which the complete side of a Hawksworth coach has come away from the frame as a single piece. So I suspect there was nothing particularly modern or revolutionary about their construction. (CJL)

 

[Wickham Green too]

52 minutes ago, JimC said:

There was a joint GWR/LMS buckeye trial in 1945, but the GWR at least considered it didn't justify making a change.  ...

I don't think I'd consider the LMS's attitude particularly enthusiastic for change, either - they had three loco-hauled buckeye fitted vehicles before 1945 and they had the same three at Nationalisation !

[JimC]

FWIW we have this in "Next Station" , a 1947 GWR publication:

"The new method now being applied on an increasing scale avoids the use of separate floor framing in the body; the side pillars are secured direct to brackets welded to the underframe, which becomes the floor of the finished coach. It also introduces partial prefabrication on jig tables laid out in conjunction with the assembly line. On these tables are built twelve prefabricated frames wich, when assembled, form the complete side walls and end walls of a coach."

I don't know enough on the subject to comment.

[jim.snowdon]

The only thing that could be said to be a development with the Hawksworth carriages was the way in which the body pillars were bolted directly to the underframe structure, with no bottom rail. That wasn't a new idea, though, the Metropolitan Railway having used that technique several decades earlier. Structurally, they were very little different from what had gone before.

 

The 10xx Counties were no great step forward, in many ways just a higher power version of the 'Modified Hall' class by way of a higher pressure boiler and larger wheels. The boiler itself was nothing more than developed Swindon practice, via the LMS.

 

[jim.snowdon]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

They missed an opportunity that had been taken on the LNER and the Southern, perpetuated by the BR mk1s, to incorporate buckeye couplers despite the bow-ended form being suitable for this type.

The only benefit of the bow end is in reducing the depth of the gangway.

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Bowended stock with conventional couplings and buffers had to have extended buffer shanks to enable the buffers to stick out enough to buff, particularly noticeable on the GW's Steam Railmotors and auto-trailers. 

Not particularly - the carriage ends were simply closer together. The railmotors/auto trailers and the later DMUs were an exception by having a much more pronounced bow end to both the body and the underframe, the latter putting the bases of the buffer guides much further back relative to the drawhook.

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The mk1s are probably overall the most successful passenger coach design in British railway history, and were very good coaches indeed.  An Achilles heel was added to them when the end steps were removed in the 60s in connection with the 25kv electrification projects, as the steps were welded on and cut out with oxymorons, I mean torches, plates being welded over the holes.

My recollections of Mark 1s were that the steps were simply cut off, leaving the last 1/2" or so still welded to the end panelling. Cutting them out of the end panelling and then welding patch plates over the holes would be a very messy way of achieving the same end, not to mention creating a severe fire risk without first removing the internal wooden panelling.

 

[MPR]

15 hours ago, Forward! said:

 

The GW did experiment with buckeyes (and pullman gangways) on the 1925 South Wales sets.  But this was essentially a fixed formation where the inner carriages had buckeyes, and the outer ends of the outer carriages had conventional screw couplers. They kept the buckeyes to around 1933.

 

At around the same time the GW played around with fixed, articulated sets (and contemplated DMUs too). The articulated set was found to be too inflexible for their ordinary mainline expresses and converted to conventional bogies quite quickly. So I suspect the buckeye idea wasn't take any further for similar reasons of operational inflexibility.

 

Will

I've seen it stated that the advantages of buckeye couplings were traded against the advantages from faster roll-out of ATC and that ATC won out for investment (ie. it is better to avoid the collision, rather than deal with the consequences) Is there any truth in this?

[The Johnster]

ATC is probably preferable from the safety pov (prevention better than cure), but it had significant operating advantages as well, especially in poor visibility, as drivers could maintain line speed knowing that they had clear roads ahead even when they couldn’t see the signals…

 

Poor timekeeping costs money, so the ATC could be justified on cost-effectiveness as well as safety. 

[Wickham Green too]

So now we have TPWS, AWS, ATC, GPS, ERMTS and who knows what to keep trains apart yet we're still worried about crashworthiness ............. hmmmmm

[melmerby]

15 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

The 10xx Counties were no great step forward, in many ways just a higher power version of the 'Modified Hall' class by way of a higher pressure boiler and larger wheels. The boiler itself was nothing more than developed Swindon practice, via the LMS.

I understood it was to get a higher power express loco without the complication & expense of 4 cylinders but still in the GWR tradition E.g. effectively a cheaper "Castle"

The objective was sound as the Britannia Class became the BR Standard express loco with similar wheel size & tractive effort.

 

However Castles were still being built for 3 years after the last of the Counties!

[Forward!]

I think Hawksworth's approach to postwar carriages is very typical of his general approach. Take something the GWR knows works, then consider changes that make it genuinely stronger, more simple (or accurate) to set up, easier or cheaper to build, more simple to maintain or take advantage of the properties of new materials. For a long time, as a lay person, I never really appreciated how carefully considered his designs were.

 

The significance of adopting a different direct-attachment of framing to a carriage underframe are probably lost on many of us 80 years later, but the saving in time, material and the skill required would have had an important effect on the company's bottom line if the carriages had bèn built at the scale and rate originally intended. To what extent Hawksworth got involved in these sort of decisions, I don't know, but at the very least he must have fostered a worplace culture of "right, let's take this and see what we can do with it". You need people with that attitude just as much as you need people who want to revolutionise everything all at once.

 

i think Hawksworth, alongside this pragmatic approach could also demonstrate vision when considering diesel railcars, gas turbine technology etc. I've rarely worked with people who are capable of thinking both ways simultaneously.

 

A much under rated engineer in my view.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Forward!

[Trestrol]

One thing you have to remember about the GWR is they didn't like buying stuff in from outside. Raw materials would go into Swindon and a finished product came out the other end. They would have to buy in Pullman Gangways and buckeyes from a supplier so they weren't interested. The same could be said for safety door locks which would have to be bought from Kayes in Leeds. So they stick with what they can make in Swindon and the SVR have found out the wisdom of this policy where door locks are concerned. 

[Pacific231G]

On 20/09/2023 at 12:24, Wickham Green too said:

So now we have TPWS, AWS, ATC, GPS, ERMTS and who knows what to keep trains apart yet we're still worried about crashworthiness ............. hmmmmm

Unfortunately no safety system is 100% effective so, however rarely,  trains will still crash (signalling systems do for example offer little protection against infrastructure failures) but, even with increased speeds, train crashes are, with some exceptions, generally less deadly now, at least in the developed world,  than they were in the past and that's largely due to better crashworthiness of coaches. 

 

I've often wondered why AAR (buckeye) couplers that do increase crash safety (they tend to keep coaches together and in line so they don't telescope into one another)  were widely adopted for British passenger trains but were never (AFAIK) used in the rest of western Europe. I guess it may have had something to do with trains requiring more splitting and joining of through carriages on long distance trains and many of those incorporating stock from more than one country.

 

[Wickham Green too]

2 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

... I guess it may have had something to do with trains requiring more splitting and joining of ...

The Southern were perfectly happy splitting & joining buckeyes at the likes of Faversham, Barnham or Bournemouth.

 

The oddity, as far as I'm concerned, is India where massive passenger trains of twenty or more heavy coaches use screw couplings but much freight stock is now equipped with buckeyes !

[Pacific231G]

9 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Southern were perfectly happy splitting & joining buckeyes at the likes of Faversham, Barnham or Bournemouth.

 

The oddity, as far as I'm concerned, is India where massive passenger trains of twenty or more heavy coaches use screw couplings but much freight stock is now equipped with buckeyes !

They were indeed and it works fine if all the stock is so fitted. The problem in Europe was that every major raiway administration would have had to fit them for them to be used in international trains which could have half a dozen final destinations for its consist.

The UIC started trying to get agreement on an automatic coupler for over a hundred years (with a version of the Willison coupler being favourite) but could never get all the railways to agree on it. That's probably now moot for passenger trains as units are taking over from loco hauled carriages. 

The more modern LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch - now Alstom LHB) passenger coaches  introduced in 2000 are fitted with AAR type couplers but Indian Railways do still have a lot of the older ICF coaches with side buffers and screwlink couplers. Something I've noticed in images from India's more disastrous train crashes is how the coaches (presumably ICF) seem to be scattered individually across the crash site with often massive loss of life so clearly separated.

 

If buckeyes (or equivalent) were required in Britain within trains what were the originally CIWL type F sleepers used on the Night Ferry fitted with? 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Pacific231G

[JimC]

I suppose, going back to the OPs question, the answer is pretty much yes, they were about as big a step, but in both cases the new designs, although they superficially look rather different, were really evolutionary, not revolutionary and so the steps not as big as one might think.

[Wickham Green too]

48 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

... what were the originally CIWL type F sleepers used on the Night Ferry fitted with? 

They were fitted with crew couplings and side buffers - compatible with Southern Railway or British Railways stock having buckeye heads dropped and buffers extended ................................ though, for some reason the Maunsell Dining Firsts - adjacent to which they were coupled at one time - had to be fitted with Continental-style gangways.

[johnofwessex]

As far as I could see on holiday last month Belgium EMU's seemed to have screw couplings within set

[jim.snowdon]

4 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

As far as I could see on holiday last month Belgium EMU's seemed to have screw couplings within set

So too did the original Eurostar sets. Whilst the outer (unit) coupler was a Scharfenberg type, the power cars were screw coupled to the articulated passenger section. In both cases, the logic is that it allows the vehicles to be loco hauled in any 'normal' train without coupling adapters. The Belgian sets would be split and recoupled driving ends inwards, becoming a screw coupled 2-car block.

[Pacific231G]

8 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

They were fitted with screw couplings and side buffers - compatible with Southern Railway or British Railways stock having buckeye heads dropped and buffers extended ................................ though, for some reason the Maunsell Dining Firsts - adjacent to which they were coupled at one time - had to be fitted with Continental-style gangways.

The position and dimensions of buffers and drawhooks on British rolling stock follows UIC standards and AFAIK has done so for very many years so, loading gauge and braking systems apart, they were compatible. However, the corridor connections were not. I was though wondering whether buckeyes  (or other couplers that kept coaches together and upright in crashes) were ever mandatory  on BR so needing to be fitted to the CIWL  F type sleepers. 

With the F type's "continental" corridor connections not being compatible with the British type there were, as well as the diner, in the BR era, two Mk1 brake seconds each fitted with a compatible gangway at one end to provide the guards compartment and also allow him to walk through the whole train.  On the other side of the Channel the sleepers were coupled to a Wagon Restaurant (later just a buffet)  and to a number of day coaches.

 

I did get to travel on the accompanying foot passenger service to Paris in February 1975 but by then plebs like me travelled from Victoria on a separate EMU to Dover Marine that ran a few minutes behind the Night Ferry. Getting to the train ferry berth involved what seemed a long walk  on a snowy winter night and, by the time the foot passengers got there, the sleepers had already been loaded. After we sailed I did go down to the vehicle deck to have a gander at the Voitures Lits which were then still CIWL: I didn't though pay any attention to their couplings.   The rest of the vehicle deck was occupied by trucks and there were no railway goods wagons.

At Dunkerque the sleepers were coupled to a set of day coaches for foot passengers but, in winter, these were not unfortunately for our exclusive use. so, despite the very early hour, the train got very crowded at Dunkerque Ville (dep. 05:25) and Lille (dep. 06.30) with morning commuters to Paris so I got very little sleep!

Before the Night ferry, with its rather elderly sleeping  cars, was withdrawn there had been plans to use BR sleeping cars on the service. Loading gauge wouldn't have been a problem but they'd presumably have needed other modifications such as Westinghouse brakes and retractable steps to accomodate the lower platforms in France and Belgium and nothing came of it. 

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Pacific231G

[Wickham Green too]

8 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

... I was though wondering whether buckeyes  (or other couplers that kept coaches together and upright in crashes) were ever mandatory  on BR ...

Had the GWR & LMS opted for buckeyes that could have happened - but they didn't so it didn't. Oddly, until the - relatively recent - Push-Pull era no locomotives were fitted with buckeyes to keep tenders & coaches together and upright .... other than Gresley's corridor tenders where the provision was for other reasons.

[The Johnster]

Hawksworth's County was very much influenced by the Stanier 8Fs build during the war at Swindon, and took advantage of some of the building jigs and tooling that were left over from that project.  The boiler was basically a domeless 8F boiler pressed to 280psi to increase T.E.  It may be regarded as the GW's response to wartime and post-war operating conditions, being designed with ease of access to greasing points and with 2 cylinders, very much the fashion and requirement of the day, but in order to use the 8F derived components Hawksworth had to introduce a new wheel size, 6'2".  It would have been more of a departure from GW practice if he'd used the 8F cylinders and Walcheart's valve gear.  One wonders (or at any rate I do) if the loco would have been built in that form at all had Swindon not had the 8F toolings available to exploit! 

 

Wheel size, a new standard boiler, and the higher pressure were the only departures from the Swindon formula in the Counties, which were very much 'more of the same, and could be regarded as a step up in power and size from the Halls.  They were strong engines, and very popular on hilly routes like the North to West, but were regarded as a failure as the intended mixed traffic engine because the very prominent piston surge that regular passengers soon got used to was not conducive to working with loose-coupled unfitted wagons.  Many general merchandise and nearly all mineral wagons had 3-link couplings in those days, though the GW was making progress introducing the much stronger 'instanter' type, and the 3-links were prone to breakage from 'snatches' as the engine picked up power at the bottom of a downhill gradient, especially if it was a dip and there was an uphill directly following; I've just described the entire North to West between Shrewsbury and Newport.  A powerful fast freight engine would have been very useful on that route.

 

Reading reports for the GW's last year of operation, 1947, shows that coupling breakages were occurring somewhere on the network about every three weeks.  In my 8 years as a Canton goods guard in the 1970s, I never heard of a single incidence of one, though the old hands were quite nervous of them.  Axle failures were the bogeyman in my day!

[JimC]

There were, I understand, studies for the Counties that included outside walschaerts gear. Weight limitations seem to have been a big issue. A Std 1 would presumably have been smaller than was wanted, and little advance on the Hall, so presumably the choice was between a high pressure version of the Castle boiler, or to take advantage of the tooling kindly supplied by the government. 

[Trestrol]

I am supprised that the LMS under Stanier didn't pursue Pullman Gangways and buckeyes. Apart from the GWR/LMS trial. With it's big neighbour already having them it probably would have made sense. Bearing in mind how friendly Stanier and Gresley were. Inter-region working with the LNER would have been so much easier. Was this more to do with die hard Midland thinking wining through? 

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Trestrol said:

I am surprised that the LMS under Stanier didn't pursue Pullman Gangways and buckeyes. Apart from the GWR/LMS trial. ...

... and 

The Engine House, Highley : 10/7/22