The one they never built.

[Prometheus]

And a great shame too. I had been thinking about building a 'Cathedral' for some years and eventually got around to it. An expensive project undeniably, but worth it in the end. A couple of hours a night for two months resulted in this:

 

 

 

The model is constructed from parts of China-made Hornby Princess and Hornby King models, parts of a recent Hornby County tender and the usual assortment of wire, plastic card, screws, brass and detail parts from the bits box. The only other parts purchased were the name and number plates. It took nearly two months of evenings to construct as there were a lot of false starts, neither model having been designed to be combined in this way!

 

All of the boiler fittings from the Princess were cut away, as was the cab, and the cylinders, steam pipes and motion were also removed. The King gave its cab to the build, along with its bogie, double chimney, steam pipes, wheels, smoke-box door, piston rods, slide bars and cross-head, cylinders and buffer beam. Everything else had to be scratch built, including the splashers.

The tender has an adapted Hawksworth tender top and the tender chassis is adapted from the Princess with additional GWR fittings.

The Princess chassis block was used but, like the trailing truck, it was adapted to take the new body. The model retains the Princess’ connecting rods but nothing else.

 

Tony

[DCB]

Looks good. What drawing did you use?    It looks pretty much like the illustration in "The Stars Castles and Kings" by O.S. Nock showing the the Hawksworth Pacific.   Not too sure it was a shame they never built the Pacific,  judging by recent ish you Tubes of Stanier Pacifics slipping on South Devon Banks.   The  proposed roller bearing Kings with streamlined steam passages would have been a better bet... Unless they upgraded Cornwall to double red and decided to run Penzance to Paddington without an engine change , like Exeter Saints and Stars used to on the West Country Postal....  Which begs the question....

[Prometheus]

Drawings were a problem DCB. I found an old article in the Modeller, two paintings/artist’s impressions in books and a basic line drawing on line. Not a lot to go by! In the end, I had to decide which I wanted to copy as much as anything else.

[kevinlms]

The Railway Modeller for 1994 November had an article for a 4mm model 'Cathedral', but that was for a 4-8-0!

[Paul H Vigor]

Was the low dome a feature of the original design? 

[Prometheus]

1 hour ago, Paul H Vigor said:

Was the low dome a feature of the original design? 

I cannot say for certain, two images had it with the safety valve bonnet and two had it alone. I went with the former.

 

Tony

[JimC]

The consensus on the 4-6-2 seems to be that it was a project kicked off by the drawing office that Hawksworth had halted when he heard about it, so to call it a Hawksworth pacific is definitely stretching a point. Mattingly pacific perhaps . There isn't very much to go on because it didn't get very far. The basic weight diagram in RCTS part 9 is about all that's available I believe. That drawing shows a dome and apparently pop safety valves on the firebox, and no safety valve cover at all. It was cancelled at an early enough stage that really one is free to imagine what one likes, because who knows what would have changed as the design was worked up.

 

Edited March 29 by JimC

[The Johnster]

Brunel's mistake with the Atmospheric (it sucked!) and the South Devon banks is held responsible for the GW's attitude to pacifics and the preference for surer-footed 4-6-0s, but the assumed superiority of Churchward designs and the usual reluctance of CMEs at Swindon to try anything that rocked the boat played their part too.  Of course, there were serious banks to contend with on the South Wales Main Line west of Neath, and the Birkenhead line NW of Salop, but since the Kings never got to Neath or past Salop, these are academic considerations.  A through non-stop Penzance-Paddington has been mentioned, but it would be near impossible to justify the expense of beefing up Royal Albert and the Cornwall main line for a train with limited passenger appeal that would have had to slow through Plymouth and Exeter, so might just as well have stopped anyway.  The Mattingley pacific looks more improbable the more you study it, and by the time the drawing office sketched it out, the day of new 4-cylinder pacifics was over, not that that prevented Swindon from building Castles up to 1950 and campainging for more when they were offered Britannias. 

 

They managed to palm the first of their Brits off on to Stewart's Lane, but Marylebone wasn't having any more of their jive, and Brits were used successfully on the South Devon banks, and the South Wales ones as well when they'd reduced their wheel diameter with a bit of mileage.  They did well on the North to West, too.  But a Brit is a radically different propostion from a GW-version Princess Royal.  The argument for a GW/WR pacific was that a wider firebox could be used and lower quality coal exploited, but with 4-6-0s proving adequate, if awkward to prep, the Mattingley was never needed.  Indeed, the Brits were not liked on the WR, especially at Laira, the depot arguably the most steep bank work, but were very well liked at Canton, where a free-steaming 2-cylinder loco with 6'2" drivers that could plug uphill from Severn Tunnel bottom to Badminton with 14 bogies was a very useful thing to have on the roster.

 

But I remember the fuss they made trying to lift those 14 bogies, sometimes 16, out of Platform 2 at Cardiff General.  Bit of a rise over the Canal Wharf bridges, only a few yards, and a tightish lh curve, and the result was volcanic.  I've seen the preserved 70000 manage it easily enough with 11 and a dead 47, but back in the 50s it would take about 4 or 5 of the 15 minutes allowed to Newport for the train to clear the platform!  The down-line workings were entrusted to high-mileage engines with the drivers down to 6', which helped, but one wonders how they managed leaving Neath General on the down, up a corkscrew 1 in 90 to Skewen...  I doubt a Cathederal  would have done any better.

[Prometheus]

Thanks for the comments all. This is illustration I used principally. I cannot advise on its origin though.

 

https://share.icloud.com/photos/064HQSw9DP1M-4tmKu_AKFPpw

 

Tony

[JimC]

10 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Thanks for the comments all. This is illustration I used principally. I cannot advise on its origin though.

The top one is the GWR sketch as included in RCTS. The centre one is a composite of issued weight diagrams over the sketch. I reckon there are substantial chunks of County and King in it, not sure about anything else. I think it must have been produced by an enthusiast, not a Swindon trained draughtsman. The third appears to be a composite based on photos of models. I'm not sure what all the components are, but I'm guessing Stanier Pacific and King are in there, probably County too. 

Edited March 30 by JimC

[JimC]

10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

not that that prevented Swindon from building Castles up to 1950 and campaigning for 

Or, for that matter, Marylebone's 3 cylinder white elephant. Seems to me there probably wasn't that big a gulf in costs between 3 cylinders and 3 valve gears and 4 cylinders and 2. But I m sure you're right, there wasn't a job for a Mattingly Pacific. To my mind the Hawksworth/Stanier 4 cylinder compound is a more interesting never was. 

[JimC]

If one is doing alternate histories one may imagine Collett's wife not dying young, Collett retiring in 1936 at her instigation, and Hawksworth picking up his compound Castle proposal with a large chunk of the Chapelon ideas that were demonstrably (Grange valve chests) already floating round Swindon. The result could potentially have been spectacular given a high superheat boiler, maybe even enlarged to Std 7 size. 

[later] And to my surprise I think the boiler on the surviving GWR diagram of the "Compound Castle" *is* a standard 7. It's not very safe scaling from such drawings, especially from scans, not originals, but I'm about 85% confident that's the case. The proposal had 2* 17 x26 cylinders and 2* 25x26. It doesn't seem to me that would have been lighter than the Castle's 4* 16x26, but I don't know enough to offer any kind of informed opinion.

Edited April 3 by JimC
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