Western Region 'Britannia' locos

[Trev52A]

The former Western Region 'Britannia' Pacifics could be identified in their later years by (among other things) the two lugs(?) on the smokebox door, (circled in my picture of 70023 at Carlisle in 1967). Presumably these were something to do with attaching the frames they had previously carried to display the WR train reporting numbers. But how were these frames attached? Access was required to operate the smokebox door retaining handles at the loco sheds so they must have been temporary fittings, I would have thought. Are the lugs just vestiges of something more complex?

 

Thanks

Trevor

Edited September 4, 2024 by Trev52A

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting question as similar 'lugs' appear on photos of 'Clans' so not something unique to WR allocated engines - maybe more related t something inside the smokebox?  The WR train reporting number frames fitted on the smokebox door handles - no lugs on Western smokebox doors.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

There's a picture a short way down this page (on the left) showing a Britannia smokebox door with an empty reporting number frame: https://davidheyscollection.myshopblocks.com/pages/david-heys-steam-diesel-photo-collection-23-br-western-region-3

 

It isn't clear (not to me, at any rate) how the frame is attached to the smokebox door, but the left hand lug you mention is clearly shown in the picture, and the reporting number frame is not attached to it

 

What's the lamp bracket doing there in your picture?

[RFS]

3 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

What's the lamp bracket doing there in your picture?

 

When the SR Merchant Navy locos were temporarily withdrawn in 1953 for crank axle checks, some WR Britannias were loaned to the SR, and it's possible it acquired this lamp bracket then to accomodate the SR's route discs. 

[Poor Old Bruce]

37 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

What's the lamp bracket doing there in your picture?

 

In the 1960s, locos allocated to the LMR (where they often operated under overhead electrification wires) had the top lamp brackets moved onto the smokebox door at a lower level to avoid the risk of staff getting electrocuted. The lamp brackets in the middle of the front buffer beams were moved at the same time to be vertically in line.

[Trev52A]

53 minutes ago, Poor Old Bruce said:

 

In the 1960s, locos allocated to the LMR (where they often operated under overhead electrification wires) had the top lamp brackets moved onto the smokebox door at a lower level to avoid the risk of staff getting electrocuted. The lamp brackets in the middle of the front buffer beams were moved at the same time to be vertically in line.

 

Please forgive me if I am mistaken, but I think the query was about the extra bracket which has been attached to the smoke deflector stay, not the top one which has been moved to its usual new low position on the smoke box door.
Trevor

[Wickham Green too]

Certainly in the right position for an SR one - but how on earth has it managed to survive 'til '67 when the deflector's obviously been off for grab hole mods at some date !!?!

[Hal Nail]

6 hours ago, Trev52A said:

The former Western Region 'Britannia' Pacifics could be identified in their later years by (among other things) the two lugs(?) on the smokebox door, (circled in my picture of 70023 at Carlisle in 1967). Presumably these were something to do with attaching the frames they had previously carried to display the WR train reporting numbers.

 

 

I would have guessed these are to help secure ornate headboards.

[Wickham Green too]

... though any bracket on said headboard would have to be long enough to clear the lamp iron and dart.

[OnTheBranchline]

Is it true that the Britannias are not popular with WR engine crews?

[LMS2968]

Yes, except at Canton.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Is it true that the Britannias are not popular with WR engine crews?

 

30 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

Yes, except at Canton.

In 1957 all the Western Britannias that were not Canton allocated moved from Old Oak, Laira and Newton Abbot to Canton.

 

Canton used them on their principal expresses and until higher locomotive management banned it from doing so, they would also employ Evening Star on said principal expresses too.

[The Johnster]

A 2-cylinder engine with mixed traffic-sized driving wheels and a free-steaming boiler is a very useful thing for a depot that had a lot of slogging uphill work with heavy trains, and Canton's up-line work featured a long haul from Severn Tunnel Bottom to Badminton summit with anything up to 16 bogies; assistance was not expected with less than 14 on.  More up hill & down dale stuff was to be found on the North to West, and down-line, where the higher mileage engines were used to take advantage of their smaller driving wheels.  Canton men considered them equal to Castles, which is about as high praise as you'd get from WR men, but complained about the draughts in the cab and the extra ton of coal that had to be shovelled. 

 

The down side, as with many pacifics, was slipping when you were trying to get away from platforms.  At Cardiff General P2 involves a short climb over the Canal Wharf bridge and a sharpish lh curve, and the results were volcanic; I've seen trains take a good 5 minutes to clear the platform,  Castles just went chuff chuff chuff and off they went, and I witnessed an East Dock Hall doing the same as late as summer 1964, having replaced an ailing 47, though the loads were down to 12 bogies by then.

 

It is difficult to assess accurately the degree of WR driver prejudice against the Brits.  Old Oak was quick to dispose of it's first example, 70014 Iron Duke, by lending it to Stewart's Lane during the problems with the MNs and 'forgetting' to ask for it back, and a Laira driver wrote to the Times complaining about the ineffectiveness of the new locos.  There was certainly a feeling on the WR that BR designs were basically a continuation of LMS practice, and Derby in particualr was not regarded with much enthusiasm, but other standards such as the 5MT, 4MT 4-6-0, and 9F were well enough recieved on the region.  The 3MT 2-6-2T suffered in it's Cardiff Valleys allocations from being regarded as inferior to the Large Prairie it was supplied in lieu of, which it was, but it was really concieved as a replacement for the likes of rebuilt TVR Class As & Rhymney Ps, so it wasn't really a fair comparison.  The larger driving wheels gave it more 'range' than the 56xx.

 

Canton used it's Brits on top-link express work until the arrival of the Kings in 1961.  The shed had wanted Kings ever since 1927 but the Civil Engineers blocked them, and the locos were worked to death by the time Canton got them and falling apart (cracked frames mostly), so couldn't improve on the Brits.  Prior to the arrival of the Brits, the top jobs were given to Castles, which were also BR power class 7, and the WTT did not require particularly high speeds on the South Wales expresses.  The use of Evening Star on the 'Red Dragon' for the first 3 days it was allox Canton showed the loco more than capable of timing the train, but this was hardly the most effective use of a 10-coupled with 5' driving wheels.  The practice was put a stop to when somebody high-up noticed the loco on the stops at Paddington.  The Kings were replaced by Hymeks, hopelessly underpowered and arguably even less suitable than a double-chimney 9F, but there was nothing else available until the first Westerns and 47s arrived in '63; even these could only reliably time the trains with progressively reduced loads as the timings were reduced through the 60s and early 70s, 12 as mentioned, then 11, and finally 10 eth/airco.  It is interesting to compare the Brit/Castle South Wales service with the late 70s 8-coach HST; same ballpark number of seats per hour but the HSTs halved the timing and increased the frequency.  This meant more trains on the route and a greater number of passengers carried.

Edited September 8, 2024 by The Johnster

[OnTheBranchline]

2 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

Yes, except at Canton.

I read in an article about the 47xx that suggested that WR enginemen would make the Britannia look bad in the summer Saturday runnings from Paddington  so they didn’t have to roster them.

Edited September 8, 2024 by OnTheBranchline

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

Yes, except at Canton.

Well not entirely so.  At. a regular meeting of District Motive Power Supts the subject of the 'Britannias' once again reared its head and as the discussion carried on along its normal path the Newport DMS said to his colleagues that he would take the lot.  Presumaby his motive was to get hs hands on some top link passenger locos and he saw this as a golden chance because no one else wanted them.

 

Reportedly one of his colleagues then asked him what would happen if his Drivers didn't like them and his reply was that they'd have to put up with them.  From what former Canton enginemen have told me there was indeed some mixed feelings about the'Brits' at Canton although I'm sure it was no where near the level of outright hatred that had grown up in the West Of England.  The Milton derailment didn't help matters where some of the feeling against the 'Brits' was turned into 'evidence' against them and their potential culpability for the incident.  Be that as it may a result of that incident was the removal of smoke deflector handrails on the Western's allocation of the class.

 

As ever there were various stories and allegations surrounding that incident which never got to the inquiry (nor presumably to the internal inquiry).  The alleged 'unusual' use of coupling and connecting rod bearing oil point corks  was something which seems never to have been the subject of any formal comment.

Edited September 9, 2024 by The Stationmaster

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

... There was certainly a feeling on the WR that BR designs were basically a continuation of LMS practice, and Derby in particular was not regarded with much enthusiasm, but other standards such as the 5MT, 4MT 4-6-0, and 9F were well enough received on the region. ...

The 5MTs & 4MTs were, of course, direct descendants from their LMS forebears and the larger of the two is attributed to a Swindon man.

[The Stationmaster]

3 minutes ago, OnTheBranchline said:

I read in an article about the 47xx that suggested that WR enginemen would make the Britannia look bad in the summer Saturday runnings from Paddington  so they didn’t have to roster them.

From what I know from men who worked on them the engines the Firemen truly hated on such work were the 47XX - a cionsequence of their having lever reverse as much as anything else/. Lots of Western Firemen did not like the wide fireboxes of the Brits and 9Fs but they had their own way of dealing with that problem (maybe that possibly interfered with steam raising ability on the Brits when working at the sort of power outputs the trains needed?)

[The Johnster]

Well, it's a big ask to take any engine out of Plymouth up the Devon banks before it is fully warmed up and the fire is established.  The Canton Brits were pretty well into their stride by the time they'd got to Severn Tunnel Bottom, where the sloggy work started.  And the firemen had a point; right-handed firing and a ton more of coal to shift into a bigger firebox than a Castle.  Moreover, the extra ton comes at the end of the journey when the fireman is tired, not something that would endear itself to Laira men on the down at Newton Abbott with the track disappearing vertically upwards under the bridge... 

 

The comparable situation in South Wales is probably Neath General. where down trains face a vicious left-hand bend and the start of Skewen Bank straight off the end of the platform, but in this case the crew are likely to have boarded the loco at Cardiff (IIRC the Pembroke Coast Express was a Landore turn but given a Castle) and a Canton Brit working down-line from Cardiff would be a high mileage engine with significantly smaller driving wheels due to tyre wear, and hend a higher tractive effort.

 

Speed is not a significant issue west of Exeter, or of Stoke Gifford for that matter.  The general comment about the Brits when I asked about them in the 70s at Canton was 'good strong engines', but both drivers and firemen preferred Castles.

 

The WR idea that BR standard designs were LMS based has some justification, especially with some of the smaller engines.  The 4MT mogul is not much more than a restyled Ivatt Flying Pig, and the 2MT & corresponding 2MT tank were even more closely based on Ivatt equivalents.  The WR was already using LMS designs when the Brits were introduced, the Mickey Mouse 2MTs in particular, and these had made their own inter-regional ripples when Brecon and Moat Lane men claimed that the steaming was inferior to the Dean Goods they replaced.  Stanier 8Fs were commonly used, and of course some had been built at Swindon during the war, a factor in the design of Hawkworth's County class which used a modified 8F boiler.  There were also a good number of WD 2-8-0s working on the region, which, being based on the Stanier 8F, were regarded as another Midland engine and further evidence of a conspiracy to Midlandise the Western. 

 

There were certainly examples of sheds requesting GW designs and complaining when BR standard equivalents turned up.  A case in point is the Swindon drawn-up and built 3MT 2-6-2T, which used a modified domed version of the Swindon standard no.2 boiler.  The South Wales sheds that were the first to have them allocated all complained that they were not as good as the 4MT-classed 5101s that those sheds had asked for, but the comparison was unfair, as the 3MTs' cylinders were much smaller than the 5101s'.  They were to replace rebuilt pre-grouping 0-6-2Ts in the 3MT range, but supplied as the standard replacement for 5101s, which were still being built as late as 1950.  The logical BR standard replacement for a 5101is a 4MT 2-6-4T, and the performance of 80080 in the GW 150 events in South Wales was particularly interesting for that reason.  The loco failed with 5 coaches on the Penarth and Rhymney branches, but sailed up Abercynon Bank on the way to Merthyr, from a standing start at Stormstown, and accelerated to the line speed of 50mph once over the viaduct at the top, still climbing steeply.  It also ran at the 70mph line speed from Radyr to Crockherbtown Jc on the return legs.  But it would have incurred the scorn of GW men had it been allocated, being so much bigger than a 5101 and only capable of the same work (having seen them with 12-coach trains at Largs and Ardrossan, I'd queston that assumption). 

 

Making engine drivers happy is a thankless and pointless task; my experience of them is that their main pleasure in life is complaining about things...

[LMS2968]

56 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Making engine drivers happy is a thankless and pointless task; my experience of them is that their main pleasure in life is complaining about things...

True. Oh, so very true!

 

But they aren't alone in that.

[LMS2968]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

The WR idea that BR standard designs were LMS based has some justification, especially with some of the smaller engines.  The 4MT mogul is not much more than a restyled Ivatt Flying Pig, and the 2MT & corresponding 2MT tank were even more closely based on Ivatt equivalents.  The WR was already using LMS designs when the Brits were introduced, the Mickey Mouse 2MTs in particular, and these had made their own inter-regional ripples when Brecon and Moat Lane men claimed that the steaming was inferior to the Dean Goods they replaced.  Stanier 8Fs were commonly used, and of course some had been built at Swindon during the war, a factor in the design of Hawkworth's County class which used a modified 8F boiler.  There were also a good number of WD 2-8-0s working on the region, which, being based on the Stanier 8F, were regarded as another Midland engine and further evidence of a conspiracy to Midlandise the Western. 

I can't see anything in that which would sway a jury to an opposing view. Riddles had been on the LNWR at the Grouping and witnessed the Midland Railway's imposition of MR types on the other constituents. He probably realised that doing the same with LMS types on to the other three Big Four companies would be equally unpopular. I suggest the Interchange Trials were an attempt to convince the others that their ideas were being fully taken into account and incorporated. I don't think this fooled anyone.

[Happy Hippo]

As a matter of interest what where the lugs on the smokebox door for that the OP wanted to know about?

 

As Mike has suggested it may have been the back of some brackets for a fixture inside the smokebox. something a

 

Neither of the two locos left, 70000 and 70013, appear to have these fixtures.

 

However, in this picture by JR Carter, 70023 is shown here without the lugs on the smokebox door.

 

 

So it would probably be fair to say that this was a  one off modification carried out locally by shed staff on the LMR toward the end of the locos working life.

 

Reinforcing plate to keep the smokebox door in shape and airtight might be an answer.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2024 by Happy Hippo

[The Johnster]

Canton's Brits were always well turned out; the shed's policy was to make an effort with locos that were to be used on Paddington trains, or were booked on inter-regional duties (that included the 72xx used on the Salisbury and Corby double-home jobs).  My personal perspective was that the brass-edged handholes were a magnificent finishing touch. though I was told that the purpose was not decorative but to prevent rust setting in where the holes had been cut. 

 

They were brought in after Polar Star's 1955 derailment at Didcot, where the Canton driver claimed he had been unable to correctly read the signals because his view was obscured by the handrails, a situation compounded by a lh drive loco on the WR.  Some LMR Brits were modified in the same way by having LMS-style dimple-&-bar handholds let into the smoke deflectors.  I have never been totally convinced by this, as no problem ever seems to have been reported with either the Clans, the rebuilt Bullied pacifics, or the 9Fs which had an identical smokebox handrail to the Brits in their original form (and none of the men I talked to in the 70s seemed to have been unhappy with visibility from either an unmodified Britannia's or a 9F's cab.  A Merchant Navy's boiler is bigger than a Brit's, and a Clan's is the same length but narrower.  A 9F's is shorter, all of which will have some effect on signal sighting from the cab).  In the light of the Board of Trade's inspector tacitly agreeing with Polar Star's driver or at least not going out of his way to prove him wrong, one might have expected similar modification on all smoke-deflector handrails of this type.

[Wickham Green too]

I wonder why Mr.Riddles decided to fit handrails on his deflectors anyway .... I don't think any British loco had had anything but holes - of some sort - previously ??!?

[pH]

7 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

I wonder why Mr.Riddles decided to fit handrails on his deflectors anyway .... I don't think any British loco had had anything but holes - of some sort - previously ??!?

- A1s:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80572914@N06/7388463002

 

- various A2 subclasses:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80572914@N06/7885507652  (as an example)

 

- A3s with “blinkers” :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80572914@N06/7547625524

 

- A3 60097:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/malton/7544867964

There were probably others - those were the ones I could remember offhand.

 

Edit to add Royal Scot 46106:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/norbet/3302066784

(Interestingly, unrebuilt Patriots do not appear to have had handrails on the deflectors.)

Edited September 9, 2024 by pH

[Wickham Green too]

Apologies - obviously Mr.Riddles was, indeed, following Mr.Thompson's A1/A2 lead ............... didn't the A3s with deflectors appear after the 'Brits' though ?