Midland Railway Company

[Jol Wilkinson]

9 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Dynamic balancing that took into account the reciprocating masses was introduced in the 1860s and can be seen on many Kirtley 0-6-0s by the fact that the balance weights aren't opposite the cranks. The problem was that as well as opposing the reciprocating moments they also resulted in hammer blow on the track as they produced vertical forces. For this reason the reciprocating masses weren't generally balanced fully and most engineers settled on 66.6% balancing. Later experiments and trials led to some engines having the balance reduced to 50% and in the case of the LMS 8Fs for instances allowing some of the class being permitted over routes that the majority were banned from. 

Dynamic balancing is where the wheel is rotated and sensors identify the out of balance forces, as in balancing a car wheel. 

 

I don't imagine that is what the locomotive builders could do, although it might have been achievable on a rolling road such as the Swindon or Rugby Locomotive Test Stations, if they were suitably equipped. I think that balancing a locomotive drive system would have to rely on careful calculation of all the forces involved,  horizontal, vertical, rotational and every bit in between.

[Compound2632]

25 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

I think that balancing a locomotive drive system would have to rely on careful calculation of all the forces involved,  horizontal, vertical, rotational and every bit in between.

 

Such calculations would have been possible - though not to the level possible with computer modelling - in a 19th century locomotive drawing office, though I imagine a good bit of practical experimentation would have been involved too.

[DenysW]

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Have you studied the four volumes of Stephen Summerson's Midland Railway Locomotives, published by Irwell Press?

Not yet, the next tasks are to add the Midland tank engines to my database (virtually none under Kirtley, lots under Johnson), then to compare the Midland numbers with L&Y, then (probably) the North Eastern. On a leaf-through the Catalogue for the L&Y, they did not stop retiring elderly (40 years+, often rebuilt) locomotives in around 1903, it was more steady. Then it's add and collate class physical data.

[Dave Hunt]

On 13/06/2023 at 07:27, Jol Wilkinson said:

I think that balancing a locomotive drive system would have to rely on careful calculation of all the forces involved,  horizontal, vertical, rotational and every bit in between.

 

As I understand it, that is exactly how it was done and I believe that tables were produced as well. E. S. Cox wrote a paper on it in, IIRC, the 1930s that I think owed something to the deliberations of the Bridge Stress Committee.

 

Dave

Edited June 14, 2023 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

Just to add some empirical evidence to the myth of double heading everything the current Railway Magazine has a Locomotive Practice and Performance article about the Leeds to Leicester main line.  The author could only find one log in the archives of IIRC the Railway Performance Society, of a double headed train on that route and that was two compounds in the 30's.  It's a well written piece. 

 

Jamie

[DenysW]

On 12/06/2023 at 22:34, Compound2632 said:

The rebuilding programme that turned a very large number of Johnson 0-6-0s - both those built with B and H boilers - into Class 3F, in which form they did very useful work right up to the late 50s/early 60s.

I think this is a glass-half-full view of the Midland - not wrong but focussing on the positive. Kirtley's and Johnson's (sometimes now derided) choice of 8ft + 8ft6in for the wheelbase of all of their 0-6-0s surely maximised the possibility of swapping cylinders and boilers and upgrading (or downgrading) the power of the fleet in line with the need. In agreement with your view, this then gives (mostly) the LMS the Johnson-framed locos with a chance for them to be upgraded to 3F. However, I can't rule out that the sag in building new for the period (roughly) 1878-1887 didn't contribute to the Midland's freight chaos in the 1890s (lack of paths must surely have contributed), and the failure to fully replace rather than rebuild  locomotives (nominally) 40 years-old by matching in 1903-1912 the build profile of 1863-1872 must have given the Midland an poor age-profile for its locomotive fleet coming out of WW1. I'll crunch the L&Y numbers, but on a leaf-through they went on building new and withdrawing old in the Edwardian period to 1913.

 

If the Midland had been in upgrade mode for freight in 1903-1914 (the way they didn't neglect the 4P and 2P needs of the company) they could have trialled the 4F 0-6-0s in 1902, and rolled them out at, say, 40/year from 1904 to 1911, when the 483 'rebuilds' started. I feel the view of the Midland would have been significantly less 'small-engine' if they had.

 

The build numbers of the Midland (in 5-year bands to reduce noise) were:

 

Start_Year  End_Year  Total  Goods* Other** Tank

1843           1847           108      30        77            1

1848           1852           158      87       68             3

1853           1857           136      81       52             3

1858           1862           184     124      50           10

1863           1867           252     150      91           11

1868           1872           461     309      93           59

1873           1877           446     214     148          84

1878           1882           235     68         85          82

1883           1887           246     102      55           89

1888           1892           451     230      90         131

1893           1897           298     150      88          60

1898           1902           494     235    129        130

1903           1907           180     50        80          50

1908           1912           122     22      100           0

1913           1917           59       15        44           0

1918           1922           199     175     19           5

1923           1927           17    17

 

* Goods: 0-6-0 and 2-6-0. Ignores that most early 2-4-0 were built for goods, and that 4-2-0 were localised on the Bristol & Birmingham.

** mostly passenger, but includes the Lickey Banker.

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, DenysW said:

However, I can't rule out that the sag in building new for the period (roughly) 1878-1887 didn't contribute to the Midland's freight chaos in the 1890s

 

Remember that the 1880s was a period of depression - the traffic did not justify additional engines. The 1890s were, in contrast, a period when traffic expanded rapidly. The number of engines didn't keep up with that not because there ewasn't the will or the money but because a widespread engineering trades strike meant that engines ordered from the trade weren't being delivered on schedule.

 

As for the 8' 0" + 8' 6" wheelbase, remember that made Kirtley's 0-6-0s very big for their day, and indeed Johnson's were on the large size too.  The GWR Dean Goods and the three LNWR 0-6-0 classes 0 DX, Coal Engine, Cauliflower - all had 7' 3" + 8' 3" wheelbase - and hence smaller grate area and boiler volume. The only other 8' 0" + 8' 6" 0-6-0 of the period that springs to mind is T.W. Wordsdell's NER Class C; his brother's Mineral engines, Class P, were 7' 3" + 8' 0".

 

Of course as a paid-up member of the L&NWR Society I am duty-bound to point out that the LNWR was building 0-8-0s from 1892.

[DenysW]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Remember that the 1880s was a period of depression - the traffic did not justify additional engines. The 1890s were, in contrast, a period when traffic expanded rapidly.

Not for the overall GB railways by the attached numbers; I attach the some-what waffley article they came from, and I'll have a look at Midland traffic numbers at Kew tomorrow. There does seem to have been a passenger sag (and freight increase) for the Boer War.

 

railways network development.pdf

[DenysW]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Of course as a paid-up member of the L&NWR Society I am duty-bound to point out that the LNWR was building 0-8-0s from 1892.

Indeed, also the L&Y from 1900.  But neither more powerful than a 4F, I believe, than until just before WW1, and semi-experimental re-boilering to get to 5F.

[Compound2632]

I was at Kew again today. I'm down to the last few volumes of Traffic Committee minutes, mid 1850s. This was a period when the Midland wasn't increasing its carriage and wagon stock much, so very few minutes to my purpose. It was also Allport's first stint as General Manager; the Traffic Committee minutes are dominated by his reports - at this period the minutiae of staff appointments, transfers, wage increases, and dismissals were minuted, along with accidents. Typical of the attitudes of the time was the minute of an accident to a woman who, crossing the line between wagons, had had both arms crushed when the wagons were shunted. She had had both arms amputated but, it was said, she was "progressing very well".

[Adam88]

At one time I was involved in analysing and modelling mechanical systems with rotating out-of-balance loads.  After a lot of hard maths you can produce a frequency response diagram for your system which might look like this (example found from Google rather than from the actual cases I was involved with).  We used to consider the systems we were looking at as rotating masses connected through springs and dampers.

 

Here you see that at certain frequency (e.g. driving wheel rotational speeds) ranges you get a large response - these are resonant frequencies and for many purposes should be avoided through operating the system outside these frequencies/speeds or suitable design.  This explains the why if you lose a tyre balance weight on your car wheel there are some speeds at which the car vibrates as though it's going to drop to bits but a little bit faster and you are through the resonant zone.  You can observe similar effects with washing machines, especially when they don't manage to distribute the load evenly.

 

In a coupled steam locomotive there are so many factors involved, each axle will have its own resonances and could no doubt be excited by forces transferred through the coupling rods, connecting rods and through the frames.

 

It is not always possible to create the model but I was told that if you have the hardware you are interested in you can hit it with a hammer and find the resonances with tuning forks.  I am sure there are sophisticated machines which can do this electronically.

 

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Adam88

[DenysW]

Dodgy Dealing in the 1890s on the Midland?

 

My understanding of the 19th Century logic for the GB Railways was that you sold shares (sometimes getting the payments in stages) at their nominal value (Hudson: or at a discount) to raise a big lump sum as cash. You then spent this money on building a railway, operated said railway, and paid dividends to the shareholders on the profits, these being the excess of revenue over operating expenditure. If the capital money ran out you went normally raised more by the same route or failed to complete your authorised mileage.

 

Mostly debt was the same: you issued debentures which are tradeable debt at fixed interest on the face value of the note, redeemable at par. Bank debt was possible too, but when you used that route (the Great Central did at the time of its London Extension) the rates were higher and you tried to retire it quickly. Debentures seem to allow you to act like a government: you can pretend it isn't debt providing you keep paying the interest.

 

To the completion of the London Extension and the Settle & Carlisle (1877, but probably later for the rolling stock implications) the Midland seems to have fitted this description. Then between 1889 and 1891 it borrows an extra £9M without any extra shares, and between 1895 and 1897 the reported share capital doubles. This seems legal (the accounts mention an 1897 Act) but very dodgy, and it clearly isn't due to converting debentures into shares. The £9M for the LT&S can be seen in 1911.

 

Is there an honest explanation? On the face of it profits would have to double to pay the same dividend from 1899 onwards.

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by DenysW
Correct a date

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, DenysW said:

(the accounts mention an 1897 Act)

 

The Preferential Payments in Bankruptcy Amendment Act 1897?

 

As i understand it, the type of share held, whether ordinary, preference, or debenture, determined where one stood in the pecking order for dividends. With some companies, ordinary shareholders went for years without any dividend (Money Sunk and Lost) and if the company raised more capital to fund additional activities, with a view to improving profitability, they stood to benefit even less (Gone Completely).

[DenysW]

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The Preferential Payments in Bankruptcy Amendment Act 1897?

I believe not, and none of the histories mention the Midland going into bankruptcy, although it was apparently close when the banking crisis of the 1860s coincided with the massive expenditure on the St. Pancras extension (and all of the goods handing built at the same time). It did indeed have many different issues of preference shares listed in the accounts, generally paying 4 or 4½%, but some at 6% and some revealing Hudson's hand: the 8% paid to the Leicester & Swannington, and, for a time, the 10% paid to the Leeds & Bradford. This was later doubled in face value to £1.8M, but simultaneously reduced to paying 4½% under the reign of the virtuous John Ellis - this feels borderline illegal to me as there doesn't seem to have been a receipt of £900,000 in cash to justify the increased capitalisation.

 

When I read about the GCR's London Extension it had preferred shares (which, in many years, none or only the older issues got paid), normal shares that sometimes got paid, and deferred shares, which presumably never got paid. It was where I learned about the use of bank loans extra to debentures (which I believe get paid before preferred shares).

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

49 minutes ago, DenysW said:

I believe not, and none of the histories mention the Midland going into bankruptcy, although it was apparently close when the banking crisis of the 1860s coincided with the massive expenditure on the St. Pancras extension (and all of the goods handing built at the same time).

 

But it was by no means in the worst position. Daniel Gooch led a deputation of railway company chairmen to beg Lord Derby for nationalisation. 

 

Somers Town Goods Station, next door to St Pancras, opened in 1887. On the other hand, the first part of St Pancras Goods Station pre-dated the London Extension by a decade, being built to handle Midland traffic via the Great Northern.

[DenysW]

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

But it was by no means in the worst position.

No, that would be the London, Chatham & Dover that went into administration, and, although it came out, never paid a dividend on its common stock again.

 

More from Kew ...

 

The early accounts aren't always clear on miles run (sometimes Mr Kirtley doesn't seem to have reported them), and before 1859 only the total is given. What they show is that the reduction in locomotive construction 1878-1887 was misguided, as the goods mileage was actually increasing to 1883 then stabilised, and the company was then caught short in 1887-1891 when there was a 25% increase in goods miles. Total miles were flat from 1900-1912 (the reporting requirements appear to change in 1913), but a minimalist approach to refreshing the locomotive fleet after 1903 still seems short-sighted.

 

I also found the attached from the 1849 report interesting, showing (at that point) the Midland tracked the weight and age of rails, and the type of sleepers.

 

[Compound2632]

34 minutes ago, DenysW said:

No, that would be the London, Chatham & Dover that went into administration, and, although it came out, never paid a dividend on its common stock again.

 

It's a mystery how James Staats Forbes came to be so very wealthy, isn't it? All those Corots and Whistlers...

[DenysW]

Just for completeness, I was curious as to the evolution of speed and quantity of passenger service to London on the Midland. Particularly how much relying on first LNWR, then GNR had affected this, then had the Great Central's arrival caused a step-change by direct competition. The Kew numbers of the Bradshaws are included.

 

The only things that are hidden are that (a) in LNWR days it was possible for a later-departing train to arrive sooner (b) in 1869 the Midland was flirting with "change at Leicester for intermediate stations", with a semi-fast service leaving 5-10 minutes after the express, and this increases the average journey-time (c) with the opening of the Nottingham-Melton-Kettering line not all expresses went through Leicester (d) relying on other company's metal and termini to get into London was not a recipe for either co-ordinated connections or through-service punctuality.

 

[DenysW]

20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

James Staats Forbes came to be so very wealthy

He seems to have been a paid member of the boards of a very large number of rather bad companies (shades of Watkin), and some less-bad/good. Also - no mention of wife/children in Wikipedia, and both of these are hobbies as expensive as a stupidly-big art collection.

 

Paget (junior) on the Midland's expensive hobby was locomotive design.

[DenysW]

Another thing I didn't learn from histories of the Midland - its fleet locomotive count was (essentially) frozen in 1903 at the start of Deeley reign at the same time as its miles-run stopped increasing. Separately (as above) the emphasis changed from withdrawing old Kirtley engines to rebuilding (almost) everything except renewing 4-4-0s into the 483 class. The implication is that most of the fleet had spent the 20 years before Grouping gracefully ageing by those 20 years, just having their boilers changed.

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

Another thing I didn't learn from histories of the Midland - its fleet locomotive count was (essentially) frozen in 1903 at the start of Deeley reign at the same time as its miles-run stopped increasing. Separately (as above) the emphasis changed from withdrawing old Kirtley engines to rebuilding (almost) everything except renewing 4-4-0s into the 483 class. The implication is that most of the fleet had spent the 20 years before Grouping gracefully ageing by those 20 years, just having their boilers changed.

 

I don't think that holds water - mention of the 483 Class gives the game away. The latest of the slim-boiler Johnson thender locomotives, both 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 - everything built since the mid-80s bar the singles, Belpaires, and Compounds - were rebuilt into substantially different and more powerful engines from 1912 onwards. That was a pretty significant change, that one misses by just looking a total numbers.

 

But the observation that with the onset of the twentieth century, growth in fleet numbers stopped, is certainly correct, and applies to wagons too - there is a flattening-out at 128,000. But again, the total number obscures the fact that the late-nineteenth century 8-ton standard wagons - between a half and two-thirds of the fleet in 1902, was steadily renewed by 12-ton mineral wagons, 10 ton open merchandise wagons, and 8/10-ton covered goods wagons in the last two decades of the company's independent existence.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Compound2632

[DenysW]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

everything built since the mid-80s bar the singles, Belpaires, and Compounds - were rebuilt into substantially different and more powerful engines from 1912 onwards

I'll mostly reply when I've collated Lancs & Yorks data to see if they did the same things at the same times. However, the limit on the Kirtley and Johnson frames seems to have been a boiler that would do 2P or 3F, and the limit on 0-6-0s at 18.5 tons/axle appears to have been the 4F. So yes, old 1Fs and 2Fs could be upgraded to 3Fs, but not further. At the same time the other companies were trialling (often unsucessfully at first) 5F and 5P designs and higher, and in 1922 the Great Northern started its love affair with wide-grate Pacifics. So the Midland, from being at or close to the forefront of the power race in 1901, drifted backwards by standing still.

 

As an aside, the only significant Midland classes that exceeded 2.62 tons/ft were the 2441 flatirons, and the 4Fs. There were also some 0-4-0 tank engines.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, DenysW said:

So the Midland, from being at or close to the forefront of the power race in 1901, drifted backwards by standing still.

But that presumes that some sort of "power race" was a thing. Surely each company aimed to build the types of locomotives that were best adapted to its operating methods?

 

3 minutes ago, DenysW said:

As an aside, the only significant Midland classes that exceeded 2.62 tons/ft were the 2441 flatirons, and the 4Fs. There were also some 0-4-0 tank engines.

 

You conflate the 2441 Class 0-6-0Ts and the 2000 Class 0-6-4Ts.

[DenysW]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Surely each company aimed to build the types of locomotives that were best adapted to its operating methods?

Open mind. For goods and minerals probably more than for passengers. The Victorian mindset seems to have been one of belief in eternal expansion of business, with progress meaning bigger, better, faster, more powerful would always be the way of the future.

 

The two 'Race to the North' episodes weren't especially rational, but the drive to supply extra comfort on competitive routes was, and both will have driven motive power larger. The Great Western with its Great Bear and (post-Grouping) its Kings definitely publicised its being the biggest and, by false analogy, the best.

 

Dave Hunt et al.'s book on the Compounds gives the cost of the 108 bridge upgrades to allow the Compounds to be used south of Leeds, and it was comparable to the first large batch of the locos. That total seems unlikely to be directly recouped - it would surely have been better short-term business logic to adopt a small-engine 2P policy, so increase the frequency but hold the train weight at, say 180 tons. Particularly if you believe that the main express passenger traffic on the Midland wasn't London->the remote destination, but East Mids/South Yorks ->Manchester, Liverpool & Scotland. There the only competition was the cash-strapped Great Central.

 

I've never seen equivalent data (for any railway) for upgrades to the bridges, turntables, passing loops, signalling, and track upgrades that would have allowed bigger locomotives to pull longer freight/mineral trains up to the limit set by the rubbishy UK couplings between loose-coupled wagons. The American progression to regarding under 30 tons/axles as 'light' doesn't seem to have been accompanied by any angst about knock-on costs, but theirs was much more of a growing market until the Great Depression.

[Compound2632]

On 18/06/2023 at 14:22, DenysW said:

Particularly if you believe that the main express passenger traffic on the Midland wasn't London->the remote destination, but East Mids/South Yorks ->Manchester, Liverpool & Scotland. There the only competition was the cash-strapped Great Central.

 

But is that belief supported by the evidence? Without spending several millennia pouring over RCH ledgers, if they exist, it's hard to know. There is, from what I've read, annecdotal evidence of the popularity of the Midland route from London to Scotland in some quarters but one only has to look at a photograph of the 2 o'clock West Coast Corridor train to realise that the Midland had a relatively small share of that business. It appealed to the discerning traveller! The poverty of the Great Central is beside the point here, as it did not prevent that company from running a highly competitive express service between London, South Yorkshire, and South Lancashire, just as it had in MS&L days in conjunction with the Great Northern.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Compound2632