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I did know someone who had a middle initial, and when I asked what it stood for he replied it was just the letter M. His parents had actually just given him a middle initial rather than a middle name. I think the initial was just there to make his name sound a bit grander. He was american.

Remember it isn't just going up. The local colliery branch to us had a ruling grade of 1 in 18. A loco could take 9 empty hoppers up, but only bring 3 loaded 20 tonners back down. There were a few runways and spectacular derailments in the early days. But yes, a world of difference between a 3 mile ncb branch where multiple trips are feasible if needed and sticking a gradient like that on the mainline. Whilst adhesion locos might be able to best steeper grades, not economically, and not without hugely restricting train loads and traffic movements. It also necessitates disproportionate motive power per train - I believe the mersey 064t had the biggest cylinders of any loco in the country when built, but were far from hauling the heaviest trains. Keeping that amount of power going eats away at profits, so if possible you resort to banking on the steep bit. That just gives you an operational headache, a permanent requirement for shed, locos and crews on site, with all the ongoing costs of those, and delays every train that passes. If you priced in the increased operating costs since opening to the present, it probably would prove to be vastly cheaper to have replaced the lickey incline with a big long tunnel, cutting or embankment to spread the climb out. Unfortunately shareholders tend not to take quite such a long view when the lines are getting built!

The lickey incline is only 1 in 37. I doubt anyone would be considering rack unless you're past 1 in 20 (for steam/diesel). Saluda on the Norfolk Southern (in the US) is about 1 in 20 and was always adhesion worked. For rack worked main line sections you're looking at something like the Erzbergbahn's 1 in 14 in Austria. Adhesion lines mostly run with railcars can go to about 1 in 13 without too much trouble (e.g the bernina or MOB, and I believe that non rack equipped diesel passenger railcars were allowed over the Erzbergbahn). I imagine thats down to you being able to have every axle both powered and braked.

It'd have been interesting - I was under the impression (but may be wrong) that the Met 264t's demise in 1948 was essentially due to them getting to the age where major bits needed replacement/repair, but they were non standard, hence spares weren't kept and they phased them out, rather than they were scrapped due to any actual flaw in the design (indeed if I recall part of the rationale for Thompson's L1 was to make something like the ex Met L2 out of LNER bits). If there were more locos of related design, a pool of boilers and spares, then the assessment of whether it was worth overhauling and keeping them might well have been different.

Think it's fair to say that the scheme to build locos and wagons at woolwich postwar to maintain the workforce looks more like the sort of grand initiative our current government might think up and announce without really planning or considering the consequences than a sensible, costed, thought through provision to essentially set up a state operated rolling stock builder. They were also supposed to build 2000 open wagons for the NER and 500 for the GWR. After a year 30 GW and 852 NE wagons had been delivered, following which it fizzled out and there isn't much further mention - labour and material price increases sort of doomed it. The initial proposed price was quoted as £10000 each in The Locomotive in 1920. Smithers' Woolwich Arsenal book states that no cost estimates were prepared when the order for 100 locos was placed, but after a few years they estimated the total cost of the project at £1.6 million. Essentially reconfiguring a munitions and weapons factory into a loco works was a lot more difficult and took a lot longer than the politicians had assumed - even once the bits had been built, they didn't actually have an erecting shop that could put them together! Worth considering that in spite of excellent facilities woolwich bought in all their 18" and standard gauge locos from a variety of builders - they knew what they were and weren't good at. There is a report that Romanian State Railways were interested, but the deal was quashed on the grounds that too much money was already owed to Britain by Romania, and there were concerns regarding their ability to pay. There's an interesting might have been to go with the GER one. Strangely the SR purchase (at £3950 apiece) occurred a month or so after the initial MGWR sale (at £2000 each!) Presumably the price charged was adjusted on the fly according to the perceived depth of the customer's pockets!

If the Midland Great Western Railway could afford to buy them, then they were remarkably cheap! You're talking about a railway than mostly ran superannuated 6 wheel coaches (as did its successor GSR and CIE) and 30-40 yr old 240s. Their main line passenger power in the 20s was a bunch of 440s rebuilt 20 years earlier from 1880s 240s. The average price paid by the MGWR was £2200 per loco for their kits. Given that Woolwich had bought the boilers in at a cost of £3375 apiece 3 years earlier, then made all the wheels, cylinders, frames and other bits themselves, they were incredibly cheap for what they were. I imagine other lines didn't want them as they weren't their design (CME pride), they were financially up the creek post ww1 (and indeed may have had other priorities than locos to fix - infrastructure and maintenance had taken a hammering), and had their own works and men (which they had to pay regardless) to keep busy. Hence the buyers were either the SECR/Southern, or smaller concerns with less prideful CMEs and smaller design/works departments - the Met and MGWR. The GSR looked at the new MGWR moguls they'd just inherited in the merger, then the price tag, and promptly bought another batch. The southern bought way more kits than they needed, then worked out what else they could make out of them - that suggests a good deal to me. Additionally they picked up the spare pony truck bits on the cheap and used them to rebuild E1s.

Which modern loco designs were available, tested, fit the brief and would fit most railways loading gauge? Once you've worked that out, the N class might be the only one left*, additionally the fact that plans, patterns, tooling and men experienced in building them were available a very short distance away would probably tip the balance. The ARLE process was a good idea for producing new designs for railways to take off the shelf, but if a design already existed which fulfilled all the criteria, producing a new one seems superfluous. *Whilst the 43xx was very good, it is well known that the n class was an attempt at improving the design, so choosing the older version as standard would seem strange. Plus outside walschaerts valve gear is a definite advantage.

Interesting beast - what are the wheel spacing and diameter of the mallet chassis? Wonder how it lines up with the 30hp O&K 600/700mm gauge mallets? Though ironically they have far simpler valve gear! I don't think Beyer's ever made a mallet - plenty of garratts of course, and the FCAB cab forward tender meyers, but it's an interesting machine you've built nonetheless.

Depends how expendable you consider the local population to be...

I'd heartily recommend a trip to mariefred to see the survivor on the Oslj, and all their other stock. Then a trip back along the lake to stockholm on the steamer... I haven't been for 10 years.

Doesn't need to be 60cm to get decauville mallets. The Nesttun-Osbanen in norway was 750mm, but kitted out with 3 standard 0440t decauville mallets (built by Tubize) and a 042t. Exactly the same designs as the french 60cm tramways, but with nicer cabs. The strange thing was it was planned as 60cm gauge, and they started building in 1891 but after a year of construction in 1892 they decided to widen the gauge to 750mm, but then bought a load of stock to designs usually supplied to 60cm! The locos weren't built until 1893, so it wasn't as if they changed their gauge mid building either. Not that they were very careful with their mallets mind you... Somehow all 3 survived til the line closed in 1935!

What about hiring in the local industrial shunter? Plenty of those were registered to run over BR.

Dad's had one of these for a few months, it's a nice model and runs well, and as you say a genuine 1870s design. The green Cork, Bandon & South Coast one is probably the best 'freelance-friendly' livery/details rather than the GSR grey, lswr or SR versions. When I looked at some of my reference material as prompted by this thread I couldn't help but notice that 042st or 240t seemed perhaps more common for mixed or passenger traffic at that time period.

The cornwall minerals railway 060t dated from 1873-4: Sharp, Stewart products, they had 18 of them. Half were kept by the GWR and rebuilt as saddle tanks, the last of which made it into the 1930s. The 1361 and 1366 classes were GW built developments of the rebuilds. The other 9 were sold to the colney valley and Lynn & Fakenham. with some rebuilt to tender locos and some as 240s.

There were several proposals for both adhesion (though it'd be more spectacular climbing than the bernina!) and rack lines down the grimselpass to meiringen. I believe there was an idea floated for putting a 20 mile tunnel in for both rail and power lines a couple of years back. Likewise you can get an adhesion line from goschenen over the sustenpass to link up with the brunig line. So if one of those had been built, then perhaps the FO might have needed a few more ge4/4 to run them, and they'd be running outside of tunnels.

Are we talking Hornby or Bachmann locos? I'd assume someone like Peter's spares might actually stock the manufacturers rivets, otherwise markits or Eileen's do hollow ended valve gear rivets - just use a pin hammer and a punch to gently expand the rear of it to fix your valve gear back together.

Producing something like the walker railmotors used in queensland and on the GNR(I), though minus the articulation?

Reminds me of this: Already got the footboard on (although it didn't always have them). Could be driven from inside or alongside the cab.

Experience shows that running a system half dieselised was more problematic than going the whole hog, as maintaining the two in the same facilities/sheds causes no end of trouble. Knowing something is cheaper and works better in the long run isn't the same as bring able to make the shift. I'm quite aware that my running costs would be significantly reduced were I to replace my 2003 vw polo with an electric vehicle, i also know that such a switch is pretty much inevitable in the future, but I simply don't have the capital to make the initial purchase or install a charging point at this moment, or more accurately I cannot justify using the capital/credit I have access to when there are more pressing demands on it. Perhaps fair to say the GWR/WR had proved the concept of diesel railcars, as indeed all the big 4 had proven the 6 coupled diesel electric shunter as being vastly better for shunting stock, but felt they had more pressing needs/uses for the capital they had (like hundreds of obsolete steam shunting locos). Likewise the NER's electrification schemes were obvious successes, but circumstances meant they couldn't be expanded - indeed shildon-Newport was dewired at the same time as the woodhead electrification was planned/begun.

I imagine the opposite is perhaps a more common problem, given the number of large pacifics, black 5s and gwr 460s preserved - locos which certainly weren't intended and are somewhat overpowered to be pulling half a dozen mk 1s along a single track at 15-20mph for 10-15 miles - realistically the trains on a preserved line are closer to those that a class 2 or 3 062t or 262t would've handled in normal service. Usually the outcome is that a line's timetable and coaching rakes end up planned around one size of loco and those that don't fit with that end up unused. Any train that runs needs to carry max passengers for its crew, fuel and signalling/timetabling path. Often locos that lines started off with now find themselves only pulled out for special events - how integral is Stepney to running the bluebell now? K1 on the welsh highland caused trouble as it could only take 60% of the load the NGG16s could haul, and the service was designed around them, so it fell out of use and now is at statfold. Likewise Bonnie Dundee at Ravenglass - a good loco, but can only take half of the usual rake of coaches, whereas the rest of the fleet are fairly similar in power. After several years, the outcome was the loco fell out of use and only sees use if it's loaned out elsewhere.

The later sentinel ones were (comparatively) pretty decent, essentially by making the steam engine part of it rather less like a traditional steam loco. The earlier ones suffered the obvious flaw of making the coaches have the same availability as a steam loco, plus varying amounts of heat, dust, noise, moisture and dirt. Separating the two and having push pull working was probably the most sensible option until diesel propulsion came of age.

Yes, or build 54/64xx instead which were already auto fitted. It's difficult to understand why they built the 48xx/14xx, and especially the non auto fitted 58xx. They were a touch lower in axle loading that the 54xx, but were the branches that lightly laid? I've read one justification of the 14/48xx vs the 54xx as being a desire to have a leading carrying wheel, but surely that was only in 1 direction anyway. If anything it reminds me of the east german rekolok Saxon meyers or the rheidol tanks rather than new locomotive construction - supposed rebuilds of old locos, but using no original parts.

45xx were useful for freight working - a smallish 262t was something that the lms and br standard programme also produced. 48xx/14xx were pretty straight copies (with modern bits/fittings) of the ageing 517s, one might argue as to whether they were really needed, especially so late on, and it is interesting that none of the other big 4 really built an equivalent.

I'd agree that WW2 and impending nationalisation don't seem enough to stop railcar production - they were building them until 1941 anyway, and impending nationalisation didn't stop them building new steam locos, designing the counties, ordering tons of unnecessary panniers, buying gas turbines from abroad etc. most of the GWR railcars weren't really built for branch line service, only no.s 18-33. The others were mostly meant as high speed supplementary services between cities following the flying hamburger model, hence high speed gearing and buffet provision in many of them. I'd assume the usual idea of reluctance to throw a big capital investment down some loss making branchline that could be run quite happily with existing locos. I think 18's intended use on the lamboune branch was linked to rapidly shifting horse boxes in and out, so not quite the impoverished bit of cornwall people tend to imagine or model. The railcars were kept nearer the middle of the GW empire, often on secondary mains or cross country routes, rather than being scattered off to the 4 corners. I think with hindsight we look back and see them as the obvious answer to reducing operating costs on impecunious branches (in the same way the Donegal railcars were used in ireland), but that wasn't really the intention or rationale behind the gwr cars. If it had been, then you would've expected there to be a lot more of them built, and they would've been more commonly employed around the periphery of the system.

The DSER ones are the direct result of building progressively bigger 060s which led to several derailments of locos too heavy at the front end, so an additional axle was stuck there to spread the weight, rather than to guide the loco into curves as the pony truck acted on most outside cylinder moguls. This loco and its sister were originally designed as 060s, but before building commenced they decided to add the extra axle - the solution that had been adopted pre ww1 when the previous class of big 060s had a series of derailments due to excess weight on the front axle. Not exactly pretty though... The caledonian 34 class's leading carrying axle was a radial truck, but without curved guides. The rationale for these was similar to the irish locos - adding a superheater to the 060 design made the front end too heavy, hence additional carrying wheels were tacked on. The GSWR locos i think had a proper pony truck though, but they were again a development of an existing inside cylinder 060 - superheating and bigger cylinders necessitating the front end change. So I'd suggest that all of the inside cylinder 260s in these isles were originally started/intended as 060s, with the front end lengthened out of a need to carry weight, rather than being conceived as a modern 260 in the way the GWR 43xx/GNR H3/LBSC K/SECR N were, or indeed Adams' GER moguls from 30 years earlier, which are closer to the result of adapting a 440* for fast freight with smaller wheels than stretching a dumpy 060 until it gets too big at the front. The only uk inside cylinder 260 that developed as a freight version of 440s were the gw aberdares. *yes, I know the 43xx were developed from the prairies, but my point is they began as a modern outside cylinder 260