ciderglider

Thanks for your reply. Glad to hear I can run the Austrian wagons with a clear conscience.

Would freight wagons from outside Germany appear on DB rails, in Era IV? I am looking for an excuse to run some OBB timber wagons on a layout set in Bavaria.

Thanks @doctor quinn and @Vecchio for your positive thinking. Yes, I think the branch could have a siding that supplies a power station. I wouldn't have to model the whole power station, just the bit where the coal is unloaded.

@Vecchio thanks for your reply. So it looks like the hoppers would be out-of-place on a branch line! The video you liked to is impressive. The footage of the wagons being unloaded was just what I was looking for 

I have some models of self-unloading hopper wagons, Falns 103, I think. I am wondering whether there is a place for them on my proposed small branch line terminus layout, set in Era IV.

Would they appear in ones and twos among other wagons, or would they only appear in trains comprising only self-unloading hoppers? I suspect the latter may be the case. Would destinations other than power stations would be plausible? What cargo would they carry apart from coal? Would they have been used for things like sugar beet? I know there is also a version with a roof for grain cargo, but I don't have that.

And can anyone point me to a photo of the unloading of these wagons in progress?

I am considering a z scale shunting layout. This will involve a mainline with some sidings. The mainline will have catenary, but should the sidings also have catenary? Googling images of German marshalling yards hasn't really answered my question. Whenever I see a picture of a German shunting loco (model or prototype), it seems to be the BR 260 diesel 0-6-0. This makes me think there must have been a lot of unelectrified track in otherwise electrified parts of the DB network.

If leaving the sidings without catenary would be prototypical, then that is all to the good, as it makes things cheaper, and I don't want the layout to fall victim to HS2 style cost overruns.

8 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

Thinking out loud........

 

The LNWR clearly had a lot of Anglo Scottish traffic.

 

If you want to get to Glasgow/Edinburgh at a half way sensible time  pre WW1 thats going to mean a morning departure from London, and probably not much later from Birmingham.

 

Whereas if I wanted to get to Sheffield from St Pancras I would get in at a sensible time even if I left in late afternoon.

 

Might this have meant that the LNWR had rather more 'tidal' traffic than the Midland with heavily loaded Anglo Scottish expresses leaving Glasgow/Edinburgh and London in the mornings?

Your argument makes a lot of sense, but The Corridor was one of the most prestigious Anglo Scottish expresses, that left Euston at 2pm. And that doesn't fit your theory very well, unless the LNWR made a big thing of that train in order to encourage passengers to use what would otherwise be an underused service.

I still await a convincing explanation of the need for long infrequent trains from Euston after Grouping.

Yes, I am a bit sceptical of the "too many freight trains" argument. The section of the line at Ellistown is double tracked, not sure if it is all the way to Leicester. I've lived in area for about 8 years, and only seen a train on the line once.

Network Rail have announced they will not reopen the Leicester to Coalville section of the line to passengers, they are only considering the section from Coalville to Burton. In addition to the problems connecting to the MML at Leicester, apparently there is too much freight traffic between Coalville and Leicester. 

6 hours ago, rogerzilla said:

3 gives smoother power delivery.  Its main problem is that you need an extra set of valve gear or a Gresley derived arrangement.  4 cylinder locos normally use 2 sets of valve gear with rocking levers, since the inside cylinders have the opposite valve events to the outside ones.

 

4 doesn't give smoother power delivery (in virtually all cases) because it gives the same power pulses as a 2-cylinder loco, although it reduces surging and hammer blow because the reciprocating masses mostly cancel out.

 

4 is better for large, fast and heavy locos because you can fit more cylinder volume in the loading gauge and it's easier on the track.

 

The BR Standards eschewed 4 cylinders because they used a high running plate to fit 2 large ones, and E S Cox reckoned the reciprocating mass issue was overstated, preferring not to balance half of it with wheel weights - as was normal practice but causes hammer blow - and instead tweaking the drawbar springing to reduce the surging effect.

The USA has more generous loading gauges than we have in the UK or the rest of Europe. Union Pacific's FEF class 4-8-4 was a large express loco, with just two cylinders. So it seems to me that the main reason for going beyond two cylinders was staying within the loading gauge, rather than achieving smoothness. 

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

But that makes the OP's question, as to whether any locos had more than 4 cylinders, as ridiculous as there is no space on a single chassis.

So I answered the original question. Where did it say that it had to novel, interesting or that 2 chassis fed by a common boiler are eliminated?

 

What about the Kitson steam-diesel loco? Does that meet the criteria as originally asked - I say no, as not merely a steam loco! An entirely different beast.

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

But that makes the OP's question, as to whether any locos had more than 4 cylinders, as ridiculous as there is no space on a single chassis.

So I answered the original question. Where did it say that it had to novel, interesting or that 2 chassis fed by a common boiler are eliminated?

 

What about the Kitson steam-diesel loco? Does that meet the criteria as originally asked - I say no, as not merely a steam loco! An entirely different beast.

As the OP I apologize for posing the question ambiguously. I should have added the proviso "per set of coupled wheels".

Peppercorn's Pacific's came after Bulleid's, and had 3 cylinders, but one might not consider them entirely new designs.

1 hour ago, Andy Kirkham said:

Although Chapelon designed a six-cylinder machine https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/160_A_1

That is quite something, but the Wikipedia entry suggests it wasn't a great success. I wonder if Chapelon came up with his "three's enough" maxim after seeing this loco in action?

When reading about steam locos, I have got the impression that 3 or 4 cylinders are better than 2, at least for express locos. The argument seems to be that the extra cylinders make things smoother. Also having more than 2 cylinders means the outside cylinders can be smaller, to fit the loading gauge. But this comes at the cost of complexity, which I suppose is why Riddles designed the Britannnias with just 2 cylinders. What I've never really understood is why some designers opted for 3 and others for 4. And why never more than 4?