DenysW

I cracked under the pressure from SWMBO and bought an item of infant-school-style furniture where there are lots of plastic trays in primary colours instead of shelves or drawers. We got the version with doors as a concession to reducing the visual impact. It did help with the sorting as the trays are big enough to take OO/HO rolling stock, and deep enough for track. I don't think it will solve with the problem that there's never storage to let you actually find stuff, but it has deferred the issue a bit.

A thought prompted by the recent mentions in this thread of speed records, Mallard, and German 05 locos. Ahrons (p312) states that "The effect on speed of harder tyres has been referred to previously by the author. As the hardness increased so did the speeds, even of older engines in which no other alteration had been made." He then states that the effect on maxima was 7-9 mph, at the same time as the range of train weights increased from 90-120 tones to 150-170 tons over the period from the mid-1880s to around 1900. What do we think the effect of modern incremental technology would have been on the records? By incremental I mean: - Surface hardening the tyres and/or the rails by carburising or carbonitriding - Continuously welded track instead of expansion joints - Bulleid wheels instead of spokes - Roller bearings - etc.? Surface hardening the rails would be a non-trivial investment in an oven to roll them through, but could be done given the will.

There is a saying "We judge ourselves by our excuses, and others by their reasons". There are plenty of excuses (and several reasons) for the UK not to have invested in upgrading its rail infrastructure from the 1820s loading gauge inherited from Stephenson to later standards that would have allowed better and faster trains. Others upgraded, we chose not to. My reading is that it was simply about money for safer trains, the last of the trinity of Safer, Better, Faster (hon. exception: GWR), although many excuses were always proffered. What sticks in my craw, then, is when we pretend the UK was still world-class at the same time (1870-present) as drifting down the world league tables. "Ultimate" 9F heavy freight engines - once you discount comparisons with locomotives with mechanical stoking. "World speed record" locomotives - once you allow downhill at speeds that destroy the transmission. And so on. "Ultimate Cheapy narrow-gauge" 9F freight engines just don't make you feel as proud, even if it's closer to the truth.

Having had a look at loading gauges (and the French 'gabarit' was generally a better search term, although with a tendency to give a lot of canal information in French as well), the UK gauge of 27" on each side of the rails greater than the track gauge (= 110.5" for Standard Gauge) isn't dramatically less than the 124" of the Berne gauge or the US 128". The UK gauge does reach its maximum width appreciably above track level, which the others don't, and that won't help with cylinder sizes. As JimC noted above, the net effect of the UK/US difference is to reduce the maximum UK boiler diameter to 80% of the US, giving a maximum of 64% of the American area. The Berne height (14'1") is correspondingly more than the 12'6" of the UK gauge, and so also allows bigger boilers above still reasonably-sized wheels. I have seen comments on the Net that, having agreed to Berne Gauge in 1912, the French Railways still hadn't finished the changes required in the 1930s. The UK hadn't agreed to Berne so hadn't started. What's vastly different with the US practice is locomotive length and axle loading. The Southern Pacific cab-forwards (30 tons/axle) could just squeeze onto a 125' turntable, and the Big Boys needed 135' at 40 tons/axle. Great Western 65', and LNER/LMS 70-75' for WCML and ECML? Use of Mallets also put the front cylinders on the articulated bogie rather than clashing with the frame. The end result of length & gauge differences is the biggest US locomotives (excluding failures like the bendy-boilers, or the Erie triplex) have three times the power of the largest UK ones, and that the UK could have doubled its locomotive power at a noticeable cost in loading gauge expansion, and a huge cost in trackbed upgrades, passing loops and signalling blocks, and mechanical stoking. It looks like it was never a good time to start spending the money.

Well, on the UK's complex but essentially narrow-gauge system, probably not. We have, to this day, standard-gauge track with a narrow-gauge (compared to Europe and the rest of world) loading gauge. We also have short city-to-city distances meaning that an functional overnight freight service is possible with fairly poor train lengths. Go small engine until the track runs out of slots is not limited to the pre-Grouping Midland Railway and early LMS. And converting from US-loading-gauge (even more generous west of the Mississippi) also probably requires a complete locomotive re-design (as per JimC, above) as in the UK outside cylinders are limited to 19" (source of assertion: Churchward at an ICE meeting in the time of Edward VII), and the rest of the world are not. Basically, we had a (largely) fit-for-purpose system that we tell ourselves was world-class, and still don't like to be told that we were/are the last major economy to tolerate using toy-scale trains. We didn't change because it was never a good time to spend THAT MUCH money - bridges, stations, embankments, cutting, tunnels, track (including rails & sleeper spacing) and so on.

Southern Pacific might have been able to use vodka, but not coal - illegal in California due to the wildfire risk in the hot dry summers. More theoretically, I think that with 139 sq-ft of grate area, the tender would have to move in front of the cab to use coal, and trigger pretty much a complete re-design. I shudder at the degree of foul language required to maintain a mechanical solid fuel stoking system running the length of even a fairly short locomotive.

Inspired by the admiration for the home-grown 9F on these pages as an 'ultimate development', I've put in a bid at an auction for an HO model of a 6,000 hp 4-8-8-2 Southern Pacific cab-forward locomotive. Yes, the real-thing boiler is 10' in diameter (so, just by itself, noticeably but not hugely over UK loading gauge) and the axle loading at 30 tons is enough to spread the rails and break every overbridge between Derby and London. Yes, I don't have enough track to put it into a train that won't look silly behind it. Yes, I do know that every line the real thing ran on in the UK would also have required re-blocking, re-signalling, massively expanded passing loops, new turning circles, and supplies of bunker-oil. But it will serve to remind me that there are other definitions - from the big wide world outside the UK - of 'big' and 'powerful' that are not tainted by the suspected involvement of the marketing department (see 'Big Boy') or of 'British is Best'.

Agreed on scaling issues, as I haven't been able to check the Uintah loading gauge. But that is why I gave the cylinder size - you can get outside 19" cylinders into British gauge, although it's towards the limit. These were also bespoke by Balwin's standards, and fitted into their logging portfolio, although Uintah was primarily a mineral railway (gilsonite, a coal-like mineral).

At the risk of re-stating an entrenched position, I think We Brits look at articulated designs and try to go as big as possible (within the UK loading gauge) and then find out either there's no need for something that size, or that our designs fail at first visual inspection. Instead, for this iteration of the discussion, I suggest starting at Uintah Railroad's No's 50 and 51, 2-6-6-2 Baldwin non-compound Mallets, which had 42,000 lb starting tractive effort and 15 tons/axle for 36" gauge track using 19" cylinders. I feel that it's likely that Baldwin could have scaled up to UK loading gauge more easily from this that we can scale lengthways from a standard gauge starting point. It's only a move from 3 or 4 driving axles restricted by the maximum rigid wheelbase to 3+3 articulated, and also from 2 or 3 cylinders to deliver the power to 4 cylinders. Much more possible. Beware the HO scale model of No. 50. It was made HO by multiplying all the dimensions of the 36" gauge drawings by 56.5/36 and is a mega-machine indeed.

There's a full thread on the Woodhead under Prototypes. What I took from it was (a) Sheffield Victoria and Sheffield (Midland) being at different levels was a killer disadvantage for this 'what if', and (b) there were lots of reasons at the time that made closure the right decision, and (c) if it had staggered on for another decade, it might be with us still. Beware the second half of the thread - too many posts from folks with a political stance that made them pre-judge the answer, and an extended digression into the (de)merits of the Humber Bridge.

This is recollection-time so it's suspect, but here goes ... I thought the early double Fairlies were as Flying Pig says, with a single firebox , but they couldn't get the drafting to work properly enough of the time. So the design was changed to two independent locomotives, still on a single, long, rigid frame.

Rodent279 said "Were there any standard gauge double Fairlie's? If not, why not?" Very few, because they are a bad idea except for short-haul. So suited to the Ffestiniog, but not much else. More specifically: - The frame was/is rigid for the entire length of both boilers. Even with double-articulation underneath this gets limiting on curves quite quickly as you try and scale-up to bigger locos - As tank engines without a rear bunker, the coal is stored on one side. This is awkward for the fireman, and also restricts the amount you can store. - As a result there is no tender-version possible, in contrast to pretty much all the other articulated types. Even the Garratts had a South African version with a water-tender as a possibility.

This is an acrimonious divorce within a Family. Don't get sucked in to taking anything at face value - from either side. There will be an agenda as well as the truth, both probably blended in very variable amounts.

I agree with HH completely. My preference for radial-arm saws is 100% safety driven - I suspect from a quality-of-cut point of view they make him shudder. And I'd never try to use one to rip a long length of timber. Reproducible trimming and mitring was my need. I've never been brave enough to acquire a router table - same concerns about not being able to see the cutter.

I impulse-bought a biscuit-jointer from Aldi a few years back to make wooden planters. It lasted well and did the job. So did the planters. Only concern was replacement blades. It was probably 1/5th the price of a conventional brand, so worth the risk. I detest table saws after an uncle-in-law sliced a couple of fingers off using one and I'd always go for the radial-arm alternative - so much easier to see where the blade is.

It was Beeching's preference over the Hope/Edale route, and lost out because the latter had better pressure groups (at least, this is the conventional wisdom). If this was the reason it stayed open, then it would stay dualled (or if it was maintained open as an emergencies-only reserve to Hope/Edale). As to electricity I give you the Erie-Lackawanna suburban New Jersey conversion of the 1970s/1980s from DC to AC. The only rationale for the change of voltage-type was that the other lines into Hoboken were AC, so it needed to change for compatibility reasons when the (very old) DC supply needed asset renewal. The carriages weren't spring chickens, either - some dated back to pre-WW1 and steam days. So it would depend on what else was going into Manchester, and I believe would eventually have been made the same as the WCML.

Metr0land posted "Not a quint but a closer view of a typical Gresley coach at same sort of time shows how dirty it is and how it could easily look brown at a distance in poor light. Also a Robert Gadsdon offering." The Chingford line seemed to be the only lower priority service out of Liverpool Street in the early '70s than the Hertford East service, the one I used. There were legends from steam days of "Liverpool St. or bust" chalked onto the rolling stock. I'm not surprised it's beyond grubby into filthy.

Until I saw the bird images I thought this was a plan to hex all panniers by sticking pins into this one. Pannierphobia to excess, I feel. Given the large number of these 3Fs, was there a (Top Secret) Small Engine policy at the Great Wander 'Round, leaned from a certain Midlands enterprise?

Mr. H, I have to ask. Is "You are only entitled to an opinion if it conforms to what the mob want" a contribution to the Crimson Lake pannier tanks debate?

SWMBO tells me that all diesels are evil, even if they come from the LMS, that source of all great locomotives. I think she may have been influenced by the Rev. Awdry as a child.

I'm viewing this through Grandparent eyes. Yes they are all different, but they also age. The 5 & the 7 year-old are total speed freaks, and what is needed is something that survives a DC controller at 100%, including falling off the track - presently this is a Thomas set for the 5 year-old and an old LMS 0-4-0 in Crimson lane pulling a single wagon with a scale dinosaur in it for the 7 year-old. But I don't set anything up under radius 3 as a result. The 10 year old is being treated as an apprentice adult and is allowed to use Grandpa's LMS and K.Bay.Sts.B locos and rolling stock - so far without problems. They need to have fun at an age- and personality-specific level or it degrades to destructive play, or not-fun.

Rack railways 50-60 years later than the Lickey Bank. What is typically omitted in discussions of rack railways is that the entire permanent way needs to be re-thought. Instead of sleepers (etc.) having to deal almost exclusively with vertical forces, they now get appreciable horizontal forces from the rack as well. You have to put together a 2D matrix to distribute these forces along the length of the rails and not just across them- getting closer to Brunel's baulk system, but maybe without the vertical pilings. Most of the rack systems (there were a lot of proprietary options) are very slow for exactly this reason - not to destroy the permanent way. Points a nightmare until/unless you can use level-enough ground to revert to adhesion for the length of the junction. Hence it's cheaper to use adhesion until there's no other option, with the rules of thumb given by Brack, above. Or go rope-hauled until more powerful adhesion locomotives are available (example: Euston).

I'm not sure the original American locomotives were bankers. I get more the feel that they were intended to pull normal loads at normal speed other than on the Lickey Bank, and yet NOT need bankers on it. Churchward had the South Devon Banks, and doesn't seem to have done a bespoke design. Gresley inherited the Worsborough Incline, and also the Garratt 'solution' for it. Gut feel is that the Lickey Bank faced a wide variety of freight train weights, and not much in the way of passenger - routes via Worcester had become normal for this. Hence the whistle-code for how many bankers were needed, with Bertha counting as 2. Worsborough was probably closer to a standard size of coal train (it was on a freight-only route to bypass Barnsley). I don't know enough about the South Devon Banks to comment. I have read that a 'Jubilee' was tested on the Lickey Bank with a 1930s-weight 5-coach passenger train - it could climb the bank, but not re-start from a stall on it.

A detail, I think. The Grand Junction Railway, at the height of the gauge wars, wrote a letter to its shareholders saying its routes were compatible with broad gauge. Reading its wording, I think this was a mixed-gauge assertion, and, as is widely believed, may have been more about positioning vs. the London & Birmingham than a serious threat. So I think they were asserting they could live (profitably) with Bristol->Birmingham in broad gauge without messing-up any transfer links to standard-gauge railways. After all, if the cost of widening embankments and cuttings to take the extra width was modest, and they hadn't many curves that would have to be re-profiled for the new gauge, the only expensive bits would be tunnels - and they were paying 10% dividends, so could contemplate some dualling of these.

From a variety of sources, all individually a bit suspect ... Moorsom's route included the Lickey Bank. He was told that no British locomotive could meet the specification (speed, tons). His reply was to point out that there was an American locomotive already running in the required duty (speed, tons, incline). So it wasn't a design, more selecting a locomotive with the (apologies) track record. There is a legend that Bury tried one of his locomotives, full of confidence, and failed. The Lickey Bank still wasn't a good idea, but it was affordable.