tythatguy1312

realistically speaking, that was due to the coal itself. Welsh coal, which the GWR extensively used, was almost competitive with fuel oil for locomotives, and actively proved superior for the day-to-day operation of Great Western Trains. However, crucially, the A1's were designed with Newcastle Coal in mind, which was lower quality and needed a larger ashpan and firebox to be used effectively. Hence, the Castles could get away with a smaller firebox for the same performance as the A1's. It's also of note that the Castle has 4 cylinders, whilst the A1 has 3. This meant the Castle was more powerful, yet the A1's were easier going on maintenance for its work, even with Gresley's conjugated valve gear.

honestly, with all the issues the Kings had for their power, I'm beginning to think that Gresley's A1's truly were superior for their smaller power output. Don't get me wrong the A1's aren't fun to maintain but at least there wasn't 4 sets of valve gear jammed between the frames

if it weren't for those then there's potential to dispose of the engine swap at Plymouth, shaving off a few minutes of time.

aight so this idea's been bouncing around in my head like many, substantially worse options. But the GWR seems to have been testing the merits of 4-4-2's compared to 4-6-0's and I'm curious to see what would've happened if the 4-4-2 had proven superior. It wouldn't considering the Exeter-Plymouth route but hey, who said ideas have to be realistic.

I should mention I've heard of a proposal for such, using a GNR L1 as a base. Admittedly the use of an L1 strikes me as odd, but in general those things are unique.

swear there was an Electric locomotive that tried the same thing with a large flywheel.

hey, the theory was sound. Well "sound" to the kind of person Holman was aiming to swindle with this thing

In theory, the limits of wild locomotive proposals are limited only by whether they can be realised in any form. Ultimately, the number could be near-infinite, however despite that I'm still left wondering how the Diesel Pneumatic locomotive was among those few realised. Alas, in practice, it was better than its appearance implies and even I'm not blind to that.

Fortunately Webb was trying to design innovative compound locomotives, whilst geared locomotives of the day were honestly too slow even for most slow goods work. That was both good AND bad, limiting them to heavy shunting or logging work in America, albeit whilst able to start trains that would be too heavy for some Garratts. Given that Webb would've definitely heard of them, I believe he wrote the idea off due to that issue. Even with the obvious increases in power for his 0-8-0's, I doubt such a machine has any hope of exceeding 20mph, when most unbraked goods trains in the UK achieved 35.

That might've been the Fontaine or Holman locomotive, which both represent an intriguing yet incredibly flawed attempt at this sort of technology. Well that and the Holman was an investment scam.

Considering Brunel's many... intriguing ideas about locomotive development, I'm honestly surprised. In theory, these might save a little bit of weight on the axles, which Brunel was so fanatical about that it resulted in Hurricane and Thunderer, the only locomotives I'd actually describe as incapable of working.

At this point I'm mentally throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks, and I'm kinda surprised Wood Gas/Coal Gas locomotives didn't catch on for rural use in the UK. Surely their complexity would balance out in being able to run on fuels far cheaper than diesel.

I SUSPECT common working might've become more prevalent at the turn of the century personally. To save costs, it's easy to see why a railway would merely train a pool of drivers on the engine and the lines they ran, rather than forcing them to stick to a particular engine. The GWR must've been an early adapter regardless, given the standardised control layout on most of their locomotives.

I've heard that about the GNR's experiment with a powered tender as well. Don't know why other articulated/duplex locos didn't try it, as in theory it allows for greater precision and easier wheelslip checking

And I thought Dolgoch's running gear was a mess

If I remember correctly the key turn-off against 750V DC was due to it being poor for heavy freight what heavy freight. Most traffic in a lot of areas was, at worst, 40 wagon coal trains. With the right transmission settings a Class 73 could probably handle that, albeit possibly a double header

I'm gonna be honest I have a lot of ideas, but perhaps the wildest is if British Rail chose to expand the 750v dc system instead of overhead, would this have been feasible?

not just the BR Standards. Although the larger BR Standards used LMS Style deflectors, it was the German Witte type deflector design applied to the Gresley A3's, in contrast to the 3 deflector designs the LNER had

with all due respect, at least Mallard had a dynamometer car and a believable narrator backing it up, which is more than can be said for the PRR Duplexes or DRG Class 05. But yeah our inability to expand our loading gauge left us on par with Japan's, despite Japan having a much narrower rail gauge. Yes, the locomotives built for it did get truly as much power as possible, but it lead to a lot of complexities in locomotives that simply weren't necessary elsewhere. The US was content with 2 cylinder simplex's or, at a push, 4 cylinder articulates whilst France and Germany could build faster, larger & stronger locomotives on average. Frankly Mallard's record is more owed to Luck, and the HST's owe it to "well nobody else has tried". It ultimately strangled the expansion of locomotive designs, as well as the speeds due to automatic brakes not being mandated until the 1960's IIRC.

I've heard of a few Maunsell Kits being sent to Ireland, as well as some Fowler 3f's during WW2, I imagine a couple more would've definitely ended up there, mostly 4-4-0's and maybe the Standard 2

A lower tender, not dissimilar to Big Bertha, might be the way to go instead. Yes it would limit capacity, but that can be offset by sheer length or a raised area between the windows.

Looking at how improvements can be made... I'm just at a loss. Logically it would mean an expansion of the pre-existing European Loading Gauge lines which apparently exist near a few ports, but it's taken decades for electrification alone to get this far (not that I've seen a single mile of 25kv AC Overhead myself), yet alone rebuilding every track on every line on top of hundreds of thousands of buildings & bridges to fit them.

You could reasonably coal-fire a lot of locomotives, even a series of Italian cab-forwards achieved it with cabside bunkers In fact you could use Vodka to power an oil fired engine... if you wanted a Big Boy to have less power than a Black 5

looking at that thing's massive Boiler I assume the best option to modernise the Big Boy is to remove said Boiler, place it in a building to generate electricity and then use said electricity to power a 2-B-B-2 electric locomotive

the 9F's seem to have been BR's little testbed design when it came to potential improvements, with some having Franco-Crosti boilers and at least 1 having a Giesl Ejector (which if, tests with Edward Thomas were accurate, didn't work as advertised with slow locomotives or at slow speeds). I don't know why, as the 9f's were already a roaring success, but Riddles was fairly curious towards future development of steam locomotives.