John_Miles

This again comes from Adrian Tester but not in his book. I'm not clear how many engines it applied to but it certainly was the 483s. It wouldn't be as important with the smaller locos because the rate of flow of steam would be less. A 4-2-2 was recorded doing well over 90 near Sharnbrook which was possibly a speed record for a steam engine until City of Truro's feat. Also Tuplin (who hated Midland engines) records a 4F as doing over 80. It was on the Thames-Clyde express. The train engine failed at Appleby and the 4F was pressed into action to take the train to Carlisle. The compounds are a more difficult subject. Unlike a simple engine, they needed to be worked at much longer cut-offs (60 to 70%) as the steam expanded twice. As there was no training of engine crews, many would presumably have no clue how to drive them correctly so reports of them not doing well on, for instance, the Birmingham 2 hour trains have to be considered with the above in mind.

The Midland 4-4-0s seem to have had a problem with friction in the steam supply which meant that at high speed they lost more power than one would expect. The main steam supply pipe was IIRC only 5" diameter whereas other railways used larger diameters. Friction is proportional to velocity squared and velocity is flow divided by cross sectional area.

The evidence for the oil being changed is in Adrian Tester's book, which is a heavy read. You need to have a grounding in engineering to get very far with it and preferably Mechanical Engineering with a good knowledge of fracture mechanics (he deals with frame fractures as well) and tribology. Basically what happened was that the original oil used was of organic origin (IIRC it was an animal product) and this is "sticky" i.e. it smears and so sticks to the bearing. The new oil was a mineral oil which lacked this stickiness and so led to a significant increase in hot boxes, especially in engines with inside cylinders where the valve gear and motion restricted the room for axle boxes. The solution came from the LNER who had similar problems and devised a blend of oils which led to fewer hot boxes. The lubrication of axle boxes is interesting. Because there is no way of containing the oil in the bearing it just leaks out so the idea of the box being fully lubricated is erroneous, unlike for example a car crank shaft where the oil is circulated under pressure. So the stickiness of the lubricant is important because this smears around the bearing and provides the lubrication.

The Austin 7s like the Super Ds suffered from being powerful engines with inside cylinders which limited the size of the axlebox which could be used. The Garratts - put that down to stupidity. Incidentally, when Stanier came to the LMS some 4Fs were fitted with GWR style axleboxes - which were found to be no better than the Midland boxes.

Hot boxes only started to be a problem on 4Fs from around 1930 onwards when the LMS tried to save money by using a cheaper oil. Even then the incidence of hot boxes on 4Fs and other Midland locos was much better than on many other LMS engines. For example Super Ds were noticeably worse but the myth of the Derby axlebox (apparently started by E.S. Cox - ex-L&Y) is so well established that it has become the accepted history. Fortunately the LMS kept fairly good record (Stamp liked statistics) and so the facts are available for those who don't like fake news.

In that excellent book by Miles, Thomas and Watkins (some connection) on the Swansea Vale Railway there is quite a bit about the Broad Gauge because the citizens of Swansea and its environs were up in arms about the fact that the need for transhipment except for destinations on the southern part of the GWR was hampering the trade of local industries. They were encouraging any railway company which showed any interest in promoting a standard gauge line towards Swansea to "connect them to the rest of the country". So when the Swansea Vale reached Brynamman and connected with the then Llanelly Railway via a single track line with 1 in 40 gradients there was dancing in the streets ( slight exaggeration). This lack of easy connectivity would have had an impact on the wide range of industries which existed in the area such as non-ferrous metal smelting, tinplate production and anthracite mining.

There's a set of photographs in the latest issue of Bactrack which show a colliery at Swadlincote. The trackwork is interesting because of its appalling state but there is also a Mdland 3 plank wagon laden with coal. I've never made a study of wagon loads but this seems to be unusual to me. The author is Bon Essery to whom all interested in the Midland owe a huge debt.

Now we are getting really technical. Drag is directly proportional to the plan area in the direction of travel so if a broad gauge engine has a greater frontal area than a standard gauge engine then you are right but it will obviously depend on things such as boiler diameter. A more significant factor is velocity, Drag increases as the square of the velocity and just for the record fluid density and drag factor are also significant. The drag factor depends on the shape of the object.

The word optimum is starting to appear in this thread. It is a word which is widely misused and misunderstood. For a start optimum with regard to what? Cost, utility (and how would you define that exactly), train performance, steam engine design. If you optimise on one of these, unless you are extremely lucky, you are sub-optimal on the rest. All engineering is a trade off between a variety of factors. You get better performance in one area and it tends to get worse in another. Standard gauge has stood the test of time. It seems to be a good compromise between many competing factors.

I wonder what Johnson thought of the American locos. I suspect he was appalled by their appearance and rumour has it that they were not as well finished as Derby's products. Also before he died (in 1912) Deeley has produced the Flatirons which score null point for attractiveness.

Scratch building at times can seem like a form of masochism but when you get it right it is far more satisfying than opening a box and putting a RTR item on the track. I have learned a lot by picking up ideas from others and by having a go and learning when things go wrong. Gaining skills and knowledge takes time but IMHO it's worth it. Also there are lots of things which RTR companies are never going to get around to providing so there is plenty of scope for scratch building.

IMHO Joseph Locke was a much better engineer than Brunel. His schemes were relatively cheap, done to budget and on time. He is almost forgotten today because he didn't have huge and expensive failures. He was also an excellent tenor.

Because he was obsessed with being regarded as a genius so he couldn't do anything so mundane as picking a gauge which had been used for carts. chariots etc. His reasoning was a wider gauge would lead to greater stability and allow higher speeds. Sadly, despite being a genius, he didn't realise that railways would be interconnected so the Great Western would in places come into contact with standard gauge railways and that there would be a need for through working. This mistake cost the GWR a lot of money.

Isn't it about time Fred Lewis posted something about NEWGOG or is he too busy driving trains?

There was a 4mm model of one of these on the Ambergate layout, which I presume was scratch built. I know the current owner. Dave Hunt of Midland Railway loco books fame has a 7mm model which is absolutely beautiful. I know I am a masochist, but if everything is available in ready to run form, it leaves nothing to scratch build. I enjoy cutting and bashing bits of metal and turning up chimneys is one of the most satisfying activities possible (I am getting on in years so some satisfying activities and getting a bit beyond me).

The Portland Hotel at the west end of Chesterfield Market Place was built by the LDECR and is in use as a Wetherspoons. The actual station was immediately to the right of the hotel as you look at it from the front. Not quite what you were expecting?

Gloucester or Glocester apparently used agents in many places rather than having their own repair facility. The Gloucester book I have is a 1905 diary and for Wigston it says that the agent is Mr H. Betton. He appears to cover an area which extends as far south as Wellingborough, Kettering but not Bedford - all based on his Wigston facility. Going north he covers Leicester, Loughborough and Syston. Ullesthorpe, on the Rugby line is not within his domain and the advice for there is to contact Gloucester themselves..

Some months ago I posted a link to a BBC report about the end of coal trains in South Wales. Happily the report was wrong although I don't think there is much traffic to Aberthaw these days.

In response to Nick Haliday's post above, I have a Gloucester publication which gives the location of all their outstations and agents. I had always thought that Gloucester was a national concern but they were mainly concentrated in the South West and South Wales. Their coverage of areas north of Brum was very thin.

In engineering and practical terms you are right but railway modelling is for many about nostalgia. I was brought up in north Derbyshire and so came to like 2Ps, 3Fs and 4Fs as well as Stanier's engines but then when I was about 11, my dad bought me Hamilton Ellis's book on the Midland and my eyes were opened. Midland engines had at one time been stunningly beautiful works of art and forever after I have been a fan of what Johnson achieved. Johnsons's smokebox doors disappeared well before 1917 if the photographic record is to be believed. One of the first things to happen is that dogs were added to the bottom of Johnson's smokebox doors - there is for instance a photograph of an 0-4-4T at Colbren which is so fitted. The date of the image is around 1906. I would guess that all Johnson smokebox doors had gone by 1910 - with the possible exception of the 0-4-0Ts.

This is a bit of model railway history which I am lucky enough to own. It is a David Jenkinson loco which ran on his Settle and Carlisle layouts when he modelled in EM. The basis is a K's kit. It has a tender drive which is heavily weighted. I acquired it from Tudor Watkins who bought it from Roger Carpenter (the photos man) for IIRC £10. I never ran it until last autumn when I cleaned the wheels and tested it on Dunvant at Cardiff Exhibition. It ran beautifully and happily pulled a rake of 5 carriages.

I had a chat with Keith Turton some years ago and he definitely didn't intend to do 14 volumes. As I have found myself, when you start publishing, more information turns up when the book appears, which is both gratifying and annoying. There is one book in the Turton series which just covers one area and that is volume 4 on the anthracite coalfield of South Wales (there was also anthracite in Scotland). It is an absolute gem so far as I am concerned. With regard to Kew, if it wasn't so far away and expensive to get to, I would go there every week. It is an absolute treasure chest of information.

There is Bill Hudson's excellent book on the Midland's line through the Peak. One the of best line histories ever. Also, with reference to the Turton / Lightmoor series of books above, although Keith Turton has retired, Ian Pope of Lightmoor is planning more books in this series and one is expected to be published this year. I do start to wonder how much more there can be to discover about PO wagons.

It was the east Cardiff sewage works on land which was partially reclaimed from the sea. It's just to the east of the Celsa steelworks but on the other side of the road.

Saying anything negative about that nice Mr Johnson is a mortal sin. He designed beautiful engines and their smokebox doors may not have been perfect but his locos lasted until the 1960s, albeit with a lot of aesthetic damage from Deeley, Fowler and to a lesser extent Stanier. If you read the memoirs of loco men such as Terry Essery they were good engines. Part of the reason they spent so long in the works was the paint shop needed a lot of time to produce that wonderful finish.