JimC

Very early stuff this time. I've got an idea for a new publication, but the concept means I will have to have much better coverage of the early locomotives than I did in "Introduction to". So I think I'm going to have to do a lot of drawing, and this one is starting very near the beginning! Its tempting to simply reuse the E.L. Ahrons drawings in RCTS, which are out of copyright, but I don't feel comfortable doing it. As far as I can see no-one really talks about classes this early, but this is one of five long boiler goods engines which were probably built in 1849 by R.B. Longridge & Co. for the Shrewsbury & Birmingham Railway. Longridge seem to have been associated with Stephensons to some extent, and were based in Bedlington, Northumberland. They featured the gothic style firebox. One was sold to the Shrewsbury and Chester, but all five came to the GWR in 1854. In 1868 one was rebuilt into a saddle tank with a new boiler and cylinders and altered wheelbase. According to RCTS a similar conversion was considered for the others, but in the end they were withdrawn between 1868 and 1877. They don't seen to have been reconstructed as much as many other early locomotives. The saddle tank, with a further reconstruction in 1875, worked on until 1889.

Its maybe a little ironic to note that Cook tells us the running department put in a request for more 47s, but Collett elected to build a batch of Castles instead as being more versatile even though more expensive. The other thing to note is that WR thought it justified to build a new set of boilers for them in 1955-7 which suggests it was thought they would run for many more years. One might observe that fitting Castle boilers instead of a new batch of Std 7s might well have been a cheaper option since one fewer would have been needed. There was also a plan to fit screw reverse to them in the 1950s, although this went no further than the drawing board.

The coupling rod bearing on the Castle driving wheel was larger too.

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Beighton1942.pdf

Now, here's a little puzzle. On a page about Stafford Road Works here http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/Transport/Trains/gwr/mpd2.htm , Mervyn Srodzinsky includes this photograph of no 40 after her second rebuild with an 850 boiler. Now RCTS doesn't say so, but I reckon that she's been refitted with 4'0 diameter 850 wheels. They're the same H section spokes, which is not how Ahrons drew them in the drawing I used as a source for the initial sketch, and the splashers look well oversize. What does the panel think? It would be nice to sketch the locomotive in original condition as well, but there's nothing in RCTS. There is, however, a drawing of No 41, which was built by the same company at the same time, but with a different boiler and inside cylinders, so I will probably draw that as being as near as one can get.

This was one of those locomotives which, for no reason apparent at this distance, was rebuilt time and again for a very long life. This is the first GWR No 40, which was officially withdrawn in 1904! It was constructed as a long boilered 0-4-2 tender engine with outside cylinders in 1849 by R.B. Longridge & Co of Bedlington, for the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway, and was so well regarded that the S&B attempted to sell it without success. In 1854 it became GWR property. In 1858 Armstrong had it completely reconstructed as an 0-4-2ST with inside cylinders, possibly using the old boiler, much modified, but little else. In 1873 it was reconstructed again, still as an 0-4-2ST, but with new cylinders and boiler. Finally in 1897 it received new boiler and cylinders again. Ahrons has a neat phrase for these complete rebuilds come renewals: "Reusing the space between the wheels" and in this case it seems entirely appropriate. I wonder how Armstrong saw all these locomotives. Did he treat them as classes, or as individuals, upgraded/rebuilt or withdrawn according to their merits and the state of the GWR bank balance? Presumably when one of these antiques and curios came into the factory some long vanished notebook contained estimates of what was going to be needed to repair it to run until another overhaul was due, and George Armstrong would look at what it was going to cost and where there was capacity in the factory, and a decision on high would be promulgated to scrap or rebuild. Its also worth considering, I think, too, that we need to consider that because so much had been replaced over the years, in 1897 it was not so much a question of putting a new boiler and cylinders on an 1849 locomotive, but rebuilding an 1873 one. Maybe too the Chester workshops, which had once been the works of the Shrewsbury and Cheseter, was adept at keeping the old crocks running. Its striking just how many of the oddities survived in that area, and how few were in front of Dean or Churchward's eyes at Swindon!

No 92 was one of five small 0-4-0STs, superficially rather similar in appearance, but which were not treated as a class. With one exception they were late 19thC Wolverhampton reconstructions of older locomotives, and by the end of their long lives probably retained few original parts. The first of the group was no 45, built in 1880, which was a new engine, albeit given the number of a Sharp Stewart built locomotive withdrawn a very few years earlier. It had the odd feature of a cab that was only accessible from the right hand side. The next to appear were 95 and 96,which were originally Sharp Stewart built for the Birkenhead Railway, and their cabs only had entrances on the left hand side. In their final form they had rather vestigial spectacle plates at each end of the cab and a rather minimal roof. They were substantially reconstructed at Wolverhampton in 1890 and 1888 respectively when they received new boilers. No 92 started life as two 0-4-2 saddle tanks, 91 & 92, built for the GWR by Beyer Peacock in 1857. In 1877/8, one good 0-4-0ST, 92 was made from the two. In 1893 it received a very major rebuild at Wolverhampton to gain basically the appearance shown here. Amazingly, it then survived until 1942, albeit only as a stationary engine in its latter years. A similar loco, 342, was built by Beyer Peacock in 1856, and bought by the GWR in 1864. This had a similar life to 92, converted to 0-4-0ST in 1881 and rebuilt in 1897. The original 0-4-2ST form can be seen in this blog entry. A peculiarity of all these five was that the design had the firebox behind the trailing wheels with a distinctive long overhang. The result was much greater weight on the trailing wheels than the driving wheels and this high load on the second axle meant they were prohibited on uncoloured routes. They had long lives, mainly in the obscure northern reaches of the GWR around Wrexham. At least two were cut down at one time or another for use on a route with a very low bridge, and this sketch of 92 is based on a photograph of the locomotive in cut down condition. No. 342 was withdrawn in 1931 and No. 45 in 1938. No. 92 survived until 1942, with the boiler lasting a few more years in stationary use. One wonders whether the curious reluctance of Swindon to build 0-4-0Ts was the reason for the long lives of these antiques, or contrariwise, their long lives were why Swindon didn't build any replacements.

from an E.L. Ahrons sketch, this is No 342 in original or at least very early form. It was built in 1856 by Beyer, Peacock for the Commissioners of Chester General Station, which was jointly owned by the GR, the LNWR and the Birkenhead railway, and was bought by the GWR in 1865. In this form it was really a slightly earlier version of Nos 91 and 92, also from Beyer, Peacock. In 1881 it was altered into an 0-4-0ST of much the same form as its cousins. The rebuilt locomotive looked substantially similar to nos. 91 and 92 as discussed elsewhere in this blog. In 0-4-0ST form the locomotive was in service until 1931. I wonder what the rationale for the conversion was. They would up rather heavy on the trailing wheels, as noted under No 92. I suppose it may have been a fixed wheelbase rather than a trailing truck of some kind, so they would have been a lot more flexible round sharply curved sidings as 0-4-0STs.

This document turned up on Facebook...

Built in 1898 this odd experimental locomotive is arguably significant only as having the first set of pannier tanks. It had outside frames and an unconventional firebox, wider than it was long and initially featuring water tubes inside the firebox. Apparently it was unsuccessful in its designed role as a passenger engine and was relegated to shunting duties before being sold off. Initially it went to the Ebbw Vale Steel and Iron Co, then to the Brecon & Merthyr at a time when they were particularly in need of locomotives and finally to a Northumberland colliery, who scrapped it in 1929. The sketch is better founded than some, in spite of it being based only on a weight diagram, because there are some excellent photographs available. Its difficult to imagine it as an industrial shunter, but maybe the colliery got it very cheap!

Browsing through Steamindex having awoken in the early hours I happened on a mention (by LA Summers) of a GWR Dean era proposal for a water tube boiler on a 4-4-0. You'd think that came out of nowhere, but a couple of months ago I was given sight of part of the Swindon drawing office register of drawings for the time when the 3521 0-4-2Ts were being worked on. One thing that struck me was the number of drawings being produced at Swindon for the GWR's ships. They clearly didn't maintain a separate drawing office or outsource at least some marine work, even though I don't think Swindon designed their own ships. It also seemed evident that at least some draughtsmen worked on both marine and rail drawings. I'm not going to double check now, but if memory serves me right a young G. J. Churchward worked on drawings for a marine boiler. One assumes, too, that at least the keener young draughtsmen would be readers of trade publications like 'The Engineer' which covered a very wide range of engineering topics. Now I think of it I'm also reminded of Cook's tale of how big end lubrication for Kings, Castles and eventually LNER A4s was sorted out with inspiration from the design of a machine tool in Swindon Works. Collett did his apprenticeship with Maudsley's, a very high status marine engineering firm too. We're accustomed to think of a silo mentality in railway design in the 20thC, and there certainly was some of that, but equally the above suggests that design staff had a rather wider range of experience than we might expect.

Here's a sketch from Miss prism's photo of 157 with a Wolverhampton boiler. I've given it what I hope approximates a Wolverhampton paint colour, but not the lining. You'd never run out of variations if you were modelling the Armstrong/Dean era locomotives would you? I've also added this image to the original post so they are all together.

This is what I've sketched up from the drawing in GWW and information above. Dimensions in inches. No guarantees its correct and any required corrections welcome. It would be interesting to have widths for 1, 2 and 3 digit plates.

Yeah, I tried scaling off those, but there's just enough camera distortion that I didn't think it reliable enough. Trivia. In general three figure plates all seem to be a standard width (unsure whether iron different as per 4 figure), also probably two figure, although not many of those to work from. But 111 appears to have had her own no-standard width cabside.

So the end screws are slightly further from the edge of the cast iron plates than the brass ones? Was the raised border the same distance from the edge on both?

Yep, its a vector drawing. Most use if drawing your own plates. I've got reasonable outlines of all the numerals on there. Alan, that's a useful observation and probably explains some inconsistencies I was seeing scaling from the photos on the Railwayana site . Do you have any of the other dimensions for iron plates? I'll look at working up a dimensioned jpg.

Hopefully this is to scale 1 mm to 1 inch and will work for people. I've worked it up mainly from railwayana photos. The narrower plates are estimated widths from the photos. GWRcabsidenumerals.svg

According to a drawing in Great Western Way, 2'1.25in * 11.75in, but 1, 2 and 3 digit ones were narrower. I think that's over the polished brass outline rather than the actual edge of the plate though.

Indeed, but according to the numbers in RCTS there weren't any spare non-super Std 10s to form a pool for the 94s and 15s. Rcts records various boilers being converted between superheated and not in the first quarter of 20thC, but not Std 10s. As you say a very big job, but they did have all the facilities. So it appears to me we are left with 4 possibilities 1.superheated boilers were fitted on externally built 94s, with or maybe even without the actual superheater elements and header. 2. Some super-standard 10s were rebuilt without flue tubes and used for a pool, even though RCTS doesn't mention it. 3. RCTS has got the total of non-super Std 10s built wrong. 4. There was no boiler pool for the non super Std 10s. None of these seem especially likely!

That's how they were built, yes. Did they stay like that? I've seen it said 9400 no longer has a superheated boiler. IIRC according to RCTS only enough saturated Std 10s were built to fit the 15s and the 94s with none spare for a pool. There must have been superheated Std 10s reasonably available from the pool for 2251s and absorbed, plus more freed up as absorbed locomotives were withdrawn while the 94s were being built. Were s/H superheated boilers retubed? RCTS doesn't mention it AFAICS, and it does for other types. Were the 10 superheated locomotives allocated separately? Did superheated boilers migrate round the fleet? I haven't managed to find any of this out. I must get to Kew and look at boiler records to see if there are any clues.

Trouble is there are also oil feeds on the saturated types, if not as many. I'm glad I'm not the only person who's wondered what on earth it is that is visible. Pre group and 94xx panniers are the ones where I'd very much like to be able to tell and haven't managed to.work out a way.

No, that's the 4 cone ejector.

I think everyone who has written books or magazine articles knows the temptation to use a good story that has slightly dubious provenance or has been exaggerated just a tad. Lets face it we've all come across tales that have grown in the telling. And its also going to be the case that not every story told in the first person actually happened to that individual. As for Tuplin: well he definitely has, shall we say, a weakness for a good story. The other one I take with a bit of a pinch of salt is Gibson's "critical appreciation of GWR locomotive design" where I've found a number of places where what he has to say literally doesn't add up!

How does that work with clearances vis a vis the wheels? Obviously there are ways and means to juggle it a bit, but isn't the main limiting factor the need to have the connecting rods in line with the piston centre and reasonable bearing widths for connecting and coupling rods?

I suppose one should add that problems of water supply, quality and cost were a major preoccupation to the railways. From my readings of GWR minutes the cost of water supplies was always discussed, and water supply contracts etc were a significant preoccupation at director level in the GWR. Improving water quality was also a priority, because better water meant better boiler life and had a very great influence on running costs. In his book Ken Cook records how Swindon made big improvements in boiler life through both selection of supply and installation of water softening plants.