JimC

And there's apparently some evidence that tanks were kept with boilers at that period, which must have been a considerable pain for storage, although I suppose they could have been left out in the rain.

Isn't the criticism mainly of the need for excessive double heading, and thus double manning? Which I suggest is very much not what happens on XC!

And the trouble is even if you were to study the surviving Manors I'm quite sure that they *now* have a selection of components from all over the place, no matter what might have been there when originally turned out.

Its complicated by the end of steam and redundancy by DMUs, but what makes me think that is looking at the pre great war Std 2 boilered locomotives, 99/3100/5100 and 3111/5111-3149/5149. On the data I have the ten that were rebuilt as 81s nine were withdrawn between 1960 and 1965 and one in 1957, but those that weren't rebuilt were mostly withdrawn between 1948 and 1953. But as you say its much less evident with the Std 4 types, with the 31xx being apparently withdrawn as a group 1957-60, but even then most of the earlier 3150s seem to have gone in the early 50s.

I do wonder about that... There's a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that the GWR were not averse to using refurbished parts on new locomotives - and why not if they were good enough to serve without failure until the first heavy general. It seems not impossible that second hand parts from 43s withdrawn around the same time that the BR Manors were introduced (and the numbers match fairly but not very closely) were used. But unless the records of how many motion parts (say) were created are available and someone is inspired enough to cross reference I'm not sure we can ever know.

As I understand it there wasn't, and that was the point of the exercise. In good times overhaul money (direct from revenue) could be used to upgrade locomotives to make them cheaper to run if there was a sound case. In the 30s revenue was poor and the money wasn't there, but there was money in the renewal fund, which was the money compulsorily put aside to replace life expired locomotives. So by upgrading the locomotives sufficiently to be considered a renewal the renewal fund money could be used. There's a sort of hint that possibly TPTB were increasingly strict about what constituted a renewal in the 30s. Cook states that Collett wouldn't accept mid life upgrades of 2-6-2Ts with new cylinders etc as renewals, hence the wheel size, high pressure boilers etc. However I've seen entries in Loco committee minutes from the 20s where very extensive overhauls/repairs of absorbed locomotives at external companies were classified as renewals, so maybe policy changed. It appears to me, incidentally, that the renewed 31/81 2-6-2Ts ran longer lives than their sisters which were not renewed, which does suggest the work was rather more comprehensive than a general overhaul: in what respect I couldn't guess.

As I recall Cook states that about half the 43s were reused, but I don't think he says whether that was by weight, by value or by count!

You're about a third of the way there. - Some have more cylinders than others - Some have bigger wheels than others - Some have bigger boilers than others Master those three and the only thing left is the difference between Halls and Modified Halls and that's getting a bit too esoteric...

Basically a Hall is a cut down Saint, and a Grange an enlarged 43. But Grange and Manor cylinders were significantly different internally than the earlier standards.

I suspect economic factors at work.. This is pure guesswork, those who know more correct me, but did the US had plenty of cheap steel and perhaps relatively few bridges, so could have heavy rails for their large but infrequent trains? And did the UK have short distances, lots of curvature and frequent trains, which meant stations (=revenue earning points) were not far apart so earning per mile track was good? By contrast might one expect long distances and expensive steel to make lighter trackwork more compelling? This is very much off the cuff rambling, its not researched in any way. Who knows better?

You mean there's an Airfix chassis that hasn't destroyed it's gears?

Fair comment. To put it in proportion though, big as it superficially looks, with 50 tons of adhesive weight it can't be much more powerful than a GWR pannier tank. We have to imagine a long light railway for such to be a useful proposition. As pointed out above very light axle weights were something of a feature in parts of Germany and Austria.

I suppose if one imagines heavy traffic and a harsh axle loading limit on a light railway then an 0-10-0 could have light axle loading. Over bridges might be an issue! Here's a *very* quick hack - a Dukedog boiler on ten 1361 wheels. A Dukedog weighed 49 tons, so might we imagine an axle weight of under 10 tons per axle? Might have to have an 8 wheeled tender!

Supposing one had a steam driven electric generator set on the locomotive, and used that to drive electric motors under the carriages. Easier to transmit electricity than steam down the train. Kinda analogous to the electric assistance on modern formula one. Get the steam pressure up at the station and mortgage the boiler to use the electricity to assist acceleration and turn off the generator when the steam pressure comes down too much...

In my days in the bike trade we had a customer bring his Honda stepthru in because it steered very erratically and he kept falling off. Pete wheels it onto the ramp and goes to put it on the stand - and fails! After a struggle he gets it on the stand and looks in the generous sized top box. It contains a huge assortment of heavy tools, and with the top box being behind the rear axle the front wheel was barely skimming the ground and lifting off at every opportunity. No wonder the chap keeps falling off - its barely possible to steer the thing. On talking to the customer he explained that he needed all these heavy tools to fix the bike when he fell off...

I hope not too confusing:-) Its part of a whole series of loading gauge drawings superimposed on the BR gauge, and all the rest are centred so both rails coincide. To my mind the centre alignment is good for seeing how different in size the loading gauge is. Its certainly not a representation of anything one might have seen on the road. Mind you I sometimes idly wonder how rail wear worked out on the mixed gauge, with one rail seeing so much more use than the other two. If you are interested the rest of the drawings are in the page linked in my sig.

And most of all a good six inches extra platform clearance. Here's a sketch of the GWR broad gauge loading gauge against a current NR standard. It gets you gloriously wide coaches, and high containers fit (single stacked only though) and the exhaust in the centre is well clear of the passengers, but the eaves are so low that double deck stock would be impractical. Its a largely irrelevant consideration now, but in the early days a lot of lives were probably saved because coaches with bodies between the wheels overtuned a lot less often in the all too frequent derailments of the era.

I've tried thinking about what a big say 1930s British 7ft gauge locomotive would look like, and its a surprisingly difficult challenge. I gave up before I got very far because it rapidly became evident that it would have to be utterly different from anything that was built. The big issues were weight and loading gauge. Firstly, there's no more room for outside cylinders than there is on the narrow gauge, so the sort of huge cylinders seen on US types and even metre gauge types are impractical. It leads one towards a 4 cylinder compound, because small outside cylinders are mandated, hence high pressure ones, but there's plenty of room for truly enormous low pressure cylinders between the frames, so the division between high and low pressure can be much better managed than is normally the case. And now the boiler. Yippee, I thought, plenty of room for a really big efficient boiler and a wide grate between the frames. We can have the best aspects of wide and narrow fireboxes. And so we can, except I'm not sure what that would look like. But hang on: the eaves are rather low on the broad gauge. My huge boiler probably can't have a belpaire firebox unless we back it down a bit in size. Unless it has a round top box the firebox corners are a big limitation. But a bigger issue is weight. Lets say I have a 22 ton axle weight limit. My boiler just can't be much bigger in diameter than a King or Duchess boiler, because what's going to carry the weight? Driving wheels are close to touching on those anyway, can't fit another pair in under the shorter fatter boiler. And so it goes on. I decided that I couldn't sketch up something reasonably credible without a far greater understanding of steam locomotive design than I possess. Starting from standard gauge deigns just didn't work for me.

We really need a horse traction enthusiast on this thread, because I wonder if we could be recycling received wisdom. Horses are very variable in size, and sometimes used two abreast, but 4ft6ish seems quite big to me. Horse width seems not to be widely published on the net. On loading gauge, my guess is that it was realised fairly early on that the GB loading gauge was too small, but (again my guess) I wonder if high platforms are part of the story? Platform to vehicle clearance is a major limitation on the GB loading gauge, and seems to have been standardised fairly early. Once there are high platforms (how early did they come in?) expansion of the gauge is pretty much stuffed.

Slaters have confirmed that this is a possibility, due to acid formed from reaction with atmospheric water.

My understanding is that the existing plateways etc round the NE coalfields were around 4'6, 4'8. Around the SW/S Wales, apparent;y, they were typiczlly around 4'0, similarly the Surrey Iron Railway and Pen Y Darren. So a 4' gauge could have easily happened.

Well, passengers are roughly as dense as water and have a very low packing rate. The extensive internal planking must surely weigh at least as much as the seating, so I should have thought the springs at least must be upgraded. Even if the turf has been dried, rain is not an unknown phenomenum in that part of the world...

There were a few, I'm away from references ATM, but I seem to remember a MSWJR type as well. It depends on one's aims. A pastiche of a Swindonised absorbed type is fairly readily managed - a 48xx chimney, a safety valve cover and a pair of whistles gets you a long way, and with a little more work an upward and rearward bunker extension is very characteristic. If one wishes to model a prototype its a lot more difficult, but a J72 seems to me an intrinsically better starting point than the ex midland types which have a very long wheelbase.

Isn't the 'when in doubt' location for anything weird, old or unusual on the GWR 'somewhere in the Chester area' ? Especially odd 2-4-0s? At this date I suggest it's still worth considering the north/south divisions, and which your line is in. With wagons from other lines, in pre pool days wouldn't they tend to reflect specific traffic flows rather than a random collection from multiple lines?

Hmm, if your cat's litter tray smells like MEK your cat has a serious metabolic problem. If it smells like the chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbon version of MEK-PAK then something very unusual is happening.