JimC

Not according to the weight diagrams in front of me. The 44s were 6' + 5'6 (45s 5'6 and 6') but the 1392s and 1361s 5' + 6'.

The standard GWR layout has the reversing lever to the right hand, but it has to be said that the virtues of the GWR layout were more about its consistency across classes than its ergonomic sophistication.

Yes, the inspector who did the accident report did footplate trips to examine visibility. https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Milton1955.pdf Isn't signal siting on the modern railway going to be very different? And presumably the larger crews on modern mainline steam makes a difference too.

Deep coal mining is such a health nightmare though. Blood and bone being the price of coal was no mere cliche.

A 45 seems like quite a lump to lift onto a rack in the confines of a small lamp hut. In my short time in the chemical industry it was strictly a forklift job, although there must have been manual handling gear before that. I think I have a vague recollection of something with a winch that you could put the barrel on at ground level and wind a handle to raise it up. In the rather dubious shop I worked in we didn't always bother with taps but simply unscrewed the cap and used it to control the flow into the bucket. I doubt that would have done for the railways though. Dropping the cap was very messy and expensive! As I recall in the 70s when I was in industry most barrels were dark green, I think with white ends, it tended to be only premium products that came in specially painted barrels.

That was the case in 1945, but would it be so in say 1875?

Sounds highly dubious to me. According to his autobiography Holcroft was recruited to do factory/workshop design, and the GW influence on the Ns was from Pearson, the assistant CME, who was also ex Swindon. It would be interesting to know what side other SECR classes were driven from. In any case another significant influence on the Ns was the leading draughtsman, Clayton, ex Midland, and AIUI the Midland was also right hand drive.

Yes, it all depends on the compromises you are prepared to accept. I haven't found a single GWR or absorbed class that the Hornby chassis is a really good match for, you are really stuck with LMS types with that chassis, but plenty of folks have accepted the 2721 as being satisfactory for them, and why not. Differences between 1854 and 2721 past as built status are not huge, suspension is perhaps one of the bigger ones. On the whole though I think a Bachmann is a better starting point for the pregroup panniers. I've got a spare 2721 chassis and have mulled over attempting a Rhymney style body, but the RR 0-6-0Ts like S and S1 look notably short ended to me and I don't think you could get the look. A thought for a Hornby 2721 conversion might be a fictional absorbed type. Not a few retained their original cabs and bunkers (sometimes extended) , when given GW boilers and pannier tanks, so a new cab with say a Barry shaped cab entrance might be an interesting little project.

RCTS reckons that saddle tanks were common with the 1854s, so that provides a starting point.

I don't suppose anyone here has a copy of diagram C or something else in the way of works drawings for the 1813s as saddle tanks? I drew pannier tank variants for the book, and the side tanks above, but I don't have anything for the stage inbetween, which seems something of an oversight. NRM has a copy, but while I don't mind paying their reproduction price for a full GA, it seems an awful lot for the minimal info on a weight diagram.

Here's another overlay, not perfect, but good enough I think, even if it does appear you should look at it with 3D glasses! Green is B65, the last diagram for the 655/1741 Class. Red is B47, similarly the last diagram for the 2721s. Blue is B74, the last diagram for the 57xx. You can see the extent to which originally rather different classes merged, with just the shape of the footplate and the end overhangs being major differences.

I think we should qualify that as being standard for P Class boilers. I haven't spotted any exceptions in a quick trawl through my spreadsheet of 0-6-0T dimensions. And, perhaps more surprisingly the same seems to be true of cab heights of the full length roof/rear sheet style as per 57xx (but not 8750). Other boiler types, O, Q, T, Std 10 and the smaller classes are different as one would expect. Chimney heights are more variable. Must admit I hadn't noticed that consistency. I don't know how consistent heights were on the older cab styles with the various pre group and local bunker styles. The weight diags I have are often not dimensioned - the drawings of sections would be better for that. In those days there appears to have been an element of local variation as if the minor works were cutting the sheet metal on the fly rather than working in detail to Swindon issued drawings. Incidentally one does note that like all smaller than 10 wheel classes the 0-6-0Ts were kept within the 19thC 9'0" x 13'3" loading gauge, presumably for wider route availability.

For interest here's the two superimposed. I normally align wheel centres, because its the most convenient reference, and that's how I've done the top one. The lower one has the main part of the body aligned, which is a better fit for these two drawings, but is a lot more difficult to do. When I do my drawings I align with guide lines draw on on the main dimensioned points, so the crossing points of the wheel centres are ideal. The overlain drawings also show up the distortions that have occurred in the paper over the years and the transfer to pixels. Look at the various guide lines on the drawings and how they drift from parallel in varying amounts in different places. From my POV the discrepancies look rather large, but I bet if I were to prepare a scale drawing of a Hornby 2721 and superimpose that the issues with the GW drawings would suddenly look much better!

Mmm yes. I drew out the 57xx inside valve gear from a GA drawing yesterday, and I've revisited a couple of other drawings to see if it can add anything, I got to the 2721 drawings I did for the book, and revisiting it with what I have learned and the skills I've acquired since I reckon that in places there's up to 3 inches discrepancy between the GWR drawings for weight Diag A11 and Diag B47.

Another early bird this one. These two were the first GWR built 0-6-0T, and belong to the Gooch era - built in 1860. They were quite small engines with 4ft 2in (or possibly 4ft) wheels. They were fairly typical Gooch designs with domeless boilers, raised fireboxes and Gooch valve gear. They had inside frames, small side tanks and a well tank under the bunker. When renewed in the 1870s, they were turned out as members of the 850/1901 classes, so it is probable that no significant parts were reused. They don't really seem to feature in the general GWR 0-6-0T evolution. I rather fancied doing this one, but the only source I could find was the E L Ahrons drawing which has been reproduced in several places, notably Holcroft and RCTS. I haven't found any photograph, which isn't really surprising given their early demise and probable low profile. Curiously Ahrons and Holcroft (the latter following Ahrons I imagine) refer to the 'class' as being 91 & 92, but as seen elsewhere in these pages 91 and 92 were 0-4-2T built for the GWR by Beyers. The valve gear was a particular issue. I didn't think I could leave it put completely, so I tried to make some sense out of the lines in Ahrons drawing against a copy of Stephenson's gear from another locomotive and altered it for what I figured were the visible differences in Gooch gear. I call these drawing sketches since although intended to be scale I can't guarantee accuracy, but this one is perhaps more sketchy than most. Which brings me on to livery and lining. I omit lining. It's shed loads of work, and scale lining at this sort of size disappears into anti-aliasing anyway. Plus it tends to obscure the underlying shape. But this one does look a bit bald without it. As for livery, well according to GWW dark holly green, so I picked a dark holly green from a number of choices available on the net. But like most colour names its a broad church. Who knows!

Excellent point, I hadn't properly considered that. I did give it a Std 1 length firebox though, so there's potential, but its still got to manage the transition between the rear corner of the box fitting between the wheels and the back of the boiler barrel being 5'6. I simply don't know enough about boiler design to comment whether its feasible to have the side of the firebox other than straight lines, or alternatively whether the firebox could be designed to taper from front to back in plan view.

The whole idea of a 20thC Crampton is sufficiently ridiculous that its probably pointless to debate what the point is, but for the purpose of my flight of fancy I chose to believe that the key design aim was to have larger driving wheels than could be fitted under a 4-4-0 sized boiler. It now occurs to me that the Crampton configuration might have been a better solution for Brunel's impossible to meet specification for Broad Gauge engines than any that were actually delivered. A 6-2-0 might have come closer to permitting Brunel's desired piston speed and thus very large wheels than any of the locomotives that were delivered? And maybe that's what inspired Gooch's chief draughtsman (for 'twas Crampton) to come up with the idea?

With my lowered boiler I suspect I may have drawn a footplate height that is actually above the firebox door! I had trouble with access into the cab. Perhaps the tank needs to be set back on the tender so the crew climb onto the tender footplate, not the locomotive one? So if we do that and raise the boiler back to a more conventional height so the firebox is accessible... Umm, maybe that's not an improvement! Its starting to make the Kruger's look pretty! Incidentally, how does one describe that wheel arrangement? I suppose its a 4-2-2-0 of sorts, or perhaps 21A for the continental?

Something odd. I replaced the images on the page below after the outage, but when I looked at it just now the graphics were just a broken link, but nevertheless the images were still attached to the post, so I just had to delete the broken links and hit insert again. Don't know if this is an artifact of the image restoration, bit awkward if it is. Doesn't seem to have happened to any of my other blog entries though. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/blogs/entry/25015-rhymney-railway-k-class-0-6-2st0-6-2pt/

Slung some GW components together. Sadly the more I looked at it and the more design problems I picked up the more ridiculous the whole concept became... and if you think that's dreadful you should have seen some of the rejected features!

Propping up a door with a random baulk of timber has obvious dangers, but I'm not sure that resting the door on a solidly constructed sound wall would be any more dangerous than resting it on a goods platform. But the point seems moot as there appears to be no evidence of it being done.

Interesting to consider whether they are original or a later fitment. You'd think for new construction they are a bit inelegant, but if as noted above the clerestory was weak in that area its an obvious quick and dirty reinforcement/repair if required.

Would closed side pens towards the track permit resting the wagon door on the back of the pen, which I would guess could make unloading easier and maybe even safer?

I believe this is overstated. On both exchanges, LNER and LMS, the Castle used the local coal.

Don't forget 40 only retained the scissors gear until 1929: it wasn't retained when she got Castle cylinders. There's an argument to say that there's a region between "not good enough to repeat" and "good enough to live with". And if I understand what Don Ashton had to say correctly the vast majority of locomotives had worse valve events than the GWR ones. Cook says in his book "GW locomotives had extreme regularity in their exhaust beats" . But I must admit I have my doubts about the patent argument too, since 40s gear was rather different (and superior in detail) to Deeley's concept and there had been others in the same vein before. But patents are funny things, so much is in the fine detail of the wording as to whether something is covered or not. Holcroft says that the timing of the patent application and grant and 40s construction was such that 40 was in the clear, but any more would have had to pay a license fee.