JimC

Ah a customer:-) That's what I like to see! A few 2021s were sold off as industrials, which maybe widens their appeal. If anyone here isn't aware, the 2021 is a 'small' type, ancestor to 54/64/74/16 and with ~4'1 wheels. One might also mention their cousins, the 850/1901s with similar variety but shorter wheelbase. There were 158 of those. The 1134s were a 'large' type, distantly ancestral to the 57s with ~4'7 wheels. The 1134s also came with different design/class/type boilers which varied in diameter, length and were higher and lower pitched, which changed their appearance subtly but would also make life 'interesting' for a R2R designer seeking a chassis that would fit as many variants as possible. Mind you a R2R 1134 with a chassis that could fit all its cousins would be a great thing for bashers, makers of 3d print bodies etc because there were almost unlimited numbers of variations, although the widest variety was back in the 19thC.

I've been given some GWR archive material, including a lot of locomotive diagrams, and to my surprise and delight they include weight diagrams of 342, 95/6 and 92. unfortunately the 342 drawing especially has suffered, but I may be able to work up some improvements on my drawings of these little oddities.

To be fair though the war ended a lot sooner than anyone expected which threw all the planning out.

Mmm. Well the ARLE committee was a committee. Hence it took considerable time to reach an agreement - indeed I believe it never did. But the Maunsell wasn't a mile from the consensus, and all the drawings already existed for it. Getting the committee to finalise a design and getting all the drawings prepared would surely have been some months more.

Well, they look pretty fair to me. Enjoy!

Gosh, what a coincidence. Not saying the cracks are anything but real, but its amazing how much more difficult it is to repair something you don't want there anyway...

Probably wrong to think of Swindon Works as a single unit in this context. AIUI the loco works used withdrawn engines with a bit of life left, and supposedly the welsh 0-6-2Ts were popular because nice roomy cabs. Presumably they ran them until something broke and then grabbed another. The 1366s (and presumably earlier equivalents) duties were in the wagon works. I haven't heard what was used in the carriage works.

A process which if taken to its logical extreme leaves us with a single topic of "stuff". I submit that this thread generates quite enough traffic already. Mea culpa, I shouldn't have started this diversion.

Large (4'7) panniers were very rarely chosen for auto fitting in the days before the dedicated autoclasses, and by and large those few that were were of the oldest and weakest classes. As noted 4'0 wheel classes esp 2021 were the preferred choice. Larger wheels were almost all 4 coupled types. The gear seemed to be added and removed with such frequency that I wonder if taken off when a loco was stripped down it was reinstalled on the next candidate going to the desired location. But as to why those apparent policies, I haven't found anything.

According to Holcroft it was in fact usage on Canadian lines that impressed him. Holcroft went on a trip to Eastern Canada/US border. On return he wrote up the trip for his management. Then Churchward gave him the job of outlining replacements for Atbara (large wheel 4-4-0) Bulldog (med wheel 4-4-0s) and Aberdare small wheel 2-6-0s which were to be inside cylinder with 10in piston valves over the cylinders. It perhaps should be noted that the County 4-4-0s were already in existence and a small boiler version tried and abandoned. Apparently this didn't prove practical, so Churchward gave orders to draft a medium wheel 2-6-0, which as we know was a huge success and indeed I think the GW never built another all new 4-4-0.

Cook gives us a pretty good insight into the design of the 48/58/54/64/74/16 family in Swindon Steam. Apparently there were a lot of common parts between them. Its a rare insight into the actual thinking behind design decisions. It's mildly amusing that they started with a clean sheet of paper and ended up with the same configurations as their predecessors 50 years before.

It is strange though. It's as if it all comes to a stop when Collett retires and nothing happens until 1952. No Hawksworth railcar for instance.

Which probably should have been replaced with railcars since having a Riddles Std 2 or for that matter a 4575 towing a coach or two with a dozen passengers in was a pretty wasteful exercise. They aren't things I've devoted much thinking time to but I wonder why there was a ~ 15year pause between the last of the GWR cars and the first BR?

With time and study, though, I'm moving to the opinion that the accountancy rebuilds, on the GWR at least, weren't nearly as dubious bits of financial gamesmanship as I used to think. Yes, it's recorded that the renewal fund was healthy and revenue was not, so putting a locomotive through a renewal saved the cost of the heavy General it would otherwise have required. In the event the end of steam truncated the life of all the 1930s renewals, so it's impossible to do a real analysis, but there's some evidence, looking at the large Prairies in particular, that the renewals would have still been in service long after their unaltered cousins had disappeared. So if a locomotive half way through its normal working life had a renewal costing half what a new build would cost, and the renewed locomotive went on to run a normal full life, and also had various small enhancements making it cheaper to run or more capable, then it seems to me the renewal would be sound business practice. But between the end of steam truncating locomotive lives, and the difficulty of extracting exact costs from surviving records - beyond me I fear - I'm not sure it's possible to make a definitive evaluation.

It wouldn't. Its a nice demonstration of why simply lengthening a 4-4-0 isn't a viable design route. The whole locomotive needs to be rethought.

Another what if is that according to Felix Pole's book the LNWR execs were agitating to have the Rhymney included in the LMS.

Scrapped at the first opportunity I expect!

But not at the grouping. According to RCTS the Corris was owned by a Bristol based tram company at the time of the grouping, and tram companies weren't grouped. The Tram co was later bought by Crosville Motor Co, and then some complicated dealings went on which ended up with Crosville being owned by the LMS and the Corris by the GWR, in the midst of all sorts of other deals with bus companies, LMS and GWR going on that I can't be bothered to work out!

try https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Milton1955.pdf "66. As is the case with most large modern locomotives, the view from the footplate of the L Britannia class engine is restricted by the long boiler: it is further obstructed by the smoke deflector, the vacuum ejector and the hand rails, and the view compares unfavourably with that obtained from the footplate of other Western Region express engines. I recommend, therefore, that early steps be taken to modify the design, where practicable, so as to improve the view."

The other regions mostly had a mix of LH and RH drive though didn't they with pre group locomotives on many lines having been RHD? There seems to be some sort of consensus that the GWR types had a more controllable regulator than the other lines, so if that's the case one would expect the WR crews to have more problems with an inferior regulator than those crews who had spent their whole working lives with controls that were no better.

The last new locomotives for the Rhymney were ordered in February 1920, about the time when serious planning for the grouping started in the Cabinet (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7735748). Four were delivered by Hudswell Clarke in July and September 1921, and six from Beyer Peacock in December. They were slightly different in detail from the pre war R class. The classification AR doesn't seem to have ever been used in practice or officially but was certainly present on a Beyer Peacock drawing which is still in existence and available from HMRS (https://hmrs.org.uk/hmrs-22702--0-6-2t-class-r--12ft-6ins-driving-wheels.html). Seven of these ten never received GWR boilers and kept Rhymney boilers to the end. The sketch is based mainly on the Beyer drawing, with reference also to WRRC drawings and to photographs. Very unusually I had enough information to sketch the inside valve gear: its a shame its almost completely obscured!

I hadn't heard that any useful drawings of the Harrison/Hawthorn locomotives are extant, so should we assume that the model is largely speculative and not place too much weight on details?

For that matter they could have put some big lumps of stone and iron on the footplate to ballast it. The trouble is it would then be an awfully long and complicated lump to do the same job as a 2-2-2. Its stated the steam joints gave trouble, which is entirely unsurprising at that time. Gooch took the boiler and with other bits and pieces put together a 0-6-0, called Bacchus, which had a useful life.. The locomotive was built to a patent of TE Harrison, later chief engineer of the North East Railway, and presumably designed by him, whilst it was built by R & W Hawthorn, who later became Hawthorn Leslie. Being involved with it seems to have harmed no-one's reputation, although Harrison really made his name as a civil engineer.

Potentially yes. The nominal King adhesive weight was 22.5 x 3 =67.5. Divide by 4 is 19.125 against 19.5 for the red limit. 5'8 wheels would save a bit too.

A 4-8-0 chassis under a King boiler seems feasible enough without actually drawing it. You might enjoy 'Swindon Apprentice' by AE Durrant. 'Dusty' Durrant trained on the (G) WR in the 40s and 50s and then worked mainly overseas. His book is a mix of his time as an apprentice and in the drawing office at Swindon, interspersed with tales of his trips round Britain and Europe photographing steam, plus drawings of the mighty locomotives he drew up in idle moments. Its pretty readily available secondhand I think.