JimC

Churchward had done much the same thing when he introduced his outside cylinder standards. A Dean single with a set of dummy wooden outside cylinders was sent all round the system. The lead fingers were a neat touch though.

Jus a vague approximation really. I don't have the patience to do lining (which is quite a PITA on vector drawings) and I think I grabbed a base shade from a colour photo of a model and hoped his research was adequate. The main thing is it doesn't look at all like GWR!

While we're on the subject of signs, presumably this is a private siding. Should there be a sign or other demarcation of where the GWR responsibility ends and the private siding begins?

Which, for those who are into such things, gives the idea of a little cameo with every rule in the book being broken, horse in the middle of the track, horseman riding on the buffer, etc etc... Or, for those of a macabre bent, the consequence of breaking all the rules...

The only illustrations I've found show the horse in the middle of the track, and hitched to the coupling hook, which surprised me, because I thought the holes in GWR solebars were to hook on horse harness. I would think in your situation the horse probably would walk between the rails, which in turn suggests that the track would need to be ballasted at least level with the sleepers, if not right over them. I would have thought the investment in a capstan system would be a much bigger and more sophisticated yard than you seem to have in mind.

Possibly, but I was also thinking there could be changes because the actual measurements and basis of calculation has changed. The GWR system was particularly simplistic and although purely on axle load GWR red - eg Castle, Hall, looks to be less than RA6, I wouldn't be surprised if the modern number is rather greater. Also it wasn't completely unknown for locomotive departments to have a metaphorical finger under the scales and report the weights they'd like to have achieved when they built the locomotives!

That seems logical to me. I was wondering whether, in a simpler age, they just took a pair of dividers and adjusted the spread until they could walk them round the rim and have the last point land on the first mark. In that case there's be no need for the drawing office to provide anything but the diameter of hub and tyre and the number of spokes - which is exactly what's on the GWR drawing I looked at.

Just as a thought, does anyone know of a source for RA numbers for current mainline steam. It would be interesting to see how some of the historical restrictions line up against today's much more sophisticated evaluation.

After thinking about it for a bit, I wonder if the drawing office calculated the size of an segment of the circles representing hub and rim, and then gave the pattern shop a spacing between the spokes at each end. But I've just had a look through some GWR drawings and there's no sign of such a dimension - indeed nothing to give any guide as to how radially spaced items were laid out. Perhaps this was too commonplace to need instruction?

I've been counting spokes a lot for the locomotive drawings I do for my publications. There was clearly no consensus for a given size, but they were rarely very far apart. There doesn't seem to have been any objection to odd numbers of spokes, nor for numbers that aren't spaced at whole numbers of degrees. It's never occurred to me to explore whether they were round numbers of radians, if indeed that's possible. I suppose one thing to consider with the BR standards is that it seems to me they must have been visualising building hundreds of each class, so standardising components between classes wouldn't have been seen as that important.

If you research the 'Felix Pole' wagons on the GWR that was one initiative for higher capacity wagons, albeit still loose coupled and hand braked. Churchward's 40 ton bogie coal wagons were considered to have a greater tare weight and train length than two 20ton. But fundamentally wasn't the problem that changing over required huge capital investment at every stage of coal handling and the changeover to be substantially complete before there was any return?

Excellent. I've seen the third, but not in such good quality. Still got the problem of the tenders disappearing into mud, but hopefully I can do a bit of enhancement. I reckon they confirm the presence of a small three sided frame cut out behind the tender steps which is absent on all the drawings and which I wasn't quite confident enough to add in. The locomotive balance weights are clear enough to add now too, so its good stuff. A detail I hadn't picked up on before is that the first and third both seem to be 93/1390, but in the post rebuild Barry days of the first photo 93 has very large front sandboxes which are flush with the front of the smokebox saddle, but in later years she seems to have smaller sand boxes set slightly back like the rest of her sisters. There's always something to catch you out isn't there! Look at the variations in the boiler clothing and the handrail knobs too...

A project for a Bulleid enthusiast - a mixed traffic 2-6-0 or 4-6-0 with 5'7 wheels...

Thanks for that... interesting that the Southern lists routes against class, and the LM class against routes.

As is my wont with a topic I haven't found very accessible information for I'm knocking up a web page with what I've discovered. If you're interested its here. https://www.devboats.co.uk/gwdrawings/weightrestrictions.php

Especially when one considers that if the railway had an extra route serving their fictional town they would necessarily have had to have extra locomotive(s) to run the services to it.

Thanks. I've since discovered that on the Western Region the detail was covered in Service Timetables, so most likely equivalent documents elsewhere.

Thanks folks. So it looks as if the LNER system has continued to the present day - maybe with a bit of rounding, and the LMS and Souhern didn't have formal categories, instead having the information against classes in the sectional appendix or similar document. I have the equivalent GW document and it does go into a lot more detail about what is allowed where than basic RA would tell you, so presumably the other lines never found a need for the more formal classification. Its interesting that the GWR red route classification (which with the exception of the Kings and the Great Bear was the heaviest) is relatively light, coming just under RA 6 in LNER terms. The GW and LNER systems don't seem to be directly comparable though as Jim Snowdon suggests above. For example I note that in my late 50s Observers book the 04/ROD is listed at RA6 in the LNER scheme, but the GWR have theirs at Blue, which is nearer RA4 than RA5. Roughly the same weight is quoted for both in the book, so it doesn't seem to be a case of the specific gravity of Swindon steel. I must try and get a sight of an LMS and SR Sectional appendix and get a feel for how they are laid out. Has anyone got either (or their early BR regional equivalents) they could let me have a photo of the relevant pages?

That could be my sketch of course, as the cranks and rods aren't the easiest thing to get right, but I've just checked the dimensions, and it seems to scale for a 12" throw (24 inch diameter circle) for the crank and I've redrawn with the rods at the top. Don't forget suspension movement too.

Perhaps this is the trip freight version they never managed to get to work?

A foot longer firebox would make it a Std 3 boiler!

A "bunker" inside the side tanks. Is the boiler longer or the chassis shorter? A longer boiler would get you into weight trouble.

It struck me that all of the big 4 must have had route availability categories based primarily on axle loading, and it might not be a bad thing to have them all listed together. I have the GWR ones, which are fairly readily available, but I've struck out for the rest of the Big Four. All I've readily found is a modern Network Rail list, and that on Wikipedia where one may never quite be sure. That list, combined with the GW list FWIW is this:- Route Availability Axle Load Tonnes Tons/Cwt GW uncoloured 14T GW Yellow 16T NR RA3 ≤16.5 tonnes 16T 5cwt GW Blue 17T 12cwt NR RA5 ≤19.0 tonnes 18T 14cwt GW Red 19T 12cwt ** NR RA6 ≤20.3 tonnes 20T NR RA8 ≤22.8 tonnes 22T 9cwt GWR double Red 22T 10cwt NR RA9 ≤24.1 tonnes 23T 14cwt RA10 ≤25.4 tonnes 25T ** Usually given as > 17.12 and not a King. 19:12 was the usual maximum on red route locomotives, but some Hawksworth locos were 19:14 and the Bear, which was not permitted on all red routes, was 20T, Does anyone have available steam era RA lists? Especially the big Four? Jim C

I'm not sure how I came to omit a sketch of this class from my book, but I certainly did. I included the tender version. Perhaps I was unsure how many drawings of similar looking pre-group pannier tanks should be included. They have one of the more complex histories. The 322 class tale started in 1864. They were thirty 0-6-0 tender engines, entirely of Beyer Peacock design, twenty ordered under the Gooch regime (322-341) and the rest (350-359) by Joseph Armstrong. They had plate (not sandwich) double frames with the running plate rising over each wheel to clear the cranks. They were rebuilt quite heavily from 1878, but not officially renewed. In six cases these rebuilds consisted of a conversion to saddle tank, and some numbers were swapped between locomotives so the tank locomotives took numbers 322-327, and the remaining locos 328 on. So from 1878-1885 the six 322 tank engines were created at Wolverhampton as conversions from tender engines. They had open cabs and full length saddle tanks as was conventional at this period. They received a variety of boilers in the late nineteenth century, receiving the Sir Daniel type in various configurations. After 1918, they mostly received pannier tanks, and those that survived into the 1930s had all received superheated P class boilers. Only one received an enclosed cab. One was scrapped in 1921, and the rest between 1928 and 1932. So this sketch represents the last gasp of what were by then sixty year old locomotives, albeit only a very limited amount of the locomotive would actually have been of that age. I can see no GW lettering on a photo of 322 in the last days, so I've left it off. The Sketch is based on the GWR weight diagram B31, but there are a few small changes based on a photo of 322, notably brakes, sanding and axle guards. And for interest, this sketch from the book is the original form of the class. Frames, motion components and maybe wheel centres are probably about all that was common to both! Tractive effort had increased from around 13,000lbs to over 18,000lbs.

There might be an element of circular argument about it. Coal pushers weren't fitted because no services required them, and no services were introduced that required them because none were fitted. Also there must have been limited scope for such services in the UK, even if you discount the lack of innovation and imagination of BR management. The runs you mention were within the reach of hand firing.