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JimC

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  1. JimC

    Barry Railway J Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    The J Class. Another fairly early version of this sketch. Interesting to compare the J class 2-4-2T with the G Class 0-4-4T. They both use the standard Barry boiler and cylinders, but the J is a longer and heavier locomotive with considerably more coal and water capacity. Sadly I don't know enough about locomotive design to understand the pros and cons of the 0-4-4 and 2-4-2 wheel arrangements. I need to focus a bit more on the differences between the Sharp, Stewart and Hudswell Clarke versions of the J class, and make sure this isn't some kind of uneasy blend. There's also the problem of dates, since they did have some changes over their lives with the Barry Railway. Its sometimes said that its as easy to get models right as wrong, and presumably the same is said of sketches like mine, but I find it an endless struggle to get a reasonable stab at the details. To say the least its rare to find a set of photographs taken from all angles of a single locomotive on a single date, and even then you'd need dimensioned drawings as well. Also one really needs to become expert on the locomotives of a given railway, and I'm more of a generalist. I'll recommend again the work of the Welsh Railway Research Circle when it comes to studying these locomotives. I was surprised to see more brightwork on the photographs of these than I've sketched for other Barry classes, and I had better go back and check the other passenger types at some stage.
     
     
  2. JimC

    Barry Railway H Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    This is a early version sketch of a Barry H class. There are some puzzles. Photos appear to show a much narrower dome than the various weight diagrams, Barry and GW, which I've tried to reproduce. More problems come from the underframe being in shadows on most photographs. No brakes shoes on the leading driving wheel, and although I've drawn them the same, I have a suspicion the brake gear on the second pair of drivers was different to the other two. Finally the best profile shot of the L/H side of a locomotive I found shows a very prominent injector (I think) with a large diameter pipe leading a few inches below the footplate to a box like structure between the 1st and 2nd driving wheels, but I can't make any sign of it out in the shadows in any other photos I've found. No sign of it in drawings in Mountford and Russell. I try to avoid drawing injectors unless I have a very good reference as they are such a pain to get looking vaguely right, but if the universal fitment was as per this locomotive then I shall have to make the attempt. However I note that RCTS states that the locomotives started life with an exhaust steam injector which was fairly soon removed, so I wonder if its that early fitment that I am looking at. Anyone know?

     
  3. JimC

    Barry Railway B1 Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    This sketch is of the second B1 class which was originally designated B2. The first B1 class was based on the B class with an upgraded boiler and was merged into the B class when the originals also received the upgraded boiler. This B1 class had larger side tanks and a greater water capacity than the earlier locomotives.
     
     
     
  5. JimC

    Barry Railway L Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    These ten locos, built in 1914, discarded the old Barry standards and were a bigger loco overall with a much bigger boiler and a very large bunker. They were generally considered successful with the exception of a serious and strange flaw. When running forwards the rear coupled wheels had a tendency to switch points as they passed through them, sending the trailing bogie down the other branch. In reverse, they were fine. Naturally this resulted in an immediate derailment, and this was usually coupled with a fracture of a main water distribution pipe. This lost all the water, meaning the fire had to be immediately thrown out.
    On absorption, they were numbered 1347-1355 and 1357 and given diagram B. Four were rebuilt in 1922 with Standard 4 boilers, the first Welsh class to receive such a major change. This was allocated diagram C. In 1926, with the loss in traffic resulting from the General Strike, it appears the GWR lost patience with their reluctance to stay on the track and all were scrapped in short order.
    1356, by the way, was allocated to an 0-6-0T locomotive that had been built for the Severn and Wye Railway, had been taken over by the GWR in 1895, rebuilt by the GWR in 1896, sold to the Alexandra Docks and Railway Co in 1912, and then resumed its 1895 number when it came back to the GWR at the grouping.
  6. JimC

    Barry Railway K Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    This first sketch is aimed at being post war, but pre grouping.
     
    In 1899, the Barry railway desperately needed some new locomotives, but all British builders were at full capacity. To resolve this, the five locomotives of the K class was ordered from Cooke Loco and Machine Co in the USA. It seems the Barry railway really wanted something as close as possible to the B1 class and the Americans wanted to build something as close as possible to their standard product. The result was a decidedly odd hybrid, with the top and rear halves largely complying with Barry standards, and the front and bottom halves  - the cylinders and the frames - pure US with bar frames, outside cylinders and all. The combination does not appear to have been a happy one, and yet when the GWR got their hands on them they elected to rebuild two in the best GWR style with Standard 3 taper boiler and full GWR side tanks, cab and bunkers. They were numbered 193-197. The rebuilds do not seem to have been significantly more satisfactory and all were scrapped between 1927 and 1932, no industrial user having elected to purchase one.
     
     
    This sketch represents the two rebuilt with Std 3 boilers. The sketch owes as much to an excellent photo in Russell as to the weight diagram.

    I had some trouble with this one. Its the muddy shadows under the footplate, and the fact that aspects of the design are so alien. The original Barry weight diagram contains a dimensional error, which complicates my method of tracing weight diagrams as the starting point for my sketches.  The odd mix of US and British practice also complicates things, because I sometimes had trouble establishing in my mind what a line represented. I hope there aren't too many errors. I was having so much trouble getting a feel for what was happening under the footplate that I even reluctantly looked at photographs of a model, which is of course a desperate and highly dangerous step indeed. In the event all I really achieved with that is spot a number of things which obviously the modeller had failed to work out either and omitted. Sensible man!
    Under the footplate is really troublesome, and particularly against the firebox between the second and third drivers. I also can't work out where the front sand pipe and sand box is, and the brake rigging looks odd too. I think the brake cylinder might be horizontal between the cylinders, which is quite unlike anything else I've sketched!
    The weights diagrams from the Barry (in Mountford) and GWR (in Russell) have been major sources, although as above there's a dimensional error in the Barry diagram which the GWR apparently caught in the first drawing in Russell. Interesting, BTW, that like Churchward's US inspired locomotives, the cylinders are horizontal with their centre line above that of the wheels.
     
  7. JimC

    Barry Railway G Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    This was an interesting one to draw too. The nicely drawn Barry weight diagram is dimensioned with a front overhang of 6ft 7in, but the drawing scales some 5 inches less! I've gone with the written dimension, which is the safer option with workshop drawings.
     
     

  8. JimC

    Barry Railway E Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    A class of five small lightweight 0-6-0T, numbered 781-5 by the GWR. Two survived to join British Railways but were gone by 1950, whilst three went to industrial use in the 1930s and lasted to 1958/60. Only one received a really major GWR rebuild, which included a non standard Swindon designed boiler as well as GWR style cab and bunker. 

    There are complexities around the E class bunkers! 781, 783 and 785 had an upward extension of the bunker with coal plates in Barry days, but 782 and 784 did not - or at least had lost it in their GWR time. I've drawn it in the Barry sketch. There are various problems with the GWR weight diagrams. Diagram A82, which was purportedly the locomotives as received shows the wrong shape cab entrance and the bunker too low. Diagram B5 ,which only applied to 782, shows a GWR shaped bunker that was never fitted. The locomotive appears to have had a new bunker at that rebuild, but it was a plain rectangle, taller than the Barry bunkers and about the same height as the extensions.  783 had a more major rebuild for Diagram B21 and did have a GWR style bunker. Another feature is balance weights on the wheels. I often leave these off as being tricky to manage accurately, but in the case of the E class only 782 appears to have had them. The generous supply of handrails seen on the Barry sketch may not have been present on every locomotive. They had quite an array of pipework behind the safety valve cover which I haven't managed to understand well enough to reproduce.
  9. JimC

    Barry Railway D Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    I've rather struggled with this one. There were only four of them, and they were all built by one builder. How difficult can it be? Well, one source of confusion was that I had 4 drawings, one Barry weight diagram, two GWR weight diagrams and a distorted photo of a drawing by Trefor L. Jones, whose work is generally excellent, but I think may have been struggling with some of the same issues. They were contradictions all over the place. I also had few photos, and all of those were front 3/4 view, so particularly muddy in the tender region. 
    So lets go through some of the issues, and the choices I made. 
    These locomotives were built by Sharp Stewarts for the Swedish and Norwegian Railway, and the Barry acquired them. They were from two different batches, and the first ones were acquired unused, but the second two were older and had seen some service in Norway. The first two were Barry 35/6, GWR 1387/8, and the second two Barry 92/3, GWR 1389/90.
    The first sketch is intended to represent 35 and 36 from around 1902 when they received the tender weatherboards.  At this stage the locomotives seem to have been mostly used for heavy local coal trains in the Barry area.

    In 1909 however the Barry decided that the second two should haul main line coal traffic, and they were modified with new boilers, and new cabs, and the tenders given increased water capacity. All the references state the increased water capacity was from adding a well tank between the frames, but I think in photos I see the tank above the frames as having been extended to the end of the frames, and so I've chosen to draw that. I don't have anything that gives me any clues about the well tank. Another puzzle is the cutout in the tender frames. Both the later GWR weight diagram (B) and Jones draw a cutout coming nearer to the top of the frames, but I don't see that in photographs, so I've chosen to ignore that. Another feature drawn in GWR diag B and Jones is coal fenders on the tender, but there's no photographic evidence for these and RCTS states they weren't fitted so I've chosen to omit them. 

    On the locomotives there is variation in sanding arrangements. According to the photos at least 1390 lost the big sandbox alongside the firebox and had it replaced by one in the cab, so I've attempted to reproduce that.
    So the second drawing is intended to be representative of the second two in their GWR days, but the only external modifications that are GWR are the safety valve cover and chimney. Other differences from the first drawing were made in Barry days. The first two retained the round side window cab and tender weatherboard into GWR days, although at least one of them acquired a GWR safety valve cover.
    Other issues - tender brakes were especially contradictory, and the result is little better than a guess. I'm also getting footplate height variations between drawings, so I'm not as confident as I might be about some of the detail and proportions in that sort of area. 
    But for what its worth, this is my first pass at this interesting and unusual class, but modelers especially should note all my caveats. The NRM have an appreciable collection of detail drawings from the D as well as the weight diagrams. I can't possibly justify purchasing copies, but the prospective modeler might want to consider a trip to York to see if they provide more useful information.
  10. JimC

    Barry Railway C Class

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    Built by Sharp Stewart, the C class originally comprised four small 2-4-0T, without the standard boiler used by most Barry Railway classes. In 1898 two were converted to 2-4-2T, and the other two, one also converted to 2-4-2T, were sold to the Port Talbot Railway. Both the Barry locomotives were gone by 1928, even though one received a major rebuild with a Metro boiler. 
     
     
  12. JimC

    Barry Locomotive Sketches

    By JimC,


    Barry Railway Locomotive Sketches
    Well, I've covered all the main Barry classes in varying levels of detail as my fancy and my sources permit. The other absorbed lines won't be nearly as simple - the Barry Railway was founded late and had a particularly organised and disciplined locomotive policy. There are some obvious books on the Barry Railway locomotives for those who wish to learn more. My main references have been "The Barry Railway Diagrams and photographs of Locomotives Coaches and Wagons" by Eric R Mountford, Oakwood Press 1987, ISBN 0 83561 355 9, Russell's "A Pictorial Record of Great Western Absorbed Engines", Oxford Publishing Co, 1978, and RCTS Part 10 - Absorbed Engines 1922-1947, 1966. I haven't been able to justify to my self purchasing the Welsh Railway Circle's Barry Railway Drawings, but its companion volume Rhymney Railway Drawings is an excellent publication, and I imagine this one is just as good and much more readily available than the older volumes. The drawings are to a larger scale too which is always a good thing.
    There are also on line sources for photographs, almost too many to mention, search engines being your friend, but this flickr collection by Nick Baxter and the 813 fund's collections deserve a plug.
    For those who haven't tried the exercise of interpreting drawings and photographs, this page covers how I go about it. The sketches are strictly representative. Unless you have a full works general arrangement drawing its difficult to have much confidence about a inch or sometimes three here and there - weights diagrams aren't nearly as accurate as one might hope - and the minefield of locomotive condition against date, not to mention the problems of understanding what you are looking at, means nothing is truly set in stone. In general when I haven't understood something I've omitted it. Pipework and inside valve gear especially.  In answer to the always vexed question of liveries, drawing out lining is a royal pain in the neck and doesn't in my opinion add very much to the legibility of the sketches, so I don't do it! I've given rudimentary colours to the sketches because it looks prettier than grayscale, and the contrast between the pre group and GWR green helps make it obvious which is which.
     
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