JimC

They're certainly a minefield, the pre group 0-6-0Ts. The challenge is not so much what they were like when built, as what they were like a few years down the lines after overhauls at different factories.
Making larger scale digital versions of the drawings available is a very interesting idea. I'll give some serious thought to that. Thankyou. Relationships/contracts with publishers may well not permit it though. 

I've produced a sketch of the as built condition. It took an awful lot longer than I had hoped. A lot of it was not finding it very congenial to work up, and a lot more was having a very  detailed but very indistinct works drawing to use as a source.
Livery is largely guesswork. I have a black and white shaded drawing which gives some clues, but little more. I'm choosing to believe that it was painted up something in the style of GWR Wolverhampton, the S&C having been the foundation of that line, but that's completely and utterly a guess. 

I'm still unsure of some constructional details, and cannot make sense of @billbedford's  comment re valve gear above. I don't think it really matters for the sketch though. I do remain unconvinced that they would have stayed in this configuration for all their twelve years of service, but there's no evidence otherwise in any source available to me, it's only surmise.  Its so easy to construct a grand theory, but I'm all too aware its easy to construct grand theories that then get utterly demolished when subsequent evidence comes to light. 

Update: 5/11/2023. I've found a more detailed description of these locomotives in E.L. Ahrons. The early Great Western standard gauge engines, The locomotive magazine No 260 1914, which amongst other things states the dome was painted, so I amended the sketch. Ahrons is quite positive about one of the oval boilers having been reconstructed with a circular profile in 1866, which would seem to torpedo my theory about an earlier reconstruction, although these were events from before Ahrons was born.

As a light hearted aside, whilst talking about another ex S&C locomotive in the same piece, Ahrons' dry sense of humour is evident. He records that the locomotive in question "had but a short career, the chief incident in which appears to have been a collision with an itinerant horse, as a result of which, No. 32 sustained damage to the extent of one broken split pin on the outside valve gear. Structural alterations subsequently required by the horse were not stated.". Thanks to Steamindex for the extract.

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

The valve chest was under the cylinders, hence the odd, sloping bottom to the cylinder block. 

 

There was only one piston rod in each cylinder, but because the front axle was in line with the centre of the cylinder there was a yoke to take the drive past the axle. This yoke's top and bottom elements were round bars which must have worked in some sort of bearing, though this part is not clear on the drawing. This whole arrangement was a substitute for conventional slide bars. 

Could you enlarge on that please? I'm having trouble working out what you mean. As far as I can see there is maybe a few inches, no more between the cylinder and the axle, so I don't see how there could be any kind of central piston rod or yoke external to the cylinder - I don't see where it can move.
  I've sketched my interpretation below, please could you clarify what I haven't  understood. 
It seems to me as if the valve (red in front elevation) is about 30 degrees off horizontal, as well as sloping downwards on the plane of the valve rod (very faint pink), so pretty much below.
The cylinder is in green, and I don't see there's room for any kind of yoke. We've certainly got the two round bars top and bottom, but my interpretation had them as piston rods. I think I see bearing surfaces for conventional slide bars on the crosshead (red)

I posted a link to the sketch on the GWR Elist and a fellow member suggests that the drawings show two piston rods per cylinder, one above and one below the axle, and (bearing in mind the possibility of pareidolia) I now reckon I see that too. Besides how else can it possibly have worked? But it doesn't seem to me that this setup would have worked, presumably adequately, for twelve years under Joseph Armstrong. I think it reinforces my (utterly without evidence) conjecture that they must have seen a significant rebuild fairly early in life, maybe even in S&C days, into something more conventional and more in the style of their renewals. Maybe even a smaller wheeled long boiler 0-6-0? But I don't know what sources there are for this era, what RCTS drew on for their research. And even if anything does exist in some register in one of the archives, can I face working through pages of impenetrable victorian copperplate  handwriting to find it?

Reading RCTS more carefully and looking at the Vulcan drawing the original 34 and 35 had the exceedingly unusual feature of an oval section boiler. This boiler had the long dimension vertically, which one supposes explains why there was room for railings round the footplate, otherwise only seen on the broad gauge. I'm tempted to speculate that perhaps these oval boilers didn't last very long, and that some time before 1866 these locomotives had been rebuilt with more conventional boilers, and when Armstrong came to rebuild the chassis he retained the replacement boilers, which would have been of more recent and more conventional construction.  If boiler and at least some motion components could be retained then the reconstruction looks rather more sensible. Just about everything in the chassis must have been discarded with even the wheels of a different size. 

I'm still struggling to fully understand the Vulcan drawing, but I'm also coming to think that at least the valve rods ran under the front axle rather than above.  I'm really struggling with the drawing as regards the piston rods. As far as I can see at the moment the pistons are directly in line with the leading wheel axle, which is surely impossible. I'm increasingly tempted to believe that the locomotives had a major reconstruction that hasn't been recorded, because I find it hard to believe that something so very unconventional ran for 12 years. 



 

Thanks for that (I think) Id forgotten that Vulcan list. Lot of work to do presenting some of them. 

I'd love to know the economics of these reconstructions. Going back to mid 19thC the tools and facilities were so different from how we'd do stuff today I have to wonder whether they found it economic to alter stuff we'd think crazy to reuse.  I recall being gobsmacked by Holcroft's description of cutting the holes in a saddle tank for handrail pillars *by hand with a chisel* as late as the turn of the century because they had no powered tools that would function on a curved surface. 

Coming back to these, I've just started working up a sketch of the 1866 incarnation of numbers 34 and 35. These numbers seem to have been reserved for oddities! The original 34 & 35 were a pair of locomotives built by the Vulcan Foundry which the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway bought off the shelf in 1853, and one may suspect at a bargain price. They could be described as long boiler 0-4-0 tender engines, but the drive was not to either wheel axle, but to an intermediate crank axle, somewhat in the position that the middle driving axle of a long boiler 0-6-0 would be.  In 1866 Joseph Armstrong took these weird contraptions in hand and reconstructed them. They reappeared as long boiler 0-6-0s, the only ones of this configuration to be built by the GWR, although a fair number of others were taken over in the early days. I'll probably do a separate blog page for them when the sketch is done.

It occurred to me to draw a comparison between 94xx (above) and 15xx Chassis. They are sketched with the boiler in the same place. 
Note that the apparent disparity in size between the cylinders is because the 94 has slide valves between the cylinders, but the 15xx has piston valves above the cylinders. If I were to draw a plan view the 94 cylinders would look larger. Even so The difference in where the weight is is striking. I hadn't really appreciated, until I drew it like this, just how much weight there must be on the centre axle with the crank. It would be interesting to know the difference in weight between a crank axle and a plain one.  If anything, though, the drawing tends to confirm my supposition that the outside cylinder/walschaerts configuration was inherently front heavy. It would be interesting to compare with other designs. A quick browse of my 1957 Observer's Book suggests that other 0-6-0T with outside cylinders tend to have shorter overall wheelbases than the 15s.  Most are specifically described as dock tanks.

Here's a reconstruction of how I hope No 96 might have looked when still in Sharp Stewart form, but after coming into GWR ownership. Apparently she and her sister were named Grasshopper and Cricket when in service with the Birkenhead Railway, and the brackets on the tank are presumably from where the name was removed. There is, apparently, some doubt as to which was Grasshopper and which Cricket. The sketch is worked up from a rather muddy photo of the opposite side of the locomotive, so a good deal is conjectural. Hopefully it gives a reasonable impression of the original. The photograph is presumably post 1876, which is when Great Western Way says the cabside plates replaced painted numbers.

No thoughts on those wheels anyone? 

Presumably Wheatsheaf was a precursor to Croes Newdd Shed? There's nothing about it in my Lyons books on a quick glance, but I see mention of Wheatsheaf junction on line which was very close to Croes Newdd.

Now, here's a little puzzle. On a page about Stafford Road Works here http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/Transport/Trains/gwr/mpd2.htm , Mervyn Srodzinsky includes this photograph of no 40 after her second rebuild with an 850 boiler. 

Now RCTS doesn't say so, but I reckon that she's been refitted with 4'0 diameter 850 wheels. They're the same H section spokes, which is not how Ahrons drew them in the drawing I used as a source for the initial sketch, and the splashers look well oversize. What does the panel think?

It would be nice to sketch the locomotive in original condition as well, but there's nothing in RCTS. There is, however, a drawing of No 41, which was built by the same company at the same time, but with a different boiler and inside cylinders, so I will probably draw that as being as near as one can get.

This document turned up on Facebook...

Here's a sketch from Miss prism's photo of 157 with a Wolverhampton boiler. I've given it what I hope approximates a Wolverhampton paint colour, but not the lining. You'd never run out of variations if you were modelling the Armstrong/Dean era locomotives would you?  I've also added this image to the original post so they are all together.

According to RCTS 157 was Northern division based, and that boiler was fitted at Wolverhampton. I don't know if its just a freak angle, I suppose it must be, but it almost looks as if those rivet heads are polished metal! That photo is in RCTS but dark and muddy, that's a far better version with much more detail visible. I may attempt a sketch of that form. Very hard to distinguish between colours in that photo though isn't it. Really useful post, thank you.

Well, I've made a small amount of progress on my 3521 tank drawing. I found a detailed drawing of the trailing axle assembly of the 0-4-2T version in Ahrons "British Steam Locomotive". Just need the rest of the locomotive now.  GWS, who have a considerably stronger 19thC drawing collection than the NRM, have a fair collection of odd components - much of the trailing bogie is available in detail drawings by the look of things - but no general arrangement or frame plan. Amazing what strange things survive. The NRM do have a couple of weight diagrams, but at 27+ quid a shot and with 19thC weight diagrams typically having next to no detail... Suppose I had better bite the bullet...

See what I mean... Here's where I am. It will be that boiler, although not sure what position, , frame outline on the trailing wheels drawing is from the drawing in Ahrons, frame outline on the driving wheels is from the frames as reused on 4-4-0s and the two don't line up... 

A bit of perusing of drawings tells me that the leading bogie on the odd 4-4-0T pannier tank 1490 is pretty much the same as the trailing bogie on the 3521s, so there's another source...

I've had sight of the GWR drawing register which gives the titles of drawings. Its evident that there were definitely two bogies on No 9, and that the trailing bogie had brake gear fitted.

Having worked through the drawings list its slightly frustrating. Nothing new about that when dealing with No 9! Most drawing titles don't distinguish between leading and trailing bogies, and those that do (frame plan, life guards (=guard irons?)  include both on the same drawing. There's also no evidence from the drawing list that the axle boxes were different on the leading and trailing wheels, but this is not definitive. As is often repeated, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They might have had two entirely different styles of axlebox on the same drawing. There is certainly no evidence that the two bogies were radically different, but there isn't any firm evidence that they were fundamentally similar either. There were parts in common with the 4-4-0 No1 (lot 46), but not many and not major. The two such  drawings are entitled "Spring for bogie" and "Bogie brackets & slides" The two designs were being worked on at the same time (1879-1880 drawing dates for Lot 56, 1879-1881 for lot 54 which I suppose is circumstantial evidence that they would have been similar, but they don't appear to have shared major components. I don't think I've really discovered anything that Les Summers hadn't spotted before. I'm perhaps less confident that the No 1 and No 9 bogies were similar than I was before I started the exercise, but I think the balance of probabilities has to be that the two bogies on No 9 were much the same with outside bearings. I wonder where Holcroft got inside bearings from. As far as I can see Twining drew inside bearings because he knew there were no fixed outside frames, but we now have proof positive he was mistaken about the possibility of fixed leading wheels.  So did Holcroft get inside bearings from Twining, or some piece of 60 year old office gossip? 

No 9 again, this time in her 1884 incarnation. This retained the external  Stephenson's gear, in my opinion probably slightly modified, but was given a new domed boiler. In 1890 she was to be reconstructed again, to much the form of No 10 as shown with Diagram C above. In 1902 she was reboilered with a Belpaire boiler - domeless with a raised firebox, which was a Class N type. She was withdrawn in 1905, whilst 10 followed into oblivion in 1906. 
This drawing is pretty well founded. I have a copy of a part Swindon works drawing which was published in the Engineer and shows the locomotive from the boiler centreline down and driving wheel forward, and I was given an original Swindon blue print of a weights diagram of the 1884 configuration by Chris Hext, ex Swindon drawing office, which is now with the GWS at Didcot.

That photo is lifted from Les Summers' book, its his photoshop recreation of No 9.  I recognise parts of it as being lifted from a photo of the 1813 class - know the one?

I've heard it described as good looking, but not to my eyes I'm afraid.

 

Here's my imagining of No 9 in its original form, and here are my notes I put together whilst working up my ideas. I must acknowledge various sources listed below, and assistance/ideas from the people on the GWR Elist https://gwr-elist-2019.groups.io/g/main/topic/dean_4_2_4t_no_9/95663670 and Model Engineering Clearing House forum. All errors, stupidities, misinterpretations etc are my own. 

No 9 in 4-2-4 form is a hard project. Nothing contemporary seems to have survived. We have a few sentences in Joy's (valve gear Joy) memoirs and some paragraphs from E.L Ahrons, who joined Swindon works within a few years of the locomotive being dismantled. We also have a drawing produced by Earnest Twining about 1939, for which he had sight of two original drawings which have now disappeared.

Its hard to discuss No 9 without considering Les Summers ideas. These ideas were first printed in "Backtrack", volume 18, April 2004, and in his book "Swindon Steam" (https://www.amberley-books.com/swindon-steam.html). The first thing to be said is that Mr Summers has done a good deal of primary research - and I haven't. All I'm doing is sitting on his shoulder.
 

Sources - Contemporary.

Joy

Joy's diaries/memoirs. Joy undoubtedly saw drawings and probably the locomotive itself, albeit under construction ('I saw drawings and all and she looked a beauty' ) . He describes it as "8.0 single and double 4.0 wheel bogies at each end". 

E L Ahrons. 

He worked at Swindon Works from 1885. No 9 had been reconstructed in 1884, so presumably Ahrons never saw the original, but may well have heard about it first hand. He also states that he had seen parts of it - an interesting statement suggesting some of what wasn’t reused in the 2-2-2 hung around for a while before being disposed of.

Sources - Mid 20thC

Twining

E W Twining wrote an article in "The Locomotive", published Jan 1940, which discussed some of Dean's experimental locomotives, particularly No 9. At that time there seem to have been two surviving drawings, which Collett made available to him. Malcolm Brown, from the Model Engineering  Clearing House forum, has kindly photographed the article from the Locomotive and posted it on flickr.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/151383600@N02/52567179711/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/151383600@N02/52566715522/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/151383600@N02/52567454744/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/151383600@N02/52567454639/

Its interesting and useful to see Twining's conclusions. The centreless rear bogie is agreed, but there's an issue with the support. On No 1 the bogie was hung from outside frames, but Twining considers that the tank drawing precludes any outside frames, so there must have been some sort of bracket from the inside frames. He notes that an unnamed member of staff at Swindon, who was interested in the locomotive, agrees with Les Summers that the leading bogie was surely similar to the trailing bogie in style. Twining, however, concludes that two bogies with minimal side control was surely impractical, and feels that the leading wheels must have been in the main frames (as per the broad gauge Rovers) and so no leading bogie at all. 
 

Holcroft

Holcroft states the trailing bogie was as per No 1, but that the leading bogie had inside bearings. I wonder where this comes from?  Can we regard Holcroft as a contemporary source? He was about three when the locomotive was dismantled. He wrote his book in the 1950s, and had undoubtedly seen Twining’s article since he uses illustrations from it. However he is definite about a leading bogie and doesn’t follow Twining’s supposition about fixed wheels. 
 

Sources - Modern

Summers 

He suggests that the motion components from No 9 were used unchanged when the locomotive was rebuilt. This is a compelling theory, but there’s a problem. If we make the assumption that the tanks are accurate on Twinings drawing, which apparently was made with the original drawing available, then the eccentric rods shown on the works drawing of no 9 in rebuilt form don’t fit. There’s what appears to be a shaped recess for the link of the Stephenson motion as it moves up and down.

Summers also considers, from researching the Swindon drawings list, that the bogies were similar to the 2-4-0T no 1. This aspect of his research seems very sound. The Swindon drawing register lists a drawing of certain bogie components as covering both locomotives. He extends this to make the proposition that the recording of the leading bogie as 7’+ is incorrect, and both bogies were the same short dimension. The short leading bogie certainly gives room for the eccentrics and radius link to clear the bogie, which is not the case if the rebuilt length eccentric rods are drawn.

Mike Oxon

 in a model reported on Rmweb, https://www.rmweb.co.uk/blogs/entry/14782-william-deans-express-tank/ bases his model on the 2-2-2 motion drawing, like Summers. In order for the motion to fit he swaps the bogies round so that the long wheelbase is under the bunker and the short wheelbase under the cylinders. 

The short front bogie concept has two potential objections - firstly the statement that the long bogie was at the front, and secondly the tank cutout as drawn by Twinings. If a copy of the original tank drawing could be found that would settle the question, but it appears it has not been seen for 60 years.

Conclusions.

Because Twining claims that the tank drawing precludes any form of outside frame and a central pivot for the rear bogie, I am inclined to believe that this was a detailed "arrangement of tanks" type drawing and the detail Twining shows of the internal cavities in the tanks for the motion are correct. If I accept this, and I freely admit that its a rather shaky foundation, then that means that the eccentric rods on the 2-2-2 were new, and longer than those on the 4-2-4T version of No 9. That in turn means that I can accept the published long wheelbase for the leading wheels. It would be interesting to see if the drawing register for around 1882-4 contains any mention of motion components for lot 54. I freely admit, though, it still seems unlikely that Swindon would have fabricated new extension rods, so I certainly wouldn't rule out Les' and Mike's belief that the rods were as per the 2-2-2 and the leading bogie must have been shorter.

Every source seems to support the concept of a similar bogie on Lot 54 as Lot 46 so I am inclined to consider that is as well proved as it can be. I think the recorded wheelbase is almost certainly correct: if I take the relative positions of tanks, boiler and bunker to be correct, which seems reasonably soundly based, then I can't make Mike's ingenious interpretation of reversed wheel spacing work on a drawing. I think either the trailing wheel ends up too close to the rear buffer beam or the first of the rear bogie ends up in the ashpan. But feel free to prove me wrong.

That leaves me with Twining's interpretation of a non bogie leading bogie. That implies Ahrons got his description wrong. I really struggle with that, Ahrons was just too near the time, and its not as if a fixed pair of carrying wheels was an unfamiliar concept to him. Holcroft didn’t repeat the fixed wheels theory when he wrote his book too. I think Les must be correct, and there was a bogie of the same style and many of the same parts as the rear one, albeit with the longer wheelbase. The obvious objection is Twining's - that such an arrangement would scarcely be trackworthy. Well, of course it wasn't. I wonder if the arrangement with fixed leading wheels is perhaps too close to an 0-6-4T to be quite so spectacularly keen to fall off the rails. Maybe Dean simply over estimated the centring effect of the swinging links.

I have chosen to ignore Holcroft's statement about inside bearings for the leading bogie, and have made the assumption that he is following Twining's drawing rather than stating something he knew. Arguably this is the most unsafe conclusion I have drawn, and I am not altogether comfortable with it. However carrying wheels with inside bearings were rare on the GWR, and no other bogie had inside frames until the Churchward standards. I also have trouble working out where suspension components would actually fit bearing in mind the presence of the cylinders.

So altogether I come up with a different conclusion to others who've trod the same path! That's at least consistent with the shadowy nature of the whole locomotive. Feel free to rip my conclusions to bits folks, that's what they are there for! I really ought to go up to the NRM and look at that drawings register, but its a big trek for me, and I'm not a keen traveller these days. Also, I presume it means much eye straining deciphering of Victorian copper plate handwriting.

Things that worry me.
The frames

With inside frames only and the bogies to clear the frames get awfully shallow. Perhaps there was no real footplate and the tanks were outside the frames and overhanging them.
 

The Tanks

The tanks get horribly complicated around the driving wheels and axles. Indeed to all intents and purposes they are in two halves each side. How did water flow between? I’m making the assumption Twining had a detailed drawing of the tanks. Why doesn’t he show the water filling location? His text implies a back tank under the coal, which is likely enough, How did the water flow to the other tanks?

Complexity
It seems fearsomely complicated to build, although most of that seems like platework. I wonder how the costs in the account book Mr Morgan found for Les Summers compare with others?

Brakes

Twining has drawn clasp shoes on the driving wheels. I can’t find any evidence of such a fit out on other GWR locomotives. The conventional arrangement on singles was brakes on driving and trailing wheels. An express tank - no tender brakes remember - and just a single wheel braked sounds decidedly sketchy. Is this an argument for Twining’s fixed front wheels? Then it could have had 6 braked wheels. Or did they arrange bogie brakes. It was possible I suppose, done on carriages. I've just drawn a single brake shoe, but surely there must have been more.

There’s an awful lot of gubbins in a very small space between driving wheels and the trailing wheels of the bogie. We have the sanding for sure, then presumably suspension arrangements for the bogie and the brakes, Can it all fit? Quite a complicated area.

Argue away!

This first sketch is intended to represent no 10 towards the end of her days, as in 2-2-2 diagram C. Its quite a bit more conjectural than I would like in places, most notably the brakes and what is visible of the motion and reversing gear.

On 06/08/2022 at 13:59, Schooner said:

All I really learned from this is that we're overdue the return of the bustle to high fashion.

except now the same effect is achieved with implants...

Just a small thought. I'm currently further up the coast, and one thing I've noticed as a scenic feature is a raised beach. Coastguard Lane, West Wittering is a little local road that I reckon runs on the edge of one, so on one side of the road it drops down a few feet to an area that's variously wet/verging on salt marsh, whilst the actual road is on the edge of the raised beach, and presumably bedded on shingle. I find it easy to imagine a railway builder settling on such a feature - a sort of one sided embankment with level ground on the high side for a yard. The lane runs down to a creek, and although I don't believe there's a history of boat or ship building on that spot, its easy to imagine there could be. Another scenic thought is mud flats with the tide out. No pesky water to reproduce. A little further down the harbour there are sea defences made from railway sleepers. Traffic wise, your yard would have timber in, but quite probably there would be fish/seafood traffic in the other direction. Lobsters by rail is apparently still a thing according to a bit of web search! 

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. 

I've been sent a copy of Diag C, so I'm covered:-)

Yes, as far as I can see once the original boilers were gone the pitch was 6'11.75. RCTS doesn't document the handful with domed boilers and side tanks, but they look as if they are higher pitched than the originals to me, and so I drew it at the higher figure. 

I think the 1813s would be a R2R manufacturers nightmare. I suppose the fact that none lasted long enough to receive BR livery would be a major killer anyway, but you can permutate forward dome, back dome and domeless boilers, round top and belpaire fireboxes, side tanks, five panel and three panel saddle tanks, short pannier tanks, full length pannier tanks, various bunkers, narrow, standard width and enclosed cabs, top feed or not, superheating or not, but of course all GWR locomotives look the same...