JimC

If we are honest the King didn't quite make nominal 40K TE anyways so it cannot have been a fundamental design aim. Truth is the King primarily got to 40K by being a bit economical with the old actualité! Its come back to me that in Pole's book he states that it was coming out just below 40K, and he asked if they could not get it over the limit. He then talks about wheel size, but his memory must have been playing him false, because its clearly the first rebore numbers manipulation that nudged the Kings over 40K. As Cook says the smaller wheels were a key part of the design. The thing is though, unless the King was going to be a significant advance on the Castle what was the point of introducing it? The Great Bear had a boiler with, I believe, the same pitch and same diameters as the King over 6'8.5 wheels, so it was possible to squeeze it in over the larger wheels. We might note, though, that the smaller wheels saved a bit of precious weight. As for RA, surely it wouldn't have been affected if they had designed it for 21 tons or whatever - new GWR bridges were already being built for the 23 ton limit, and older ones had been constructed for 19.5. A 19.5 axle weight limit King would have been a Castle. So, all locomotive designs being compromises, what alternate compromises could Collett have considered for the King? Larger wheels and a slightly lighter boiler would have given slightly less capability for heavy trains, and a lot of GWR loco development over the preceding years had been about increasing train weight.

Who was it who made that claim, was it Nock, Gibson or Tuplin? I'm of the opinion it doesn't stand up. Reducing wheel size on express locomotives was a general trend, and Cook tells us the reduced wheel size was an early decision. Taking the cylinders out to first rebore on the first few locomotives on the other hand...

There's also the GWR policy of improvement. The GA shows the locomotive as built. According to the tender drawing register tender axle boxes, for instance, changed in 1915 and 1937 on new construction, and there were two different designs in use between 1884 and 1915. There were certainly different bogie designs used on 4-4-0s, but I don't have data on whether axle boxes changed.

Did all the 6700 and 6750s have jointed coupling rods? Has anyone got a photo or a drawing? I can't find anything on line.

This comes down to the two sets of rights. As your book is GER it must surely be out of the original copyright. The NRM only hold copyright on their copies, not on yours.I Again its the two forms of copyright. There is copyright on the actual order of words, and there's copyright on the image taken of them. The two copyrights may be owned by different people. The sensible thing is to get an agreement from employer or former employer. Most are pretty reasonable. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-of-copyright-works

That's quite feasible. Assignation of copyright does not depend on physical ownership of a copy of the item.

Well, if you buy an original copy of Bradshaw then copyright has expired and you can copy it as you like. However depending on how much work you do preparing it for printing there may be some copyright in your presentation of it. So publisher B can't reproduce your version of Bradshaw, but they can reproduce the original. So and so's collection is a decidedly dubious area. Just because I have a print - or even an original negative - I may not own copyright on the original, and in some cases the copyright owner may be near enough untraceable. However if I make reproductions of the original, especially if scanned, cleaned up, altered colour balance etc, then I'll have copyright on those reproductions, but if someone else also has a copy of that print nothing I do with reproducing my print affects what he can do with his print. Other than that I don't know about the precise legal status of 'xx collection'. I suppose if you can't credit the actual copyright holder its the next best thing, and stating where you got it might prevent others who have a print from getting excited. Can anyone comment.

There are potentially two varieties of copyright on any work. The first is the authors copyright, which expires at authors death + 70 as described. The second is copyright on the actual presentation. So if I make a new issue of a book written 40 years ago I have to have permission from the author or their estate to reproduce their words. But say my new issue contains illustrations I have selected, a layout I have carefully worked on and so on, then I have copyright on my layout. So if in 5 years someone wants to publish a facsimile edition of my version of the book, with my layout etc, then they have to seek permission both from the original author and from me. If they want to produce a brand new edition with their own layout they only need permission from the author. When NRM claim rights on the reproductions of material they produce its the second type of rights thay are claiming, not the first. Yes, it all seems irksome, but turn it around, why on earth should the people who did all the hard work, be it authorship back then or layout more recently, be the only ones who don't benefit from the sale of a work? An example of the limits of the second style of copyright is that when I produced illustrations for my book I used as source some drawings sourced from the NRM. But because I redrew each illustration completely there were no copyright issues, because I wasn't reproducing the NRMs copy. If I had wanted to use the original drawings, rather than draw them myself then I would rightly have had to seek permission and pay. It does hurt, though, that the publisher wanted me to include a limited number of original photographs, and boy did they make a hole in my income. I don't really begrudge photographic libraries their money, because keeping a library together is a serious piece of work, but the disparity in what they made for each illustration in my book, and what I made for each illustration I drew or took was not a happy calculation for me! JimC

We covered this topic recently in a digression on a thread about the Rapido 15xx which I don't think you participated in. There were, as I expect you know, two types of Std 10, the KA and KB. KA were the original superheated ones on all the absorbed classes and the 2251s. KB were the unsuperheated ones for the 94s and 15s. According to RCTS 215 KB boilers were constructed. There were 10 GWR built 94s, 200 outsourced 94s and 10 1500s. So that suggests that there were never enough saturated KB boilers to go round the 94s, so it seems likely a few always had KA boilers unless any KA boilers were converted to be non superheated. Presumably there was a good supply of KA boilers in the 50s as pre group locomotives were withdrawn with boilers that would have had life left. I'm told, incidentally that the 15s all had at least two boiler changes, and that 9400-9 all had KB boilers when withdrawn, so while the last 94s might not have had boiler changes the early ones definitely did. If anyone has access to the records for 9400-9 it would be interesting to know the boilers they had when turned out. The numbers ought to let us know whether they were new or reused. Similarly the 94s which had GW supplied boilers, but unfortunately I'm locked down away from my records and can't look up which ones they were.

I have the impression, compared to the LMS say, that almost all GWR locomotives were expected to serve passenger turns if needed, hence the rarity of locos with 3 link couplings and no vacuum brake (67xx and ROD in the 50s? ). And I wonder if this in turn is part of the GWR's relative reluctance with diesel shunters, as the early ones were simply too slow for such duties. Any comments people? The first 94s with superheating seem intended as traffic locomotives, although they lost this with boiler changes. Alternatively perhaps they were just turned out with second hand boilers, which would have been superheated? On that topic, according to RCTS, it doesn't seem as if enough saturated Std 10 boilers were built to cover all the 94s and the 15s, so were there always a few superheated boilers among the 94s, or were some older boilers retubed without flue tubes? ISTR some 94s were built with GWR supplied boilers, and wonder if those were new or refurbished. An obvious difference between 5700 and 9400 is the firebox. I don't have numbers here, but wouldn't the Std 10 firebox have been wider than the P class? The 2251s were I think all screw reverse by the time the 94s came out, so that was one difference in the cab layout.

One oddity was that locos from many different pre group classes*, although normally the lower powered ones, were picked for auto working, and the gear seems to have sometimes been taken off again at overhauls, but the new built classes kept their gear for all their lives, and don't seem to have swapped with their non auto fitted cousins, 74s and 58s. *the ones Johnster lists were predominant though.

I wonder if it's significant that the trailers could only be driven from one end. That must have forced certain limitations on what could be done. Do we have anyone here who has driven a 14 or a 64? Could they comment on whether cab first or boiler first is more congenial?

Does anyone here have access to the records for 9400-9409 to tell us what boilers they had?

Oh no, the 97xx are clearly pannier tanks with the tanks extended downwards, whereas, for example, the 1101s are obviously side tanks with the tanks extended forwards. [grin]

I find it hard to see station polluting smokeboxes as anything other than a major own goal, penny wise and pound foolish making the railway a far more unpleasant environment to work in and even more importantly travel on.

The real reason things get done may be different from the ones presented to the directors though. In my own career I saw large sums expended on what I saw as bees in bonnets, vanity projects or 'looks good on the CV" when I felt the money would have been far better spent on low profile developments which would have done much more to enhance the work of the organisation, but wouldn't have been nearly as exciting.

It's one of the amusing quirks of steam enthusiasts in the UK that folk wish to deny certain locomotives have pannier tanks. I suppose because the pannier tank configuration is so strongly associated with the GWR. So I observe enthusiasts and or owners of industrials and others that clearly have pannier tanks ardently denying it. Even more amusing when you consider locomotives with no footplate and outside motion, where the distinction is at best blurred, and verging on non existent on some locomotives.

A study of numbers indicates that the 94s were built to replace the last of the pre group 0-6-2T and 0-6-0T, which were withdrawn over the period the 94s were built. So a cheaper alternative to more 56xx. And yes, more boiler capacity and brake power than the 57s.

Mmm, but if there hadn't been the desire to build a new design then they wouldn't have built a new locomotive, in the language used before the war on the GWR they would have renewed the locomotive utilising such parts as might have been suitable for re-use, which would probably have been not many... The Duke of Gloucester is certainly the hardest of the BR standards to justify. But perhaps they foresaw more heavier trains, in which case more 8ps would have been desirable.

They had to be building *something*. Even with short lifetimes, steam being capital cheap and maintenance heavy, I imagine the standards were cheaper than keeping life expired pre group locos designed in an era of cheap labour running. As for alternatives, the Southern had to have new design, the standards were substantially LMS anyway, so it's really only West and East where there was a case for perpetuating existing design schools. But with the East in the middle of a design upheaval anyway I think it can be argued that only on the Western was there really a strong justification for perpetuating existing design.

Any number of ways to skin the cat, my usual division is small wheel v large wheel, but with 54s, 64s and 74s honorary members of the small wheel club. It is tricky to draw firm lines, especially on the basis of power, because Collett's 'small' classes, esp the 74, whilst clearly of the 850 line of development were actually more powerful than earlier members of the 'large' 57 lineage.

Excellent piece of work. The numbers may seem dry, but they tell us a lot we simply cannot find out any other way.

I think this is something of a non-existent distinction. If you look at the GWR pannier tanks the straps across the boiler are not large at all, but the support brackets under the tanks are very substantial. I suspect few engineers would pick hanging tanks in tension over sitting them on solid structures in compression.

If you ignore capital expenditure electric traction has been the superior option for over a hundred years.

I would still be interested to know whether signalmen at Bognor regularly had to provide authority to pass at danger, or at the other extreme whether it was the first time this signalman had ever had to do so?