JimC

No, but it made financial sense. As Cook tells us the Churchward Prairies were getting to the age where they needed a really major overhaul, new cylinders and the like, more than a normal heavy general. By rebuilding them as new classes with different performance characteristics the work could be done on the renewals account, which was healthy, and not out of revenue, which was not. Its noticeable that the renewals ran several years longer than their sisters that weren't updated: it wasn't just a financial trick.. I don't think that would have helped. Cook again: he reports that the Std 4 boiler couldn't keep up with the cylinders on the 43 with bigger loads on fast freight trains, because the coal consumption was rising above 100lb per sq foot of grate per hour. So the need was mixed traffic engines with a bigger grate. The Granges were excellent, but too heavy for blue routes, so there was really no choice but to build a new boiler.

Plenty of innovation on the detail engineering and manufacture though. If Gresley's big ends had been as good as Collett's then the LNER might have had rather fewer reliability problems in WW2.

But the job wasn't locomotive designer. The job was to be the senior executive to make the big decisions, knock heads together and get as many as possible of the LMS technical staff pointing in the same, preferably correct, direction. Would Hawksworth have been better at that?

maybe, but 17xx and 27xx were pre grouping pannier tanks albeit in Dean block sequences, so 57xx had a certain logic too. The trouble is there are only so many digits!

Personally I think they were trying for cheaper insurance premiums...

GWR certainly. At the time of the grouping one number was issued to three different locomotives in the course of a year.

The trouble was the GWR were averse to major renumbering, so there was the original sequential system 1 - 1300, Dean's block allocation by type, which was 1301 - 4400, and Churchward's 1912 scheme of class allocations by second digit, which managed to include a good percentage of the Dean groups too, especially as the particularly confused 4-4-0s were renumbered in 1912. Something that gives an insight into conservatism of ideas is that the last new GWR classes, the 15s and 16s, as well as the renumbered 48s were given number ranges that matched the old Dean block system, with 14xx having previously icluded Metros and 517s, and 15xx and 16xx 0-6-0T.

My understanding was that LMS numbers ran to in excess of 2,000, but whereas those below 2000 had 4,000 added making them 4xxx and 5xxx those above 2,000 were renumbered.

The flexible, highly idiosyncratic but logical when you understood it GWR system would have been a pain in the neck with a numeral prefixed.

The GWR had a handful of locos, notably 5 Bulldogs fitted with air brakes in the 1914-1933 period, I think they were for working through trains from the Great Eastern. Not sure if there were others.

In Bernard Barlow's "Didcot Engineman" he tells of lodging with a fireman at Barlby Gardens just off Ladbroke grove and walking to OOC - about 45 minutes.

I recall seeing a station on a closed line in light and dark stone in the 1970s.

Upper Thames locks are 109ft (33m) by 14ft 8in wide. (4.4m). I would have thought it would be unusual to transport a large boat by rail, simply because the river is more convenient. My best guess is that by your 1960/2 date most small boats would have gone by road. Rail transport of small racing boats would have been earlier. I suppose the most likely rail transport would be if someone had ordered a motor boat from one of the Norfolk boatyards, which were not water connected (other than by sea) to the main canal/river network. Hence researching 1950s Norfolk broads cruisers might be a good bet. Norfolk boats don't generally run much over 46ft and 14'6 beam, usually smaller.

I'm not sure the big 14 ton cruiser in Russell is a very likely load for Bourne End. The most obvious guess would be racing sailboats for Upper Thames Sailing Club, or possibly smaller motor craft. There are videos on Pathe News showing the annual regatta, which was a significant event, for example this one. That should give an idea of craft in the area. https://www.britishpathe.com/video/cowes-on-thames

There's also, I think, a bit of a question mark about how well the GWR engineering would have survived LMS shed maintenance practice.

Presumably, though, any small drivered 10 or 12 wheel locomotive would be better 8 coupled.

It seems to me problems were more likely to be the springs rather than the casings. If the springs in the taper buffers were more liable to failure then that would be a motivation for a replacement program. But this is 100% pure speculation.

Cab shutters were from the early 30s I think. My understanding is that the idea came from absorbed welsh locomotives. One might speculate that they were mostly in use when the weather was so vile no sensible person would be out with a camera... If you do a major web search for b/w photos of GWR locomotives you'll see the odd one shut, but you're right, they're amazingly rare.

Do you really believe that? I can't speak for the railway press, but in fields where I have a bit more knowledge...

Anyone who believes any digital image is evidence of anything seriously needs their head examined.

From the imaginary loco perspective not all changes might have been fruitful. I can imagine, for instance, if Cook had been recruited by the LNER, the emphasis might have moved from new design to improving reliability on the existing stock.

I do wish people wouldn't repeat the 135 number. Signal box timings were to the nearest 30 seconds, the clocks weren't synchronised (other than once a day), and all that number means, IIRC, is something between 100 and 170. The story certainly grows in the telling: I haven't heard the Wootton Basset stop one before although Tuplin produced a particularly highly coloured set of speculations. The report in the Railway Magazine was as follows. Two Miles a Minute During January last a statement obtained wide currency in the daily press that Mr. H. J. Robinson, then just about to retire from the position of Chief Locomotive Inspector on the Great Western Railway, had been responsible for driving a locomotive in this country at a speed of 120 miles per hour. It is needless to say that readers of The Railway Magazine who are familiar with all the speeds hitherto claimed as railway records, and in particular with the figure of 102-3 m.p.h. achieved down Wellington bank of the G.W.R. on May 9, 1904, which from that day to this has had an unchallenged supremacy, are interested to know on what authority this new claim has been made, as is evidenced by the extensive correspondence we have received on the subject. We therefore wrote Mr. C. B. Collett, the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, who communicated to us an interesting account of what actually occurred. It appears that in May, 1906, No. 2903 one of the newly introduced 2-cylinder 4-6-0 locomotives and herself fresh from the shops was taken for a trial run light from Swindon to Stoke Gifford, with the intention, after running the engine round the Filton-Patchway triangle, of having "a sharp run" back. Signal checks were experienced, however, and No. 2903 was then stopped at Chipping Sodbury until "line clear" had been obtained through to Wootton Bassett, after which she was re-started, and there was evidently some running of a very startling order down the 1 in 300 from Badminton to Little Somerford. The purpose of the run was to demonstrate that an engine taken straight from the shops could be run at over 100 miles per hour. Those on the footplate included Mr. Collett, who was then Assistant Manager of the Locomotive Works, Mr. G. H. Flewellen, who was Locomotive Inspector, and the Foreman of the Erecting Shop, Mr. Evans. The timing for some distance by the mileposts with a stop watch was given as 120 miles per hour, and the clocking between the signal-boxes of Little Somerford and Hullavington was booked as two minutes for the 4½ miles. Mr. Collett points out that, while the object of running a new engine on its first trip at over 100 miles per hour was achieved, the timing could not be regarded as accurate and that the 102-3 m.p.h. record of "City of Truro" in 1904, made under the personal observation of one of the most careful recorders of his time the late Charles Rous-Marten with the aid of a chronograph reading to one-fifth parts of a second, must remain the best duly authenticated railway speed record that this country has yet witnessed. One may speculate - although there's much too much speculation on the topic - that the crew on the footplate had a stopwatch of limited accuracy - one second perhaps as opposed to the 1/5 second stop watches of Rous Marten - hence the rather round number. I think that if they got say a 15 second half mile with a 1 second watch that only means anything between 112.5 and 128.5 even ignoring the possibility of operator error, which demonstrates that the actual speed may not have been utterly beyond the bounds of credibility and also why it would have been unsuitable to claim as a record.

I'm not sure that question has a reasonable answer. You can certainly identify a given Star with a given tender at a given date, but I don't think you can say that any particular variation was especially associated with the class over another. Possibly the high sided type, but there were never huge numbers of those. Then to make matters more complicated there were a good number of Swindon works bitsas, where later style frames were put under earlier style tanks and so on. Miss Prism and I were recently musing over tender no 1560, which is conventionally called a Dean 4,000 gallon and was built in 1903 to run with Saint prototype no 98 (so under Churchward). However in the early 1930s it got a major rebuild, and was fitted with 1931 style 'Collett' frames and a "Collett" style wrap around fender, but retained handrails and the like to the original style.

Interestingly quite a few of the earliest 0-6-0 tanks of that lineage were side tanks. The first of the 1076 class of 1870 had side tanks, then short saddle tanks, then full length saddle tanks, then panniers. The 633 class of 1871 were side tanks for their entire lives, but their immediate successors were saddle tanks which became pannier tanks. The 1813s of 1882, arguable the direct ancestors of the 57s also started live as side tanks and went through saddle tanks to pannier tanks. Conversely the 517 class, ancestors of the 14xx, started life as saddle tanks in 1868, but were soon converted to side tanks which they never changed from. There doesn't seem to be an especial pattern. I expect it was down to detailed design factors.