JimC

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.

On GWR pannier tanks the weight is mainly taken by supports front and rear underneath the tanks. On a 94 both go to the footplate. On a 57 the rear one goes to the footplate, and the front one to the saddle/smokebox assembly. On a 1500 the front one goes to a transverse I beam under the boiler, and thus to the frames, while the rear one is riveted directly to the frames. There are straps across the top, but they don't seem to be large enough to take really serious weight.

Well that's fine, but its not immediately obvious that: - reducing your income from the site, no matter how inadequate you might consider it - increasing your overheads, because the station will still need to be maintained and probably insured - removing a visitor attraction (even if you hope to expand it later creating a new museum from scratch requires investment) - using the site as a PW depot are actually going to do anything much to reduce the pickle situation, even if one doesn't consider the implications on the reputation of the organisation.

There's a note in the Tender drawings register against Lot A117 (53 flush bottom 4,000 gallon tenders built 1928-30) booked against Halls saying "For LOT 254 80 "Saint Martin" Class (4900-4979). Note in Red "These tenders [illegible] be used on 4000, "Castle" & 4700 classes and 53 tenders of 3,500 gallon capacity taken from these engines will be used on 4900 class engines with 27 more tenders built on Lot A118.". 53 is an interesting number. About that date there were 9 47s, plus the Bear in Castle form, 20 new Castles (lot 234, 4093 on got 4,000 gallon tenders from lot A113) and 73 Stars (some converted to Castles) . Similarly Lot A124 (20 flush bottom 4,000 gallon tenders built is booked against the 9300s, with a note saying these tenders were used behind Halls, and the 93s given displaced 3,500 gallon tenders.

Its a weird statement. Someone should have said to the WSR board "This is going to make us look really bad to third parties"

http://www.sdrt.org/Blog/Trust-Receives-12-Months-Notice-To-Quit-Washford-Site.Html Not that it actually says anything!

Think the boot was on the other foot, and it was a Beyer peacock proposal to the GWR.

Apparently so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_ML_2/2 and http://www.microfeinmechanik.de/index.php?ebene1=10&ebene2=140

I agree that the most likely intention of a conversion of an O11 kit by changing the side strapping was an O14. I wonder if he had found a photograph of an O14 that had been converted to Morton brakes, maybe after underframe damage and with the either side rule coming up. Stranger things happened in Swindon workshops. I think I might be inclined to continue with that: the effort of changing the brakes feels a bit OTT.

9ft or 10ft wheelbase? Scale 16ft or 17ft6 over headstocks? What's the scale width of the door? Vacuum brake or not? What brakes are on the other side?

I suspect the problem on the UK loading gauge would be that the further forward the cylinders are then the greater the throw on curves, and thus the cylinders are forced smaller again.

Dean built a couple of experimental tandem compounds on the GWR, one Broad gauge, one narrow. The broad gauge one had the larger low pressure cylinders in front, and they had two piston rods on the side of the pistons, and these rods passed each side of the high pressure piston, and all 3 piston rods were connected to the same crosshead. This was less than successful, and on two occasions the pistons disintegrated at speed, the first time in Box tunnel, showering the crew, which included EL Ahrons, with scrap metal. The standard gauge one was more conventional, with a single piston rod for both pistons, but had a bush for the rod between the pistons which frequently seized.

I think that's a good observation. If it were humanly possible to hand fire a longer firebox than the King one then my inexpert guess is that a longer box and the current King wheels moved forward would be the way to go, but it would require very clever ash pan design. Here's (above) the layout of wheels and boiler (minus ashpan) on a King, and below the firebox extended about 20 inches and the wheels moved. Its obvious, I think, that all the problems will be around detail design of grate and ashpan. As I frequently failed to get across to executives, all strategies look fine on paper, its the detail where you fail... As a bonus if you could make this work it would probably have better RA than the King.

I'm not sure you can characterise the successful 4-6-0s as 4-4-0 developments simply because the ones that obviously were 4-4-0 developments were mostly failures. Churchward stated that ‘The modern Locomotive Question is principally a matter of boiler’, and its hard to disagree. Given a boiler that will be successful its then a question of putting a chassis under it. The narrow firebox seems superior to me because it has more surface area to fire volume for better heat transfer, the fly in the ointment being to get coal into it and ash out of it. I reckon the wide firebox works with a combustion chamber to get the heating surface to grate ratio to a more reasonable number, but It doesn't seem to me to be optimal, even if the practical problems of coal in and ash out are considerably easier. An oil fired GWR style 4-8-0 would almost certainly be a success, but brings you smack against the question "why would you want to burn oil in a steam locomotive when its so much more efficient to burn it in a diesel engine?"

There's an idea... Quite tricky to work up something vaguely believable for this. I spent a lot of time agonising over wheel positioning. I decided that if I called it a hump shunter and gave it 4ft1 wheels then the ashpan might just about work. Its got a Standard 2 boiler, and I'm imagining its one of the 225 psi variants, so the tractive effort is a tad over 28,000lbs, less than the big 2-8-0 tanks, but close to an SR Z class. This is now a Mk 3 - I realised I'd drawn the reversing shaft running through a driving wheel in the Mk 1... While the Mk 2 valve gear probably wouldn't have worked and there were problems with the brakes. More difficult than it looks this steam locomotive design...

You remember better than me then. I'm not surprised!

There was indeed a Churchward era 0-8-0T proposal, around 1905, but it seems to have been abandoned at quite an early stage. Presumably it wasn't working out into something useful. The surviving weights drawing shows a 44/45xx boiler, very high pitched, presumably for ashpan clearance over the axles, and light axle loading. A number of the early pannier tank installations stopped off at the smokebox like that. This is my interpretation of the weights drawing, which is in RCTS.

In many ways I submit that's not a bad thing. A building is a big lump of capital that a charitable organisation will have trouble finding, so a big lump gift is appropriate, but staff and equipment needs to be continually resourced out of regular income: if you rely on an occasional patron for it then sooner or later you won't get one when you need it and will be in big trouble.

I should have checked - RCTS has 3258. However RCTS shows 3282 in the row above, against 3216/9016. The dates of withdrawal and rebuild in RCTS suggest that 3282/3216 and 3258/3217 were not in the works together.

The welded up portholes are still clearly visible on 9017. Presumably they were blocked when the cab was still on 3258*. With so many photos of 9017 about it should be possible to get a feel for what percentage of photos they are actually visible in. *corrected, thanks for headsup Ms Prism

For example 28th Feb 1924 Now don't get me wrong, the sum is utterly trivial compared to many thousands being authorised to spend on machinery at the same meeting, not to mention whatever the directors received for turning up to the meetings, but at least there's a small acceptance of the principle...

On the other hand without the baleful influence of Lenin and the agitprop from the Soviet Union there might have been less excuse for business owners to ignore social justice. The more enlightened business owners realised that the quality of life of their staff was important and did justify some of the company's money. Without the evils of marxism/leninism proclaiming that only violent revolution leads to social justice, perhaps society might have developed a bit more positively. In GWR loco committee minutes there are frequent authorisations of spending that had nothing to do with the business. I doubt the same is true of the current GWR. But we're getting a long way...