JimC

A Castle or even a King boiler might be worthwhile with all that extra adhesion... Maybe a pony truck to help the leading unit into curves. Could be a better option than the proposed 2-10-2 for the iron ore traffic.

[Pedant mode on] Milk is passenger rated traffic. [Pedant mode off]

 

Chris

Mmm, I'm not very familiar with the 47s at work. Did passenger rated "freight" trains such as milk, parcels etc form a regular part of their work load, or was it mainly freight rated?

Couple of things...

Earls. I'm sure I've seem it said that some of the Earls in question were GWR directors and had dropped a hint the'd like to see their names. Cook (in Swindon Steam) seems to have been of the opinion that choosing the Dukedogs to get the Earl names was Collett indulging in a little personal humour at the noble Lords' expense.

Cook also records that at one stage a further batch of 47s were requested, but Collett elected to build Castles instead, which suggests that using a Castle on fast vacuum freight (eg milk) is soundly based.

 As I said, I am not a loco engineer, and do not know if the 2nd axle drive of these engines is a consequence of the jointed coupling rods; perhaps someone of greater erudition in the matter will comment?

I'm not a loco engineer either, but hopefully I've absorbed some stuff spending a lot of time looking at their work while writing and drawing the book in the sig...

I believe the original plan for the big freight tank was a 2-8-2T much more closely based on the 28s with a Std 1 boiler (RCTS J38). Looking at the drawings here this would have been a long locomotive with an awful lot of throwover at the back, so its not surprising it wasn't progressed with. I just crudely blocked it out, and its a horror! The obvious next alternative was to put a Standard 4 boiler on, but when I line up a standard 4 boiler against the 28 chassis then the firebox comes smack against the third set of driving wheels, so that wasn't viable. 

So what it looks as if what they did was to move the second pair of driving wheels back to the same position as the  3150 2-6-2T, using the shorter size of con rods as per the 2-6-2T, and the third and 4th drivers further back yet so there was space for the firebox between the second and third drivers - basically the same arrangement as the 2-6-2T but with two driving wheels, not a driving wheel and a trailing axle. But this meant an undesirably long fixed wheelbase, hence a degree of flexibility from coupling rods and thin flanges on the centre driving wheels.

I could produce a drawing of the chassis and boilers all lined up against each other if folk are interested and it would help.

History has (I think) been unfair on the poor old ROD. There were 521 built. If it wasn't right, you can bet they would have been rebuilt by other companies of the big 4.

LNER enthusiasts, how did the LNER crews regard them? From reading LNER.info the LNER seem to have tried quite a number of boiler variations on the class.

I know the GWR crews generally loathed them, but I'm not sure any other pre grouping freight locomotive would have come out well in a head to head with the 28s, The GWR reworked the ones they kept appreciably - they had new copper inner (at least) fireboxes and GWR superheaters. It would be interesting to know how different the new fireboxes were to the originals. 

The LMS didn't keep the ones they had very long - indeed weren't many bought simply as a supply of cheap tenders? Wikipedia (FWTIW) suggests they had poor route availability on the LMS though.

I understand there was also a proposal to reboiler the RODs with Std 1 boilers. I may have to take a look at that.

I suppose you could consider the 2-8-0 and 2-6-0 as alternative answers to the question "what do we do with these 2-8-0Ts we don't need?" which in practice resulted in the 7200 2-8-2Ts. So in both cases they would be conversions, not brand new locomotives. I'm completely in agreement with Johnster when he suggests there would be at best no advantage over further 28s. The short spacing to the rear wheel of the 2-6-0 does look a bit odd: the wheel/firebox relationship is that of the parent 2-8-0T. As an even more bizarre answer to that question I schemed out a 2-8-0 tank/tender with the 42 basically unaltered other than the drag box, and a little short wheelbase 2,000 gallon tender added, assuming that a steam powered waterscoop could be managed. With the original short bunker of the first 42s I think the combination could even be turned on a 55ft turntable, but the full size 42/5205 bunker might be a bit marginal.

At some point, we will be placing a cat into the steam chest...

Castle Class 7038 Schrödinger ...

And I'm imagining the Surrey Junction Railway being absorbed by the GWR, not the Southern at the grouping, the Southern not being much interested in the Cranleigh and Redhill lines, and then I can run my favourite locomotives and stock in my favourite countryside...

I slipped up, I should know better since I usually take care with word usage.  And yes I do agree that 'unique' requires no other qualifier because it either is or it isn't.  I shall now go and iron my hands to teach myself not to do it again.

But to throw another curveball into this pedants festival, if you go down to a detailed enough level every steam locomotive was unique. They were series built, partly by hand, and it's notorious that the position of minor fittings, pipe bends and the like would vary slightly because they were generally positioned by eye or ruler, not with a precision template. And if you go down a level further then doubtless each component would have different flaws or inclusions, patterns of sand from casting, fractionally different bearing diameters and all the rest of it.  So every locomotive was unique, if only at a microscopic level...

These came about on another forum as a result of a discussion about Didcot's Barry wreck 5205/42xx

This was something I believe the GWR considered. Its basically a 5205 chassis given a Std 1 boiler and a tender. It would be very much equivalent to a 2800.

This one is completely fictional. Its the 4200 chassis truncated at the 3rd pair of drivers and retaining the Std 4 boiler. Its turned into what is effectively a small wheeled 4300 Mogul. The adhesion factor might be somewhat dubious, although the tractive effort would be no more than a Castle.

A question. Were there any welded/flush rivetted Collett 4000 gallon tenders? I seem to recall a reference to there being some but have never seen a photo.

 

I was at Quainton Road last week and noticed a half-completed welded 4000 gallon tender for their rebuilt Hall. However that is I think just the best way to construct a tender tank these days.

 

Chris

RCTS states that about 5 of the last lot of "Collett" tenders (A186), probably the last 5, had welded tanks. That would be 4015 to 4019 in 1946. There's no mention of a drawing number for a welded tank in the drawing register though. Not everything seems to have been recorded, as with the high tender sides we've discussed above, which also don't have a drawing listed in the register.

OK, I've been trying to put together a little summary of changes to some of the major components from the drawing register for the 3,500 gall tenders up to A112, and the 4000 gal ones beyond that.

Starting with lot A79

At Lot A92 the axleboxes changed from drawing 12504 to drawing 47737, and the brake cylinder changed from 25611 to 48415.

At Lot A112 the frame/erecting plan drawing changed from 41428 to 72342,  and the spring gear drawing from 41660 to 72129.

At Lot A113 the frame/erecting plan changed to 76937, the frame plates from 41509 to 76938, the spring gear to 77388, the tank to 76940, and the brake gear to 76941.  A GA drawing was now listed, 76936. The frame/erecting plan appears to have served that purpose earlier on.

At lot A120 the GA changed to 89790, the spring gear to 89791, and the tank to 87554.

At Lot A123 the GA changed to 92460, the erecting plan to 92461, the frame plates to 92642, the spring gear to 92464, and the brake gear to 93074. For A123 only 76941 has been crossed out and replaced with 93074.

At Lot A145 the axle boxes changed to 111273.

At Lot A167 the brake gear changes to 113704

The Hawksworth tenders changed frame plan to 122517, frame plates to 121720, and tank drawing to 122574. so even though the slab sided Hawksworth tenders looked radically different a lot of the components were the same as their predecessors.

Its quite clear that the design changes were incremental, which in turn means that new and improved components could and as we have seen often were fitted to earlier tenders.

What would be useful is to correlate the drawing numbers with what we actually see. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at a tender and say those are 111273 axleboxes. Or is my background running a parts dept in my youth showing? From a modelling POV it would doubtless be handy if component manufacturers could correlate their offerings with the drawing numbers.

The complications are interesting. I was just looking again at this photo, claimed to be circa 1923.

http://railphotoprints.uk/p176522356/hc2648ef#hc2648ef

A 3,000 gallon tender unless I am mistaken, bearing lot A112 style frames, so that suggests it cannot  be before Dec 1923. But when I looked at it further there are short spring hangers and the later very straight springs, much the same as tender 2376 now has, but which don't appear, as far as I can make out, to have been fitted to new tenders until lot A123 in 1931. So I very much doubt that photo is circa 1923. Might 1933 be more likely or is there other dating evidence that I am not au fait with?

The other interesting variation is the tender believed to be 2202 (currently carrying 2056) normally with Ditcheat Manor. That one has the prominent rectangular reinforcing, which uses long spring hangers, not the short ones, but still the straighter springs.

The permutations of frame/reinforcement/spring type/spring hanger etc seem almost endless. That's the trouble with Swindon's standardisation for modellers. It didn't mean all parts were the same, it meant that parts were highly interchangeable over decades, and there really is no such thing as a definitive configuration.

Mike, 41425 is the drawing for lot A79 on, (the drawings register lists 41428 as being the frame plan for that lot) so it is indeed the previous drawing - but for the previous design back in 1911. Drawings were amended as required, but I think if radical changes had been made they'd have had to issue a new drawing. The drawings register lists 72342 as being dated 24-11-23.

The drawings register suggests work on the flush tank design started from 24-4-25, so before the A112 tenders were in service. So it doesn't seem as if the A112 frames were anything but an interim design. I suppose the A112 frames may have proved unsatisfactory on repairs even before A112 was built, but its very very unsafe speculation.

Swindon is more accessible for me than Shildon, so I shall have to go and have a look, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis that this design of frame cracked spectacularly and had to be welded up with all the original rivet holes gone.

Some of the welsh lines would be an interesting example for loco policy. There were examples of a design built by one of the major manufacturers for one company being built by another for example, sometimes modified, sometimes not. The Brecon and Merthyr had 6 locos that were effectively copies of GWR medium Metros, and 0-6-2s that were copies of Rhymnney classes, but with round top, not belpaire fireboxes. Then there could be house style too - no matter who built locomotives for the Barry railway they all had the Barry cab.

OK, I *think* I see. 

Take a look at this.

Apologies for the drawings, my sketches were never meant to survive reproduction at this sort of size. 

The upper one is my best interpretation of the setup in drawing 72342, which is Drawing 18 in Pannier no 17, and not the best reproduction for interpreting fine detail.

The lower one is my interpretation of your photo and others of tender 2376 as preserved behind 2818. 2818 is at Swindon now isn't she? I'll have to try and get down there and take a closer look.

As far as I can tell from the way things line up, the actual profile of the frames looks the same. What's changed are the later style springs and spring hanger arrangement. *If* I'm right one might guess that there were stress cracks all round the bolt holes, being so close to the edge of the frames, and so they had to weld up the cracks and the holes - or more likely weld a whole new piece in. How does that match up with what you've seen in the flesh?

Note the strengthening sections welded into the underframe to support the spring hangers, similar to the underframe with preserved 2818

I'm confused. What's the difference between what we are seeing there and the standard Lot A112 / drawing 72342 underframe? 

I think that if this was a truly viable solution for British railways, we would have seen it implemented by now.

You are discovering all the reasons why it hasn’t happened.

That's probably true for the majority of our imaginary locomotives, except that few of them are being analysed to this level of detail.

The chances of us being able to solve problems the full time engineers have found insuperable are not great, but we can have fun trying and educate ourselves at the same time.

It feels as if the availability of cars has massively influenced the whole way we conduct our lives, with massive change in that respect since the 1960/70s,

Absolutely and completely. How many people do you know who let the availability of public transport to their workplace influence their choice of house? And how many do you know who move house to be in easy reach of the new job? Indeed how many jobs outside London would be even practical to live within public transport reach of? I think the end of "jobs for life" mass employment has completely changed the living and travel culture as well as the actual workplaces.

The gig economy is already a fact of life, as an IT contractor I have been part of it,

One thing to be properly self employed in a skilled job where you are difficult to replace, quite another to be a minimum wage peon dragged back to all the worst excesses of 19thC exploitative employers... Just because its an electronic queue outside the Amazon distribution web site, instead of a real queue of real people outside the factory gates waiting to see if there's any work today, it doesn't make it any better...

Damn, I sound like a bloody socialist. I'm not, but some of the way things are going...

Before then, there was a different relationship between those making something and those they were making it for, far less oppressive than today.

I don't know that those who flocked to the new cities in search of regular wages would agree with you. Awful as most of the industrial revolution cities were, it was clearly still better than working on the land, struggling to have enough food to get through the winter living in a wet mud floored hovel at the Lord of the manor's beck and call. Easy to pick up the romanticised Arts and Crafts movement vision of the happy peasant living securely on the land, with a nice paternal lord and lady looking after him,but all to often the brutal reality was very different...

Interesting to see the eccentric rods with all the others apparently just slung in the tenders with odd lumps of cotton waste. I suppose it was conventional to take all the motion down for travelling, but it doesn't feel encouraging to see it left in the rain. I suppose one can't tell how heavily (if at all) greased it was.  Also I see that there appears to be a second something on the cab roof alongside the whistle. My feeling though,looking at photos of GWR RODs, is that its too close to the existing whistle to be a location where a second whistle might have been fitted. I'm away from my books: is it recorded whether the locomotives loaned to the GWR had a second whistle for the duration of the loan? I'd think the brake whistle would have been regarded as important for unfitted locomotives...

Another thing to do is consider loading gauges in detail. The lines being upgraded for container traffic may have more potential. If we imagine that upgrade program making more progress with more investment...

Redhill.

Did they never go further on towards Tonbridge?