JimC

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?

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

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.

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.

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...

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...

Did they never go further on towards Tonbridge?

According to LNER.info the LNERS last 100 were after the GWR ones. The LMS had the last 75 of all I believe. As you say its hard to believe they were worn out beyond the reach of a heavy general and a new firebox, but who knows. You can go to Kew and read *what* the Loco Cttee decided, but never have I found a word of why. After reading these comments and other material about RODs today I find it very easy to believe the policy was "we want to keep 50 and we'll have 50 more for some cheap mileage, spares and tenders", but I fear it will never be more than surmise.

I'm not sure that quite lines up. The day of the wall street crash was 29th October 1929, and I've just been through the list in RCTS and I make it that only 5 of the 50 were withdrawn Nov 1929 or later.

If only there were a nice r-t-r 1500 to act as a chassis donor. Boiler and cab are 9300, albeit with the Holcroft curve removed, and the tender is a standard Hawksworth reduced in height.

And here's the 1500 Chassis Mogul with a Std 4 boiler... [5 mins later] falling off the rails, I now notice. Never mind...

Hawksworth 15xx do you mean? It would probably be better to have a longer boiler and give the pony truck something useful to do. A standard 2 boiler instead of the Standard 10, or even a Standard 4.

According to RCTS the last 4 of the 84 hired 1919-1922 were numbered thus, but only 80 were purchased in 1925, so the 6000/3 numbers weren't needed again.

I think it likely they simply didn't need any more 2-8-0s than the number they kept, but the price they paid for the RODs was so low that it was worth taking them, grabbing what mileage was left on them (which naturally saved mileage on other locomotives) and then breaking them for scrap and spares. Literally asset stripping! After 1919 no more 28s were built until 1938.

It seems to match the drawings I worked up for A65 to A78 very well, so I would think so, but I'm learning about this all the time.

I discovered you can only post an image in comments if its externally hosted, you can't add an attachment, which is a PITA. Fortunately I have hosting. Freezer's 9400 is drawn with a rear overhang 10 inches too short! Thanks for the headsup about the URL Mikkel, some spurious non visible characters appeared after php. I thought I checked it!

Should have realised it wouldn't be that simple... Just been reading the current GWS Echo, which has a feature by Adrian Knowles on the Counties. He states that 3801 on (ie Lots 165 and 184) were built with vacuum brakes, and only lot 149 (3800, 3831-9) with steam brakes. RCTS says the same. The third lot, of course, had Holcroft ends and lowered cylinders as well as the other later developments. The first 16 4,000 gallon tenders were certainly recorded as steam braked, and must have been so for some time. The drawings records book has written in "Converted to Vacuum to Drawing No 38109" in pencil on both relevant pages. The significance of this is that 38109 is the GA for lot A79 on, so that means the conversion must have been after 1910, That drawing was in use for all subsequent well tank tenders. The other interesting detail in the books about these tenders (including the last 4)is a note written in red ink against the water pick up gear drawings which says "converted to hand gear now". This suggests that they were built with water pickup apparatus that wasn't hand gear - steam operated perhaps. The relevant drawing numbers only appear for the 4,000 gallon tenders.

I've done a series of drawings for various web articles, and also for the item in the footer, and use a similar technique. I've written it up a bit here. https://www.devboats.co.uk/gwdrawings/howidraw.php A couple of nasty catches to watch out for when transferring your scans is that sometimes the scale is not exactly the same horizontally and vertically, and also, especially if the originals are in a book you don't wish to destroy, it can be easy to get distortions near the gutter where the paper tends not to lie flat. I would add to your guidelines horizontal ones. In particular wheel centres, wheel edges and boiler centreline, documented in RCTS and on many drawings, are IME good to use. That way you can align as much as possible to a grid. I also have a library of standard components where I can get drawings. Interesting how often components on a weight diagram don't quite match the official drawing! I do believe your example is from Freezer's book. Have you tried his 94xx yet? Not his finest hour! Jim C

Don't reckon so. [Non IT techies look away NOW!] Remember at this date typical business programming was in CoBOL, which in its native format, as I recall, didn't really deal with integers, single precision and the like. Numbers were handled (just dug a 30 year old textbook out to remind me) as simply numeric with a number of digits, and leading zeros had to be specifically suppressed. Mind you if Wikipedia is to be believed TOPS is written with a suite of IBM assembler macros, but I suspect number handling would be similarly basic.