JimC

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.

Dammit, I just realised. The clue is in the engine. If the tender is being towed by an Atbara, Aberdare or the like, it must be steam braked, and if its behind a Churchward standard it must be vacuum braked. That's correct isn't it? So if you compare photos of 3,000 and 3,500 gallon tender brake standards by the locomotive being hauled then it should tell you whether the angled brake standard is related to vacuum brakes or tender size.

While we're considering the 1900/1901 4,000 gallon tenders, what locomotives did they run with when new? The tender records book doesn't associate them with any particular lot, which is unusual. RCTS associates the last 4 with the Churchward prototypes, but seems silent on the first 16. The question was asked at the beginning of the thread,but unless I'm blind I don't see an answer. Later on they're associated with Stars and Castles, but that leaves a good few years unaccounted for. As we've discussed they were not fitted up for vacuum brakes until some time after they were built, which one assumes was so they could be used with Stars. Locomotives being built at the time of these tenders included Atbaras Krugers and Aberdares, although there's a photo of single 3027 in RCTS (G9) which looks almost as if it could be the large variety. Was there some special duty, perhaps running onto another line, that the large tenders were allocated for?

I've just been through my list of NRM drawings. Nearly everything that might be of use seems to have been published in Russell or Pannier. This one might be helpful, but I can't see a matching drawing for steam braked tenders. 16838 : Arrangement of details of vacuum cylinder & gear & water pickup as fitted to a 3500 & 4000g tender (1900). There's at least one roll of tender drawings, albeit probably later, that they don't dare unroll at the moment.

I greatly fear that you are more likely to be looking at a difference between vacuum braked and steam braked tenders. Unfortunately the various GWR GA drawings published in Pannier and Russell don't cover the steam/vacuum brake transition very well, and with the third party drawings its difficult to be certain exactly what you are looking at.

The original wheels were 3ft 8in, so 14mm isn't a mile away. according to the register the axleboxes and tank used the same drawings as the 6 wheeled tenders.

This is not the time and place. But publishing != copying.

I have a gut feeling I've seen one of those too. I can't remember where, and it might even be your photo. I think its the sort of change that would be made by simply amending the drawing, not issuing a new one, so I don't think the build register I have will help us. Need to see the actual drawings I think, but there's no sign of such an alteration in the versions of the GAs printed in Russell vol2. The Hawksworth frames are like that at the back of course.

Fair use is a USA law concept, so not applicable at all. There is a UK equivalent, Fair dealing, but I believe its more limited. I strongly suspect that publishing on a internet forum is a very different concept to making copies for private use. Beyond that I refuse to go, because I am not a lawyer at all, let alone a specialist in IP.

The previous was one I did a while back, but I felt like doing an imaginary tonight. and thought, supposing the GWR had needed a more powerful Auto tank than the 48/1400s, but which was more flexible and kinder on track than the 0-6-0s. So, I made a 2-4-0 version of the 5400 pannier tank. I moved the leading wheels forward slightly so that there would be a bit more weight on the drivers and a bit less on the leading wheels. Even so it was so comically quick and easy that it rather defeated the object of a bit of fun. Also the weight on the leading wheels worried me a bit. So, what about a side tank version. This pulls the weight back a bit, so is probably better balanced. It is, I suppose, really as much an updated version of the Metro as the 48 is an updated version of the 517. Funny how the logic repeats. Might have been good for the Wenford Bridge line...

Supposing Churchward had become enamoured of wide fireboxes and atlantics, and instead of Stars built this. Shortened Std 6 (Great Bear) boiler, on chassis developed from the 4-4-2 Star prototype. I think most likely it would be more than a little overweight, and be close to King route restrictions.

You should have said... I typed in the drawings quickly into my spreadsheet, and didn't look at size against type... Lets see... The two lots of 1900/01 4,000 gallon tenders, (16 in all) built with steam brakes, are noted as having been later converted to vacuum brake. The odd 4,000 gallon tenders built for 100, 98, 97 and 171 in 1902/4 were the first to be built with vacuum brakes. 3.000 gallon tenders up to lot A61 (1904) were built with steam brakes, 3,000 gall tenders in lots 62, 63, 64 and 71 (1905-1906) are recorded as having vac brakes. 3,500 gall tenders didn't start until Lot A65 (1905) and by that time all tenders were being built with vac brakes. So there were a reasonable number of 3,000 gallon tenders built with vacuum brakes. The record book, as I said in the email, doesn't have a lot to say about reservoirs. Need to consult the drawings.

Ah, maybe I wasn't clear enough about that. Its obvious looking at the book that some junior had the job of filling in the pages of the register in advance with titles and headings, to in effect create blank forms. For example Lots A5 to A87 have all the headings filled in in an amazingly consistent and very florid italic hand with lots of curlicues. A88 to the end of the first volume at A126, OTOH, are filled in in a very different upright plain printed hand. So when the form came to be filled in for each lot, then 'vacuum brake cylinder' had to be crossed out and 'steam brake cylinder' written in for all steam brake tenders. I also suspect that the beginning of the book we have was filled in after the date. I don't see that the lad would have been writing vacuum brake cylinder" before many tenders had vacuum brakes!

There is a note in the records book - uniquely for these tenders - stating that they were originally fitted to 4088, 4091, 4092, 4008, 4083, 4087, 4016, 4032, 4019, 4056 You'll note these are a mix of Castles, Stars, and rebuilt Stars. The note is in a different hand to the rest, and I strongly suspect it is much later, maybe even very much later. The random nature of this list, coupled with the undoubted existence at an early date of high sided tenders on earlier style frames, makes me strongly suspect that A112 was not the only lot built with high sides.

There's a german Wikipedia page here. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pf%C3%A4lzische_P_3.II Doubtless all the usual warnings about the unreliability of Wikipedia apply. Google translate reckons A google translation of a wikipedia page must be fairly definitive in unreliability, but it seems the contraption under the cab is not cylinders and in fact the cylinders are inside.

Also from the discussion on the other forum, this was my take with the (G)WR 1500 very lightly Riddlesized.

Think milk train brakes?

Presumably your big bogie stock would be vac brakes, as there wouldn't be the myriad leaky connections that were problematic with 4 wheel stock, so a very big brake van would be unnecessary? You'd need it to ride alright, so perhaps a combined brake van and goods van, in other words a conventional parcel trains brake? Now if you want an interesting speculation, consider adoption of containerisation in the early/mid 19thC? With easy transhipment of goods between wagons then many of the disadvantages of mixed broad and narrow gauge would be minimised. Wagons could all be railway owned, just the containers owned privately, and the speed and reliability of freight traffic greatly increased. Freight yards might contain instead of coal staithes working platforms where the containers would be swiftly offloaded... By the 1930s just about all freight traffic might be in containers on flats and well wagons. AIUI most vans were part loaded by weight, so containers might go down to much smaller sizes, maybe even small enough to be stacked two deep. Some containers were small enough to have 3 or 4 on a 16ft wagon, so bogie flats might have eight or ten...

In that case your project for the upcoming weekend is to devise a class numbering scheme that will be guaranteed unique and also be so simple to explain that it fits in a light hearted one line post:-)

90 70 0152 001-0 GB-SDR (I'm assuming we A =100, B=110 etc so class E 2 is 15 2 and that the Sodor Railway grabs SDR).

Installation on other GWR classes may experience practical difficulties...