JimC

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...

They are, but its enormously convenient for the informed user to be able to interpret the number without having to look it up. Basically the concept makes sense, and the same sort of thing has been in use for part numbers since forever. What is perhaps less clever is the precise format since the "daily use" number is embedded within the middle of the long string. it would have been better if it had been one end of the other, so it was easier to pick out, but I imagine that error was made decades ago. The various large text or different colour options are sensible.

I was thinking that after this discussion, but I was also thinking that the sales would never remotely match the amount of expenditure in research to do a thorough job. There's around 12 pages on the subject in my upcoming book, if you don't mind me gratuitously plugging the gratuitous plug in my sig, but that's just scratching the surface, bringing together info from a few published sources. The discussion here has highlighted a number of things it didn't occur to me to cover - most notably the shape of the coal space. Just doing the sums using various on line calculators. I get 3,500 gallons of water to be around 15.5 tons and 560 cubic feet, while from what I can make out on line 7.5 tons of coal is going to be between 300 and 350 cubic feet, so the coal space would seem to be very vaguely half that of the water space. I think I'll try and get some more info together for my own interest, but the thing that really makes it a minefield is that so much happened in the factory to alter tenders. I haven't seen exactly what is on tender record cards (of which 90% have been destroyed). Has anyone seen them? I understand there is not much detail of what got changed in service - only when the capacity was changed.

If the tender number the VCT database has is correct (2032) then its not an A112 tender, its from lot A97. The high sides and tank are known to have been built new in preservation. To the best of my knowledge the only surviving A112 tender is 2376, which is with 2800 class 2818 currently at NRM Shildon, and although that tender was almost certainly built with high sides, it received low sides at some time during its GWR/WR service. Its certainly documented that tank replacements or swaps were not uncommon in service, and we know that Swindon had fewer tenders than locomotives, but does anyone know whether it was GWR practice to maintain the tanks separately from the chassis? Were the tanks and sides routinely lifted off and repaired, then put back on the next available chassis as a matter of routine (as with boilers), or did this only happen if major repairs were required?

It depends. my understanding is that the small Prairies, 44 and 45, had pony trucks at each end, but the large Prairies, 31s, 51s 61s etc had a pony truck at the front and a radial setup at the rear.

Need a break from something else, so am looking at a few drawings... The Pannier article shows the top of the tank sloping both fore and aft and laterally in the centre of the coal space on 85060 (3,500 gallon lot A118), 121718 (Hawksworth A180/183 for County) ( and a drawing I take to be 92460 (4,000 gall, A123 on) . It also has 41429 the tank drawing for A79-112 , and that appears to show a sloping end to the tank, but steeper and shorter, in the fore and aft plane only. 72342, the GA for lot A112, also seems to show the same slope, which matches what the drawing register says. I don't seem to have any drawings for lots A65 - A78, but the obvious supposition is that they had the vertical face shown in Wenrush' post above. There are drawings of Dean era tenders in Russell, but I'm not confident in my interpretation of which line is which, other than to say there's no sign of any angled lines, all seem vertical or horizontal. Of course we don't know what might have been done with replacement tanks, and we also need to be aware that the drawings register is not a complete guide to what was built - there's nothing in it, for instance, to inform us about the high sides on at least some if not all of lot A112 and I very strongly suspect some tenders in earlier lots.