Imaginary Locomotives

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, Wolf27 said:

This has an Alco RS-2 feel about it.

 

cheers

 

Shane

Was the Triang dock shunter based on anything? Does it warrant a better underframe & wheels?

[Ramblin Rich]

2 hours ago, ScottishRailFanatic said:

You suggest, I deliver. Combining both points, a centre-cab with heightened engine compartments.

I'd prefer lower engine compartments to allow better vision, "Clayton style". This would have poor vision both ways. Even coupled in multi there wouldn't be a cab at an outer end, which was one advantage the 20s did have over other type 1s.

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, ScottishRailFanatic said:

You suggest, I deliver. Combining both points, a centre-cab with heightened engine compartments.

 

12 minutes ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I'd prefer lower engine compartments to allow better vision, "Clayton style". This would have poor vision both ways. Even coupled in multi there wouldn't be a cab at an outer end, which was one advantage the 20s did have over other type 1s.

Thats what I was suggesting, a cab at each end with a raised engine compartment. I envisioned the centre cab with the normal height bonnets.

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Was the Triang dock shunter based on anything? Does it warrant a better underframe & wheels?

Yes, Bagnall 1950s shunters such as this one, though not by any means a scale model. There were 0-6-0 versions too (possible two-into-one splice for 03 chassis)

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, rodent279 said:

4 hours ago, Wolf27 said:

 

Was the Triang dock shunter based on anything? Does it warrant a better underframe & wheels?

Yes and if you want.  It is based on a Bagnall New Zealand shunting loco, and is in fact a bit bulky as a UK industrial, being pretty close to the height and width limits of the UK loading gauge in 00.  Mine is scheduled for new wheels when I acquire my long awaited round tuit (actually, I am going to replace the chassis with something jackshaft driven if I can), but (surprisingly) runs well enough on it's old Triang steamrollers through my Peco code 100 flangeways. 

[rodent279]

Thanks. Nice to see that the 0-6-0 version worked at the Tring cement works at Pitstone, a few miles from where I misspent my yoof. I must have passed it many times on the train, but don't recollect it at all. Together with a Sentinel, the exchange sidings would make a nice little layout.

[Barclay]

14 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

Still, excellent to see it again.   Where would it fall in terms of power, do you think?

 

13 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Nice, and very plausible. Would/could that have replaced either the class 13's at Wath, or 08's at many other locations, for shunting and trip work? If say it had 500hp, and a top speed of say 30-35 mph, it would be ok for short trips, but would it be overkill for station pilot duties?

I wonder also what the maintenance cost of 2 x 4 wheel bogies is, compared to a rigid 6 wheel frame with con rods? Would it be more expensive & demanding from a maintenance point of view?

 

Hi the real Brush-Bagnall Bo-Bo's, built for the Steel Company of Wales, had a 515HP Mirrlees Engine, but a maximum speed of only 28mph, so heavy shunters really, rather than road engines. Quicker than an 08 of course.

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, Barclay said:

 

 

Hi the real Brush-Bagnall Bo-Bo's, built for the Steel Company of Wales, had a 515HP Mirrlees Engine, but a maximum speed of only 28mph, so heavy shunters really, rather than road engines. Quicker than an 08 of course.

 

A redesigned version with higher top speed for trip work would have been possible if required, at the cost of tractive effort.  Perhaps some maverick in South Wales decided it would be just the thing for a like-for-like 94xx replacement and managed to barter for a few with wagon-loads of bara brith and Brains SA before he was stopped.

 

Of course the proper replacement for a 94xx is an EE type 3.

[JimC]

The correct replacement for a 57ton 6 wheeled steam engine is a 100ton 12 wheeled diesel? Or is there irony there I've missed? 

[Flying Pig]

28 minutes ago, JimC said:

The correct replacement for a 57ton 6 wheeled steam engine is a 100ton 12 wheeled diesel? Or is there irony there I've missed? 

 

No irony.  Like-for-like replacement of steam with diesel was the wrong thing to do and left BR with far too many low powered units as the traffic conditions changed.  While using a type 3 for trip working is arguably wasteful, it is more wasteful to build and maintain a small fleet of sub-1200hp locos for a diminishing requirement if a more generally useful design can do the work.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Flying Pig

[Northmoor]

5 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

No irony.  Like-for-like replacement of steam with diesel was the wrong thing to do and left BR with far too many low powered units as the traffic conditions changed.  While using a type 3 for trip working is arguably wasteful, it is more wasteful to build and maintain a small fleet of sub-1200hp locos for a diminishing requirement if a more generally useful design can do the work.

Agreed and the axle load was about the same too.

[The Johnster]

The economics of locomotive provision are not something I am familiar with, but clearly the best answer, in the sense of the most efficient and cost effective way of working the traffic, is always going to be a compromise.  You could, if you wanted, build locomotive perfectly suited to the load, gradient, required speed, water/coal capacity etc of each individual diagram on your railway (the Brighton did something not unlike this in pre-Stroudley days), or you could attempt to standardise on a small number of standard classes in a 'one size fits all', actually 'one size doesn't properly fit any but it's close enough for jazz' approach.  Most real railways fell somewhere between these two stools, even where locos of radically different appearance were concerned standard parts were used.  It was said that the GW could operate it's timetable with just 49xx and 57xx, and there is some truth in this but it would not have been operating in the most efficient and cost effective way.

 

Any railway will expect a set length of service time from it's locos, so the amount of older locos still in the fleet at any given time will always defeat attempts at standardisation; you have to do the arithmetic to discern whether the savings generated by standardisation are outweighed or not by the cost of scrapping locos that still have useful service life left in them.  By the time the previous generation have all been withdrawn, your new standard has been supplanted by another, better, new standard, and so the long night wears on, and for the first 30 years of the 20th century it wore on against a background of the requirement for faster trains at the same time as higher loads and longer non stop distances, which speeded up obsolescence somewhat, a matter that continued after WW2 for the decade or so that new steam design was being introduced as times changed again, and a new standard range of easily prepared and disposed locos to cope with staff shortages at sheds and that could burn carp coal were needed.

 

Enter the Dragon, in the shape of the 1955 Modernisation Plan.  Steam development was halted and only existing orders for which materials had been paid for were built over the next 5 years.  It was seen as an opportunity to start again, sweep away the past, and provide the railway with a fleet of new, standard, efficient, clean, easily prepped/disposed, and available to the extend of being able to replace 3 steam locos for every new unit, locomotives.  We all know what happened, and I reckon that one of the main reasons for the failure and underpowering of the new locos was that the information regarding the power output of the steam locos they were to replace obtained from the Rugby Testing Plant were badly flawed; they seem to have drastically underrated the power of steam locos by between 30 and 40%, resulting in the 2khp Class 40 to replace 8P steam when what was needed was the 3.3khp Deltic.  Availability was a let down in the early years as well.

 

Interestingly, the tenders for the 25kv LMR electric locos got the sums right, probably by using different source information, but I do not know enough about how such matters were dealt with to make any objective statements.  Now, Enter the Other Dragon, in the form of Beeching and the black hole of traffic of the early 60s, which left the railway oversupplied with locomotives and stock for the next decade at least.  This effectively resulted in a moratorium of diesel loco design between the 1966 class 50 and the 56 a decade later, by which time new locomotives for passenger service were not needed any more.  The HSTs took over where there was no electrification, and the rest was handled by 'second generation' type 4s that were already looking old fashioned in the electronic world of the 1980s and later. 

 

The only loco from the 1955 plan that became anything like a standard was the Class 20, and that only because it was bombproof reliable and, hunting in pairs, a very suitable tool for the MGR traffic, not even thought of when the loco was designed.  My view at the time, both as a spotter in the 60s and a freight guard in the 70s, and in fact up to the current time, is that there was never any point in building diesel locomotives of less than type 3, and that by 1980 type 3s were effectively obsolete.  The other ealry standards have proved to be the class 31, which had to be uprated to pull anything, 33, useful because of electric heating and a bit of a pocket rocket, 37, and 47, which had to be downrated to pull anything reliably. all significantly designed in the early 60s, and all still with us.  The other success story is the 08, but this was already the accepted standard shunting design before 1955, in fact before nationalisation.

 

There were far too many 1955 Plan diesels, only the 20 and 31 having lasted the pace, and far too many 2nd generation supercharged ones as well; Westerns, Class 45 and 46 Peaks, most of the 50s, all have come and gone, and all capable of being replaced without major issue by the 47s.  The biggest success is beyond question the HST, still with us, the train that saved BR, when introduced the only train in the world that could run 125mph timetables and provide double glazing, airconditioning, electric heating, air suspension, seats comfortable enough to see off the Pullmans, and tinted windows without requiring pre-booking or an excess fare!!!

 

On the WR the 1976 HST timings are only now being replicated by the class 800/801 Hitachi electrics.

[PhilJ W]

The only fault with the IC125's was they didn't have retention toilets as built. It was not a good idea to be standing trackside when someone flushes a number two at 125mph.

[rodent279]

15 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

The only fault with the IC125's was they didn't have retention toilets as built. It was not a good idea to be standing trackside when someone flushes a number two at 125mph.

That and the slam door/droplight window combination. That was the biggest flaw in the HST/MK3 design imho, but let's not reopen that can of worms again, it's been done to the death enough times.

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

The only fault with the IC125's was they didn't have retention toilets as built. It was not a good idea to be standing trackside when someone flushes a number two at 125mph.

 

 

Repost:

 

[The Johnster]

When the 125mph HST timetables were introduced on the WR, the toilet outlets were directional and pointed towards the ends of the coach, which resulted in a little old lady having a very uncomfortable experience at 125mph in Badminton Tunnel, in which the wind beneath the train returned the contents of the bowl to her with some force.  Oh, how we laughed, but the outlet pipes were cut back to decant directly downwards, sadly on to the outer axles of the bogies as everyone who has worked with them in a maintenance shed will testify; the result was a build up of unpleasantness around the axle, dried hard in seconds by the wind, that had to be chiselled off by hand.

 

The previous mk2 e and f airconditioned coaches were originally put in to service on the ECML, and were fitted with fixed glass lights and internal door handles.  They had been in service less than a week when an inebriated passenger waiting his turn in the toilet lurched into the handle of a door between Northallerton and York at over 100mph.  The door opened (it was facing into the wind) and threw him out on to the track.  It is to be hoped that this killed him, because he was instantly run over by a down express.  Damage was caused to the side of the down train and the door ripped off, which meant that the guard had to move the passengers and lock the coach out of use.  The train was taken out of service at York, and all trains with the new stock stopped Immediately and the coaches taken out of use. 

 

The answer was to replace the doors from stock, which only took a few days, with the standard droplight wrap around mk2 doors, which had no internal handles and had to be opened by dropping the window and leaning out, old school style; at least the passengers were used to that or the sprung brass clip arrangement which had proved safe over many years,  But the airconditioning design principle was compromised; the idea was originally that the heating and draught-free ventilation could be controlled by the guard, and that the passengers would not be able to open any windows or ventilators at all.  This compromised design was continued with the mk3s.  It would have been better if a central locking or automatic door system had been used, but the railway felt that this was not cost effective.  To be fair the pneumatically operated automatic doors of the day were draughty and not 100% reliable; this was 1974, remember, when we thought VHS and CDs were miraculous.

[Compound2632]

30 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

this was 1974, remember, when we thought VHS and CDs were miraculous.

 

They would have been, too. VHS was first released in Japan in 1976 and CDs, also in Japan, in 1982!

[Ohmisterporter]

22 hours ago, The Johnster said:

  Most real railways fell somewhere between these two stools...

 

 

I wondered how we started talking about toilets.

[Northroader]

The HSTs needed so many disc brake pads changing on depot every night, to keep on top of the wear rate, which was the main requirement for staff to go working in the pit. The discharge from the toilet pipes would either spray along underneath, or hit the track and splash back up. Either way you ended up with a fine film covering everything, the only distinguishable item being fine shreds of toilet paper. From time to time the staff would complain, but there was never time for the undersides to have a steam clean, so we just used to go along with a disinfectant spray which had a nice perfumed smell in it.

[The Johnster]

21 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

They would have been, too. VHS was first released in Japan in 1976 and CDs, also in Japan, in 1982!

Liike I said, miraculous.  Ok, we still thought led digital watches and displaying boobies on calculators was pretty cool, though...

 

Mention of the brake pads reminds me that the smell of burning pads was a frequent feature of early HST travel.  The brakes were pretty effective, though, which was perhaps a surprise given their poor reputation on MGR trains on South Wales banks.  Perhaps a different pad material was used; IIRC these came from Ferodo at Cwmbran.

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Liike I said, miraculous.  Ok, we still thought led digital watches and displaying boobies on calculators was pretty cool, though...

 

You're making a right hash of this - what you really mean is "we still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea".

 

[ScottishRailFanatic]

Needs no explanation.

[ScottishRailFanatic]

'Midget Models' rolls off the tongue quite nicely... 

[Gibbo675]

12 minutes ago, ScottishRailFanatic said:

Needs no explanation.

Hi SRF,

 

Where is its four wheeled tender ?

 

Gibbo.

[Flying Pig]

21 minutes ago, ScottishRailFanatic said:

Needs no explanation.

 

Needs safety valves though Otherwise very nice.  Would look good pulling 6-wheeled Umbauwagen with Mk1 style bodies as an alternative to those pesky railcars.