Imaginary Locomotives

[The Johnster]

I love the GW, but hope to not be blind to it's faults.  Castles were adequate for express passenger work into the mid 50s until replaced by diesels; they could pull the trains and keep time without breaking their firemen, which is as much as you can expect from a loco in traffic.  But they were an enlargement on an Edwardian loco, without any technical advance and in fact harder work to prep than their predecessors because the space between the frames was even more restricted.  Their inability to burn low quality post WW2 coal and the staff shortages of that time told against them.  But had the BR standards not intervened, Swindon would have kept building them until 1960, probably.

 

This shows how very good the Stars were when they were introduced, and that the Castles were already losing the lead that the Stars had established when they came out in 1923.  Much is made of the exchanges between the GW and LNER which vindicated the smaller GW engine, on the road, but I suspect a Gresley A1 was a better bet on shed, and possibly when it came to down time and running costs as well; there can be no doubt that they were kinder to the track!.  Swindon had another 40 years almost to improve on the Castles, and did to some extent with better superheaters and double chimneys, but there was no real advance in 4 decades.  Within 5 years of 1923, Gresley had improved the A1 into the A3, Swindon consoling itself with the fact that some of their design principles had influenced this, and had come up with the A4, P2, and Hush Hush within a few more years of that; the GW was still building Castles in 1950, a time when it was very difficult to justify a 4 cylinder loco.

 

Churchward's legacy of standard exchangeable components was undermined continually by Collett and Hawksworth, who introduced new wheel sizes, boilers, cylinder sizes and other details.  It is a matter of debate that is now probably completely pointless as to whether this was a result of Churchward's components not being adequate for post WW1 conditions and traffic, or that the concept was held onto too long when a complete rethink might have been a better idea.

 

It should be remembered that the GW thought it was the cat that had got the cream in 1923.  A continued existence from 1835 and now they'd been handed the Golden Horn on a plate; the massively profitable South Wales network.  They responded with massive investment; station rebuilds, quadruplings, resignalling schemes, new stock.  By 1926 this had all gone south with a vengeance; the national strike holed the coal trade below the water line (though it took a long time to sink), and the Great Depression followed on before much could be done to recover decent profits for investment.  

 

But the LMS and the never wealthy LNER managed to advance locomotive design to perhaps it's British peak during these years, so while the conditions should be remembered they should not be made an excuse for stagnant thinking and failure to adapt to current conditions.  The thought that the GW was evolving slowly and steadily to a Perfect Design Plan is Swindon propaganda; nothing was happening and even the little that did had to wait for the early BR period when Castles and Kings were souped up to the extent that they shattered their frames (rebuilt Royal Scots did this as well, by the way).  The much vaunted boiler technology had been overtaken by Ivatt and Bullied before nationalisation; the Bullied pacific boilers were as good as it gets, whatever other issues the locos had.

[rockershovel]

.... to which it needs to be pointed out that the LNER 2-8-2s were never numerous, suffered from very restricted route availability, and most ended their days as conventional Pacifics. The “Hush-hush” never became a successful design (nor did the Alco experimental design which Yarrow & Co also acted as consultants for boiler design).

 

It would probably be best to conclude that by 1930 at the latest, steam locomotive design was firmly within the realms of “diminishing returns” - the near-century-old “Stephenson” type had been developed to its limits and no significant advantage appeared to accrue from the more radical variations, particularly boilers.

 

All the “Big Four” companies possessed locomotives which were capable of 100mph under certain conditions; none could do it regularly or in scheduled service. Several locomotives were timed at speeds in the 115-125mph range, none consistently. No European company, and only one American railroad achieved this milestone of 100mph scheduled services

 

European and American designers were already turning to electric, or diesel traction respectively, with British designers lagging behind.

Edited September 15, 2018 by rockershovel

[Northmoor]

I love the GW, but hope to not be blind to it's faults.  Castles were adequate for express passenger work into the mid 50s until replaced by diesels; they could pull the trains and keep time without breaking their firemen, which is as much as you can expect from a loco in traffic.  But they were an enlargement on an Edwardian loco, without any technical advance and in fact harder work to prep than their predecessors because the space between the frames was even more restricted.  

 

This shows how very good the Stars were when they were introduced, and that the Castles were already losing the lead that the Stars had established when they came out in 1923.  Much is made of the exchanges between the GW and LNER which vindicated the smaller GW engine, on the road, but I suspect a Gresley A1 was a better bet on shed, and possibly when it came to down time and running costs as well; there can be no doubt that they were kinder to the track!.  

 

It should be remembered that the GW thought it was the cat that had got the cream in 1923.  A continued existence from 1835 and now they'd been handed the Golden Horn on a plate; the massively profitable South Wales network.  They responded with massive investment; station rebuilds, quadruplings, resignalling schemes, new stock.  By 1926 this had all gone south with a vengeance; the national strike holed the coal trade below the water line (though it took a long time to sink), and the Great Depression followed on before much could be done to recover decent profits for investment.  

Your point about the GWR getting the "Grand Prix" of SW coal traffic, also explains a lot about why they stuck with steam when the NER was looking at electrification.  The NER had relatively few feeder routes into a medium length bulk haul route (the ECML), where the heavy loads and moderate speeds required justified wires. So much of the South Wales traffic was short distance to Cardiff, Barry or Newport Docks for export; coming from multiple valleys which would have been enormously expensive to wire.  Steam remained a very effective way to move the slow-moving heavy coal for short distances.  Likewise it was the NW of England that the LMS looked to electrify in the 20s, but the world recession put paid to that.

 

I'd not read about the Kings and Castles breaking frames but was this as much an issue of trying to return to pre-war express schedules on post-war track?  

[brack]

But a) the north eastern's trial route for electrification was a short haul coal route (shildon-newport yard - Newport) and b) what they wanted to electrify (especially looking at Raven's prototype) was not intended to be working at moderate speeds - an express route and the loco was very definitely for express passenger service.

 

I'm sure they weren't thinking of wires into every pit or over stainmore, but main lines would be. I suspect the big selling points of electrification were (as always) efficiency, reliability, availability, multiple unit capability and higher power output.

If anything electric traction on the GWR main line should've been more attractive. Maybe they already knew that any plans in that regard would be thwarted by a village full on nimbys.

[john new]

The GWR were looking into electrification for the S West route and there are a few published articles out there covering it. Whether it was done just as a costing exercise to disprove its practicality/cost effectiveness relative to retaining steam, or as a serious intention to build proposal WW2 killed off, I can't remember. If we are talking innovation they introduced the diesel rail cars so were not totally wedded to the concepts of steam. The GWR is not my specialism so regrettably I can't add more on their non-steam endeavours. Was the Swiss gas-turbine a late GWR order or early BR(W)?

Edited September 15, 2018 by john new

[PhilJ W]

The GWR were looking into electrification for the S West route and there are a few published articles out there covering it. Whether it was done just as a costing exercise to disprove its practicality/cost effectiveness relative to retaining steam, or as a serious intention to build proposal WW2 killed off, I can't remember. If we are talking innovation they introduced the diesel rail cars so were not totally wedded to the concepts of steam. The GWR is not my specialism so regrettably I can't add more on their non-steam endeavours. Was the Swiss gas-turbine a late GWR order or early BR(W)?

The reason the GWR were looking into the electricification of the SW main line was the cost of transporting locomotive coal. The Somerset coalfields were in decline and the next nearest were South Wales, quite a distance by rail from Cornwall, in fact London was nearer (by rail).

[Mr_Tilt]

Was the Swiss gas-turbine a late GWR order or early BR(W)?

 

 

The Brown-Bovero turbine, no. 1800, was ordered by the GWR in 1946 but wasn't delivered until 1949, by which time there was no GWR.

 

Likewise the Metro-Vic 18100, also ordered by the GWR in its time, but not delivered until 1951.

 

So the answer to your question is 'Yes'......... 

[Mark Saunders]

The reason the GWR were looking into the electricification of the SW main line was the cost of transporting locomotive coal. The Somerset coalfields were in decline and the next nearest were South Wales, quite a distance by rail from Cornwall, in fact London was nearer (by rail).

 

It looks close when compared with the imports from Columbia, South Africa and the USA for electricity generation in recent decades!

 

Mark Saunders

[Budgie]

The reason the GWR were looking into the electricification of the SW main line was the cost of transporting locomotive coal. The Somerset coalfields were in decline and the next nearest were South Wales, quite a distance by rail from Cornwall, in fact London was nearer (by rail).

 

 

So why didn't they transport the coal from Cardiff or Barry to Cornwall by sea?

[john new]

So why didn't they transport the coal from Cardiff or Barry to Cornwall by sea?

It had been done, IIRC one reason why what became the S&DJR had the line to Burnham. But that was in the early days and better railways killed off the the cross-Severn trade. After that no decent ports for modern ships on the N Coast and add in the transshipment hassles.

Edited September 15, 2018 by john new

[rockershovel]

It had been done, IIRC one reason why what became the S&DJR had the line to Burnham. But that was in the early days and better railways killed off the the cross-Severn trade. After that no decent ports for modern ships on the N Coast and add in the transshipment hassles.

It depended on the tin and copper mining industry. When the industry was busy, there was a thriving sea trade - coal from South Wales to the engines at the mines, tin and copper to South Wales for smelting. After the collapse of the 1870s - in 1875, over 10,000 miners left Cornwall, most never to return - the trade was not viable and the ports left to decline.

 

The East Cornwall and Devon mines (broadly speaking, Callington, Gunnislake and Great Consols) were mostly focussed around the Tamar Valley and the GWR was essentially irrelevant to them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Cornwall_Mineral_Railway

Edited September 15, 2018 by rockershovel

[The Johnster]

Your point about the GWR getting the "Grand Prix" of SW coal traffic, also explains a lot about why they stuck with steam when the NER was looking at electrification.  The NER had relatively few feeder routes into a medium length bulk haul route (the ECML), where the heavy loads and moderate speeds required justified wires. So much of the South Wales traffic was short distance to Cardiff, Barry or Newport Docks for export; coming from multiple valleys which would have been enormously expensive to wire.  Steam remained a very effective way to move the slow-moving heavy coal for short distances.  Likewise it was the NW of England that the LMS looked to electrify in the 20s, but the world recession put paid to that.

 

I'd not read about the Kings and Castles breaking frames but was this as much an issue of trying to return to pre-war express schedules on post-war track?  

 

The point I was making was not that the P2s and the Hush Hush were successful, but that they represented a development of design that had been lacking at Swindon since before WW1.  

 

Not so much the Castles, but Kings, successfully uprated with double chimneys and better draughting to manage the 2 hour Paddington-Birmingham service while the LNW's route was being electrified, were all withdrawn from service with broken frames by the end of 1962; luckily the new Westerns were coming into service just in time to rescue the timetable and the LNW route's knitting and locos with coat hangers on top reached Birmingham shortly afterwards, and have taken the bulk of the traffic ever since.

[rockershovel]

The point I was making was not that the P2s and the Hush Hush were successful, but that they represented a development of design that had been lacking at Swindon since before WW1.  

 

......

For a given value of “development of design”.... the 2-8-2s were not particularly successful on the arduous Scottish route, which seems to have been a demonstration of the limits of steam traction within the British loading gauge (because American and Canadian locomotives coped with more, and worse, but could be much larger) while the “mineral” 2-8-2s seem to have been more than the overall structure could make effective use of.

 

I wouldn’t regard that as “development of design”, rather as a failure of concept, on the grounds that either the required outcome was not sufficiently understood and/or defined, or that the likely outcome was either not correctly understood during design, or that a flawed decision to continue in any case was imposed as the solution.

 

The REAL development of design was done by the originators of innovations, such as Kylala and Chapelon, whose PATENTED innovations were included in the LNER design.

[runs as required]

I'd rather forgotten the GWR's electrification plan for the West of England.

Did they actually consider electrification of Exeter-Dawlish-Newton Abbott practicable?  Or were they contemplating an inland re-alignment/upgrading ?

 

The other interesting mainline electrification was the Midland's notion of Derby - Manchester for which Morecambe and Heysham was their test case.

dh

[rockershovel]

I'd rather forgotten the GWR's electrification plan for the West of England.

Did they actually consider electrification of Exeter-Dawlish-Newton Abbott practicable?  Or were they contemplating an inland re-alignment/upgrading ?

 

The other interesting mainline electrification was the Midland's notion of Derby - Manchester for which Morecambe and Heysham was their test case.

dh

OHLE wires along Dawlish Warren sounds pretty scary!

[Zomboid]

OLE along Dawlish would be fine. Would probably be advisable to provide larger clearances than normal, but electrifying coastal railways is not unknown in the world (or even the UK, the line along the sea wall at Saltcoats in Ayrshire is an example).

[Budgie]

OLE along Dawlish would be fine. Would probably be advisable to provide larger clearances than normal, but electrifying coastal railways is not unknown in the world (or even the UK, the line along the sea wall at Saltcoats in Ayrshire is an example).

How often would the wires come down as a result of the storms in the area?

[PhilJ W]

OHLE wires along Dawlish Warren sounds pretty scary!

 

 

How often would the wires come down as a result of the storms in the area?

They could have used third rail.

[rockershovel]

They could have used third rail.

.... it’s just not a happy thought, is it, however you look at it....

[The Black Hat]

I'd suggest that the NER was seeing further than the GWR in the years between the turn of the century and grouping. Perhaps not in steam design, but operationally, wagon design and electric traction. They even built batches of bogie 40 ton air braked coal hoppers in Edwardian times. They too looked closely at the US and Eric Geddes had been a stationmaster for the B&O and worked on the railways in India (our colonial systems were often more advanced than our domestic ones in terms of adoption of new technologies - less inertia and more influence from other countries).

Sadly much of what they did was later undone (often of necessity) by a financially weak LNER. The GWR had a huge advantage in that it's main routes and loco stock didn't change much at grouping so it was able to continue and finish off what it had started.

Had the NER been able to finish what they started we'd have seen mainline electrification and block freight trains of air braked bogie vehicles with knuckle couplers widespread across their system in by the 1920s (100 years on and we're still not there, but everyone knows that is what we ought to have). Unfortunately WW1, the loss of Raven and Geddes to important roles in the war effort and the economic change post war rather got in the way, then they were grouped into the LNER and never were in a situation to do much.

 

Agree totally. Really the North East should have gone on to operate as a North Eastern Company much like GW did. Grouping could have been the big six, with NER, a Scottish Company and a London and Eastern Railway company. However, I think the North East with freight volumes and income was put into LNER to carry the other systems that simply didn't have the volume or cash flow that it had.

[The Black Hat]

I love the GW, but hope to not be blind to it's faults.  Castles were adequate for express passenger work into the mid 50s until replaced by diesels; they could pull the trains and keep time without breaking their firemen, which is as much as you can expect from a loco in traffic.  But they were an enlargement on an Edwardian loco, without any technical advance and in fact harder work to prep than their predecessors because the space between the frames was even more restricted.  Their inability to burn low quality post WW2 coal and the staff shortages of that time told against them.  But had the BR standards not intervened, Swindon would have kept building them until 1960, probably.

 

This shows how very good the Stars were when they were introduced, and that the Castles were already losing the lead that the Stars had established when they came out in 1923.  Much is made of the exchanges between the GW and LNER which vindicated the smaller GW engine, on the road, but I suspect a Gresley A1 was a better bet on shed, and possibly when it came to down time and running costs as well; there can be no doubt that they were kinder to the track!.  Swindon had another 40 years almost to improve on the Castles, and did to some extent with better superheaters and double chimneys, but there was no real advance in 4 decades.  Within 5 years of 1923, Gresley had improved the A1 into the A3, Swindon consoling itself with the fact that some of their design principles had influenced this, and had come up with the A4, P2, and Hush Hush within a few more years of that; the GW was still building Castles in 1950, a time when it was very difficult to justify a 4 cylinder loco.

 

Churchward's legacy of standard exchangeable components was undermined continually by Collett and Hawksworth, who introduced new wheel sizes, boilers, cylinder sizes and other details.  It is a matter of debate that is now probably completely pointless as to whether this was a result of Churchward's components not being adequate for post WW1 conditions and traffic, or that the concept was held onto too long when a complete rethink might have been a better idea.

 

It should be remembered that the GW thought it was the cat that had got the cream in 1923.  A continued existence from 1835 and now they'd been handed the Golden Horn on a plate; the massively profitable South Wales network.  They responded with massive investment; station rebuilds, quadruplings, resignalling schemes, new stock.  By 1926 this had all gone south with a vengeance; the national strike holed the coal trade below the water line (though it took a long time to sink), and the Great Depression followed on before much could be done to recover decent profits for investment.  

 

But the LMS and the never wealthy LNER managed to advance locomotive design to perhaps it's British peak during these years, so while the conditions should be remembered they should not be made an excuse for stagnant thinking and failure to adapt to current conditions.  The thought that the GW was evolving slowly and steadily to a Perfect Design Plan is Swindon propaganda; nothing was happening and even the little that did had to wait for the early BR period when Castles and Kings were souped up to the extent that they shattered their frames (rebuilt Royal Scots did this as well, by the way).  The much vaunted boiler technology had been overtaken by Ivatt and Bullied before nationalisation; the Bullied pacific boilers were as good as it gets, whatever other issues the locos had.

 

Theres a lot of that that mirrors development in the North East, but the Western were able to continue as you say, being mainly a continuation of the company post-grouping. At that time the Western were well ahead of most of the competition, with engine performance and designs that would allow evolution of excellence rather than a leap in standards. A lot of this was through the standardisation that the Western region operated. This was on a par with the North Eastern, which had much standardisation across engines like the J21/24/25, J71/72, Q5/Q6 and were also exploring electrification and use of petrol/diesel.

 

 

Yes the Western went and built Castles, but the design is excellent, same with others like Halls, Manors. The maintenance was something that could be managed and while it might be more technical, the time spent of engines being repaired would be a lot lower with the amount of engines running and the standardisation of parts meant instantaneous swaps.

 

 

This was not the case in other regions and with other designers. Gresley was the ultimate tinkerman, and while he did not have resources for many designs, he also inherited some areas like the NE, with a lot of newer pregrouping engines being built, such as Q6 and B16. P2 might have been a testbed class for designs which led to A3 and A4, but others like the W1 were stages that went far away from the tested and reliable norms and ultimately ended in failure. Against this backdrop you can see where Bullied got so many of his ideas and designs from to incorporate into his Southern Pacifics. All while this was happening the NER was stifled by the LNER, and the Western Region churned out Castles as they were capable of what was required and eventually were matched in parity by designs built in the 30s, including the work of Stanier, who had learned his craft at Swindon.

 

 

Its telling that when some Eastern region designs were made, its obvious that Gresley was barely involved. J39 came about in Darlington, not Doncaster and was put together with standard parts, such as the smokebox, tender, cab, buffers and wheels that were all cast from other engines. The boiler, motion and cylinders were the gaps that needed filling. The NER remants just got on with the job and plugged the gap in the fleet. Meanwhile in the Western, standardisation did reign supreme and while Collett and Hawksworth might have added more designs and parts, the scheer volume of engines using the same parts remained massive meaning efficiency was excellent and the envy of other networks. Note that the extra parts needed would be to improve capacity in terms of the operation of the engine. Areas like the Midland caught on, and the NE Region made do with the standard designs inherited pre-grouping, but its no wonder that when Thompson took over, all these nonstandard Gresley designs with their own needs and parts saw that massive standardisation was needed to improve availability. If it was another designer like Stanier, he would have done the same – something often overlooked in the Gresley vs Thompson debate (which this shouldn’t turn into!)

 

 

While other networks matched the parity of Western designs during the 30s, it should also be remembered that a great many designs were retro-fitted with design improvements, such as double chimneys and exhausts, essentially leaving the rest of the design as it was. Steam was being taken to its limit and while WWII interrupted, standard designs produced by BR, matched a great many features of designs that were previously built and gains often were in maintenance and durability. Even under BR, Western region Castles, Manors, etc were still produced because they were a standard design for the Western region and were still able to do the duties required of them. They were cost effective, had enough power and had production lines and staff knowledge all already sorted.

 

 

While the Western region might had led and others caught up, its operation and efficiency thanks to its standardisation still gave it clout to put it equal to other systems, even though it was working with older designs. You have to enjoy at some attempts at the other end of the spectrum, such as Southern fans championing a schools design as the most powerful 4-4-0 design 20 years after everyone else stopped making them…

 

 

Standardisation helped the Western maintain its high operation, and gave the railway the ability to continue its ethos of independence and culture. It’s a shame in many ways that the NER got smothered and had to carry the rest of the Eastern region with it.

 

 

 

Your point about the GWR getting the "Grand Prix" of SW coal traffic, also explains a lot about why they stuck with steam when the NER was looking at electrification.  The NER had relatively few feeder routes into a medium length bulk haul route (the ECML), where the heavy loads and moderate speeds required justified wires. So much of the South Wales traffic was short distance to Cardiff, Barry or Newport Docks for export; coming from multiple valleys which would have been enormously expensive to wire.  Steam remained a very effective way to move the slow-moving heavy coal for short distances.  Likewise it was the NW of England that the LMS looked to electrify in the 20s, but the world recession put paid to that.

 

I'd not read about the Kings and Castles breaking frames but was this as much an issue of trying to return to pre-war express schedules on post-war track?  

 

NER had many routes, but these were essencially west to east. From Coal fields to the docks for shipment, or to the furnaces and plant. The workings were pretty much the fore-runner of the MGR system. The NER did not run a series of private owner wagons, instead running a fleet of its own. Rather than having some parked up the rake would be used day in, day out. The main line through the region was supported with fast services on other routes too, with many branch lines coming from the dales. Services ran around coastal areas, but also encompassed suburban traffic too for areas like Newcastle and Sunderland.

 

Its telling that the first line ran with electrification was from Shildon yard to Newport, to take coal, across on a regular basis. Not passenger services. The region had a myriad of railways and routes running across the county, traversing the whole area so that trains could go from one point to another easily. Each of these routes were pretty much a trunk route, with regular workings following one after the other, so far from being based around the ECML, in fact the ECML passed through the main busy NE Railway system.

 

[brack]

The weakness of the NER loco stud lay in big passenger locos. They (like many others) had not produced a successful big express loco (the Raven Pacific wasn't rubbish, but wasn't great either). For most other work they had something decent and reliable. They did produce a loco capable of pulling a 14 coach train at a steady 65mph and handling any mainline gradients between York and Edinburgh (equal or better in performance to any pregrouping express design), but without the wires going up it wasn't really much use.

[Niels]

Ravens Pacifics were (Judged by Gressley) not so good as Gressley Pacifics that was no so good as a GWR castle.

Morale .Pacifics were toys.

B16s had an impressive longevity.

It could be fun if someone could photoshop a B16 like(that is three cylinder front wheel drive ) GWR express with coppercap  compared to a B 16 and normal a  Castle.

A Three cylinder  five feet eigth drivers Castle with  all cylinder in line  and front driving wheels a little further aft will be much kinder to track and more steam economic.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Niels

[The Johnster]

The ECML 'passing through' the NER's other lines is paralleled, but not in the literal sense (sorry) by the South Wales Railway, Brunel's broad guage extension of the Gloucester branch of the GW to Neyland on Milford Haven.  The first railway in Cardiff was the Taff Vale in 1838, 17 years before the South Wales opened in the town (it wasn't a city then).  There were broad gauge branches to Aberdare from Neath and some in the Llantrisant area, but by and large the South Wales's purpose was to connect Paddington with New York, a recurring dream for the GW, and it was not interested in the iron and later coal trade just to the north of it's line across Glamorgan and Eastern Carmarthenshire; not initially anyway.  Even Swansea, a major industrial centre second only to Merthyr Tydfil in size in 1850, was served by a branch from Landore where the main line went straight on for points west.  

 

Brunel was also the engineer for the Taff Vale, promoted by some of the same Bristol cabal who had backed the GW.  He was asked by the Gauge Commission why he hadn't built it to the 7 foot gauge and said that, at that time, he thought 7 foot unsuitable for the Taff's sharp curves but had changed his mind in the meantime.  

[Compound2632]

The weakness of the NER loco stud lay in big passenger locos. They (like many others) had not produced a successful big express loco 

 

Well. I wouldn't say the the Fletcher 901 Class, the Tennants, T.W. Worsdell's Class F, or Wilson Worsdell's Classes M, R, or R1 were either unsuccessful or small for their day.