Incredibly cool photos of trains
Discussion
2xChevrons said:
<big clip> There was one class of GWR engine (the Hawksworth 'County', IIRC) which at certain speeds/regulator settings developed a noticeable fore/aft shuttling motion due to the way it was balanced, which was apparently very popular with firemen since it meant the coal walked itself out of the tender, across the cab floor and piled itself up below the firehole. On less-than-perfect track or on a particularly 'knocky' engine it practically hurled itself into the firebox.
Thanks for that post, very informative. the last paragraph in particular made me laugh! Great post from Mr Chevrons, v informative and a lot of good sense. I reckon it should have answered the query from RichB.
Another GW quirk is the refusal to allow anyone to see the valve gear of an outside-cylinder locomotive. So even on a two-cylinder one the poor sod of a driver needs to clamber up between the frames to get to multiple oiling points. Elsewhere it was an easy walk round the outside.
Then there was the general resistance of mechanical lubricators. And don’t start me off on rocking grates and hopper ashpans. It was the LMS that by WW2 had maintenance efficiency licked. Good job it was their lot who were in charge in the early BR days.
Another GW quirk is the refusal to allow anyone to see the valve gear of an outside-cylinder locomotive. So even on a two-cylinder one the poor sod of a driver needs to clamber up between the frames to get to multiple oiling points. Elsewhere it was an easy walk round the outside.
Then there was the general resistance of mechanical lubricators. And don’t start me off on rocking grates and hopper ashpans. It was the LMS that by WW2 had maintenance efficiency licked. Good job it was their lot who were in charge in the early BR days.
matchmaker said:
A lot of LNER (ex GN) locos retained right hand driving for some time.
One GWR loco had outside valve gear - the 15xx pannier tank.
True. Hawksworth must have been taking something mind-altering. Only ten of them and all completed in the BR era.One GWR loco had outside valve gear - the 15xx pannier tank.
Edited by matchmaker on Wednesday 18th October 18:31
Maxym said:
matchmaker said:
True. Hawksworth must have been taking something mind-altering. Only ten of them and all completed in the BR era.
p.s. Maxym, you didn't say what you drive?
Maxym said:
Another GW quirk is the refusal to allow anyone to see the valve gear of an outside-cylinder locomotive. So even on a two-cylinder one the poor sod of a driver needs to clamber up between the frames to get to multiple oiling points. Elsewhere it was an easy walk round the outside.
Then there was the general resistance of mechanical lubricators. And don’t start me off on rocking grates and hopper ashpans. It was the LMS that by WW2 had maintenance efficiency licked. Good job it was their lot who were in charge in the early BR days.
...
True. Hawksworth must have been taking something mind-altering. Only ten of them and all completed in the BR era.
The GWR in the 20th century was a very metric-driven organisation. This was especially the case during the spell of Collett as CME. He was not an especially brilliant or free-thinking engineer, but he had a real talent for management, process, quality control and product development. Hence why no startlingly new designs came from Swindon in his tenure, but the engineering legacy left by Churchward was finessed to a point of near-perfection. Almost every decision - wheel arrangements, valve gear type and location, which side the engine was driven from, the level of superheat, the type of lubrication and the types of oil used etc. etc. - was backed up by figures. If something archaic was retained (like inside valve gear or single-verandah brake vans) it was either because there was some measurable benefit to retain it or the cost/benefit analysis of changing it wasn't big enough.
The historian in me finds it a shame that Hawksworth's time in the big seat at Swindon was so brief, because he clearly had some novel ideas and was not content to just copy what he'd inherited from Collett and Churchward. He built two tank engines with taper boilers and short panniers, and one of them had outside valve gear - Walschaerts gear, what's more! He built a 4-6-0 with plate frames, then built another 4-6-0 that not only looked different from the other 4-6-0s (single wheel splasher!) but had a boiler cribbed from another railway! There are the persistent rumours of a GWR Pacific and/or a 4-8-0 'Super King' being proposed during his time, both of which would have had to be accompanied by a major shift in GWR traffic patterns and operating practices to be worthwhile. He also signed off on the gas-turbine 'Kerosene Castles'. His coaches had domed vestibules.
And yes, I absolutely agree re: technical conservatism on British steam in the mid-20thC. It took the LMS (via several lengthy visits across the Atlantic) to copy American practice when it came to both engineering standards (steam flow, valve control, lubrication) and serviceability/ease of maintenance, and they also copied American diesel practise. The Americans, the French and the Germans did far more to advance the state of the art of steam traction in its twilight years than we did. I feel duty-bound to throw in a mention to Bulleid and his high-tech Pacifics which had many useful design advances but were arguably pushing fresh thinking beyond what material science of the 1940s was capable of.
British industry seems to have been absolutely riven, at both a managerial and a worker level, with self-defeating "Four Yorkshireman" syndrome - it was dirty, difficult, dangerous, uncomfortable and unpleasant in my day, so why should it be better? - and the railways had it particularly bad. Huge resistance to things like rocking grates, self-cleaning smokeboxes, forced lubrication, assisted reversers, electric running lights or even raised running plates. Even from the very people who stood to directly benefit from them in their working day. Out of what seems to have been an oddly-sourced sense of pride and a suspicion that making a job easier made it more precarious.
Mercdriver said:
Why did they not make it possible to drive from either side?
Steam locomotives are distinctly two-man (person) machines, and each person has their own jobs and controls to do so. So a loco that can truly be driven from either side would also have to be able to be fired from either side, which would mean duplicating a lot of controls (injector steam and water valves, damper controls etc.) It seemed to be quite common on Victorian locomotives to at least have the regulator handle sized and shaped so it could be operated from either side, and the larger GNR/LNER engines with push/pull regulators had a lever on each side of the cab. But I get the impression this was mostly an emergency consideration, so steam could be shut off if a pipe burst or a gauge glass broke and filled one side of the cab with steam, as well as being useful in some situations for backing up short distances.
I've seen some of the later mixed-traffic Ivatt LMS engines and the smaller BR Standards with linked regulator handles and a second brake handle linked by a bar to the brake handle/valve on the 'proper' side of the cab. I guess that was with an eye to tender-first running - the same reason the smaller Standards had tender cabs.
Edited by 2xChevrons on Wednesday 18th October 21:46
Well this has morphed from really cool pictures of trains to a really cool analysis of the evolution of steam locomotive design. :-) I must confess that I tend to post short, pithy remarks on PH, so thanks to 2zChevrons for his considered remarks.
I think I'd take issue with the point about spring and axlebox problems being more easily sorted with inside motion. All are dealt with from underneath. Removing a driving (and I don't mean coupled) wheelset involves disconnecting the con-rod regardless of where the motion is. And with inside Stephenson's motion there's a set of eccentrics on another axle, so more complex if that needs removing. If I'm being really picky, a solid axle is stronger than a multi-piece one incorporating cranks... though the extra risk of failure is, with modern engineering, tiny.
RichB, my most common rides currently are a GWR 'Large Prairie', a '9F', a BR 'Standard 5', a Stanier '8F', a GWR 'Hall' and a couple of BR 'Standard 2s'. The other day I drove No 2999, the 'Saint' re-creation. Other things I've driven include the LNER 'K1', a 'Britannia', a 'Black Five' , a 'Jinty', an 'Austerity' 0-6-0 and various GW pannier tanks. I've fired a bigger variety including an SR 'Schools', a 'King Arthur' and the odd Bulleid 'Pacific'. But in this game you never know it all; every turn is potentially a learning opportunity.
I think I'd take issue with the point about spring and axlebox problems being more easily sorted with inside motion. All are dealt with from underneath. Removing a driving (and I don't mean coupled) wheelset involves disconnecting the con-rod regardless of where the motion is. And with inside Stephenson's motion there's a set of eccentrics on another axle, so more complex if that needs removing. If I'm being really picky, a solid axle is stronger than a multi-piece one incorporating cranks... though the extra risk of failure is, with modern engineering, tiny.
RichB, my most common rides currently are a GWR 'Large Prairie', a '9F', a BR 'Standard 5', a Stanier '8F', a GWR 'Hall' and a couple of BR 'Standard 2s'. The other day I drove No 2999, the 'Saint' re-creation. Other things I've driven include the LNER 'K1', a 'Britannia', a 'Black Five' , a 'Jinty', an 'Austerity' 0-6-0 and various GW pannier tanks. I've fired a bigger variety including an SR 'Schools', a 'King Arthur' and the odd Bulleid 'Pacific'. But in this game you never know it all; every turn is potentially a learning opportunity.
Maxym said:
RichB, my most common rides currently are a GWR 'Large Prairie', a '9F', a BR 'Standard 5', a Stanier '8F', a GWR 'Hall' and a couple of BR 'Standard 2s'. The other day I drove No 2999, the 'Saint' re-creation. Other things I've driven include the LNER 'K1', a 'Britannia', a 'Black Five' , a 'Jinty', an 'Austerity' 0-6-0 and various GW pannier tanks. I've fired a bigger variety including an SR 'Schools', a 'King Arthur' and the odd Bulleid 'Pacific'. But in this game you never know it all; every turn is potentially a learning opportunity.
Wow, that's wonderful and I'm seriously envious. 
Assuming you volunteer, where are you based? p.s. Sorry for all the questions, just curious, not stalking you, honestly!
RichB said:
Another quick question if I may: I know that the modified Halls and his Counties had plate frames but what were the frames that preceded them? I cannot find any reference to a name for them on the internet.
Technically Hawksworth's change was the switch to full length plate frames. Like virtually all British domestic steam locos, all the GWR 4-6-0s had plate frames as their main basis. The Churchward and Collett two-cylinder ones had the main frame end just ahead from the front driving wheel. Churchward had the cylinders and the saddle made and machined as a single casting, and this and the front bogie was carried on a separate extension hanging off the main frame which was cast or fabricated (I can't remember which, it may have been either depending on the timeframe). This was one of the design features Churchward absorbed from abroad (France in this case, iirc).
On the ModHalls and the Counties Hawksworth had the main plate frame run right to the front buffer beam, with the cylinders now being separate and bolted to the frames while a new forged brace went between them to be the equivalent of the saddle. This was fairly typical of British practice in the era, but the GWR had to make the switch because of the lack of spare casting/fabricating capacity of suitable size in British industry during the war.
The other type of locomotive frame was the Bar Frame, which was generally spurned in Britain but was predominant almost everywhere else and all-but universal in America. Instead of casting the big one-piece plate frames, all the major parts of the engine were attached to a sort of framework made up of short lengths of wrought iron or steel bar, which were (depending on time period) bolted, rivetted or welded together. This was easier to make (especially in countries lacking heavy industry and machining capacity), easier to repair and because the frame was more flexible, was better suited to running long distances at lower speeds over lightly-laid and uneven track. In Britain, where the condition of the permanent way was generally far better and speed was more of a concern, the plate frame engine with inside cylinders developed, whereas everywhere else the bar frame loco with outside cylinders came to the fore.
In GWR land, the bogies of the 4-6-0s were of bar-frame design, with the exception of the Kings with their plate frame bogies and inside/outside bearings. Hawksworth also went to plate frames for the bogies of the ModHall and County, presumably due to the same loss of fabricating capacity during the war.
Regarding left and right handed controls, some diesel locos were dual control equipped, Class 08 and 09 shunters for instance, and the Southern Region Class 33s. It's a while since I've driven an 08 or 09 but the ease of switching sides when pootling about in yards was one of the things I enjoyed about them.
Quote “ It's a while since I've driven an 08 or 09”
Maybe you answer a question on these for me? As a railway enthusiast in the 60’s I managed to get aboard a 08 shunting goods in Dundee. Second driver was a bear of a man, an Italian, the starter switch? Was a large brass handle with a square hole in it, the key was removable.
The drivers party piece was to turn the starter with his bare hands without the key. Was he really doing this or was he taking the mickey out of an impressionable youngster?
Maybe you answer a question on these for me? As a railway enthusiast in the 60’s I managed to get aboard a 08 shunting goods in Dundee. Second driver was a bear of a man, an Italian, the starter switch? Was a large brass handle with a square hole in it, the key was removable.
The drivers party piece was to turn the starter with his bare hands without the key. Was he really doing this or was he taking the mickey out of an impressionable youngster?
Mercdriver said:
Quote “ It's a while since I've driven an 08 or 09”
Maybe you answer a question on these for me? As a railway enthusiast in the 60’s I managed to get aboard a 08 shunting goods in Dundee. Second driver was a bear of a man, an Italian, the starter switch? Was a large brass handle with a square hole in it, the key was removable.
The drivers party piece was to turn the starter with his bare hands without the key. Was he really doing this or was he taking the mickey out of an impressionable youngster?
If his hands were big enough I dare say he could do it, yes. If the brass key went walkies you could also use mole grips!Maybe you answer a question on these for me? As a railway enthusiast in the 60’s I managed to get aboard a 08 shunting goods in Dundee. Second driver was a bear of a man, an Italian, the starter switch? Was a large brass handle with a square hole in it, the key was removable.
The drivers party piece was to turn the starter with his bare hands without the key. Was he really doing this or was he taking the mickey out of an impressionable youngster?
P5BNij said:
Regarding left and right handed controls, some diesel locos were dual control equipped, Class 08 and 09 shunters for instance, and the Southern Region Class 33s. It's a while since I've driven an 08 or 09 but the ease of switching sides when pootling about in yards was one of the things I enjoyed about them.
The Southern Region seems to have been quite fond of dual controls. As well as the EE shunters, there was the solitary Bulleid 500hp diesel-hydraulic trip shunter. I'm pretty sure the electro-diesels also had controls on each side. The 33s must be one of the few diesel-electrics that can not only be driven from each end but from each corner. I vaguely remember at least one of the SR USA shunters had its driving controls relocated - either to make it driveable from either side or to switch the control side from the left to the right due to the odd layout of the works at Brighton (maybe Lancing?) which made it preferable for the driver to be on the 'wrong' (GWR correct...) side.
Gassing Station | Boats, Planes & Trains | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff