Current and Proposed New-Builds

The Hoy 2-6-2Ts were a development, if that's the right word, of Aspinall's 2-4-2 Radial Tanks. Barry C Lane in his excellent book, Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway LOCOMOTIVES (2010) Pendragon ISBN 978 1 8998 16 17 0) states:


The electrification of the Liverpool - Southport line with its new timings was hampered at first by insufficient electric stock being available. The new 2-6-2 tanks filled in and kept to the timetable with its demand for rapid acceleration between stops as only they could. However, for all their power, their great weight at 77½ tons did nothing for the track. The class was intended for working the Manchester, Rochdale, Oldham and Bury services for which they initially proved ideal. Heavy trains on those hilly routes were at the limit of the existing 2-4-2 tank locomotives. It is that very reason that saw the Hoy design produced.

But afterwards, things went awry for the class. George Hughes introduced a superheated version of the Radial Tanks, which could outperform the Hoy engines and were kinder to the track.

They were downgraded to shunting work, to which they were totally unsuited, and their habit of spreading the track in yards, especially on tight curves, resulted in the flanges being turned off the intermediate coupled wheels. This, needless to say, resulted in many derailments of that wheelset. They also had their sprung buffers replaced by dumb buffers. Quite a comedown for engines originally allocated to very fast passenger traffic.

Hoy seems to have been more at home with details than full locomotives, and fortunately this was the only one he built. He soon left the L&YR to become Managing Director of Beyer Peacock & Co., but I believe he died young, not too long afterwards.

 

Henry Hoy's death seems to have been in 1910, aged just 55.

The comment about the class 20 (or was it 26? I'm confused... both are given) punishing the track echoes another similarity with GSWR/Beyer Peacock personality E.A.Watson (see my post #158). Along with the '400' class 4-6-0s (what a saga those were!), another design was class '900' 4-8-0t of 1915 ... an eight coupled tank in Ireland!! Developed for heavy shunting at Kingsbridge yard, it's unsurprising that the rear coupling rod was removed from the solitary No.900 in 1927 to render it a 4-6-2t. More surprising was the decision to add a second class member, No.901 in 1924, three years after Watson's departure. In a country well known for the longevity of many locos, it's noteworthy that No.900 was withdrawn in 1928 and No.901 just three years later.

In fairness to Watson, the requirement for a heavy shunter for Kinsbridge dated from 1912 and defeated his predecessor Maunsell. Perhaps that gentleman's experiences in Ireland played some part in the subsequent development, years later, of the Southern's well regarded 'Z' class 0-8-0t.

 

I would be rather worried if it was an A3 proposal, and Gresley, given it was a Peppercorn A1...

 

It did. This is factual! And rather bizarre but a great example of Doncaster Works practice.

 

I would love to see a Pickersgill Caley 944 class, it ticks rather a lot of boxes in my eyes!

Class 4- so ample for most lines.

Unique as it would be a 4-6-2 tank

Would work well for bi-directional running as no tender

Pre- grouping design

Would be an example from a relatively under-represented railway company and designer.

Is a very aesthetically pleasing loco (especially in CR livery- looks stunning)

Chris

 

Leader, yes. The most obscene waste of funds by any railway engineer in British history. That he had permission to build more than the prototype is bonkers.

The Garratt on the other hand did great work and were long lived. Not without their faults, but I remain mystified by the antipathy they get - and what makes them deserving of such a poor ranking alongside the Leader...?!

 

Whereas I look at Leader as an excellent concept that gets an undeservedly poor press. Whereas I view the Garratts as a half baked attempt to get the Midland the heavy goods loco it needed, but was held back by unduly conservative design that locked in poor value for money.


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Nice choice! It does tick nearly every box. 5ft 9in drivers, decent fuel and water capacity, many parts in common with Caley class 60 (for when newbuildists get really carried away!), nice chunky big end bearings (OK perhaps that's just me!) pretty long lived (good choice of authentic liveries).

I can't find details like axle load, or whether they were superheated (as class 60 was, I'm guessing 'yes'). Lubrication arrangements for inside Stephenson valve gear would need a look-see at design stage, or crews and shed staff won't love it! With a spot of careful design work round the front end, I'd put money on performance being closer to a class 5, with better fuel economy to boot.

I'd put this one on the shopping list too.

 

• Steam was not the future - the Ivatt Diesel pair contemporary to Leader proves this
• Centre of boiler for firebox for dangerous for fireman (cramped, single door, no means of escape should loco tip onto side)
• Southern Railway were not massively flush with cash during war and at war's end did not have much to go on
• Sleeve valves constantly required attention
• Coal and water consumption was higher particularly at the beginning of project

Excellent concept? Undeservedly poor press? With comparison to what?

This is what absolutely angers me when you see the vitriol aimed at Thompson. No outstanding locomotives but at least they all worked and they did their jobs mostly to the end of steam.

Leader is the biggest white elephant going. How Bulleid got away with that I will never know.

I refute this. They did the work required of them for around thirty years. That is not indicative of a totally unsuccessful design. A flawed design where the axle boxes and other parts were concerned, absolutely. If they were horrendous they would have been scrapped in a few years - but they were not.

 

The Achilles Heel of the LMS Garratts was indeed the 4F axleboxes, insisted on by Anderson, I think, in a move towards 'standardisation'. Shame.

Leader? That behemoth, even if it had worked, was only rated the same, power-wise, as an M7, but using how much more fuel? The thermal losses must have been horrendous. Weight? Way more than the M7. Size? Much bigger. Working conditions? Ask the poor fireman which one he preferred.

 

One measure of how worthwhile the Leader concept was might be to count the number of its innovations that were taken up and run with by other engineers.

 

I get the impression that many of the Scottish Loco's from this period were very sturdily built!

There doesn't seem to be a wealth of information available about the class, I have previously had a search on google and through some of the books that I have, and pretty much the Wikipedia article online sums up all that I have found about them.

I'd be interested to find out more about the locos, if anyone has any references to them?

Chris

 

A problem with the Garratts beyond the poor axlebox performance was their coal consumption. The saving from using them amounted to the wages of one driver and fireman, as they used about the same amount of coal as the previous Class 3F and 4F combination. How much of this saving was nullified by the high maintenance charges, I don't know.

Added to this was their sheer size; accommodating them in sheds was always a problem. They did though, as S.A.C. Martin says, last the distance, unlike the Austin 7 0-8-0s.

 

So would I !! Can't find an entry in 'steamindex(dot)com', which is odd, as it mentions a proposal for a 4cyl pacific tank which never got off the ground.

Now if it had been a Highland loco...... those I have oodles on. Quite a few candidates from there as well.

Edit: Just had a shuftie round the Caley Assoc website and forum. Not a single mention of the 944s. There's more out there on the Midland Paget!!

 

Well, if they were doing the same amount of work, you would expect a similar amount of fuel to be used. The other saving would be only one boiler to overhaul, I would think. Also, preparation/disposal would be quicker and easier - outside cylinders and valve gear would make oiling round much better, plus, again, only one ashpan to deal with, and only one bunker to replenish.

I think that, given their longevity, they can ultimately be regarded as a 'near miss'.

 

One Bulleid new build which I wouldn't mind seeing is an engine which never got built in the first place: after the war and having already supplied one of the Greenly pacifics with an Ashford-built tender, Bulleid and Missenden promised to construct a 15" gauge MN for the RHDR, but nationalisation got in the way and nothing came of it.

 

No, you expect progress! And you would also expect one big engine working a train to be more economical than two small ones, as in the Stanier Pacifics against a Black Five and a 2P. And the cost of a boiler overhaul was also related to its size.

The time taken for preparation would not in practice be reduced as it had nothing to do with accessibility: the time was prescribed by agreement with the trades unions and the cut-off point was 1500 sq ft of heating surface of the boiler, if memory serves. It might take longer to prepare a Compound with three sets of inside gear than a Standard Five, where it was outside and much of it was by grease gun by the fitters anyway, but the Five was allowed more time.

I'd agree that they were a reasonably near miss, though.

 

Jack Howey would probably have insisted on a 2-cyl machine in view of what his beloved 'Hurricane' did to it's inside motion out on the Marsh back in the 30's!!

 

Now you have got me thinking..... A 15 inch rebuilt bulleid of course....

 

Looking at the other conversation going on at the mo. on this thread, how's about a 15" gauge........ wait for it....... wait for it........ 'Leader' TA-DAH!!!