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Current and Proposed New-Builds

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by aron33, Aug 15, 2017.

  1. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    You don't think that 40 Counties seems like a generous provision for one joint line, especially if you add to it something like 90 outside frame 4-4-0s? There was surely a policy decision not to keep large wheel 4-4-0s in service since the whole lot, inside and outside frames, were withdrawn between 1927 and 1933, well short of a normal life for both groups.
    The Counties were stabled all round the system, although, yes, according to RCTS the Bristol Birmingham route was an important duty until the weight restriction on Stonehaven viaduct was lifted in 1927.
    The theory that they were simply for the Shrewsbury and Hereford line is also discounted in RCTS, which states "there was then plenty of use for express engines of moderate size".
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2017
  2. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    i didn;t say that, I said that's why the design was built. I'm sure there were plenty of secondary lines where they could be used. It was the sucess of the Halls that saw them off and don't forget a short life on the GWR is rather meaningless as not much of them would have been scrapped.
     
  3. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Looking at my 1922 Bradshaw, joint GW/LNW services covered many more services than I expected
    450 - 453 Crewe, Chester, Whitchurch, Shrewsbury, Woofferton & Hereford
    454 - 457 Swansea, Llanelly [sic], & Shrewsbury
    458 -459 Chester, Hooton, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead & Liverpool
    460 Hooton & West Kirby plus Hooton & Helsby
    461 Stafford, Newport, Wellington, Shrewsbury & Welshpool
    462 - 463 Manchester and Chester

    Without knowing too much about GW class allocations, I wouldn't care to speculate on what services away from the joint line used the 38xx. I would dispute any notion that they were a lightweight alternative to the 29xx as the axle load was actually a bit higher.

    Leaving small tank locos for specialised applications (1101, 1361 etc), what was the smallest (in numbers) class for mainline ops? 30 'Kings' come to mind, but the 38's, numbering 40 locos wasn't a lot. Is anyone aware of which earlier classes they displaced, or was it a time of significant growth in traffic on tbe GW?
     
  4. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    If 4-4-0s with two outside cylinders turned out to give a rough ride, why were 2-6-0s of about the same size not as bad or worse?
     
  5. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    The Maunsell 2-6-0 design reputedly wiggled about more when widened to the Irish 5'-3" gauge compared with the SR examples. This was put down to the wider cylinder spacing.
     
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  6. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    how did they do that, it looks to me for all the world as if the running boards , cab etc were unaltered, surely they didn't just pop spacers in ?
     
  7. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Actually..... aside from obvious tweaks around the steam and exhaust pipes...... pretty much! The class originated with the MGWR on the cusp of grouping, with the first ceremonially outshopped in MGWR livery ....... and immediately repainted into GSR grey

    From 'Locomotives of the GSR' (Clements and McMahon Pub: Colourpoint 2008 ISBN 978 1 904242 26 8):

    "To accomodate the 5'-3" gauge, it was necessary to provide new frame stays, smokebox saddles, axles and exhaust pipe distance pieces. The footplate was widened by 61/2" to 8'-101/2" and the distance between the cylinder centres was increased to 7'-21/2" .....whereas the British locomotives had a very stiff frame construction resulting from stays consisting of flanged plates fitted top and bottom, a short-sighted economy was introduced into the Irish version through reliance on a single new horizontal flanged plate ...... fitted approximately midway between top and bottom of the frames"


    The Irish locos (20 with 5'-6" dia drivers Class 372 and 6 with 6'-0" dia drivers Class 393) had a few other detail differences, most notably neither class ever wore smoke deflectors and Maunsell pattern smokebox doors were replaced over time with a wheel locked door. The lamp brackets, where originally fitted atop the smokebox, got removed too. The purchase price averaged £2200 per loco. Class 372 went extinct in 1962, outlasting Class 393 by 3 years.

    (Post edited to correct class ID of 6'-0" driver verion)
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2017
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  8. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    I haven't seen the Loco Cttee minutes for that time period, to see exactly what was built as replacements for what, but in that pre war era the last of the 2-2-2 singles classes and a lot of 2-4-0s were withdrawn. There's no doubt train weights were rapidly increasing as the last Dean Singles left the works in 1899, but by 1908 they were starting to be withdrawn as they were running out of work. Its worth noting that in Ahrons' The British Steam Locomotive from 1825 to 1925 he describes the 4-4-0 non compound locomotive as "the standard British Express engine".

    Perhaps also worth noting that when the last of the Counties were built the GWR had, I think, if my quick adding up is correct, 77 Saints and 46 Stars making 123 6'8 4-6-0s, but 134 6'8" 4-4-0s (Atabaras, Badmintons, Cities etc) and over 200 smaller wheeled 4-4-0s (Bulldogs, Dukes, 3521 etc), all of them under 20 years old and the majority much less, so the 4-4-0 was the predominant type in the fleet.

    As noted above RCTS mentions one specific viaduct as having a weight restriction, implying a total weight limit rather than axle loading.
     
  9. LesterBrown

    LesterBrown Member

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    It is perhaps illuminating to look at the class totals at the end of 1906 when there were 30 Counties and 32 'Saint's (of which quite a number were Atlantics). There was clearly a demand for further large 4-4-0s at that time, but instead of ordering more Counties a start was made on converting 9 more of the newest Atbaras to Cities by fitting the larger No 4 boilers (one had previously been rebuilt in 1902 as the prototype City). At about the same time twenty more new Atbaras (the Flower series) were ordered.

    It would surely have been logical to have ordered nine or ten of the new locos as Cities, particularly as the Flower series were built with stronger frames. I speculate that Churchward was concerned that to have ordered new engines of a similar size to his Counties to the older design might have damaged his reputation by drawing attention to the deficiencies with the Counties, so restricted new construction to the lighter class.

    Clearly at the time the first Counties were built the 4-4-0 was still the type the traffic department needed across the network with the ten wheeled locos only starting to be used on the heaviest trains.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2017
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  10. Copper-capped

    Copper-capped Part of the furniture

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    It is interesting when things start to get pieced together - build dates, other class builds, route requirements, @Jimc 's weight restricted viaduct and so forth. Even outside influences that we in modern times may not give much thought could play a part in decisions taken.

    One thing about the Counties that might bear further looking at is that 40 locomotives of supposedly questionable shortcomings were built in 3 seperate batches over a period of 8 years. The first 10 built in 1904, then a further 20 built two years later. Surely if they were terrible then two years of running would have identified the issues and put a kybosh on further batches or required appropriate corrective measures so perhaps they must have been fulfilling the role(s) they were designed for to an acceptable standard. Was there any modification between the first two batches? Certainly some degree of tinkering associated with a new class entering traffic would be expected but nothing I've come across suggests the addressing of any major issues. (Happy to be schooled on that though!)

    The third batch of a further 10 counties comes in 1911-12. They received curved frames and the earlier counties were rebuilt as such. So with 30 examples in traffic the decision was taken to build a further 10 six years later - this was after Churchward had decided on 4-6-0 wheel arrangement for the Saints rather than 4-4-2 on greater adhesion merit so there must have been some good reason to build another batch of four coupled locomotives of similar design to his Saints.

    Personally I find it slightly amusing when the County is suggested as an unsuccessful Churchward design. Something akin to criticising an athelete for not producing a personal best in every race - so high high was his benchmark! I'm sure there were some of his CME rivals that would have loved to have produced such an engine class - inherent rough riding qualities but otherwise powerful in an era of rapidly increasing train weights!
     
  11. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    Forgive me Ross but this is spoken like a true fanboy! Every company perpetuated unsatisfactory designs or design features and I do mean "every". The Midland 4F was the outstanding example but there were others. Proneness to frame fractures was a particular party piece which Doncaster did at least sort out for the A4s relative to the A1/A3s but that railway did have other foibles.

    The GWR is no exception to the rule that the Sun does not shine out of an unusual part of any railway's anatomy.

    PH
     
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  12. Martin Perry

    Martin Perry Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator Friend

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    I believe that the further batch was built due to The LNWRs objection to anything larger running over The 'North and West' route.
     
  13. Copper-capped

    Copper-capped Part of the furniture

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    I accept that but I make no apologies for being a fanboy! Certainly it plays a part in wanting to kick around a part of interesting (to me!) GWR history in an effort to delve deeper than the most available story of LNWR route exclusion of GWR 4-6-0 engines that led to the creation of the 4-4-0 County. The story is very plausible and readily found without too much trouble on a number of online sources but above posts suggest that it may be not the 'be all and end all'.

    The fanboy logic in me thinks the Counties could not have been all that bad and as such, they filled their niche. The locomotive manufacturing capability of Swindon was prodigious - by the 1920's it was the largest Locomotive workshops in the world. If factors warranted a better option than the County because it was a dud, then the capability was certainly there.
     
  14. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    There is no "logic" about being a fanboy. NP can be a lurking ground for revisionist points of view of all kinds.

    PH
     
  15. Martin Perry

    Martin Perry Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator Friend

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    There is no logic about being a railway enthusiast either! :)
     
  16. Copper-capped

    Copper-capped Part of the furniture

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    I'm not attempting to re-write history here! I just think the Counties get a bad wrap when possibly their greatest sin is to be compared against other Churchward offerings. :p
     
  17. Bill Drewett

    Bill Drewett Member

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    Deleted
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2017
  18. 8126

    8126 Member

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    Longer fixed wheelbase on the 2-6-0s. A long fixed wheelbase is bad for going round curves, but good for resisting self-induced waggling. As a comparison, according to their simulations of both, based on information gathered from testing Tornado, the A1 trust found that their proposed P2 would actually ride better than Tornado on relatively straight track.

    The Counties actually have quite a short fixed wheelbase even for a 4-4-0, at only 8'6". A lot of other 4-4-0 designs used 10' with the firebox dropped between, at which point the designers tended to lose their nerve about stretching the coupling rods any further, but the Counties don't need to accommodate a crank axle and have a relatively small grate for a late 4-4-0, which may be arranged above the trailing axle, as you would for a 2-6-0 or 2-6-2T. But you can see how a County would therefore be much more prone to waggling than a similarly potent (in cylinder terms) inside cylinder 4-4-0 like an LSWR D15 or GCR Director. The much later Schools, with a 4-6-0 firebox that could easily be arranged above the trailing axle, still has a notably large gap between its coupled axles, probably 10' again, in part to accommodate the crank axle I guess.

    I suspect the Counties went early at least in part because they were so standardised; scrapping them represented a useful stock of spare boilers, cylinders and motion, whereas scrapping say a D15 would have been just a straight write-off of capital. Even as late as the mid-1950s the 4-4-0s were still the best motive power for the right sort of jobs, long runs with few stops where infrastructure restrictions applied. The Lymington boat trains are a classic example, when the Southern region first tried to put U1-class moguls on the job they performed miserably, so the D15s were reprieved for another year while some of the U-class were re-cylindered and re-draughted. But keeping a particular class in service for certain duties makes much less sense when there's value to be extracted from cannibalising them and they were never considered hugely successful in the first place.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2017
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  19. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    There's no doubt the Counties weren't very satisfactory. In the Collett/Hannington/Cook era when there was great emphasis on shopping intervals they wouldn't have been popular at all, and the crews didn't like them either.

    On the other hand they did outlast all the other large wheel 4-4-0s, few of which were life expired, so we have to be looking at a policy decision not to carry on with large wheel 4-4-0s, and they clearly weren't so troublesome that the double framers were preferred. There must be little doubt they could do all the work they were required to do because the front end was so capable, but one may easily imagine that crews would have been reluctant to make up any lost time. I think you have to suspect that if there hadn't been the policy change to scrap all the 4-4-0s then they might have survived longer. There were worse classes around.

    The contrast is with the 5'8 wheel 4-4-0s which did run a reasonably full life, even if in some cases that was with some juggling of components to turn Bulldogs into Dukes when the original Dukes were clapped out.

    An interesting aspect of the third lot was that they had significant design changes - brakes, cylinders, and reverse were all changed, even if these were all changes that had been made to other classes and would only need a moderate amount of new design work.
     
  20. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    I think increasingly heavy traffic was the cause of the 4-4-0s demise not being life expired, in other words they had become obsolete.

    In such a case and with GWR standardisation, when a loco needs major work, such as frame repairs or replacement, the loco can be broken up and the useable parts recycled.

    Locos such as the Grange used such components from "new", or was that just an accounting exercise?
     

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