Uk Push Pull Steam Workings/Steam Multiple Units & Buckeyes/Concepts

I believe due to changes in safety standards.

 

Virgin East Coast is push and pull.

Ooops, sorry, I've just seen the thread title and noticed.......'Steam workings..........

 

Another thing that never got off the ground that I believe a few thought should have done was the bulleid leader class locos. Can't remember exactly but i'm sure it was 1 of the only attempts at making a proper modern steam loco similar to a diesel I.E. with cabs at both ends & all the workings internally.

Buckeyes have their advantages & disadvantages admittedly, if it doesn't couple 1st time then it all has to be done again which is annoying.

 

While I'm not Oliver Bulleid's greatest fan, his attempt at the Leader was certainly praiseworthy, in that it attempted to give drivers the advantages of electric units in terms of visibility and a truly reversible engine (tank engines are reversible in theory, but most men would turn them to be chimney leading given half a chance). The design though was so radical that it needed much development work to be carried out on a single prototype, as with Henry Fowler's very high pressure Royal Scot 6399 Fury, William Stanier's 6202 Turbo, and Nigel Gresley's 10000 Hush-Hush water tube boilered engine. None of these was entirely successful, and neither was the Leader. But unlike his three compatriots, Bulleid had a batch on order rather than the single prototype, so the lack of success was widespread.

It was a shame, as the principles would have answered many of the problems of steam traction, but the complexity - and expense - ensured that it was never to be under the BR Standardisation regime.

 

On the other hand however David Wardale produced the worlds most thermally efficient steam loco by rebuilding an existing design and through little more radical than proper attention to detail.

Thanks to Bullied The Southern had to continue with a fleet of elderly and underpowered tank locomotives rather than getting the decent modern 2-6-2 or 2-6-4 it desperately needed after 1945

 

I really would have liked to see the leader continue & have been developed further, a proper reversible loco with all it's workings internally could have made it a proper (pardon the pun here) modern day design.

BR wouldn't have been keen on something so complex, but they did try out other concepts etc such as 71000 duke of gloucester which IIRC was a class 8 pacific. Complex as similar to the leader & bloody tempremental at times it seems, hopefully now she's at tyseley the new owning group can crack on & get her back to full health soon as she's very sorely missed.

Any other weird concepts or similar I might've missed out?

 

There is the former Egyptian Rlys Sentinel SMU in the UK at Quainton. It has an articulated bogie layout and comprises a power car (boiler and 2 engines), an intermediate car and a driving trailer car at the far end.

 

Sentinel produced what were probably the most successful railcars. The LNER had several sets working on branch lines serving East coast resorts. I feel that it is a great shame that the LNER did not have the budget for the sort of publicity to put 'streamlined' A4 style front (& rear) cabs on them, just imagine travelling up the ECML behind a streamlined B17, then barding a similar styled railcar at. say Scarborough to complete the trip to your holiday resort.


I would venture to suggest that the first steam railcar along these lines was the idea of Colonel Stephens, built in 1905, it consisted of a carriage body & underframe by Pickering, with a vertical boiler and a steam launch (boat) engine mounted in the cab, it seems to have been in a state of constant repair/maintenance eventually being abandoned in Rolvenden yard until the mid '30's. Many armchair experts have since suggested all sorts of ways that it should have been done, mostly involving Sentinel parts that didn't exist at the time.

 

I was wondering the other day as to whether midland/lms ever looked into multiple working of their small locos as per some classes of diesels, but then I suppose that's what a garratt sort of is, and you'd still need a fireman on each loco, so any savings would be minimal.

 

A steam multiple unit would have been interesting if there'd been 1 the same design/layout as say a modern dmu.

A railmotor with streamlined cabs like an a4 would look mega.

 

I'm not really sure where this is leading. The control issues to manage a steam locomotive boiler were really such that, with the technology available sixty or seventy years ago, you really needed one person per boiler - you couldn't easily have one person operating multiple boilers remotely in safety. By time you get to the point where some form of remote control of boilers would be feasible, the core problem (how to have one crew control multiple power units) could essentially be solved much more easily using diesel or electric power.

Tom

 

My late father talked about a trip on the prototype HST - Colonel Stevens 'back to back' Ford railbuses.

The failure to develop the GWR Diesel Railcars after WW2 and build large numbers of small steam locos instead was in my view a serious mistake and cost the railways dearly.

 

The GWR railcars, like much from that company, were not the universal answer to the LMS nor later BR situation. Eric Langridge has quite a bit to say about the development - and problems - of the early dmu's in Vol. 2 of 'Under 10 CMES' (2011) The Oakwood Press ISBN 078 085361 716 7. It was quite protracted and the book is well worth a read.

He also mentions the LMS three-car dmu built in the 1930s and possibly more suitable as a prototype than the GWR railcars.

 

The point is, Martin, that the dmu's took time to develop, nor were they, even when introduced, anywhere near perfection. The GWR railcars were a possible solution to some aspects of the traffic, but nowhere near enough of them. Simply shoving a pair of bus engines under a carriage does not make for a reliable machine.

Looking back with hindsight and saying, "This was proved to be the way forward so they should have just taken that path," is neither practical nor possible. There was no guarantee that the dmu's would work, nor how long it would take to solve the problems. Nor was the massive programme of branch line closures realised in the late forties and early fifties, taking away much of the traffic the steam locos were built to work. Had those lines survived, there would have been a need for trains which the dmu building programme would not have matched. Moreover, the steam locos were available for other uses; the dmu's were passenger carrying vehicles pure and simple.

The answers are always simple when you know everything that's going to happen, but people have to deal with the present and the expected future. For what it's worth, I too think the BR Standards were a wasted effort, but not for that reason.

 

It's an opinion, certainly. But I think you underestimate the situation. Britain was in financial difficulties (as ever!) and we had coal but not (then) oil. Diesel and electric traction was not ignored with both the LMS and Southern developing main line traction, and the LNER main line electrification. But as said, these things do not happen overnight, and if proof were needed, look at the fiasco when dieselisation was forced on to the system by political rather than engineering masters, and the amount of money wasted in the process. This is what happens when short cuts are taken.

There were alternatives which might have worked better - or might not. The things is, we don't know how the untried solutions would have fared for the simple reason that they weren't tried. But I tend not to go for the 'What if..' threads on here and elsewhere, we have what happened and what didn't, for better or for worse. Debating that it might have been better had they done whatever is, to me, a pointless exercise. It didn't happen, so we'll never know.

 

We can agree on that, anyway!

 

Double Fairlie, anyone?