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What Ifs, and Locos that never were.

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Jimc, Feb 27, 2015.

  1. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Yes, and it was turned down due to war conditions. Hawksworth was miffed as Bulleid got the Merchant Navies approved
     
  2. Matt37401

    Matt37401 Nat Pres stalwart

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    Perhaps he should have said they were mixed traffic then! I wouldn't have thought the King's would have been the best design to continue to build though with those narrow fireboxes.
     
  3. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    It seems to be largely a myth. Hawksworth denied any involvement, and stated the GWR had no need for such a locomotive.
    A rough weights diagram did exist of a pacific at one stage, and allegedly Hawksworth destroyed the sketch because he didn't want it reproduced in his name.

    This is all well covered in L A Summers book Swindon Steam, and various earlier articles. The sum of it seems to be that Mattingly, the drawing office head, had some of his draughtsmen sketch out a few very preliminary ideas, but when Hawksworth found out he put a stop to it. This isn't an unlikely story - its well documented that Hawksworth and Stanier had quite a lot of preliminary design work done on a compound version of a Castle before they took it to Collett, who turned it down almost immediately.

    The sketch as exists looks wildly impractical with boiler tubes that are far too long and a factor of adhesion that would make a Light pacific look sure footed. Sometimes one makes studies to demonstrate what won't work rather than what will, and personally I will speculate that all the sketch in question demonstrates is a repeat of the Great Bear lesson - that the Star concept doesn't readily enlarge into a satisfactory 4-6-2.

    I'm not sure what a Pacific could do on the GWR lines that a King couldn't. If you want to run non stop to Scotland, yes, that's a bit different. But if there was a failure to see a need for more locomotives more powerful than a Castle, then that was a failure shared by BR management, who didn't build any either.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2016
  4. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    The more one looks at the last CME's of the "Big Four", the more one is impressed by H.G. Ivatt. He alone produced modern small locomotives (alas too few) whilst moving towards diesels.

    PH
     
  5. david1984

    david1984 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Hawksworth wasn't naughty enough to cross out "Express Passenger" and scribble in "Mixed Traffic" on the drawings.
     
  6. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    I think Hawksworth would argue that by 1947 he had placed orders to replace every pre group tank engine other than Churchward standard types, started evaluating diesel shunters (and bought basically the same English Electric design as used by LMS and BR) and also progressed Diesel railcars with the 3 car units. But basically, yes, I agree there is a sound argument that Ivatt was the best of the bunch.
     
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  7. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    There's a quote I've seen (from I think HAV Bulleid) noting that such drawing office sketches don't on their own mean much. They may have been made simply as a record of evolving thoughts. Equally, it is possible to make such sketches with the intention of showing what won't work as much as what will. For example, a "Swindon Standard" pacific may have seemed an obvious design alley in the 1940s, but a sketch may have been sufficient to show that the design would come with flaws and few practical advantages over the existing locos, at which point it could be dropped without spending further effort developing the design. Ultimately, what is important is what got built, not what didn't! What seems to have varied from company to company was the design autonomy of the draughtsmen to instigate such studies on their own; and the degree to which "the chief" took an active interest in suggesting and reviewing such designs well before more solid proposals were developed.

    Tom
     
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  8. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Didn't Stanier consider a light weight version of the Black 5 for Scotland, which wasn't built because several bridges with a weight restriction were strengthened instead?
     
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  9. 8126

    8126 Member

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    There's a lot of truth in that. I'm young enough that I've spent my entire design career driving a CAD package, never used a proper drawing board. However, there's nothing like sketching with pencil and paper for snatching an idea as it goes past and getting a grip on whether/how it can be made to work. Often the answer is 'No' fairly quickly. Other times it takes a bit of design development (which in a railway drawing office would indeed be by drawings, and probably some calculations) to determine that the answer is 'No,' or perhaps 'Not really.'
     
  10. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    But isn't a Stanier Princess Royal exactly that?
     
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  11. Smokestack Lightning

    Smokestack Lightning Member

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    OT but I understand that Adrian Newey, of Red Bull, produces his designs on a drawing board, because it enables him to predict and understand the airflow over the vehicle. The drawings are then converted to CAD format ready for production.

    Dave
     
  12. Jim Bob

    Jim Bob New Member

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    The so called "Cathedral" class only ever reached the drawing board stage, either as a 4-6-2 or a 4-8-0. Whereas the Kings were already tried, proven engines.
     
  13. Matt37401

    Matt37401 Nat Pres stalwart

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    And limited to certain routes! Although it would be intresting to see what the route availability of a 'Cathedral' would be. Going back to previous posts about building more Kings post war, with things like 18000 on order wouldn't it have been prudent to wait and see how that performed first, rather than another railway that ordered 30 loco's that number sequence began 36... ;) And of course with the benefit of hindsight 12 years after 1945 the first diesel Hydralics show up.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2016
  14. 8126

    8126 Member

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    I've read something similar, although I believe his drawings are put into CAD for computational fluid dynamics as well. The basic principle stands though, it's the way in which he can best capture his design ideas, and you don't waste the time of a genius asking him to then do something a proficient CAD monkey can do from his drawings.
     
  15. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    But each of the four railways had completely different needs to one another at the end of the second world war. There was a lot of catching up the LNER had to do in producing locomotives for a broad range of work - hence the numerous B1, K1, L1 and O1 locomotives which shared many parts. The GWR replaced a significant portion of their more elderly 0-6-0s and produced updated versions of the Hall and Castle class locomotives in addition to the new County. The Southern - well, their followers can speak for themselves, but I would argue the provision of over a hundred Pacifics, whatever misgivings I have on the design, did help to both speed up and shore up their passenger services.

    It's too simple to just point at the locomotives, however, without considering the wider range of duties a CME has to consider. For example Thompson, Hawksworth and Bulleid had rolling stock to worry about as well and all three produced a range of vehicles which were still in use well into BR days. Ivatt has no such designs to his name - but was the need for new rolling stock as necessary on the LMS as it was elsewhere? (I don't know the answer to this)

    As always putting the engineer and their work into the historical context with all of the demands and stresses that the CME requires probably paints a different story to the most basic assumptions made. Ivatt certainly did have built two mainline diesels: so did Bulleid - who also had built some electric locomotives too. So who was more forward thinking? Throw in Leader and Bulleid probably drops a few points...

    All I am trying to say is that it's not as simple as "Ivatt was the best of them". Look to what happened on each railway. They're not entirely comparable.
     
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  16. John Stewart

    John Stewart Part of the furniture

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    Frankly none of the CMEs had enough time from the end of the war to nationalisation to really show their mark.
     
  17. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    Actually nowhere did I use the expression "the best".

    PH
     
  18. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    Didn't the LMS simply continue to build the Stanier designed coaches
     
  19. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Paraphrasing a little on my part, accepted.
     
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  20. 61624

    61624 Part of the furniture

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    I always thought that the LMS "port hole" stock was their post-war design and attributed to Ivatt.
     

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