Current and Proposed New-Builds

Cheers for the link Tom. That's a new one on me. If they can raise enough support, it would certainly fill one of the biggest gaps in the history of UK locomotives.

 

The 4-4-2 tank version had, I believe, the biggest driving wheels ever used on a tank loco, the same as the tender engine, 6 foot 8.

 

Ahem ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_and_Exeter_Railway_4-2-4T_locomotives

Tom

 

Yes, forgot about them. Im getting out of my LMS/LMR comfort zone, you see

 

Now one of those would make for the most completely and utterly pointless new build proposal possible, bar none!

 

Apart from possibly a Leader or an LMS Garratt!!

 

Aaah... but 'Leader' never ran in service and the Garratt's shortcomings could be readily addressed at the design stage. Either consideration might also apply to those two Midland curiosities, 'Labache' and the Paget 2-6-2 .... and all of these four were standard gauge. To be truly useless, an obsolete gauge surely has to be a prerequisite!

 

Or totally unsuitable to passenger work, on either the main line, or a heritage railway. Before someone suggests Big Bertha!

 

So that's a 'no' to the Great Eastern's 'Decapod' too, then?

 

Sort of yes and no really. It did what was needed, proved that rapid acceleration was possible with steam, but I don't think it ever ran in ordinary traffic. Its main achievement was to postpone electrification of the GE suburban services for 50 years

 

The resolution, had the GWR needed a 4-4-0 express loco, would have been to put a Star front end on. But that would probably have been too much for the boiler. Its an interesting observation that the GWR were scrapping all their large wheel 4-4-0s at the same time the Schools were being built.

 

Its ironic really, because what it really proved was that the rapid acceleration wasn't practically possible with steam. Probably not the first and absolutely not the last time an experiment was held to give exactly the results the commissioning executive wanted given.

 

Yes, the GWR seemed to phase 4-4-0s out earlier than the other three did. The only GWR ones to reach nationalisation were the Dukedogs and a few residual Duke/Bulldog survivors all of which were the smaller wheeled ones.

 

In the great scheme of railway development, I've never been too sure that could be called a 'plus'!

 

The great postwar cull of older locos and classes of just a few examples was marked on all regions. The old LBSC B4/B4x/D1/D3/E5/I1x/I3/J1/J2 classes all went extinct by the mid 50s. S'pose the arrival of the 'Mickey Mouse' 2MTs and Fairburn 4s ahead of the BR standards might've had something to do with it. Good though they were, drafting in the neighbours' M7s and Hs to the BR(S) Central Divn was rubbing salt in the wound for Brighton afficionados!

 

And as I'm sure you know, the Hoy 2-6-2 tanks of the L&YR served exactly the same function of running steam services to the electric timetables while the electric stock was being introduced, successfully too, I understand. Unfortunately, once displaced from the Liverpool - Southport service, they proved unsuitable for almost everything else.

 

On a slightly less unconventional note than the 4-2-4T, the Brighton Baltics had 6'9" drivers, so larger even if not largest. Of course, they later became tender engines, but they didn't have a tender engine equivalent at the time of construction.

 

Not being very well up on the L&Y, this was a new one to me. Looking at the spec. my limited German (the best description and only image found thusfar) gives me the distinct impression that the Hoy design was essentially a 2-4-0t stretched in the middle and at the back. There doesn't look to be too much room for an effective front end steam/exhaust circuit, which is reminiscent of many designs of that era (GNRI and LSW examples spring to mind) which were later modified with longer smokeboxes. The early demise of this class (and of Henry Hoy, for that matter) suggests something wasn't quite right.

Adding a trailing wheelset to a 2-4-0t to produce a 2-4-2t clearly affects little more than coal & water capacity and possibly ride quality, but the 'extra' coupled axle appears no more satisfactory an adaptation than those several early 4-6-0 designs which effectively had little more than an extra wheelset added to the chassis of a 4-4-0.

The little I've found about Hoy suggests his real talent lay in organisation rather than design. Moving from Horwich to become GM at Beyer Peacock demonstrates serious confidence in the man's strengths. An unrelated aside is that GS&WR CME E.A.Watson, Maunsell's successor at Inchicore and creator of the 'interesting' 400 class 4-6-0, made the same journey to Beyer Peacock in 1921.

 

...or wearing a football shirt with some unpronounceable name on it, and pretending that you are that player.

 

....which is why I follow rugby and learned the odd unrepeatable phrase or two in Samoan (handy at the bar!).

I trust the eventual extension of the Corris to it's proper southern terminus won't present any insurmountable pronunciation problems.