10 most important / noteworthy UK steam designs .your views and why

which designs would you select ? mine are below . controversial is good !!
in no particular order

LNWR Jumbo cheap, fast and effective , was enlarged over time ,culminating in the KGV 4-4-0

Schools 4-4-0 ---what can you say .? just brilliant

Fowler 2-6-4 tank . introduced in 1927. developed and built over the following 25 or so years culminating in the standard tanks. .

GNR C1 Atlantic .superheated. just a legend.

GWR Star. a great loco , that gave us Castles, Kings, Princess Royal and the Princess Coronation.

GWR 2-8-0 the definitive heavy freight loco. ran for 60 years almost unchanged , and the inspiration for the LMS 8F

Duchess. just incomparable.

LNWR DX goods. cheap and effective ,evolved into the Crested Goods . the first mass produced standard loco. with a good turn of speed too .70 mph allegedly

LNER A4. Pacific. Well you cant ignore what they achieved ,so they're in . shame about losing Silver Link

LSWR Urie H15 4-6-0. 1 st modern large boiler 2 cyl with outside cyls. and valve gear.


near misses-Pom Pom,and the original 5 Midland Compounds

 

On the GWR side I don't know how you separate Star, Saint and 28xx 2-8-0. The Saint and the 2800 were designed together and developed together, and everything later goes back to them, and the Star was very much a 4 cylinder version of the Saint with many parts in common. However if you have all 3 of them it looks top heavy in a list of 10. Maybe you have "The Churchward standard cylinder classes" and bundle in there the large prairie as the first modern suburban passenger locomotive and the 4300 as the first modern mixed traffic locomotive.

 

I can see this thread again deteriorating into the 'What's you favourite engine?' category, so this will probably be the only post I'll make on it. But the most important, and certainly the most influential, was Robert Stephenson's Rocket; you start there and build up.

 

hopefully it will be more objective than that .
Rocket was built with the sole purpose of winning the prize at Rainhill. Lancastrian made it obsolete in very short order .

off topic already .excellent lol . come on , I suspect you have some interesting choices . maybe a Stanier 2-6-0 would figure ?

 

I did consider that , but they all spawned different lines of development . I did come close to including the 43XX in my choices but decided not to as it was an assembly of standard parts , not really a new from the ground up design . but they are one of my favourite locos

 

J21. Slogging away over the fells year after year.

 

Stephenson's Rocket. Multitube boiler. The rest were just improvements on the original!

 

Not forgetting its predecessors that proved steam locomotion was a viable prospect but I agree that Rocket was the one that showed the way forward.

 

Or how about the GNR J52. The first steamy engine privately preserved by an individual?

 

you can't ignore the 57xx family.

 

Don’t you mean the Northumbrian? Rocket was a prototype, a very successful experiment which sparked, as you say, a rapid evolution. And the best choice of locomotive name - ever.

 

Rocket's importance was in proving that steam locomotives could work traffic at high speed (for the day) over extended distances; previous locos proved that locomotives worked, but not that they were suitable for intercity use. The L&MR Directors were split on the issue with about half wanting to use rope working by stationary engines. Had Rocket failed at the Rainhill Trials, as did her three competitors, that's the way the L&MR, and many later railways, would have gone. Her importance was that she proved the point that locomotives were suitable over long distances and opened the way both for the L&MR and all that followed.

Rocket was the first of her 'class', none of which was identical to her, mostly in terms of the cylinder position, while Northumbrian moved the design on a bit further again. It's true that she was designed entirely to meet the conditions of the Trials, but she, and her successors, were also capable of working traffic. But Development was rapid: Rocket was a development of Lancashire Witch, Arrow, etc. a development of Rocket. But it was Rocket which proved the possibility of steam locomotives over 70 miles and more; all previous types were short haul only. Everything else followed from there.

 

Not really. Blast pipes in one form or another had been around since Richard Trevithick at Pen-y-Darren in 1804, and many later locos were so fitted. Rocket at Rainhill had two blast pipes, one from each cylinder, and Robert Stephenson spent some time experimenting with them to achieve the highest smokebox vacuum before the loco left the works. It was later realised that combining the two into one gave even better results, but this was after the Trials. Timothy Hackworth was a great believer in the blast pipe and Sans Pareil was also fitted with one, but the blast was too fierce for a return, large flue boiler and it ejected coke all over the surrounding countryside, one reason why the judges refuse to allow a second attempt after it failed on its first.

 

Given that the thread is looking at important or noteworthy designs then perhaps consider the designs that may not have marked a great step forward in design but where everything came together so well as to justify building large numbers, or where they were built over a long period of time. The LMS Black 5 and 8F classes spring to mind - they did what they were supposed to do (and still do!). The GWR 57XX family has already been mentioned. The LNER J72 also springs to mind.

Steve B

 

Without, as @LMS2968 points out, degenerating into 'my favourite engine in it's proper colour', here's my tuppence worth:

My first nomination just has to be Mr Richard Trevithick's Pen-y-Darren machine. The Stephenson's (père et fils) occupy positions 2 and 3 with their 'Rocket' (obviously!) and 'Planet' (first with the 'usual' position for pistons), after which, for me at least, it's more about those developments almost universally used by successful steam locomotive designers than anything else.

So, demonstrating my ignorance of specific designs to which they were first successfully applied, the next 'biggies' would be (1841 or thereabouts) the earliest successful loco fitted with Stephenson valve gear, as successor to primitive gab gear, then (around 1856), the first to utilise the Ramsbottom safety valve. With IKB's "tolerably useless" comment in mind, development of seam powered brakes (date and application unknown to me .... any offers?) has to be included. The use of live steam injectors (originating with Henri Gifford around 1858) is a defining feature of nearly all non-condensing designs (and certainly featured on Fletcher-Jennings locos within a very few years, as 'Talyllyn' of 1864 carried them until dismantled for rebuilding in the fifties). That's my criteria for nos 4,5,6 and 7. Does anyone have specific designs on which to pin these advances?

The first locos to feature the Schmidt superheater and piston valves (Schmidt/Garbe) around 1890 on the Prussian State Railway (KPStE) take positions 8 and 9, although as I can't discount both features being introduced on the same loco, maybe that should be 8a and 8b!

Discounting compounding, on the grounds that the UK loading gauge prevented full development here and André Chapelon's developments post-date my next selection, I submit Mr George Jackson Churchward's 'Saint' and 'Star' classes as the fruit of detailed empirical research. (Nos.9 and 10 or 10a and 10b .... take your pick!).

Looked at this way, I find Ing. L.D.Porta's categories of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation technology apply quite nicely, with Porta's own rebuilt 4-8-0 'Argentina' (a bloody disgrace this loco was allowed to rot away) as the genesis of 2nd gen, with the 3rd gen still languishing, awaiting the opportunity for development, on computers and drawing boards here and there.

 

Class 9Fs owe its life to USA S160s that demonstrated that wide firebox over driving wheels in UK was practical.

 

B1, K1/1, K5, A1/1, A2/1, A2/2, A2/3, B2, L1, O1

Lights blue touchpaper.

Stands well back.

 

I think people should rise above their partisan preferences and look at the whole picture.