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

Hard to disagree with most of what you say! But maybe you are just a little too harsh in calling Leader Bulleid's "whim"? There was a perfectly logical business case to order this design (in fact the SR ordered 5 of them for evaluation, with options for more) ... provided that one accepted the CME's assessment of their capabilities (the spec claimed Leader would be a go anywhere, mixed traffic, 90 MPH, full adhesion, efficient and ergonomic design). Bulleid's failings were not to do with the business need, but in being very over-optimistic about what could realistically be achieved; and/or glossing over the amount of development time and money that would be essential.

It's clear that with hindsight, this was an engineering dead end. Maybe not so clear at the time though, especially with more than one U-turn taking place in national policy about the railways using indigenous coal rather than imported oil as their fuel.

It was ugly - and it failed. But the design uniquely took a stab at a worthwhile goal, and did have some features which could possibly have been pursued more successfully, given more time and development funding.

I don't think it is quite right to say that designs by Hawksworth, Thompson, Peppercorn and Ivatt get overlooked. Their achievements were considerable, and they get plenty of mentions on here! The problem is that these designers - and others up to Riddles - all worked towards making the conventional steam locomotive as suitable as it could be for contemporary conditions. That process could only go so far - and could not address the perceived need in the 1950s for engines that looked swish and modern; could be driven by sitting in a warm, clean environment and pushing buttons or twiddling knobs; and did not need arduous, unpleasant cleaning and servicing between each trip.

 

What was the Bulleid/Leader innovative step forward from this:

http://railwaywondersoftheworld.com/wpimages/wp87e1adac_05_06.jpg

 

That's what they thought about the Rocket in 1829. The Novelty was much prettier.

 

Conspiracy theory time! Was the Leader to lumber a new organisation (BR) with something they wouldn’t want? Was the SR/Bulleid in favour of the amalgamation? My guess is, that as the Southern was actually quite profitable, they were not.

There are precedents, IMO, the big order on the eve of nationalisation for the 9400 panniers by the GWR could have been an example, also, on the buses, Stockport Corporation didn’t want to be amalgamated into Selnec PTE so they placed an order for 10 Bristol VRTs just before the merger, knowing that there were none of these in the combined fleets and that Selnec wouldn’t have wanted any.

 

You want to see an American's perspective? Here ya'll go:

1. Gresley LNER A1/A3's: Longest serving pacific-type steam locomotive for the UK, and drew influence from the Pennsylvania Railroad K4a-class Pacifics.
2. Highland Jones Goods: First 4-6-0 class design in the British Isles.
3. GWR Churchward 29xx "Saints": First of the Great Western "Ten-Wheeler" classes.
4. LNER A4's: Who doesn't love the 'Streaks'?
5. BR Standard Class 7's: Imposing 4-6-2 standard design from BR.
6. GWR 28xx 2-8-0's: 1st 2-8-0 class in Britain.
7. GWR 111 "The Great Bear": The first Pacific design in England, and the ONLY Pacific ever designed for the Great Western.
8. SR Bulleid Merchant Navy/West Country/Battle of Britain: Gotta love Spamcans!
9.GWR 57xx 0-6-0PT: Largest class of mass-produced 0-6-0T's, with different subclasses.
10. LMS 7F: If you don't like this class, then you don't know anything about the Somerset & Dorset!

 

We all know that Leader was a failure and, with the benefit of hindsight, we all know the reasons why. I suspect, though, that anyone with an interest in steam would have hoped that it would have been successful because the basic principle of a double cab loco on bogies was the right way to try and go. OVS to the SR Board: " I'm proposing to build a double ended bogie loco that can go anywhere, needs no turntable and minimum servicing, just like a diesel. it will cost less than half an equivalent diesel and will burn readily available coal." It would get my vote. It was only the execution of that dream that was fundamentally flawed.

 

Maybe if it hadn’t used sleeve valves and had been oil fired it may have been better. I understand the Irish development, CC1, was slightly better and it used normal piston valves

 

Poppet valves and single acting pistons might have been even better - as with the 6 cylinder Sentinal railcar engines on the LNER. That said they might not have produced sufficient output per cylinder single acting. There were double acting sentinel engines with poppet valves at each end but they needed two sets of seals on the piston rod.

 

This was actually a continued improvement of the Leader - with two people seconded from BR to Inchicore.

This time it was one prototype only and it actually seems to have worked surprisingly successfully. Basically all the considerable
problems with the fuel - I don't think dried fine peat burning had been achieved in anything comparable to a locomotive -
were all got to work: air preheating, spark arresting and the feed from the bunkers to the firebox all within the constraints of
a locomotive rather than a stationary power plant with a steadier power output and without the space and weight constraints.
The problems with it were fairly petty: one bogie ran rough, there were jams with lumps/bits of wood in the augers from the
bunkers, the chains coupling the bogie axles wore and - surprisingly - the boiler water treatment gave trouble. It did not have
three throw crank axles like the Leader nor the unsucessful firebox sides and it seems to have come out to weight.

Fixing the evident faults was not pursued - and the Anderson pressure condensing, which Bulleid was seriously interested
in, was never implemented - but it did show the concept was not a nonsense and it would certainly have been reasonable
to persist with it. Indeed pretty dubious that it would have been any more expensive than what did come before the General
Motors locos.

 

Not only that bit I believe that it did do some revenue earning work on freight trains.....................

 

As does Kevan Ayling's wonderful 5" gauge 'Leader'.

On a couple of occasions, although it was never placed into capital stock.

Great summary from @Hirn The Turf Burner's boiler has got to be worth a mention. There can't have been too many loco boilers with flat top and sides! An attempt to use the only native fuel source available in quantity*, especially after the coal shortages of 'The Emergency' (WWII) was a pretty sensible decision, moreso given the shortage of foreign currency.

*Arigna coal had a very high ash content. The only other viable Irish coal seams were in the six northern counties.

 

Yeah, but billions of stupid ideas have looked like great concepts until the engineering started. As I could never get home to my management, its the detail where you fail.

 

Well that’s patently not true. On any level. for a one off prototype (they tried to build three!) Leader was expensive. Little used. Partially built husks then scrapped.

BR standards - built, used at minimum for five years and in daily use. Net result: gone before their time, but definitely cheaper than leader per engine.

 

One (36001) was completed and ran trials, 36002 was very nearly finished, 3 was half built, I think 4 and 5 were just about started. Basically, a waste of effort. The standards gave good service but were withdrawn prematurely due to a change in policy, rather than because of any failings

 

Plus all bar 1 of the standard designs were based on already proven designs, mostly of LMS design, the exceptions were the britanias because there were no 2 cylinder pacifics before them, as far as i know, and 71000 was an one off experimental to replace an LMS pacific that had been lost in an accident ,and of course the 9f was a later design to cope with the demands of the fast fitted freights

 

I suspect pound for pound, Brunel's attempts to provide the initial motive power for the GWR would be a greater waste, and certainly had a more calamitous impact on the ability of the railway company to run its scheduled service! As for the atmospheric railway ...

In comparison - for the Leader, one loco was completed, a couple of others partly so, over a period of about three years. The total cost was pretty high, but over the same time span, the railway companies built hundreds of new locomotives. So seen as a proportion of their total construction budget, it was not very significant. If you consider it as R&D spend, it was probably worth at least a proportion of the cost - it's axiomatic in R&D that not everything you try works, because if it did, there would be no point doing trials. The interesting point is probably less why the project was started, but why it was't cancelled sooner once it became clear that the design was going very awry with every problem solved by adding another problem somewhere else. But "biggest waste of time, materials and effort" is I think rather over-egging it. There are plenty of bigger examples that had a far more profound impact on the ability of the companies involved to operate their service.

Tom

 

Given though that Bullieds brief was to provide a replacement for the increasingly elderley & inadequate M7's which he clearly failed to do, the impact of the Leaders construction was significantly greater than the cost

 

I'd disagree. In the late 1940s the M7s were still in reasonable shape, as evidenced by the fact that many of them still had 15 years more life. So the situation certainly wasn't critical, and it was therefore worth taking time and trying to design the optimum solution. He failed, clearly, but not to the extent that it seriously jeopardised the ability of the company to run its services. By contrast, examples like the early Brunel locos or the atmospheric railway (or the ragbag of locos provided to the nascent LCDR who listened too closely to TR Crampton) did have an existential impact on the ability of those companies to run service. So in that light, the Leader was of little more significance as a waste of money than other unsuccessful one-offs like the Paget loco: misguided, but largely an irrelevance to the day-to-day task of running a railway.

Tom

 

One of the roles of engineers is to take great concepts and make them work. That is the challenge. When Hudswell, Clarke first introduced their 68 & 100hp mines locos they were such a dismal failure that their Board seriously considered taking them back and refunding the NCB's money. They didn't and persevered; in the end, after five years of trials and tribulations they had what turned out to be arguably the most successful mines locos ever produced. On railways, five years is not a long time in going from launch of the prototype to success with any new concept.