Current and Proposed New-Builds

Mr Churchward tried a couple of French compounds and then went on to build excellent simple locomotives.
Why do some people think they know better ?

 

Clarification please ... Do you mean the CME's of old, or us lot?

 

AIUI the argument goes roughly that there is more potential for development in the compound than the simple. Churchward trialled what was believed to be state of the art compounds against what turned out to be absolutely first class simples. Both types were to receive big stepups in the next few years with superheating. Personally I'm of the opinion that the british loading gauge precludes sufficiently large LP cylinders, so any compound built for the UK loading gauge is excessively compromised, and unlikely to show sufficient advantage against a simple to be worth pursuing.

Now if the Broad gauge had survived a compound for the broad gauge could have had the same size outside cylinders as a Star or Castle, running HP, and huge inside LP cylinders and would probably have been a very spectacular piece of kit.

 

It would be rather fun to design a 20thC broad gauge locomotive to the limits of the loading gauge. I'm not at all sure I know enough. But a "narrow" broad gauge firebox would still be a very wide bit of kit, and there would be plenty of room for as big a grate as you needed. Have to explore whether there would be problems in the loading gauge for a belpaire firebox, as the broad gauge was very tall in the middle but fairly low at the sides. The big Rover class singles, in their ultimate form under Dean, must have had roughly the boiler capacity of a GWR Manor.

 

Modern BG locomotives? ..... indeed that would have been a truly mouthwatering proposition. I've often wondered how much more BG mileage it would've taken for the Gauge Commission to come down in favour of IKB's system. Better yet, for it to have specified a minimum loading gauge, as per Austro-Hungarian practise - which would've been a jolly useful thing for 'em to have done in any event.

Given so much was constrained by our small loading gauge down the years, you have to wonder what a Francis Webb - let alone a Bulleid - would have done, given such opportunity. That mythical 4-cyl LMS compound might've come to pass and consider how impressive would the streamlined era would've been - vista domes on 'Coronation' or 'Flying Scotsman' services .... though probably with 3rd class accomodation stuffed underneath ..... and I could readily envisage a broad gauge edition of Stroudley's 'Gladstone' looking particularly fine, but could you imagine a BG 'Terrier'? The Isles of Wight and Sheppey might've been as solidly 3'-0" gauge as the Isle of Man, NG versions of the J70's might have criss-crossed the Fens and the Highlands echoed to the bark of Swilly style 8-coupled mosters. The mind boggles.

Would we have ended up with 7'-01/4" gauge trunk routes and NG (perhaps 2'-6" or 3'-0") feeder lines? Maybe the companies would have developed containerised freight services readily switched between the two gauges, (thinking here of a souped-up version of the Padarn Railway's piggyback operation)?

One of those 'if only' situations .... Ho-Hum!

 

Mmm. I just started to think about a Broad gauge compound Castle, but I started by thinking, well, outside cylinders would be just the same, but I soon realised that the massive inside cylinders mean the boiler has to be pitched much higher, and the firebox will be utterly different, and then what weight limits would one be working to... It really seems to me no good to be thinking about a broad gauge version of something existing, that really only works for a convertible. Its like looking at mid 20thC Russian or US locomotives - the massive loading gauge completely changes everything about the design.

But yes, freight handling etc. How about a train of flat wagons with just rails on them, and a fold down end platform so on a straight siding a train of narrow gauge wagons, is simply shunted on, the platforms lifted/dropped, and the trunk train heads off for the next major marshalling yard without even uncoupling the narrow gauge wagons.

 

A condenser might be viable for broad gauge.

 

It will not be long before there a LED panels available that can change coulour at the click of a switch - LED lamps can do this already. So lag the boiler with these panels and the driver can choose the colour on the day. I can see some of the posters on here having to be put in a darkened room. For those of us who are colour blind it is much less important.

I do not understand why lack of vibration could disturb the hydrodynamic wedge. Where is this information documented? Steam turbines have very little vibration or disturbing cyclic forces and their bearings do not suffer problems with breaking down of the oil wedge.

 

As far as freight goes, Calthrop or Padarn style transporter wagons work just fine, but come with a significant dead weight penalty. More recent photos of SG wagonry on the ÖBB carried on NG wheelsets suggest something else would have evolved in fairly short order. I wonder .... would the need to develop efficient BG/NG freight transfer have improved or lessened the chances of some secondary and branch lines surviving into the motorway age? Either better freight handling would have mitigated freight lost to roads, or been reduced to trainload workings as per Beeching, or as happened in Ireland, pretty much collapsed in toto.

On likely design differences, small wheeled locos present no real stretch of the imagination, but as @Jimc points out, larger boilers would have undoubtedly led to some very different outlines. Imagine a stonking great Wootten style firebox feeding a stubby 8'-0" dia boiler. Perhaps a widely adopted Garrett style solution would have developed .... before spawning something like the love child of Bulleid's 'Leader' and the LNER U1. On the GW, of course, you'd still get polished brass safety valve bonnets!!

Then again, perhaps the space for reasonable ventilation would have presented the opportunity to render the Edwardian railmotor solution a likely source of inspiration and by the 1930's we'd have seen something akin to a steam HST (think 'Sentinel technology on steroids') thundering along express routes. With all that space, maybe far cheaper high speed single acting engine units (triple expansion compound, marine-style? - Why not?) would have come to replace complicated reciprocating machinery. It'd have changed shed and workshop practices out of all recognition. There'd have been more room to squeeze effective pressure condensing equipment in too - so, bye-bye water troughs.

Come dieselisation, there'd have been no need for the sort of design compromises which stymied the WR's hydraulics so badly, but there's no reason to suppose UK manufacturers would've made a better fist of home grown diesel lumps ..... more's the pity!

 

Ok there's been some really quite interesting meanderings into various finer points of design etc.. Lets' get back to the title of "Current & Proposed New Builds, so here's my latest [and this time it's steam] of a North Eastern class X, L.N.E.R. T1 4-8-0 tank. An almost ideal machine for my Railway, the N.Y.M.R. [as I'm a member and minor shareholder], considering what a twisty, turny and stiffly graded in places line that it is. Granted it's more of a slogger than sprinter being designed for shunting the various Staithes on the North Eastern Coast between Blyth and Hartlepool/Tees-side.

 

This may well have been mentioned before, but I'd love the idea of seeing a GCR 9N 4-6-2T (LNER A5). As a GCRN Volunteer they would be perfectly at home from a company perspective, and would help rectify the relative absence of GC locos (and by extension LNER locos) in preservation. Furthermore the A5s were perpetuated by the LNER for the North Eastern Region, so it would make a great visitor to somewhere like the NYMR. I'd imagine it would probably be similar in terms of performance and economy to a Standard Tank (although with the drawback of inside valve gear), but nonetheless I'd suggest it would be well suited to preserved railway operation, powerful yet economical

 

Well there was a possible newbuild candidate in my last rambling, it's just that it's nearly invisible as no-one in their right mind would like to think about it .... so I was technically on topic.

The NER pacific tanks had featured before ..... IIRC tthe inside cylindered A6 was the more popular candidate and I'm quite content with the notion .... a damned fine looking and potentially very useful addition to the ranks.

Actually, I'd reckon you could sell pretty much any NER design, simply because that livery is so damned attractive when the sun's out. Referring to it as "NER Green" really does it no justice.

 

And a high pressure water-tube boiler ala W1?

 

Going back a long way to the A1SLT's plan to build a V4 and what to call it, may I make a suggestion?

"R. H. N. Hardy"

 

I would’ve preferred “Bantam Crow”

 

The breaking down of the wedge initially surprised me, but it is mentioned in various accounts of the testing. There were no issues reported 'on the road', but 'on the rollers' was another matter. I suppose that simply applying Occam's Razor led to the conclusion that those responsible came to.

Yes, steam turbines do indeed run smoothly, but they have their bearings lubricated by a force-fed lub oil system, be it by pump directly or by a static head from a header tank, so the dynamics are different there.

Also, a simple rotary motion, as in a turbine, does not have the additional complication of the cyclic loads generated by the reciprocating driving motion of the pistons, as in a locomotive.

 

Actually, I'd reckon you could sell pretty much any NER design, simply because that livery is so damned attractive when the sun's out. Referring to it as "NER Green" really does it no justice.[/QUOTE]

Agree with you 30854. just look at this picture and see the combination of the green locomotive and the teak-coaches! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Steam_Locomotive_69023_(7074556801).jpg/1200px-Steam_Locomotive_69023_(7074556801).jpg

kind regards
Knut

 

Isn't the 4-8-0T going to be a bit range-limited? The GCR S1 0-8-4T looks like a slightly better bet to me, as a tank version of the 'Q4' - although I think that the Aussies' Q4-based 2-8-2T might be more passenger-friendly. You could build a hybrid, a 2-8-4T, with the O4's boiler and leading truck... most of the necessary bits are already extant, so it would just be a case of reverse-engineering them... a 'Q4' could also be produced by copying the details of the Aussie 2-8-2T...

Speaking of Mikados, wouldn't a P1 be useful on the NYMR, S&C etc? Think I'd go for an 8-wheel A3-type tender (perhaps with booster though!) and the A3 boiler...

*wibn*

 

I wonder if the break down in the lubrication was on the side faces of the axle boxes due to a slight hunting motion due to some feature of the rollers

 

I have heard it said that Swindon never built a bigger boiler except the King class after those final 8 foot singles.