GWR 'Dean Goods' no. 2516 - suggested restoration in Steam Railway issue no. 401

Removing the Dean Goods from Steam would not be an easy job, you would have to remove almost everything in there first . Leave it where it is, as someone has said, a boiler exsists, and i dare say that a tender is probablly availible somewhere if you look hard enough , its a standard GW tender isnt it? ,Making the bottom end is fairly streight forward, i should imagine pannier castings for things like cylinders and motion could be used ?

 

The tender with the Dean goods is the only surviving GWR 2500 gallon type also the tender with City of Truro is the only surviving GWR 3000 gallon type

David

 

Totally agree. Extracting 2516 would be a very major exercise. The museum's inner walls were constructed after the large 'central' exhibits (including 2516) arrived. If I recall, these exhibits were brought in from the traverser side of the building. Caerphilly Castle being the first exhibit on site, is fully locked in.

 

The other problem is: what would be sent to Swindon to replace it? Presumably, Steam would want another small tender engine to take her place to allow disabled access to the footplate, as 2516 does currently. Apart from 3205, which has always been preserved as a working engine, it is hard to think of another GWR tender loco that could fit the space she currently occupies (unless perhaps one were to be displayed without its tender?).

 

how about hardwick just to really get them going or any other NON GWR loco

 

If i am honest i cant see 2516 moving at all, because of the way the museum was built , a lot of the exibits were land locked , which surprised me because the designers must have not thought very hard about future changes of layout , they started with a genuine building and made a right mess up of the whole thing in my book

 

Why would it have to be a national collection GWR loco to replace 2516 exactly ?, woulden't any suitable out of ticket loco suffice ?, a 57XX seems a glaring omission considering they got everywhere on the GWR and were the most numerous class.

 

As threatened, here's a few snaps of the old stationary boiler at Didcot:






Answers on a postcard...

P.

 

Looks standard GWR to me, although of course it may be a standard GWR design specifically for a grouped loco - they did a lot of reboilering. Wonder how close it is to a Dean Goods boiler...batch production anyone?

 

I've heard muttering of such a proposal being drawn up, but not where everyone is expecting!

Shall wait and see for official announcements, but definitely something I'll put my hand into my pocket for.

 

Whether it be restoring 2516 or a new build, it's clear a Dean Goods project has plenty of support waiting.

 

I think it could be surprising how quickly money would come in for such a project, as its a simple loco to construct but also seems to have a rather large following too.

 

Yes it's quite curious as there's nothing particularly special or interesting about a Dean Goods that makes them significant in the history of railways yet people seem tremendously excited by the prospect of building a new one!

 

How about a Dean '2361' class? At least then there would be no chance of seeing it in BR Black!

 

Ooh, that's SERIOUSLY tempting fate...

 

eep:
... yeah, like some of us have more than monochrome vision. :evil: besides there ain't that many double framers out there, a once common type of loco design. Should we be trying to fill some of the voids left in early loco design rather than making another of one we already have? albeit a much loved one.
A Double Framed Goods with a few four wheelers on at the Gwili, SDR or Beamish... mmm.

Mark

 

If its off a Cambrian 0-6-0 I would say that it is most likely a GWR P Class boiler as fitted to Dean Goods, various 0-6-0 tanks, various absorbed classes and much else. It can't be a ex Cambrian boiler from a 73 class, because they had round top fireboxes, and I don't think it can be a boiler from a 15 class, either ex Cambrian or Std 9, because I think they had rather longer fireboxes. The P class came in a lot of variations, superheated or no, tube arangements and so on. Info from RCTS part 10.

 

According to Wikipedia the 2361s had larger boilers than the Dean Goods.

 

I am not that surprised really. Only two GWR 0-6-0 tender locos survived (that we know of!) and the Dean Goods was the ubiquitous branch line loco for nearly seventy years. The class went abroad in both World Wars and operated with the ROD in many parts of the UK. 0-6-0 tender engines formed the backbone of many British railways and are, in some respects, under-represented in preservation.

Foxy