Why weren't the Standards standard?

If I (or Mr Churchward) was designing a range of standard locos I would have made as many parts as possible interchangeable across the fleet. That didn't seem to happen to as large an extent as it might have.

 

Because other peoples standards is lousy engineering.
Look Mom what I can make.
From ca 1920 until ca 1940 a mr Wagner standardiced german locomotives and many (including ca 3000 baureihe 50) had Wagner superheater connections.
Baureihe 52 war austerity had the simpler Schmidt system.When 52 and 50 did same kind of work as they did over most of europe the coal used by the the prewar standard 50s was 20% more than the cheapskate 52.The leaky Wagner superheater connection system was to blame.
20% of the coal used by half the german locomotives from 1925 to 1945 is quite a mountain

 

The term standard was applied to the Riddles/Cox/Bond BR designs to describe the design criteria they were built to, especially in terms of a standard loading gauge, cab controls, mechanical principles etc.
This has been taken to mean Standardised ( ie common user components) and whilst a degree of this did occur it seems to me that a certain delight was taken in redesigning to suit. But with no shortage of drawing office and workshop capacity to hand and the expectation that large numbers of these new engines would be produced interchangeability between classes wasn't perhaps seen as paramount...

 

I've never equated the BR standards to any sort of standardisation such as Churchward or others aspired to - just that they were a standard design to be built that related to purpose. Thats my take on it.

Perhaps the term 'standard' was some sort of govt rebranding to move away from big 4 class identities??

 

You would think that everything having moved on a MK3 sleeper would be all standard components, wrong. I was involved in component recovery from a damaged sleeper and each compartment was built slightly differently. Screws in different places, sink tops adjusted to fit. Wiring slightly different. I would say bespoke rather than standard

 

Haven't come across this one. Could you provide a source for this information, please?

 

Time for this old favourite...


https://xkcd.com/927/

But I expect Class9mikado is right, they told themselves they would be building hundreds of all of them so standardisation of components between classes wouldn't matter.

In any case as far as I can see the only line with serious standardisation of all consumables they could have picked was the GWR, and they wouldn't have wanted to standardise on those because
1) it was the GWR not the LMS and
2) not all GWR components worked well under 'different' maintenance regimes.
And we know, for example, that the LMS gave up on the sort of standardisation of boilers the GWR did after the grouping because it was too difficult (Cox, Chronicles of Steam).

The other thing that is worth getting our heads round was that manufacture on the railways was typically series production by skilled men, not mass production by semi skilled, and so all sorts of things were done by eye and ruler rather than precision jig. They only seemed to have used jigs for manufacture (which of course would need to be designed, maintained and stored) when there was a big advantage in doing so. If a handrail is an inch higher or lower, who cares? If the threaded holes in the cylinders don't line up to the bolt holes in the frames, on the other hand...

 

Notice that under BR auspices I have gone from Class 8 to 9, Thanks Jim. Hoping to become class7p9fmikado at a later date

 

ISBN 13: 978-388255-545-5 page 53 in german.If I have Your e-mail I can send .

 

The new goverment wanted to show they could do a better job and did not.
They could have made a much more distinctive brand if they had said five feet driving wheels and wide fireboxes for everything.
Could even have been better locomotives.

 

Can't see it myself...

 

Try to imagine a C1 with five feet wheels and wide firebox and inside cylinders,
a 4-8-0 with front wheel drive and threecylinder compound and a 2-10-0 with two cylinder compound inside.And some tank versions .
What could what do better?

 

Many other existing locos.

 

I think the time for new Atlantics was long past by the 1950s

 

By C1 I meant Bulleid 0-6-0

 

I'm imagining the piston speeds at 80 mph. I'm imagining the out of balance forces from the reciprocating masses at that speed. I'm imagining the hammerblow from wheels balanced to reduce these at that speed. Etc, etc.

 

Don't mention this to the Bluebell.

 

I think that 80mph steam is mostly enthusiast dream timing or short bursts going downhill because going uphill was awfully slow.
How many british steam timetables demanded 80 mph?

A three cylinder compound has next to very little hammerblow and two inside cylinders could have been lessened the de Caso way.

https://rhcf.revues.org/docannexe/image/1784/img-16.jpg

 

As in the case of the LNER L1 2-6-4 tank?

 

Do they have Cornflakes in Denmark...?