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Greatest Mileage in Service

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by GWR4707, Oct 1, 2019.

  1. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think the issue with 955 is racking up that mileage in so short a period. Clearly, the same parts can't have achieved that, though quite possibly the number plate did! Though I'd note in that light that in several pre-grouping companies, the numberplate was the physical embodiment of the loco in the capital stock list, to the extent that when an old loco was scrapped and replaced in the capital list, the physical number plate swapped over to show the continuity of identity. If the LNWR ran things like that, then from the accountants point of view, 955 ran 2,000,000 in 20 years even if no single set of wheels, frames, cylinders managed it!

    On the pre-grouping Southern constituents, the assemblage of parts had a total mileage. Additionally, major components might have an individual mileage, particularly if they were likely to be replaced during the lifetime of a loco; or if it was felt for maintenance reasons that records needed to be kept. Those would include things like cylinders, crank axles, fireboxes etc, all of which would have mileages independent of the loco they were attached to.

    Normal workshop practice at Brighton, Nine Elms, Eastleigh, Longhedge and Ashford, at least pre-grouping, was for locos to be broken down for overhaul but then reassembled from the same parts, suitably refurbished. Boiler swaps from a pool didn't become general practice until into the twentieth century, and then only for some classes. So up to grouping, a mileage for a specific loco probably to a large degree represented the mileage that substantial parts had travelled, though cylinders, fireboxes and maybe crank axles would likely have undergone several swaps. (Tenders frequently swapped between locos, generally in a series of cascades rather than by virtue of pooling, LNWR-style, so tender mileages would not necessarily agree with the loco mileages to which they were attached.)

    From SR days, and particularly in BR days, there was a degree of cannibalisation of older locos to keep others in traffic, though frame swaps were still rare, and I can't think of an example of an SR class for which there was a float of spare frames as was the case with Black 5s. Occasionally frame swaps would be obvious, as with the well-known example of a couple of short-frame M7s entering Eastleigh for overhaul in BR days and emerging with long frames, while at the same time two long frame M7s were nominally scrapped. Clearly two good locos had been made and two scrapped out of four sets of parts, though only the accountant would be able to explain why the locos that emerged carried the short frame identities while clearly being the long frame locos. The mileages were said to have been "adjusted accordingly"; presumably the long frame locos taking the mileage attributable to the short frames.

    One interesting Southern example are the Stroudley / Maunsell E1R 0-6-2T, which were rebuilds of Stroudley 0-6-0T locos, built for use on the sinuous North Devon and Cornwall Junction Railway. The last of those supposedly had a mileage of 1,541,086 when scrapped, which must include the mileage run as a Stroudley E1 prior to rebuilding (likely about 1.1+million miles based on others of the class). The pony trucks of those, incidentally, came from the surplus N class mogul parts bought as a job lot, unassembled, from Woolwich Arsenal.

    Tom
     
  2. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    What about the lowest mileage ever then? My guess is 36001, any advances on that. Another candidate from the Southern is a crane engine from the SECR, I think it was 31302, it ended up shunting the milk dock at Stewart's Lane and in 70 or so years its total mileage was something like 100000.
     
  3. 60017

    60017 Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Fascinating as always Tom. Threads like this are a showcase for the real value of Nat Pres (other threads are available)!
     
  4. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    100% agreed. Tom and 2968 always bring us a lot of quality information. They are the go to men for anything Southern and LMS
     
  5. 8126

    8126 Member

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    I do think there's something of a difference between the too-little-understood "accounting identity" principle (which Tom has explained with laudable patience many a time regarding the M7s, and which applied less obviously but perhaps more consistently in the case of the A3s and Black Fives) and the fairly obvious sleight of hand regarding 955.

    With the A3s, engines went into works and seem to have emerged with the next reasonably suitable set of frames and associated parts in roughly the order they went in. They all seem to have worked up pretty substantial mileages regardless of fame or reputation (I'd never have guessed Tracery as one of the top two), as you'd expect from a long-lived class, extensively used on a long distance mainline. Yes, the frames were a known weakness, so Doncaster had spares and used them as required while they got the offending items repaired for the next engine that needed them, just as everyone was doing with boilers by then. And, in the case of 2744, that established works practice meant that they could get a working engine back into stock quickly, which is ultimately what the railway needed. This probably comes down to the division others have talked about before between the capital and maintenance budget. If the identity of 2744 had been scrapped, that would be capital costs for a new engine, but "repairing" 2744 was maintenance.

    Whereas clearly there was an element of prestige in 955 working the same duty every day, beyond any accounting convention. And so if 955 had always be available, well, so "955" would be.

    As an aside, contemporary to Charles Dickens supposedly running up 2 million miles with nothing but the occasional weekend off, one of the equally famous-at-the time Brighton Gladstones was working its way through no fewer than five crank axles (I think, I'd have to check a book that isn't here, but it was several).
     
  6. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Most kind of you, although I'm not sure that, in my case, it's deserved. But I do have a large collection of books . . .
     
  7. Eightpot

    Eightpot Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    How about the LMS 3-cyl compound high-pressure 4-6-0 No. 6399 'Fury', later rebuilt in Stanier's time as a 'Royal Scot' look-alike as No. 6170 'British Legion'. Or the Midland Paget sleeve valve equipped 2-6-2, to name but two........
     
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  8. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Timothy Birstall's 'Perseverance' following the Rainhill Trials?

    Only joking!
     
  9. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Shall we count the rebuilt (ex-Stanier 'turbomotive'), 46202 Princess Anne destroyed in the Harrow & Wealdstone disaster, mere months after its' return to service?
     
  10. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Wasn't there a B1 which was written off in a crash which hadn't been in service long?
     
  11. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    There was certainly a GER '1500' (later LNER B12) written off in pre-grouping days.

    Edit: GER No.1506, written off at 7 months old in July 1913 following a crash at Colchester. Perhaps oddly, the replacement authorised carried No.1535 [source:LNER Encyclopedia]
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2019
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  12. std tank

    std tank Part of the furniture

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    61057. Into service July 1946. Crashed March 1950. Cut up April 1950.
     
  13. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Those were experimental though, so a low mileage is at least partly to be expected.

    For a service loco, and a whole dud class to boot, how about the class of coupled Cramptons delivered by R&W Hawthorn to the LCDR at its formation in 1857 for the opening of the Chatham - Faversham line, known as the "Sondes" class? The six locos turned out to be complete duds (T.R. Crampton had undue influence on rolling stock policy, being somewhat shadily involved in the financing of a shadily financed railway), so the nominal locomotive Superintendent - Martley - could not prevent the board from ordering them. For the next six years they occasionally moved in revenue service; Martley would likely have wished to forget about them while he struggled to bring the rest of the rolling stock into order, but unfortunately for him Lord Sondes - after whom the locos had been named - had a somewhat proprietorial interest, and mentioned them regularly in board meetings to enquire of their fate.

    Eventually, Martley obtained permission to rebuild them all, though "rebuild" is being kind: not much of the originals can have ended up in the new locos, which were generally known as the "Second Sondes" class. Almost everything changed: wheel arrangement (from 4-4-0ST to 2-4-0T) , wheel base, wheel diameter (both driving and carrying), cylinder size and placement. Essentially the old ones were scrapped and new ones built, incorporating some small parts.

    So mileages: one of the locos - "Lake" - had managed 14,348 miles in 8 years. The other five were all below 12,000. And that from locos that had cost the company £2,700 each in 1857. As rebuilt, the "Second Sondes" were completely transformed: they lasted until 1909, with new boilers and sundry other changes, and when scrapped had run variously between 913,669 to 1,046,911 miles.

    Tom
     
  14. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Interesting again. I've never heard of a coupled version of a Crampton, all the pictures of them I've seen had a single driven axle mounted at the extreme rear with carrying wheels in front, usually 4-2-0. Did these rubbishy sounding efforts have two axles moulnted after the firebox?

    Edit, checked out the class on Wikipedia and can't find a picture of them in original form but there are a couple of the Second Sondes rebuilds into 2-4-0 tank locos. They look reasonably OK, and a bit like some which Sacre did for the MSLR and just made into LNER days.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2019
  15. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Dean's experimental 4-2-4 express tank, No 9, is generally not supposed to have managed to get out of Swindon works. However a lot of the parts were reused for a subsequent No 9, which, with another rebuild in the middle of its life, knocked up about 500,000 miles before becoming too obsolescent to be worth keeping, so as ever it depends on your definitions.
     
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  16. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Didn't that derail on the first point it went over the first time it came out of the works and was quietly put away afterwards?
     
  17. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    The originals were something of a transitional Crampton design, with the typical cylinder placement but an additional axle in front of the firebox. They weren't a success on the LCDR, though apparently found some favour on the continent.

    sondes1.png

    First Sondes class, 4-4-0ST, built 1857, average class mileage about 12,000.

    sondes2-rebuild.png

    Second Sondes, as rebuilt by Martley, 1865.

    sondes2-2ndrebuild.png

    Second Sondes class (No. 523, formerly "Chatham"), as rebuilt by Kirtley (1876 to 1878) and further reboilered by Wainwright (1906). Withdrawn 1909, average class mileage about 1,000,000.

    Tom
     
  18. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    I quite like the rebuilt versions. As there's nothing from the LCDR, you know what's coming..... . New build suggestion!
     
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  19. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    What was wrong with the first version?
     
  20. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    They seemed to have very high fuel and oil consumption to start with - figures of 62 - 64lb of coke per mile and 3.25 gallons of oil per 100 miles being quoted for what were essentially branch line locos. More seriously, they had frequent break downs, to the extent that Daniel Gooch was bought in to report. His report listed the following defects:

    1) Exceptionally long steam pipes prone to fracture
    2) Cylinders cannot be adequately attached to teh framing
    3) Iron tube plates of too thin a section
    4) Coupling and connecting rods frequently buckle
    5) Slipping at starting often uncontrollable
    6) Running is unsteady at speed and damages the track

    By 1859 they had been restricted to 20mph on plain line and 5mph in stations, but the derailments continued. When it was found that they couldn't;t be usefully moved elsewhere on the railway (which was by then extending towards London) they were restricted to unimportant duties and had effectively been lain aside by 1863, pending the 1865 rebuild.

    Tom
     
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