If you register, you can do a lot more. And become an active part of our growing community. You'll have access to hidden forums, and enjoy the ability of replying and starting conversations.

LMS 2P 4-4-0

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by joshs, Dec 30, 2012.

  1. BrightonBaltic

    BrightonBaltic Member

    Joined:
    May 26, 2011
    Messages:
    724
    Likes Received:
    242
    Reliability (which wasn't a watchword for 4Fs with those wretched Derby axleboxes!) is no excuse for poor fuel economy and general woefulness. As regards the Super D, I was talking about those who crewed 49395 during its last ticket... just about everyone at the NYMR, ELR etc seems to have hated it.
     
  2. Andy Williams

    Andy Williams Member

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2010
    Messages:
    851
    Likes Received:
    908
    Occupation:
    Design Engineer
    Location:
    Shropshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    I take it from your post that you must have spent a considerable time driving/firing 4Fs and Super Ds?
     
    scarle, 35B, marshall5 and 7 others like this.
  3. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2006
    Messages:
    2,987
    Likes Received:
    5,084
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Lecturer retired: Archivist of Stanier Mogul Fund
    Location:
    Wigan
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The 4F axleboxes were adequate - not good but adequate - on the 4Fs; it was on the Garratts and Austin 7s where they were poor. A running forman who sent out a 4F on its daily business could reasonably expect it to come back in good order that evening. As to Super D crews' opinions, I refer back to my previous comment. Crews in preservation didn't get the chance to work them day after day for many years and so didn't learn the ways to work them. If you understood the Ds, they were fine if rather hard work. Frank Webb might have heard of ergonomics but he didn't believe in them!
     
  4. Johnb

    Johnb Nat Pres stalwart

    Joined:
    Dec 3, 2014
    Messages:
    14,315
    Likes Received:
    16,391
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Retired, best job I've ever had
    Location:
    Buckinghamshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    A sensible angle on the subject. People now forget that engineers and railway managers back in the day when these locos were being produced had shareholders to answer to. If a 4F or Super D did the job they were built for, that’s what mattered, the opinions of footplatemen were irrelevant. Perhaps the LMS were a bit shortsighted in flooding the system with compounds when trains were getting heavier and faster but that’s with the benefit of hindsight. We produced Concorde thinking that air travellers would be attracted by a speedier service but the demand was for cheap flights so planes got bigger and the venture was a commercial failure. You only have to look at how the railway companies had to be forced into fitting continuous brakes to see the prevailing attitude to costs and it would have been far better to have adopted the air brake as standard but that would have involved paying royalties to Westinghouse.
     
  5. BrightonBaltic

    BrightonBaltic Member

    Joined:
    May 26, 2011
    Messages:
    724
    Likes Received:
    242
    Where were the shareholders when there was a need for more robust, more economical locomotives? 4Fs were coal-hungry bastards that would not steam, 2Ps likewise and they were also built in vast numbers. What I find most outrageous is that Super Ds were being built AFTER the LNWR had bought a load of war surplus Robinson 8Ks and that Derby ordered the whole lot of those scrapped in order to build more bloody 4Fs!
     
  6. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2015
    Messages:
    2,290
    Likes Received:
    1,672
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Van driver
    Location:
    Cheshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    The ROD locos on the LMS were faced with some pretty extensive route restrictions, I think they were barred from more or less the whole of the LYR and Midland systems
     
  7. Steve

    Steve Resident of Nat Pres Friend

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2006
    Messages:
    11,930
    Likes Received:
    10,088
    Occupation:
    Gentleman of leisure, nowadays
    Location:
    Near Leeds
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Well this NYMR driver didn't hate it, nor even dislike it. I did see it as a challenge and needed to keep my wits about me against all the tricks it had up its sleeve. Brakes, injectors, ejector, regulator, reverser, lubricators, to name a few. I may prefer the relative ease of a Standard but that's because of my age.
     
  8. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2006
    Messages:
    2,987
    Likes Received:
    5,084
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Lecturer retired: Archivist of Stanier Mogul Fund
    Location:
    Wigan
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The Robinson 2-8-0s were not suitable for large parts of the LMS or even the LNWR, mostly due to width across the cylinders, and they found fewer friends among footplatemen than did the Super Ds. They couldn't do the work on the LNWR, having been built for a railway largely built to the continental loading gauge, and were right hand drive when LNWR signals were sited for left hand drive. The Ds could do it, and were a known and trusted quantity. The main and most useful contribution from the 2-8-0s was their tenders; the engines had steel fireboxes, many of which needed replacement at the time. And if you're going to criticise the 4Fs' steaming, the RoD 2-8-0s aren't really a good place to start.

    The 4Fs' steaming was adequate for the first few hours and until the undersized ashpan became over-full. when things went downhill quite rapidly. Their coal consumption wasn't excessive for the time and I've never heard of firemen complaining about it. The 2Ps with the same boiler steamed well, mostly because the cylinders couldn't use the steam quickly due to the poor passages around the cylinders.

    Yes, the LMS could have built better engines, but that applies generally, and they started to in 1933. But even in 1938 there wasn't a better alternative available for the 4F - which tells you a bit about them - and this had to wait until George Ivatt's Class 4 2-6-0 in 1947.

    The fact is that all these engines did their jobs, and I again use the word adequately. Not well, perhaps in the case of the 4Fs, but not badly either. That's why they lasted as long as 1967, and the Ds to 1965, by when most other classes had long gone. If they were as bad as you make out, why didn't BR retire them early, as they did the Austin 7s, 2-6-2 tanks and many others.

    I think you need to read a bit more on the subject, and from authoritative sources rather than the whims of enthusiast who saw things only from the outside.
     
  9. Steve

    Steve Resident of Nat Pres Friend

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2006
    Messages:
    11,930
    Likes Received:
    10,088
    Occupation:
    Gentleman of leisure, nowadays
    Location:
    Near Leeds
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The operating department wanted more 4F's after the war so they must have liked them.
     
    andrewshimmin, Bluenosejohn and Johnb like this.
  10. Steamage

    Steamage Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Sep 14, 2005
    Messages:
    4,736
    Likes Received:
    1,107
    Location:
    Oxford
    Ha ha! Yes, but few potential donors to new-build projects think like that...
     
    jnc and BrightonBaltic like this.
  11. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    I have often thought H.G. Ivatt to be grossly under-rated, particularly by Bulleid obsessed gricers.
    Did this not have something to do with Rudgard not being exactly progressive?
     
  12. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2006
    Messages:
    2,987
    Likes Received:
    5,084
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Lecturer retired: Archivist of Stanier Mogul Fund
    Location:
    Wigan
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Agree about George Ivatt.

    The issue of the Traffic Dept., in the form of James Anderson, ordering locos and bypassing the CME was resolved by Stanier soon after he joined the LMS. From then, the Traffic people gave the CME the details of numbers, traffic requirements, routes, etc. and the CME then provided the class of engine to do the job. But without a viable alternative, Stanier had to go back to the 4F. It had nothing to do with Rudgard, formidable old b*gger that he was!
     
  13. Johnb

    Johnb Nat Pres stalwart

    Joined:
    Dec 3, 2014
    Messages:
    14,315
    Likes Received:
    16,391
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Retired, best job I've ever had
    Location:
    Buckinghamshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    You weren’t around in the 1920/30s when these decisions were being made and even less were not in the LMS management to know the background. The LMS management and board were not idiots and had priorities for investment. The GW may have had more efficient locomotives but they cost a lot more to build and even they had their faults. The 4F had a wide route availability and did the job it was built for, the weaknesses only became apparent when they were used on long distance passenger work on Summer Saturdays for which they were not designed.
    I remember talking to a driver in the mess room at Tebay about the merits of different locos. He had started his career in the NE, fired and driven virtually everything LNER and LMS and summed it up quite well, ‘Steam engines are a bit like women, we love them all but no one has ever come across a perfect one’.
     
  14. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2008
    Messages:
    26,100
    Likes Received:
    57,414
    Location:
    LBSC 215
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The Fairey Battle was an aeroplane with a decidedly unfavourable wartime record - actually quite advanced by the standards of when it was introduced, but hopelessly outdated by time it saw combat service. Do you therefore think that the RAF Museum should scrap their example of the type?

    As for LNWR locos, I can’t comment on the 0-8-0, but I did enjoy my day on the Coal Tank. It was clearly an antique (more obviously so than some other locos of the age) but it steamed well, pulled well. If I wanted an easy life I wouldn’t volunteer at a steam railway.
    Read some history I’m afraid - the Black Motors we’re transformed by superheating, which probably gave them another 25 - 30 years of useful life to their owners. (As an aside, Urie gets insufficient credit for his work to extend the life of Drummond’s locos). The superheated M7 was front heavy and generally had duties that didn’t gain any benefit from superheating, so only one was converted. The C2x hardly wins any beauty prizes, but again the new boiler was a success, extending the working life and, by the by, going on to form the basis of the boiler for the Z class tanks. (Small grate / large steam capacity was exactly what was needed for a loco doing intermittent duties at high output). More generally, adding new boilers to existing locomotive types was a perfectly rational response when faced with increasing loads but a fleet of locos that were mechanically sound but needed new boilers anyway after 20 - 25 years in service. Just look how James Stirling’s locos gained a new lease of life when Wainwright provided new boilers to what were mechanically sound locos.

    Tom
     
  15. Davo

    Davo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2018
    Messages:
    1,523
    Likes Received:
    634
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    W yorkshire 56f
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    The fowler 2p,s are 4.4.0. are noted to have run through huddersfield on the stanedge tunnel L.N.W. lines my dad can remember seing em in leeds in the 1950, and early 60,s and on and up the leeds new lines to farnley sheds where would ave they been shedded at in the lancashire sheds anyone?
     
  16. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2015
    Messages:
    2,290
    Likes Received:
    1,672
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Van driver
    Location:
    Cheshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    I like the C2X, the big boiler gives it a powerful, no nonsense look. On the 4Fs, 2968,was the Stanier mogul not considered for further orders as an alternative? Also an ex Stockport Edgeley man I know wasn't keen on 4Fs,but he did get one of the Johnson/Deeley 3Fs once and said that was better
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2020
    LMS2968 likes this.
  17. BrightonBaltic

    BrightonBaltic Member

    Joined:
    May 26, 2011
    Messages:
    724
    Likes Received:
    242
    @Jamessquared I thought the Z-tank boiler was the C3 Horsham Goods one rather than C2X? Am I correct in thinking the C2 was essentially an E4 tender engine?

    I understand the KWVR 4F's steaming was transformed by the fitment of a BR4 petticoat pipe.

    If the LMS really needed another inside-cylinder 0-6-0, could they not have looked north for inspiration, considering the sheer excellence of the 812 class, or west, given how good the GWR 2251s were? The Oban Bogie 4-6-0 could have been another option, put an extended smokebox on it and give it an effective superheater... Gresley seemed to get it right with the J38/9, and most seem to agree that the Southern Q was a distinct improvement on the 4F, if still less than wonderful.
     
  18. Andy Williams

    Andy Williams Member

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2010
    Messages:
    851
    Likes Received:
    908
    Occupation:
    Design Engineer
    Location:
    Shropshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Take it from someone who has driven and fired this class of engine that you are spouting absolute rubbish.
     
  19. BrightonBaltic

    BrightonBaltic Member

    Joined:
    May 26, 2011
    Messages:
    724
    Likes Received:
    242
    I'm quoting from the view of quite a few who drove and fired them under the LMS and BR.
     
  20. Andy Williams

    Andy Williams Member

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2010
    Messages:
    851
    Likes Received:
    908
    Occupation:
    Design Engineer
    Location:
    Shropshire
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    So, not from personal experience then?
     

Share This Page