The most crappiest or pathetic locos in this country.

Class 67.

Makes an S160 look like a quality job.

 

I don't think there can be a definate answer to this thread. All engines were built for different purposes and everyone has thier own opinion.

 

Class 43 Warship? Pretty dire by all accounts whereeas the class 42 was just pretty.

 

Do you mean D600 etc? Which were regarded by many as Class 41 (officially reserved for prototype HST power cars), not Class 43, which I think were North British built Warships (D833-D865).
Yes, the D600s weren't great by all accounts, and quite different to operate and maintain compared to the D800s, D1000s, D7000s.

 

no I mean the class 43s... ??

 

There are words to describe the looks of a Q1: beautiful, magnificent, attractive, unique! I mean, all the other locomotive classes have to have finery and brass bits added to upstage it's sheer elegance...

I don't think the class Vs were really designed for hard slogs up gradients at low speeds; I presume they'll cope if there's a downhill section to gain speed for the run-up the next bank, as they had to do in Kent and Sussex, but one long slog on a curvy preserved line from a standstill at less than 30MPH would probably nullify all of the advantages of the design. As mentioned by Ben Jervis, most locomotives were designed for a specific purpose, and this is particularly true of the Vs.

 

Well any "one off" is going to be subject to that criticism. The same could be said of the Turbomotive, though I regard its design as 99% right, and a great "might-have-been". Despite my love of all things Bulleid I can't really say the same for the Leaders; several fundamental flaws; too many cylinders, sleeve valves, firing issues, etc.

 

I disagree, the Duke is a great engine that has put a lot of wrongs to right since the return to steam in preserved days. Winning the Shap trials against Hamilton and Gresley for instance.

I don't think the Q1 can be considered to be ugly especially when you consider the circumstances of its built. As a war time engine Bullied did a great job in saving metal which could go on spitfires etc. and for this he should be congratulated.

 

Apologies for reference to diesel locomotives, I posted after reading in the newly posted section. Many apologies if I did offended anyones deep seated sense of propriety.

 

Crapiest loco?? easy , any loco that doesnt perform how you would expect a member of any class to do so, normally because its in need of tlc or overdue a visit to workshops

most pathetic loco 92203 when it first came to ropley from the east summerset, , it was so week it couldnt even pull anything un aided but once retubed with the correct number of superheaters (most were blanked off) a totally different beast

 

I think the Leader was a potentially good idea that needed much more time for development. If Bulleid became CME earlier, he would have been in less of a hurry to make an impact on the steam world, and would have been able to mull-over the many untried features of the design. One thing I, as an armchair engineer, would have dispensed with was the offset boiler, which caused far more problems than it solved, and would have retained two running plates and handrails either side to link the cabs. If I had to put a corridor in at all, it would have linked the fireman's compartment with the No. 2 cab through the water tank. Oil-firing or a mechanical stoker might also have been sensible options from the fireman's point of view, although the latter suffers from a propensity to clog-up. I'd have probably dispensed with the complex oscillator gear altogether, particularly as established piston lubrication methods provided adequate, if unspectacular service. Another area requiring further design work would have been the smokebox door arrangement, which consisted of a slide in the bottom to drop ash onto the track. Ash clogged up the runner, preventing the formation of a vacuum. Finally, the height of the locomotive was an issue, so smaller-diameter wheels might have been a sensible option, as would a scaling-down of the boiler.

The main issue was that the groundwork was laid between 1944 and 1947, with construction starting in 1946, before even the sleeve-valve test-bed was analysed. Because of this short gestation period for a completely new concept of steam locomotive, much of the design-work was done on an as-needed basis, resulting in the many untried, and ultimately unsuccessful features. A real shame, and one of history's might have beens.

 

Well I agree with all of that, more or less. However, if the goal was to come up with a coal-powered loco which was a bit more efficient and offered higher availability, then the Leader was over-kill, with far too many innovations of marginal value. The Standard Class 4MT came along in 1951 and did most of what could ever have been expected of a Leader. On the other hand, the Turbomotive basically worked. Its only design weakness was the under-powered reverse turbine, plus that fact that as a one-off spare parts weren't easily available. If a fleet had been built they would have been successful, commercially and technically. A non-condensing steam turbine offered greater efficiency and the lack of reciprocating parts offered greater reliability and availability.

 

Perhaps the title of this thread should qualify.

Meic

 

Whilst on a like-for-like basis, the Leader seems overkill when compared to the M7s they were meant to replace, it could be argued that Bulleid was adept at exploiting a potential motive power requirement to the full by generalising the terms of reference to produce the designs he wanted. Take his Pacifics, which were designated 'mixed-traffic' to circumvent a government moratorium on passenger locomotive construction. In this respect, it could also be argued that Bulleid used the post-war motive power situation (ie. delayed electrification, a generally ageing steam fleet) of the Southern as an excuse to bring further ideas to fruition. Taking this into consideration, the fact that the Leader was intended to replace M7s on shunting and local passenger was probably more to get his proverbial foot in the door for construction than a serious justification for their eventual utility. Therefore, it is possible to speculate that Bulleid may well have undertaken to 'overkill' the M7 terms of reference because he had envisaged that an entire fleet of Leaders would effectively take over the Southern's steam operations from express passenger downwards, and could also keep pace with the electrified network. As I have said, this is only my personal speculation about the genesis of the Leader.

 

Thomas the tank engine:behindsofa:

 

What? Let me see - cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, I won't say better looking, that's in the eye of the beholder. (But I think they are!) And nothing to choose on performance either.

The Kings are a better argument - probably the GWR never actually needed them, the Castles are really the star . But perhaps 'unnecessary' is a better term than pathetic!

 

I think you've a very good point there - I don't think it was an accident so many WC/BB's were built, I think Bullied had the aim of working the whole system with only two or three classes, much as we now do with 08's 66's and 67's. But the Leader was unworkable as a traffic machine as designed, for the fireman's situation if nothing else. It was also seriously overweght.

Of course, it may simply have been meant as a proof-of-concept - which it came very close to doing just before the plug was pulled - but I fear he might have ordered 100 of them if nationalisation hadn't intervened.

 

Surely henry the green engine is crappier than thomas, hes an underperforming 4-6-0 whos always moaning about how 'its the coals fault' (what class was he based on then ? )

 

I don't know too much about the Leader, but it does seem that one of it's best features was having a cab at the front of the loco. Obviously traditionally cabs have always been behind the boiler, but is there any technical reason for that? Seems like driving from the front without a boiler in the way of sighting would have been one of the most basic and beneficial improvements in a new design... Did designers ever consider this?

 

Not really in the UK... in the US, however, they went mad for them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab_forward

not to mention the "camelbacks":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelback_locomotive

Foxy