Current and Proposed New-Builds

That’s a rather handy tool for someone like me indeed, thanks.

Though doesn’t the fact that someone has had to make that sort of prove our point, does it not

To give you GWR lot the benefit of the doubt, and to be fair, I can tell a Stanier 5MT, 5XP and 8F apart at a glance, which I’m sure you would argue look similar, so there’s that!

 

A Manor and a Grange look very similar at first glance, especially when paired with a small tender.

 

It's clearly a Mange...

...or possibly a Granor...

And what happens if the owner of the Manor adds battlements?

 

Its a shame 4920 isnt still around as having the local hall and local grange would have been a fantastic double header

 

That more or less proves the point. You have to study the minutae to tell them all apart. In contrast, look at the LMS 4-6-0's. Black 5's were black, Jubilees were red (or green) Patriots had parallel boilers and smoke deflectors and Scots had taper boilers and smoke deflectors. No looking at what shape the slide bars are. They can easily be spotted miles away and a Black 5 can even be discerned from their noise. Look at the LNER 4-6-0's and thy, too are all markedly different,

 

I do joke about GW locomotives ‘All looking the same’ but summer 2022 when 2857 and 2999 were opposite each other on Rock Siding at Bewdley, both my mother (old enough to remember ex WR steam) and one of my nieces (4 at the time) both said the same thing and that was ‘what’s the difference between them then?’
And that’s 2 people who I’d class as ‘Normals’

I do wonder how many people would spot the difference between 2999, 3822, 5322, 5900, 6998, 7808 and 6880 if they were all lined up together at somewhere like Didcot?
This isn’t me having a dig btw, myself and a friend once had a very serious and in depth conversation about 2999 and 6880’s construction and how would the general public perceive them?

 

I don't have problems with any of those. But I do struggle to differentiate Bulleid MNs and WC/BBs.

 

I think these two posts bring up rather interesting points, I think when it comes to the public perception of new build steam locos, far and away is that they simply aren’t that bothered, to them it’s just another new steam loco, class is irrelevant, so it doesn’t really matter to most of the punters at Didcot whether it’s another 4-6-0 or something vastly more interesting like say, a Dean Single (I quite like some of the 19th century GWR stuff), the reaction will likely be, “oh, that’s nice” and go about their visit.

It is only to us enthusiasts where the detail really matters, in fact. I reckon you could probably bash something together from a kit of bits that looks vaguely like something GWR (I can already hear the jokes about the Saint and Grange here ) and call it, let’s think GW naming conventions, erm.. a Baron class and most of the public would believe it and be impressed that we have a new steam loco. So to that end, I say let all the pedantry and intense (at times) debates continue as it gives us something to do in our little world.

On the second point, I see that LNER 4-6-0s are mentioned and I think this is a rather interesting comparison as the LNER proper didn’t build many (in terms of class numbers, I know there were a good few B1s) of them, they nearly all came from constituent companies so it would make a lot of sense they were rather different, as they had different designers with different design practices, so this does raise the question, had the rest of the big four been in existence before the grouping in their own right, would we have seen more standardisation across the board, personally, I think this rather likely.

 

Hasn't that already happened with the mogul at wsr?

 

Easy - the nameplates are very different shape

Tom

 

I honestly think if Tornado and Flying Scotsman swapped nameplates 95% of the public wouldn’t notice

 

Not too surprising since all but two share the same boiler. It's called standardisation.

 

I don’t know. Scotsman’s curved plates would look silly on the smoke deflectors.

 

Indeed, and many other components too, which was surely a Good Thing from the point of view of the management running a railway. Less tooling for making the components, less drawings to keep track of, less different spares to be stocked at the main works and on sheds, less details for footplate crews to be familiar with, etc.
Churchward's successors, however, did depart from some of his standards. And then, when Stanier took over at the LMS, presumably there were sound reasons for the 5MTs, 5XPs and 8Fs having more than three models of boiler between them.

 

And if the plates are missing and the number is unreadable, then the number of washout plugs is different - six on a Merchant, five on a WC/BB.... hat, coat, etc.

 

I always felt that it was better to build a boiler to fit a loco rather than the other way around, and later boilers contained improvements found during the building period, or should they have simply stayed with the original but less advanced design? The Stanier Class 3 family of boilers weren't interchangeable between different classes of engine, but all used the same flanging blocks - the expensive bits - during construction. There were, in BR days, 178 5X Jubilees (3A), 842 Black Fives (3B), 666 8Fs (3C) and 40 2-6-0s (3D), so enough to smooth out the spares situation.

 

There were something like 20 variations on the GWR Std 1 boiler over the years, tube layouts, superheaters, water space dimensions, all sorts of variations. Some of the earlier standard types existed in even greater variety. Interchangeable does not necessarily mean identical.

 

Let's have a look at the history of the Class 3 boilers. It all began in 1932 and is described by Eric Langridge in Under 10 CMEs. He was a draughtsman at Derby and was tasked with designing a taper boiler for a 6' 9" wheeled 5XP express 4-6-0, and began with a taper the full length of the boiler from smokebox to firebox. He soon discovered that Horwich was designing a mixed traffic 2-6-0 and he realised that the boilers could be made similar, although the 2-6-0's would be made quite a bit smaller. So the design became a parallel front ring and taper from there backwards, the differences in lengths being made by altering the length of the parallel section - easily done - and using an identical tapered section. The express's firebox needed to be bigger as it needed more steam than the mixed traffic engine (this might have not worked out in practice!) so the grate was made longer. But they used the same flanging blocks.

When the Black Five was on the board, it used the same boiler as the 5XP but the firebox came from the 2-6-0. Again, as a mixed traffic engine it did not need the 5X's steaming capacity and weight reduction was a major consideration, so the smaller firebox would do. No new flanging blocks were needed. Then came the 2-8-0 and this was to be an eight-coupled wheeled version of the Black Five using the same boiler and many other parts. When it was sketched out and the weights calculated, it was found to be heavy at the rear end. This was cured by moving the boiler one foot forward, but this required the barrel to be shortened to compensate - by cutting one foot from the parallel section.

Which is why I say that the boilers were designed to fit the engines, not the other way around.

 

I’m well aware of that, but we have 18 members of another class (albeit from another company) around and I believe a certain member has said on here that in their experience they’re all slightly different as they’re from different batches and works.
As I say I’m not having a pop at the Great Western or anything that was built by it or those that have affection for it, but as I’ve 2 members of my own family who have struggled to the difference between 2 members of the GWR apart, isn’t there some truth in the phrase ‘they all look the same?’
Matt, (very much a fan of 28xx and Manors btw)