Sir Nigel Gresley - The L.N.E.R.’s First C.M.E.

Why not? I can remember having a diary from a transport company that listed best years for certain wines

 

It's "yebbut Chapelon" and its getting tedious, especially as there's a thread on locomotive performance where a load of other posts were moved to.

 

Mainly on account that if IIRC Gresley was on good terms with Chapelon [his opposite number in France]. But also kept an eye on developments across the Channel. Don't forget the "Double Kykchap" chimney and exhaust were a Finnish/French design. He also used the testing facilities at Vichy[?] in France . When he sent Olivier Bulleid and P2 2001 Cock o'the North over.

 

Thanks 30567. I wasn't quite sure of the place/spelling of the French Testing Plant.

 

What a fantastic return on investment that locomotive was - not.

Meanwhile, Gresley "one off" no.10,000 (later 60700) was achieving more than 40,000 miles on average in a year for its working life.

The more that is posted on Chapelon, the more I feel convinced that his critics are not far wrong, to be frank.

 

Vitry.

 

I think that there are two valves per cylinder

 

Not before it was rebuilt though. Chapelon got it right first time!

I suspect that that is true only of his Francophobe (mainly English?) critics!

 

If this page is correct, there were two different sizes of low pressure cylinders:

Source: http://thierry.stora.free.fr/english/techdat2.htm

I must admit, the more I read of this thread, the more I am convinced his designs - and this one in particular - were largely irrelevant. If you consider that a locomotive is just a machine to convert a company's capital into a revenue generation, then it has to be considered a failure, and not even an indicator of future direction.

Tom

 

When you were a locomotive designer, it didn't pay to be insular. Gresley wasn't!

 

Very true ..... but also Gresley was in the last generation of Railway engine designers who started their careers when the railway engine was the fastest machine in the world...and had been for a hundred years. That career may well have attracted the brightest and the best?

 

Those outside steam pipes enter the smokebox rather high up or are they exiting?

 

Was the A4 class a money earner or plaything?
Fastest steam hauled revenue train in Europe was Belgian
Chapelon was heavily involved with the design of SNCF 141P of wich 318 did work from 1942 to 1969.
Worlds most efficient steam locomotives by the way according to Cox.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/141_P_SNCF

 

That description of 10,000/60700 is a bit deceptive, isn't it? The boiler was removed at the rebuilding and used as the stationary boiler at Darlington and a new, conventional boiler was fitted.

 

A bit like the B3/3?

 

...with which it ran for a further 23 years - even surviving the accident at Peterborough North that should have been a death sentence, yet wasn't.

It was probably the death sentence for the signalman's trousers, mind.

 

Not deceptive at all. That’s quite an extreme reaction to what is a factual statement.

Any excuse being used in this thread currently to beat me with a stick, it feels like!

Should I have gone into exacting detail on the W1s career or made the salient point that the locomotive in its original form, and rebuilt, did actual work and was in service until 1959?

By the way - no.10,000 was numbered this when rebuilt, and ran as 60700 to the end of its days. So my statement is entirely correct.

 

Is it not a bit disingenuous to use 10000/60700 as a comparison? In original form it ran for seven years(?) and as a rebuild it was quite a different locomotive.

 

No. You make a statement and others challenge. Just as you challenge the statements made by others. It's called debate.

 

Given that it's a compound and the outside cylinders appear to be HP, it would be a steam pipe.