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

Interesting Tom? Any link I can read on it? I would be happy to correct the record, so to speak, when I release my book and edit the W1 chapter accordingly.

 

It's covered in Bradley; I think the South Western Circle probably have the original photos. I seem to recall there were more that appeared in one of their monographs. There's another photo in Bradley showing the interior of the smokebox with the cross water tubes very visible.

The K10 was a small-wheeled 4-4-0 used for mixed traffic. The main series had boilers the same as on the M7 0-4-4T and 700 Goods locos, except the K10s also had firebox cross water tubes.

No. 343 had an experimental boiler as shown. The circular flue was 2ft 8in in diameter, replacing the main tube nest of the conventional boilers. (You'll see from the photo that 9 fire tubes remained each side filling the space in the top corners of the firebox).

Heating surface was given as:

Circular flue - 427 sq ft
Fire tubes - 86 sq ft
Firebox - 124 sq ft
Cross water tubes - 100 sq ft
Total - 737 sq ft

That compares with the conventional boiler that had the same firebox surface area and firebox cross water tubes, but 1068 sq ft of tube area for a total of 1,292sq ft, i.e. the experimental boiler had not much more than half the heating surface. Drummond claimed that steam could be raised from cold in 1.5 hours and that the evaporative rate was at least equal to that of the conventional boilers. In practice, steam raising was quicker but there were problems with fractured tubes including "several potentially serious blow backs".

The loco was finished in December 1901; a couple of trial runs were unsuccessful but by March - April 1902 it was employed regularly on the Reading vans train. In July 1902 Drummond reported that the boiler performed well in a stationary capacity, but the jolting and vibration inevitable with railway usage caused flue fracturing and leaking tubes which could only be attended by lifting the boiler. In December 1902 the loco was returned to traffic with a standard boiler; it had run 4,641 miles with the water tube boiler.

It is also worth noting that Drummond was a marked advocate of firebox cross water tubes - not true water tube boilers, but essentially conventional boilers with a set of additional water tubes within the furnace. They are readily recognisable on many of his locomotives by large rectangular additions either side of the firebox, underneath which was a cover for the ends of the tubes. The firebox cross water tubes are clearly visible on the photo I showed above. They were clearly successful enough that Drummond kept them on many of his locos, but Urie rapidly got rid of them. I've often wondered about the additional work that must have been required at boiler washouts, where the cross water tubes can only have been accessed by partially removing the boiler cladding and then seemingly having one washout plug to remove over the top of each tube. That's a lot of additional labour on shed.

An L11 4-4-0 showing the external appearance of cross water tubes.



Here's a photo of one of the boilers (from a 4-6-0) showing the cross water tube access: (An E14 4-6-0 in this case).





Source: http://1920slocomotives.blogspot.com/2014/03/111-140-early-locomotives-and-in-works.html

Tom

 

If you want further levels of absurdity consider the difference between:
The designer streamlined the xxx
And
An unintentional side effect of this design was that the xxx could be considered to be streamlined

[I'll get my coat]

 

As an aside, I used to drive a 5" gauge narrow gauge loco with a similar pattern boiler many years ago. It used much more coal to haul the same load compared to similarly sized locos with conventional boilers.

 

But, as I have tried to explain (possibly poorly!), the W1 was considered streamlined by both its designer and its company, on completion. Gresley may not have originally set out to design a streamlined locomotive when the W1 was originally considered, but the file at the NRM on the W1 absolutely confirms that the wind tunnel testing produced a locomotive to that specification, and Gresley was convinced of the advantages that brought from the results of the wind tunnel tests.

So no, the engineer in charge didn't envisage the locomotive as being streamlined from the outset, but when it became such as a by product of development, he was happy to label it as such and to also push for further development into a streamlined locomotive and matching train.

No need Jim, I always look forward to your posts and I hope you continue to challenge me on my research, freely.

 

Fascinating, I need to look further into this.

I think there's probably a good reason why the LNER made its claims about "first water tube boiler" - to my (admittedly brief) look into this, the boilers we are looking at are stephenson style boilers with additional water tubes across the fire grate area. Not a true "water tube boiler" which works very differently.

But I promise to look into this Tom, and revise my viewpoint according with my findings and reading.

 

Most of Drummond’s boilers were indeed “Stephenson type boilers with additional water tubes across the grate area” but the one on No. 343 (trialled largely unsuccessfully) was a genuine water tube boiler in which the majority of the heating was from water-filled tubes surrounded by hot gas. There were a handful of fire tubes but they represent a small proportion of the whole and look as much as anything just “filling in a corner” with a bit more surface. Possibly they were worried at just how low the heating surface got within the size constraints available. The conventional pattern K10 boilers had 216 fire tubes; the experimental one had 18.

In design terms, the boiler on W1 was much closer to the marine boilers that were widely and successfully used in ships of the era. It feels like an attempt by Yarrow to see if their technology could break into a new market; whereas had Drummond’s boiler been successful and more widely applied, they would presumably have been constructed within the railway’s own workshop.

Tom

 

Interesting, this debate about Hush Hush, her water-tube boiler and water-tube type boilers in general. I've always found it somewhat difficult to get my head round how they worked compared to the Stephenson fire-tube type boiler. I came across a YouTube feature by the Imperial War Museum touring HMS Belfast and they had a feature in/about the boiler/engine room. Which described how the water-tube boiler worked, which went a long way to explain said workings.....

 

Actually (I'm going to be the actually person here) I don't think we can safely assume it. Given that the whole point of the architectural style of Streamline Moderne (a 1930s outworking/descendant of Art Deco) was to emphasise streamlining, modernity, clean lines and speed (quite specifically speed) - I would bet that the architect really did sit down and consider what a signalbox with lowered aerodynamic drag would look like!

Anyway, do carry on!

 

Ooh! I mis spent part of my youth in the engine & boiler rooms of the 1955 Manxman & 1965 Ben My Cree, the Foster Wheeler D types in the Ben were fabulous!

 

Just thinking about this a bit more, and specifically the publicity of claiming No. 10000 was the “first water tube boiler on a locomotive”.

10000 was (source: LNER.info) completed in Nov 1929 “and first ran on 12 December”. At the same time, the LMS loco “Fury” (which also had a form of water tube boiler) was handed over to the LMS in Dec 1929 and ran trials in February 1930 (source: Douglas Self site).

So two locos with innovative boilers from rival companies appearing almost neck and neck; my hunch is just that the LNER wanted the publicity scoop of finishing “ahead by a nose” over their rivals on the West coast, and hardly even considered any prior art from 30 years before.

I suspect that is more likely, simply the desire for a publicity scoop, rather than detailed technical consideration of precisely what types of boiler were or weren’t “water tube”. The three boilers - Drummond, LNER W1, LMS Fury - were all very different in concept, but all fundamentally had elements of design that were unambiguously water tube designs. But my sense is that the publicity department of the LNER were simply comparing their innovative high pressure experimental loco with the LMS’ innovative high pressure experimental loco, and scoring a point because they got theirs out a few weeks earlier.

Tom

 

They also carefully ignored the Sentinel locomotives that Gresley had ordered for the LNER back in 1925. Perhaps not in the same league as a passenger loco obut they were certainly water tube boiler locos. And the survivors still are.

 

Fury's boiler was some sort of strange hybrid while the W1 was imho a 'true' water tube

 

Useful historical details on marine style boilers here :

 

Evidently those tests confirmed that the air flow was as desired, flowing through ducts to the grate (an aspect I'd never heard of until this thread) and lifting smoke/steam out of the way. But did they measure the backward force on the locomotive due to the wind, and if so did they confirm that it was less than with a conventional outline?

 

They did, at least, consider taking part in the fun.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/182958803595869847/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I need to look into this more but I didn’t know the Sentinels had water tube boilers. Interesting stuff.

I need to check this but my recollection is that this was noted in the file. I will confirm this though.

 

Yes, interesting and new info.
But preheated air into the ash pan was tried before. The first Swedish Ljungström turbine loco of 1922 (wrongly designated here as SJ cl. Å 1474) was fitted with a large air pre heater under the smokebox:
https://digitaltmuseum.org/02101804...ngstroms-turbinlok-med-tag-fredrik-ljungstrom
This, of course, corroded rapidly and Ljungström invented the regenerative pre heater, which was a huge success in many fields:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljungström_air_preheater
It was applied to the test locomotive on the smokebox front:
https://digitaltmuseum.org/02101803...-jarnvagssparet-mellan-goteborg-och-olskroken
But the bigger problem with pre heated air to the ash pan was that it generated copious amounts of black smoke that could not be efficiently combusted in the fire box.
Thus for the next condensing turbine loco, SJ class Å, No. 1477, ancestor of the Beyer-Ljungström turbine loco, the pre heated air was successfully added directly into the fire box, above the grate as secondary air.
https://digitaltmuseum.org/021018092311/statens-jarnvagar-sj-a-1474-turbinlok

 

This is an even earlier example of pre-heated air forced into the ashpan - an LBSCR Gladstone class loco. It was not successful (one also wonders what it did for forward visibility!)



Tom

 

Further to Steve's contribution above, the LNER had three twin-six cylinder engined Sentinel railcars fitted with Woolnough water-tube boilers which were similar to that as used on No. 10000, as seen in this 'unfrocked' photo. A similar, but oil-fired version of this design is fitted to the 3-car Sentinel railcar set ex Egypt now at the Bucks Railway Centre at Quainton. Working pressure is 335 psi.