Southern standardisation (follow-on from the 94xx thread)

I wonder about the scale at which standardisation benefits start to wear off.

For example, on the Southern, the N class moguls were the largest class designed by Maunsell - but there were only 80 of them. (Stanier wouldn't even get out of bed for less than 200, to paraphrase Linda Evangelista ...)

The point being though that the SR only had about ~ 2,000 locos (Gradually declined from about 2,200 in 1923 to 1,800 in 1947). So 80 locos of one class represented ~ 4% of the fleet. That's not so different from the 800 Black 5s amongst 20,000 LMS locos.

The question is, in terms of stores, setting up jigs, patterns etc, at what point do you start to see a significant benefit from standardisation? In the LMS case, the Midland and LNWR were each comparably large railways to the GWR. So maybe having two strands of loco development would have got comparable benefits as the GWR achieved (in other words, eliminate the small company stock like the CR, HR, NSR etc, but keep Derby and Crewe as design practices); and further standardisation saw diminishing returns. Whereas on the SR, each of the constituents was really so small as to standardise across them was a proportionately bigger gain" one mixed traffic 2-6-0 was clearly better than having three. What the SR had to bear in mind, and did very well, was that even a "Standard" loco might have a small production run in comparison with the other companies of the Big 4. So it was expensive to design, say, completely new boilers. A Schools class uses a shortened King Arthur boiler saving money of the press blocks. A Q1 is basically a Maunsell Q frame and cylinders mated to a boiler that has a shortened Lord Nelson firebox, saving considerable money in design and tooling. Even the Maunsell rebuilds of the geriatric Stroudley E1s to form the E1R used the N class pony truck, salvaged from the pile of spares from Woolwich Arsenal!

The other point I would just throw in is my usual one about replacement lifecycles: typically 30+ years. So in any given year you can replace about 3% of your loco fleet, so any move to standardisation is necessarily constrained by that rate - in other words, even if a forceful board said "we want a standard fleet", it would take half a lifetime to achieve, and by time you got to the end, the designs would be out of date anyway.

Tom

 

Designs of individual engines would, but parts can carry on.

I'd be interested to see how much scope the GW gave their outside contractors when building compared to say the LNER. IIRC B17s had a lot of North British features (quite possible as there wasn't an LNER group standard for whichever feature). I bet you can't tell the outside 43xx locos from the swindon ones.

That is where the GW scores - if your 3% of engines replaced are done within a standard philosophy, new parts are kept to a minimum. And they got lucky/prescient with their philosophy that it wasn't out of date during the period it was needed. (LNWR and MR derived 4-6-0s didn't cut the mustard, and I doubt the putative fowler pacific would either), wheras the GW could leap from Saint to Hall to Castle to King within the Churchward playbook. Had the hawksworth pacific been built, it may have been a bridge too far?

 

Some were also built by Kerr Stuart, Armstrong Whitworth, Bagnall, Beyer Peacock and Yorkshire Engine Co., and R. Stephenson & Hawthorns (9400 class)

For a short while 5764 and 7714 (Kerr Stuart) were for a short time positioned next to each other in The Engine House with a quiz to count the differences: there are more than a dozen (and I got about three!).

Patrick

 

Complicated I think. If you take the GW47xx there were 9 of them with one spare boiler, and that was a bit marginal. However many other parts on the 47s were standard with other classes. From the point of view of spares stock, the fewer lines you have the better. From the point of view of exchange parts at overhaul you only need enough that there will always be a refurbished part on the shelf waiting.
Then there are also savings on the design side. If your new class uses a lot of existing parts then those pieces don't need to be redesigned, although you do have to design the rest to fit. So when Holcroft was told to design the 43s Churchward told him to get in all the standard parts he could, and as a result few new drawings were needed so it was quicker and cheaper to get into production.
And then if an improvement is found - and there were numerous redesigns of GW standard parts - then the new design could be fitted to many more locomotives. For example Collett had the small end lubrication of the standard con rods altered which gives a distinctive external shape, and so far I am yet to spot the earlier design on any preserved Churchward locomotive.
For the modeller this is a nightmare since any older GW locomotive would be a mishmash of older and newer parts. Of course this is not unique to the GWR, and everyone reused parts if they could as we've seen highlighted up thread. The difference, I suppose, is the determination with which this was done and the amount of compromise that was accepted to do it. GWR 43s, for example, were a bit under boilered/over cylindered if they had to go far and fast, and could have done with a longer firebox and grate. But that would have required a complete redesign. The GWR accepted that on certain fast freight duties it was better to put a Saint on. Gresley, OTOH, if I understand his philosophy correctly, would have had the redesign done.

 

Hence the V2 2-6-2 re-designed from an A3 perchance ?

 

As I think was mentioned earlier, it all depends on your definition of 'Standardisation'.
To the Traffic chappie it means a limited variety of engines of similar capabilities (not always achieved - think SR N15X and N15).
To the fitter and boilersmith in the sheds it means finding the widget you need in the stores - Firebars, Brake blocks, gauge glasses are probably Top of the Pops there.
It is often the little things that can make or break one's day. The LSWR engines had a lamp bracket - the discs and lamps had a spigot on the back. The Brighton and SECR had lamp irons, such as we are used to today. I believe that the initial transfer of Woolworths to the West Country, and 113's (T9) to Kent side caused consternation (possibly leading to Language being used!). It took the SR management about 5 years to sort that one out.
Pat

 

The same problem happened with lamp brackets on locos working on the GW when they were transferred elsewhere. The firehole doors were the wrong way round, as well.

 

Think you mean Woolwich, although if you really want to go on about Southern Standardisation, Bullied and Maunsell are definitely the most obvious offenders.

Plus the guys who built those Toilet Units.

 

Both terms were used. Don't forget the Maunsell moguls ran in southern Ireland too. The MGWR's final fling was to buy several (actually assembled under GSR auspices, the first turned out in fully lined MGWR livery, photographed, before promptly being repainted in the ubiquitous battleship grey). "Woolwich" doesn't have quite the same connotations over the Irish Sea.

Re: the charmingly named 4LAV units, the much later MkIII based 3rd rail stock (initially at least) came with a ban on bicycles. Suggestions to christen them 4NOB didn't find official favour!

Edited for clarity.

 

Who's they?

 

Pretty sure three syllables in that unit would describe the person who evented those coffin boxes.
(Give you a clue, remove the 4).

 

The Maunsell moguls. Sorry. Will amend OP to clarify.

 

Thanks for that, much appreciated.
The poor Irish, having to deal with those boring machines.

 

They served until the final run down of CIÉ steam in the early 60s. The only complaints from crews concerned the (by Irish standards) small cabs. The Irish edition looked a bit different, as they had a smokebox door wheel, had no top lamp bracket and never wore smoke deflectors.

Although quite a bit less powerful than the G&SWR Class 500 4-6-0, they were substantially cheaper to buy in than the native design was to build as well as having a wider route availability, causing the latter's construction to stop at three locos.

 

Well, cheap maybe.
So cheap in fact, the designs were practically stolen from England, so many engines in Ireland look the spit of English engines.

 

And when an Eastleigh Panel man put 5PIG on the Train Describer to denote a berthed unit the fertiliser hit the aircon!
Pat

 

No, I meant Woolworth. The 6' 0" wheeled U Class were Mongolipers. Southern (and antecedent) loco nicknames are a fascinating wormhole to get sucked down. And, for what it's worth, Mr. Maunsell, who was responsible for the design in SECR days, was a Dublinman, so the design went home, as it were.
Pat

 

The most numerous, Class 101, were from BP and bore close resemblance to the LNWR DX goods, but outlasted them by a long, long way. Aside from the Class 372/393 moguls, the Class 400 (in original condition) bore a slight passing resemblance to the GW 'Star' class. Some say the 800s look like rebuilt 'Scots', but I don't see it.

The Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway (which kept it's independence for the same reason as the GNRI, SL&NCR, L&LSR and CDJRC) was originally a 5'-3" gauge outpost of the LNWR and became the last place an LNW design (0-6-0st) could be seen hauling 4 and 6 wheeled carriages, all in LNW livery. It gave up the ghost in the early 1950s.

In the north, locos on the former B&NCR was bought by the English Midland in 1903, so the resemblance to MR and LMS (especially Fowler) locos isn't too surprising.

On the GNRI, early on, the livery was close to that of the English GNR and cabs bore a resemblance to those of Sterling. This all ended with the scrapping or rebuilding of locos and everything going into black livery, lined in red on express locos (this is the livery in which RPSI have turned out No.131). The magnificent blue borne by classes S,S1,U, V and VS came around 1930.

I'll challenge all comers to find anything vaguely close to Aspinall and Ivatt's output for the GS&W, or Atcock's for the MGWR!

Other than those, I see little close resemblance to owt else in other than 'off the peg' designs, like those of Beyer Peacock on the D&SER (slight similarity with the IWR's fleet)

 

I don't think you can really apply the word "standardisation" to the L.N.E.R. given how many different railways made it up. By 1942, with 21 years of Gresley at the helm, this is what the L.N.E.R. was in locomotive stakes:



The biggest issues being that of availability and maintainability, I think it's fair to say Gresley's hands were somewhat tied, and Thompson's too. Over 160 classes to be ideally reduced to 19 standard and non standard to be maintained locomotives was commendable thinking by Thompson but they got nowhere near it before nationalisation, and after that the standard classes were designed almost purely to supplement and replace the oldest and most obsolete locomotives.

You could quite cogently argue that in the U.K., locomotive design was out of control whereas other countries were more restrained in their application. But then we wouldn't have had the wonderful variety of beautiful steam locomotives we all adore, so swings and roundabouts...

 

My impression is that the majority of the larger Pre-Grouping railways had locomotive fleets that were fairly well standardized, and I include the main LNER constituents in that generalization. There were of course some glaring exceptions, notably the 9 classes of GCR 4-6-0, with 5 boiler types. The NER had also built a number of designs that appeared to be non-standard dead-ends - B14 4-6-0, D21 4-4-0, A6 & A7 4-6-2Ts.

On the LMS in the 1920s, a faction tried to impose Midland standards as the solution for everyone, with mixed results. Whereas Gresley made no attempt to impose GN standards uniformly across the LNER. He could, for instance, have opted to build hundreds more J6 0-6-0s, corresponding to the hundreds of Midland 4F engines being built for the LMS. He chose instead to develop the new J39, which was quite different to any of the Pre-Grouping types.

Standardization seemed to be facilitated on the larger railways where locomotive superintendents succeeded from "in-house" and could be disrupted when a new LS with strong views came from outside. After the Great Eastern was formed in 1862, in its first 24 years it had 6 LSs (Sinclair, Johnson, Adams, Bromley, T Worsdell, Holden) producing widely different designs, before James Holden stayed for 22 years and brought much needed continuity and order.

https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/locomotives

On the Southern, the SER & SECR had been served by Cudworth, J Stirling and Wainwright, all long-serving superintendents who practiced a high degree of standardization. The LSWR had a discontinuity in 1895 when Drummond succeeded Adams. I don't know whether there was much commonality of parts and spares between Adams and Drummond types. For example, could tenders be swapped between Adams & Drummond engines? Stroudley had introduced (numerically) large standardized classes on the LBSC, but the loco fleet seemed to get progressively more varied under his successors.

When discussing standardization on the SR, we also need to look at the EMU fleet. I understand that the SR established a long-term partnering arrangement with English Electric for the supply of standard EE kit for both the electrical supply infrastructure and the EMU motors. All of the SR third-rail EMUs were able to inter-work until the early 1950s, when electro-pneumatic braking was introduced in place of straight air braking for new builds. But the subsequent large variety of EP type EMUs could also inter-operate among themselves.

Finally, reference your comparison to the situation in other countries, there tended to be less variety because so many countries had either a single state railway system or a small number of large companies. The latter situation might roughly equate to the "Big 4" in Britain, but without the inheritance from numerous smaller companies. The USA was possibly the only other country with so many main-line railway companies?