LSWR H16 tanks

I'd vote for the Craven 2-4-0 or how about a Crampton type? FR20 coped with the Bluebell without a problem, so a precedent there. Not one for regular service trains, but pre-planned 'autumn tints' type services with a couple of four wheeled coaches?

Just the thing for going to Ardingly..........(now I've said it.....)

 

Dare I say, Ardingly is likely to become a very busy part of the line when opened, and running to HH as seems likely will require a loco with a decent turn of speed and acceleration. Decent water capacity will also be a must, as watering stops at HH won't be possible AFAIK - it'll have to do EG-HH-EG return on one tank of water.

 

Unlikely - the water capacity at EG is only really suitable for topping up small tank engines; it isn't enough for a whole day's supply for one or more engines. (I think it only amounts to around 3 or 4,000 gallons). I'd say that having a reliable water supply at HK is probably a pre-requisite of going to Ardingly. As for HH - a long way off, IMHO.

Also, I'm not sure why HH requires more speed and acceleration than our current service? I imagine it will still be a 25mph service, and if you compare our current section lengths with section timings, you'll see that there isn't much slack to meet the section timings if you also stay inside 25mph. The only section with a generous time allowance is Kingscote to EG.

Tom

 

Only the first bit of that is true. Judged against other locos from the 1850s and 1860s, you can't say they were failures - in fact they held up well against other contemporary locos (Cudworth, Beattie etc). The issue with Craven wasn't that (with one or two exceptions) he designed dud locos: it was that he wasn't able to make Brighton an efficient locomotive works. An issue, incidentally, that Stroudley couldn't solve either, and which ultimately did for Marsh as well...

As for less haulage than a Terrier: depends on the size. I suspect a 50 ton 2-4-0 tender engine of, say, 12,000lbs TE would be good for 8 or 9 four wheelers or the four Mets fairly easily, which a Terrier wouldn't manage, not least on account of water capacity. Not as much as the E4 or H, but more than a Terrier or P, and with more security in range than the small tank engines.

Tom

 

I think Craven's problem was that he designed bespoke locos for each task that came up, resulting in many different types with all of the problems that entailed. Stroudley was much more about standardisation.

I think the comments re Haywards Heath come from the idea that you will have to run on NR metals which would be very difficult. The sustainable way would be to run parallel to a new site (not that this would be easy).

I maintain that a small 'vintage' loco would be more use than given credit for. Our two train service over Easter was one bogie train and another of 6 four wheelers hauled by a terrier, train weight about 70 tons, and was very useful and popular. These were express engines, so acceleration would not be a factor if the train weight was proportionate.

 

Addressing the issue regarding Brighton's efficiency as a works, it seemed Lawson Billinton was able to build locos well enough there, and his father certainly had them churned out in big numbers - and don't forget a hundred Bulleid WC/BBs chucked out in the space of 2-3 years or so.

Regarding Cravens vs their contemporaries, one wonders how Beatties survived as long as they did (to the point that they could be preserved today) when Cravens were all but completely gone a century earlier? Stroudley's views, as reported in a book I have on the LBSCR by that company's footplate crews (who were not slow to put their own views forward either) is that Craven's locos did not work and that there were far too many different designs - which could only work in the environment where the crews worked 10-hour (or longer!) shifts and had their own loco - there came a point (in the early 20th century) where legislation mandated shifts be no longer than 8 hours, and there ended the tradition of one crew 'owning' a loco. Where crews could be driving different locos from one day to the next, the level of familiarisation required with Craven's plethora of classes was simply too great.

Also, I can't see NR allowing you to run down from Copyhold to HH at 25mph on what is already one of the most overcrowded lines it runs!

 

But you are trying to judge a mid-19th century designer by saying his locos weren't suited to conditions that pertained in the 20th century fifty years after they were built! You might as well say that the GNR Stirling singles were unsuited to hauling the Coronation Scot non-stop to Edinburgh...

With the exception of three engines which survived for very particular and peculiar reasons on one obscure bit of lightly-laid branch line, everything by Beattie was gone by the 1890s: most was gone by the mid 1880s. Likewise most of Cudworth's locos on the SER, which with a few exceptions didn't last much beyond 1890. In the circumstances, the fact that many Craven engines lasted well into the 1890s is at least comparable with his contemporaries, which rather suggests they weren't that bad.

With regard the efficiency of Brighton works: at times the LBSCR had almost a third of its capital stock laid up in sidings awaiting repairs, such was the chronic inability of Brighton to cope with the demand. Some of that can be laid at the door of Craven's policy of building non-standard bespoke locos, but the layout of the works and its cramped location (which was split either side of the mainline, which meant a lot of shunting moves having to cross a busy line) can't have helped. None of the Brighton's CME's got to grips with that problem: there were discussions to move to a greenfield site at Horley as early as the 1850s, but it never happened. The younger Billinton moved the carriage works out just before the First World War which helped a bit, but locomotive production was always constrained, and stories of new locos taking years to appear while work carried on in fits and starts are numerous. As an example of an efficient locomotive builder, you cite Lawson Billinton: in his tenure at Brighton, the works turned out 45 new locomotives in 10 years, plus 12 rebuilt B4X class. That's not exactly Crewe levels of production.

I'm not saying Craven was a designer in the first rank - clearly he wasn't, as witnessed by the strikingly better engines produced by his successor. But equally, nor was he a complete dud. Taken individually, most of his engines were at least the equivalents of those produced by his contemporaries on other lines. His policy of bespoke building turned out to be a poor decision, though it is worth noting in that regard that Beattie (senior) also built locos in a large number of numerically small classes, but is not so maligned for it. Ultimately, it was Craven's inability to turn round the performance of Brighton works that saw his downfall, not the construction of individually poor locomotives. Things only improved slightly under Stroudley and Billinton senior, and got markedly worse again under Marsh, which ultimately accounted for him as well.

Tom

 

Just what is the tare weight of the Chesham set? They are short vehicles

P.H.

 

80 tons for all four (i.e. 20 tons each).

There's a general perception though that they don't roll as well as more modern stock, that is they are more draggy. I suspect the truth is that they have about the same rolling resistance as any group of four bogie carriages with plain bearings, but with less weight, they seem not to accelerate as quickly downhill as e.g. four Mark 1s or Bulleids would. They are certainly more draggy than only two modern coaches would be (which would be about the same weight).

Tom

 

Tom,

Thanks for info. In other words the Chesham set is within the load limit of an I.O.W. A1x. Having ridden in a train of this sort of mass hauled by W.8 I suspect that there is a great deal in hand (supported by a postcard showing W.11 heading four bogies and a four wheeler some years ago) and the wish is is to avoid stressing 140 year old machinery unduly. It may be that the Bluebell examples have smaller cylinders than their relatives as these dimensions varied.

Forgive me Tom but I never understand Bluebell motive power policy. By all means build a Craven but let it be a freight engine rather than a passenger one. It is a 25 m.p.h. railway after all! It would seem that Craven's machinery burned rather a lot of coal but the boiler proportions would be re-designed anyway when such issues could be sorted.

Paul H.

 

You're right, the cylinders did vary - of ours, Stepney's are smaller than normal, and Fenchurch's are bigger.

I can't remember what our load limits are; I think 65 tons for a P and 75 for Fenchurch, but I might be wrong - there's ten tons extra for the Terrier, anyway. I know Fenchurch has made the trip to Kingscote with all four Mets, but not to EG - it was out of traffic before the extension opened. However (and with respect to the IoW!) we are an 11 mile line, not a five mile line, and the gradients are almost all in one direction. I think it is water capacity as much as anything else that limits the smaller locos, as well as the need for near continuous steaming up about 8 miles steeper than 1 in 75. There is more climbing on the Bluebell than over Shap... Plus as you say, there is a certain deference to machinery that is coming up to its 150th anniversary.

As for the Craven: I doubt there will be any serious moves until Beachy Head is finished, and then, who knows, ideas may lead elsewhere. The general idea at the moment was a 2-4-0 tender engine, but there are plenty to choose from, with varying wheel diameters!

I think some of the logic for a Craven engine is to have something to run with the Craven carriages (whether new build or restoration): the LTP says in the C&W aims "LB&SCR stock from the Stroudley and Craven eras." The loco department bit of the LTP simply says "To construct replicas of locomotives which are particularly appropriate to the collection, and to the operation of the Railway", though in the projects expected to commence within ten years are "Commence construction of a replica LB&SCR 'Craven era' locomotive. Development of a historic 'Craven era' carriage set."

Tom

 

Thanks for thoughts. I believe the IOW pair have 14" cylinders each although there is no reason why Stepney cannot be so fitted when she is rebuilt. You know what is coming next! Rightly or wrongly it seems to me that the Bluebell seeks reasons to run heavier trains and bigger motive power when it should be seeking means whereby they employ lighter trains and smaller locomotives for purely commercial reasons.

Incidentally the ruling gradients are pretty similar on both lines as is the distance between water stops.

Paul H. (who expects we shall never agree on this!)

 

178 did a round trip to Kingscote with the Wealden Rambler set (consisting of 3x Mk 1s at the time) a few years ago, I should think she was seriously labouring on the climb from HK to the tunnel. http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pic2/wn-2011/178_arriving_kc_derekh1891_23jun11.jpg

I think the person to ask about the Bluebell's carriage strategy is @RichardSalmon if he sees this.

 

I'm not trying to make such a comparison at all, but clearly Beattie's 0298s, albeit now looking rather different to how they did in the 1870s, were still useful to BR well after the death of their designer (and all four of his successors at the LSWR). Stroudley, on the other hand, found Craven's locomotives failures well within Craven's own lifetime, and set about replacing them immediately. The B1s, Terriers, E1s and D1s. I can't find detailed information on withdrawals of other Beattie locos: however, if they made it to 1890, that's better than Craven managed, with Stroudley's locos replacing them by 1880 or so. The LSWR was modernising faster than the more easterly companies, with Adams and Drummond building locomotives on an enormous scale, with a high level of standardisation of parts. Billinton didn't have to build that many locos because the LBSCR was already pretty well-served by his predecessors' locos, didn't have a huge amount of route mileage (covering only three counties, Surrey and Sussex, plus a handful intruding into Kent - by contrast, the LSWR covered eight counties, and the SECR five - excluding those lines which just about reached into Middlesex), and electrification was displacing locomotives from the suburban inner-London lines: I don't cite Brighton in that era as a masterpiece of efficiency, of course, but they seemed to do OK in the circumstances, especially once the carriage works had been moved to Lancing. It does seem that the works itself was hopelessly compromised - which makes one wonder how they managed to turn out a hundred or so Bulleids in such a short space of time! Brighton had probably never been so busy...

 

I really think you are reading too much into that. The vast majority of the class were withdrawn in the 19thC. The survival of the last three is surely simply a historical fluke. All you can really say is that no successive CME saw a business case for putting in all the effort in designing a class of three - or perhaps their boards wouldn't approve the expenditure.
Its amusing to note that their eventual replacements were another historical oddity in that the GWR 1366s were light updates of the 1361 saddle tank, which was in itself a modernised version of an absorbed 1873 design (and seems to have been designed as much as anything else as a training exercise for Holcroft). Rather unusual to be building a locomotive with Allen Valve gear in 1934 I should think.

 

The fact is that nothing ever really worked on the Wenfordbridge line other than 0298s. 1366s were no more up-to-date. Adams - weren't there only ever three of the Radial 4-4-2T type? Drummond certainly built some very small classes. Bulleid only got one Leader built, and, away from the Southern, Gresley only one W1, Stanier only one Turbomotive, Riddles only one Standard 8P...

 

There were 71 Adams radial tanks, not 3...

Tom

 

I stand corrected. I just remembered that three of them survived into BR days.

 

Paul,
I think this is a bit unfair, the Bluebell is surely one of the better railways when it comes to using and restoring vintage carriages and smaller locos where possible. Don't they regularly roster a Victorian train with a smaller engine, and use one for the Arrow where possible?

 

Slightly unfair comparisons here.
Leader - cancelled by BR. Had nationalisation not happened then may Bulleiod would have got it to work and more built. We shall never know of course.
W1 and Turbomotive - experimental locos.
71000 - never really intended as the prototype for a whole new class and the modernisation plan would have killed off any such pans anyway.