New-build steam strategy coordination?

There's plenty of opportunities for small preserved lines to use small locos! The problem is more that those lines don't have the resources to support effective new-build groups.

 

Not really. There are three ex-Southern 0-4-4Ts currently in steam, on three different lines, and all three see heavy usage, so are clearly useful to their owners. One of them (the M7 at Swanage) is used on a line that is in the top 5 for annual passenger numbers, showing that even "big" lines can make effective use of smaller engines . The smallest engine of the three (the H class at the Bluebell) ran about 7,500 miles a couple of years ago and has been one of the main workhorses on the line for the last few years. So I don't think that new-builds of smaller locos would necessarily see limited use, but you still have to get past the hump of who would fund them - especially as, amongst the major Southern preserved lines, most of them are quite well provided for with motive power.

Tom

 

For smaller lines, what about a batch of Terriers? They're the perfect machines in many respects, and the forthcoming work on "Stepney" will mean that patterns exist for most of the major components.

 

Bulleid is an enigma. I still find myself asking how he managed to get his Pacifics approval for building during the height of war - there is a fair argument with evidence to suggest that using conventional walschaerts would have resulted in an excellent Pacific locomotive straight off the drawing board, even if it had retained the air smoothed appearance as part of his design brief.

The Q1 was unconventional in look but excellent in application with straightforward engineering. As said there were some drawbacks - view running tender first - but a great example of austerity engineering at its best. Thompson's B1 proved the same.

Both Bulleid and Thompson gave their railways really mixed bag Pacifics - Bulleid unconventional machines of excellent performance capability with real and well documented problems with their unconventional design. Thompson produced conventional (by standards of the time elsewhere) Pacifics of unremarkable performance with well documented problems resulting from different issues. Yet Bulleids were rebuilt en-masse and Thompson's were not.

Bulleid's Leader might have had some good ideas about it but the fireman's position was outrageous in the extreme and the expenditure hard to justify by anyone's terms in post-war Britain.

I have always felt that Bulleid might have been an intellectual and a good engineer in a lot of respects but he clearly had no respect for the state of the country when he was developing his highly experimental designs - that cost a lot to the Southern Railway to build and maintain, and later the taxpayer under British Railways when scrapped/and/or rebuilt at high cost.

Arguably from an economic and social point of view you can't fault the Great Western CMEs, Stanier or Thompson/Peppercorn for their policies during the war and thereafter. You can perhaps ask if their designs could have been better, but you cannot fault that they produced workhorses at more minimal cost compared to Bulleid. On that reason alone I'd never put Bulleid - on a personal level - as one of Britain's best CMEs. In fact I'd go further and put him down as a mixed bag. Cannot understand the adulation the man gets when one looks at the excellence of the rebuilt Bulleid Pacifics.

 

I think you have to say Bulleid was over promoted. As CME, for whatever reason, he shot off on too many wild tangents chasing crazy ideas and wasted a spectacular amount of money. His talents would have been better used in a subordinate position with a sane executive to keep him pointed in the right direction.

 

Using conventional Walschaerts valve gear made the Bulleid Pacifics less free-running, less powerful, heavier, slower, reintroduced hammerblow, and made them more maintenance-intensive. There was nothing wrong with the design that couldn't be cured by use of better materials, which were becoming available by the late 50s. The Jarvis rebuilds were far more drastic than they needed to be and ended up being thoroughly regressive - such that the rebuilding programme had to be halted as some unrebuilt examples had to be retained for lines from which the rebuilds were banned! The reason Bulleid is so revered is because the unrebuilts go like stink, steam very well, and are sufficiently light that they were able to replace a lot of much older superannuated pre-Grouping types, making the LSWR lines of North Devon and Cornwall much more accessible... in comparison, I would suggest that Hawksworth did far too little to make his and his predecessors' engines easier to maintain - just look at the number of oiling points on the Castle or Modified Hall compared to the West Country. Bulleid showed vision, planning for a post-war future, and I think his vision was vindicated. Certainly, the crews (both ex-BR and preservation-era) to whom I've spoken have uniformly expressed the view that the rebuilds were and remain inferior to the originals.

Incidentally, looking into what other large passenger locomotives were built during the war - in addition to the first twenty Merchant Navies (allowing for VJ day rather than VE day being the end), some fifteen LMS Coronations (eleven streamlined), nos.6238-6252 inclusive, were built in that period - two in September '39, admittedly, but the last four (non-streamlined) didn't emerge until April/May/June '44. No fewer than 34 "rebuilt" Royal Scots emerged in that time, too, plus the two rebuilt Jubilees. A few Thompson Pacifics (including the P2 rebuilds) were also built in that time, along with ten B1s, and Hawksworth did get twelve Modified Halls built in 1944.

 

There is merit in what you say there so far as the reintroduction of hammer blow is concerned. But more maintenance intensive? D.W. Winkworth would disagree with you there. The original form Bulleid Pacifics were incredibly maintenance intensive. This is well documented. The oil bath on its own was a large factor in this - the original design machines used much more oil than other Pacific locomotives (and still do, I am told, whatever the metallurgical improvements of the modern era might have contributed).

But - and I feel this is a fair point - the point was that there was a war on, a necessity for austerity in the face of shortages of materials of the exact kind that Bulleid wanted to build his locomotives with. Is that the actions of a man envisaging a post-war Britain or someone acting in a pointedly self-indulgent manner?

That is an interesting viewpoint and I think a fair one insomuch as planning for a post-war future is concerned.

However the number of oiling points doesn't hide the fact that the air smoothed casing presents other issues, as did the oil bath and the chains on the valve gear. Engineering is always a trade off, and locomotive engineering in particular, and I wonder if the costs of the high performance you speak of can really be justified in light of the known facts of the original designs' availability and higher maintenance and fuel costs?

I am sure they have their reasons and I would defer to their superior knowledge. Perhaps in my own conservatism I can admit a fondness for the more conventional looking rebuilt locomotives than Bulleid's original vision. The originals to me are examples of locomotive development that had no place in a wartime scenario. That said, the shape and look of the things is distinctive and has its own handsomeness. I just find it hard to justify the expenditure on extremely experimental locomotives in a wartime scenario.

But rebuilds of existing locomotives were fully authorised - and all of those rebuilds you have mentioned did re-use a lot of material of the original locomotives (so much so that the P2 rebuilds have been criticised for this!) The B1s used standard parts in the synthesis of the design, as did the modified Halls. So that is not exactly comparing like with like - the Bulleid Pacifics were all new and undoubtedly had some very good practical features - the Bulleid-Firth-Brown Boxpok wheels are exquisite and their advantages are well known (but the axles are another story altogether - Bibby Line's unfortunate incident proving the theory).

 

I'm not necessarily talking about time spent in the works, but daily preparation on the crews' part - the unrebuilts have fewer oiling points and more mechanical lubricators, I'm told - no need to oil the valve gear daily. There was not, in any case, a shortage of steel in the war - look how much scrap steel ended up being dumped at sea. Aluminium was in rather shorter supply.

Of course, we know that Bulleid didn't want to use chains originally - he was planning some kind of shaft-and-gear-driven valve gear. However, he couldn't get the materials for that, so settled for chains.

I wouldn't call Bulleid's new builds anything like as reprehensible as Thompson's wartime Pacifics (four of which were all-new), nor any worse than the LMS continuing to churn out Coronations. The rebuilt Royal Scots weren't just a new boiler - they were substantially new locomotives. Building new 2A boilers for those two Jubilees seems an odd decision too.

 

This thread had drifted from the theme of co-ordinating new build projects to the slightly different "which new builds should there be?", but that maybe fits here as well as anywhere.

However the last few posts are nothing to do with new builds at all but with the pros and cons of rebuilding the Bulleids, which has been well aired before, including a link to the BR report that was the basis for the rebuilding (but which I can't find just now -- anybody able to re-post that link?). Move these posts to the "Bulleid Pacifics - Past or Present" thread?

On that latter theme

Is there evidence for those two differences? If true, is there any explanation? One post http://www.national-preservation.com/goto/post?id=952299#post-952299 pointed out that the inside cylinder valve events on the rebuilds aren't ideal, but the combined vagaries of the chain-drive and the steam reverser on the originals can cause the valve events on all three cylinders to be somewhat unpredictable.

 

Less powerful - for a start, the boiler pressure was 12% higher on the rebuilds, and as for freer-running, the rebuilds had a hang sight more reciprocating mass...

...and the relevance of this to new builds? I often wonder if an unrebuilt 'MN' would be better off being all-new than restored...

 

I presume you meant "lower"; but wasn't the reduction in boiler pressure a separate matter from the rebuilding, parallel to the same reduction on the Counties?

And the rebuilt MNs managed some spectacular high-speed exploits in the last year or two of Southern steam: ask the Yeti.

Better perhaps in some respects, but vastly more expensive for the new boiler, new wheels, etc.

 

Sorry, meant unrebuilts. 250psi on rebuilts, 280psi on unrebuilts. What's more expensive - a new build, or restoring part of a 70ish-year-old locomotive (with new crank axle, middle cylinder, valve gear, reverser...) that hasn't run in 50 years? If you take General Steam Navigation, that's a new centre wheelset entirely, I think, as it got nicked for Braunton - and Blue Star's RHS cylinder is also smashed... two locos which I do not expect ever to run again.

 

I accept that it is not the 'proper' term as far as my fellow Bulleid purists are concerned, but I tend to allow common usage to shape what I say - although, conversely, you will not find me using terms like "train line" or "train station"!

Is GSN down at Sellindge now? I wonder if 35025 might be for sale too...

 

Certainly, the crews (both ex-BR and preservation-era) to whom I've spoken have uniformly expressed the view that the rebuilds were and remain inferior to the originals.

Well I know an ex-Salisbury fireman has is adamant that the rebuilt West Countries were far superior to the originals (he started on the railway after the MNs were rebuilt) and another, who started in the fifties and does remember the MNs before rebuilding, who says the same - hich just goes to show that you can't draw sweeping conclusions from a small sample!

 

Thankyou!!!!!! I was just reading this and saw that horrible word and was muttering to myself and your post was a few below and it made me chuckle! How can you possibly un-re-build when its original and has never been re-built to start with?

 

Is non-rebuilt OK?

 

Original?

Tom

 

The reduction in boiler pressure was nothing to do with the rebuilding. It simply arose from observation that showed that drivers rarely exceeded about 230 - 240psi in the steam chest. So the extra pressure available was rarely used, but made boiler maintenance considerably more expensive and boiler life - especially of the firebox - shorter. Reducing the pressure also allowed use of a cheaper grade of steel in any replacement firebox. The reduction in pressure was already well in progress before thoughts turned to more substantial rebuilds - it is, after all, nothing much more complex than adjusting spring tension in the safety valve and updating various documents, specifications and procedures.

I think that all the surviving operational Bulleid Pacifics run at 250psi, regardless of whether they are original or rebuilt.

Tom