New-build steam strategy coordination?

The only thing that could be said for the Leader against 10000 is the abundance of coal and the dearth of oil in the UK at that time. Not enough to balance the problems, by any means.

 

One of the great 'What If's' must be what would have happened if the 'standards' had been the LMS Diesels & proto 08's and GWR railcars?

 

What i cant understand is that it was the intension to electrify the majority of the Southern railway, so why didnt they build more of the Southern electric 3rd rail / overhead electric locos, or the diesel locos? instead of building the pacific s as the majority of the routes except to Exeter were already planed to get sparks .

 

I think the answer was touched on up-thread: Bulleid was a man of fertile imagination, but he needed a solid practical engineer to decide which of those ideas to follow and which to ignore. He had that wiser counsel when he worked for Gresley, but when he took over the reins on the Southern, suddenly he was confronted with being his own boss. As such, he may at least have been guided down a more practical path by a calm, level-headed General Manager, but the SR lost such a man with Walker's retirement. Indeed, HA Walker was arguably the greatest railway manager of the first half of the last century: I don't think you can overstate the impact on the railway's affairs that having a new CME, fizzing with bright ideas but arguably not the most practical of men, arriving just as the steadying hand of a man like Walker left, to be replaced (after a short interregnum by Gilbert Slumpzer) by Eustace Missenden, who came from an operating / commercial background, but wasn't well-versed in engineering.

The SR were arguably a victim of the agreement reached between railway companies not to poach each other's top staff after Stanier went to the LMS: internal promotion was the only route left available, but many of the best people around Maunsell who may have gone on to take the role of CME (notably Clayton and Holcroft) were of similar age and chose to retire or not put themselves forward when Maunsell retired: as such, the SR were more or less forced to choose an external replacement a couple of rungs down the ladder.

In Bulleid's defence: while the steam locomotives were clearly Curate's eggs, he was also responsible for the introduction and mechanical design of successful diesel shunters, mainline diesels, mainline electrics, modern EMUs, and his carriages in many ways pre-figured the later BR Mark 1s.

Tom

 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Bulleid was not alone at the time in seeing steam as a long term prospect, and I believe that the idea behind Leader was a rational idea about how to get the most out of steam, based on what was known and understood at the time. It is only with hindsight that we can see that the LMS twins were the path to the future, and the ideas behind Leader a blind alley. Remember that the oil firing after the war was short lived, because the government were more worried about the cost of oil and its effect on the balance of payments than the long term development of rail traction.

It had two fundamental problems. Firstly, the design was wrong. If I win enough money to be able to waste it on recreating Leader, it will necessarily be a development, not a like for like recreation. Not least, I wouldn't be prepared to fire Leader, so why should I make anyone else.

Second, it didn't have a clear purpose. The SR was already putting the Pacifics into mass production, and here was another large locomotive type. Whatever it may have been pitched as, it wasn't an ECS loco for Waterloo.

 

But the lorries / buses didn't have any alternative than to use oil power, whereas there was an alternative for railway traction, i.e. coal. My understanding is that foreign exchange was in short supply immediately after the war, and at that time oil had to be imported. So indigenous coal was preferred unless there was no option.

Tom

 

That is pretty much how things stood.

 

What I find the strangest aspect of the Leader project is that it wasn't a single experimental loco like Fury, Gresley's W1 or even Dean's No 9. Construction of five of them started and another 31 ordered as if it was just another new conventional class of tank locos!

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

Classic Bulleid, he didn't really believe in prototypes. Build enough and the operating department has to use them, hence all the expensive re-working on the early Merchants and Light Pacifics. The Leader was just a step (or several) too far.

An amusing little anecdote I found recently was that after Bulleid had left BR, and the early Leader trials were proving ... troublesome ... he sent a message back "Send it to Eastleigh - Townroe will sort it out." This being the same S.C. Townroe, Eastleigh shedmaster, who had responded to the threat of an allocation of (then new) West Countries by generously offering to take the Lord Nelsons off the hands of Nine Elms et al...

 

I won't try to defend Leader because it was clearly barmy, at least in theory - but I seem to recall that, in practice, once it had begun to bed in, it started to turn in some decent performances. I still think it's as ugly as sin, though. Can't understand why Bulleid didn't just do a 4-6-4T version of the 'West Country', with a smaller 5ft-wheeled (perhaps Q1-boilered) 2-6-2T or 2-6-4T replacing the M7s, Hs and similar types.

Incidentally, rebuilt Bulleids did work west of Exeter, they were to be found on the Okehampton-Tavistock-Bere Alston-Plymouth route - but weren't cleared for the other Devon/Cornwall LSWR routes. Some actually got displaced to ex-GWR routes as Western Region took over that part of the world and older GWR types were withdrawn... see this photo of an unidentified Battle of Britain at Brentor: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/13/article-2558588-1B7417D400000578-681_634x430.jpg

 

Whilst the final product of Leader was barmy, it made good sense on paper. A locomotive with easily swappable wheelsets, so easy to maintain a fleet in-service. Drivable from either end to improve driver visibility. A corridor to allow the driver to change ends without going outside.

It was let down in it's execution, by going too radical without proper testing first. Getting the oil baths to seal properly, getting the sleeve valves to operate correctly, constructing a dry wall boiler that didn't warp, crack, or have the firebricks fall in. Do all that on a testbed first, then try fitting it to an actual loco design. And even a novice model engineer like me can see how an offset boiler would be ridiculously off balance.

I'd like to see what a modern day steam engine would look like if someone sat down today to design one making use of modern materials and construction methods, but it must have a typical loco style boiler (not flash, or electric) and dual acting cylinders (no turbines).

 

The photo refers to a rebuilt on the LSWR west of Exeter, not SR power on WR metals, I should have been clearer.

 

I just don't get why it was thought a good idea for such a thing as the "Leader" to have either a piston engine or direct drive, when a COGAS (Combined Gas And Steam) turbine setup driving a generator with electric motors in power bogies providing the drive would have been vastly simpler and more efficient, I'd have thought. One-man operation would then have been possible.

What exactly do you call a modern-day steam engine? What job do you require it to do? I've long thought about where Bulleid would have gone, given the freedom to do so within the strictures of the Stephensonian steam locomotive. I think two designs might have originated. One, a 4-8-4 retaining the 6ft 2ins driving wheels of the Pacifics - the other a 4-6-4 with 7ft 6ins driving wheels. Both would have gained big twin-bogie tenders, each bogie six wheels as per Leader, powered by a small steam engine (fed by the main boiler) via a clutch and reduction gearbox, final drive being by bevel gears - this could be used for starting or other situations where traction might be marginal. Bulleid must have been familiar with the use of tender boosters on the LNER P1. Both classes, in view of their large grates (comparable American types were around 100sqft - and, compared to the Merchant Navy, the grate of the PRR K4 Pacific - known to have influenced Gresley's A1 boiler design - was about 40% larger, so let's say about 70sqft? Maybe as much as 85, pushing it?), would have been equipped with mechanical stokers. Boilers pressured to 320psi. Four cylinders, Lentz/Caprotti rotary cam poppet valve gear to all four, retaining the Merchant Navy dimensions of 18x24 inches. This would give the 4-8-4 a tractive effort of 57,200lb, and the 4-6-4 a mere 47,000lb - both figures excluding the tractive effort of the tender booster. The 4-8-4 would presumably be good for much the same performance as the Merchant Navy in terms of outright speed - let's say 110mph. The 4-6-4 would run happily at 130mph.

The tender booster could potentially be extended to also drive the trailing bogie of the locomotive itself - although uncoupling the tender would then mean not only disconnecting the booster flexible steam-pipe and the stoker, but also a drive-shaft... now, what form the tender booster might take, I don't know... it could be a multi-cylinder piston block, or a turbine, or even a steam-powered rotary engine (the Wankel/Paschke engine started to appear in the 1950s)... if we go for the first, then I might propose six cylinders, horizontally opposed (evenness of torque delivery throughout the wheel revolution being particularly important when starting, and this inherently balanced configuration would allow it to fit between the bogies in the middle of the tender), using the same 10in bore and 12in stroke as the English Electric diesel locomotive engines of that era. This would give a tractive effort of 27,200lb through 3ft wheels even without a reduction gearbox... would be very useful in starting a heavy train out of Victoria, for example... if the mid-tender mounting were chosen, one would have to run a drive-shaft underneath the crankcase to either front or rear tender bogies, unless one took drive off both ends of the crank... with 1:1 drive, it should be good for 50mph, which does make me wonder if perhaps a reduction gear might be wise. In terms of piston speeds, it might be possible to run the H6 rather faster than your usual unbalanced steam locomotive...

Personally, I think that if we're to keep steam going over the Great Western Main Line, the old LSWR routes to Weymouth and Exeter, the Kent Coast lines, not to mention the ECML and WCML, locomotives resembling the above are going to have to be built in order to provide both the acceleration and outright speed required to keep up with the modern high-speed service trains... sticking to the basic formula, they could be styled along either Bulleid, Gresley or Stanier lines - or even as a sort of giant version of the unbuilt Hawksworth Pacific...

Taking the multi-cylinder idea further, you could have some large steam-powered piston engine between the frames, under the boiler. Let's say, for argument's sake, sticking with the 10-inch bore and 12-inch stroke, that one had two steam V12s driving the central driving axle via bevel gears between the two engine blocks... this would give very smooth power delivery, keep the weight within the frames, eliminate the reciprocating masses which cause hammer-blow, no more worrying about whether you're going to clout a cylinder on a platform... and, with a 6ft 3ins diameter driving wheel, you'd have a tractive effort of 52,200lb. Combine that with the tender booster...

What could be achieved with turbines, I really don't know. Not the foggiest clue. I can't find a remotely helpful tractive effort figure for the Turbomotive to give some comparison.

Would it be utterly impractical or even heretical to suggest some form of regenerative braking charging a battery pack in the floor of the support coach then driving electric traction motors on the tender or even the support coach itself? Might be very much simpler overall... if less authentically steamy...

Much of the above may appear barmy even by Bulleid 'Leader' standards. I have only an armchair enthusiast's theoretical knowledge of engineering...

 

The rebuilt WC/BBs (but not the MNs) were cleared for use between Exeter and Plymouth, but not elsewhere west of Exeter, and I think only from a couple of years before the Western Region takeover - I suspect there may have been a couple of tactical bridge strengthenings on that route to enable them to reach Plymouth.

Tom

 

Really, if you're going to depart from the Stephensonian locomotive any further than Ljungstrom (and Stanier with their help) did, it does get to the point that you may as well just go turbo-electric. Why diesel-electric took off, I can't understand - gas turbines are vastly simpler, lighter, more efficient and more reliable. In fact, if we'd put real effort into developing turbo-electric multiple units, we wouldn't be stringing up bloody OHLE all over the landscape - but that's a whole 'nother rant for another thread (in fact, I think it's already been had!).