Best & Worst Locos to Drive

Even LNW 0-8-0s were expected to haul 800-900 tons at line speed, 1000 at a pinch.

Dave

 

'xactly so, but its not much of a record really. But it would be amazing if a twelve wheeled 86 ton 1954 design couldn't haul a considerably greater load than a 75 ton ten wheeled 1905 design. Surprising perhaps that they didn't do an ultimate load test back in the 50s, but maybe assembling and running such a long train was operationally inconvenient and they didn't figure it would tell them anything of practical use.

 

Which is rather the point, and explains why Gresley's P1s were failures. Before all his fans turn up with pitchforks, I have to point out the these engine would not only do everything intended, but an awful lot more than that. But the 115 wagon loads they were supposed to take were too long for the infrastructure - or whatever it was then called - as they wouldn't fit in the lay-by sidings along the route. Consequently they were limited to the same loads as the 0-8-0s and 2-8-0s, which rather defeated their purpose.

While goods trains were mostly or entirely unfitted without continuous brakes, speeds were necessarily low so the trains were in the way of, and had to be regularly shunted out of the way, to allow faster traffic to overtake. This lack of train braking is what limited the train lengths and speeds: the need to be able to stop them within the signal sighting distance. And this in turn limited the size of goods engines; why build big, strong, powerful engines which would never pull the loads they are capable of dealing with?

 

It always amazed me that the big four and even BR persisted with building unfitted wagons. The L & Y R had evolved a policy of fitting all new goods wagons with continuous brakes only to have it reversed when merged with the LNWR.

 

Yes indeed - Andrew Hardy covers this in his book on the P2s rather well.

This is the same argument for the P2s effectively, but concerning passenger traffic - the loads they were capable of, and well capable of, didn't materialise through the war years and certainly didn't post war after - more shorter, faster trains emerged for the ex-LNER lines. So their usage was very much in question (and Thompson used this as a way to justify their rebuilding - rights or wrongs of this are discussed elsewhere).

That's in part why the Peppercorn A1s and A4s did very well immediately post war and we never saw (or really needed) the development of the proposed 4-8-2 or 4-8-4 6ft 8in locomotives proposed under Gresley, Thompson and Peppercorn.

The two P1s didn't survive much beyond the war years and their A3 type boilers went into the pool for the Gresley Pacifics. A pity, Bulleid (like me) felt them very handsome. If the LNER had modernised their ideas in terms of freight in the 20s, the P1s might have been the locomotives of choice for freight work. But they didn't modernise, the P1s were under utilised and that was that really.

 

I suspect in hindsight (though not in foresight ) you could probably make a decent argument that the continued use of unfitted, short-wheelbase wagons into the 1950s made the railways singularly unable to respond to speed and convenience afforded by the rapid motorisation of freight transport, and thus was a major factor in the decline of the railways after the war.

I have a photo at home, taken in January 1923, of a pair of LBSCR Open A wagons fitted with an automatic coupler (details indistinct but presumably some kind of knuckle coupling). The use of the wagons is being demonstrated to large body of officials and guests. Needless to say it was never adopted despite the potential to speed up (and make safer) marshalling operations: I'd be interested if anyone definitively knows why - I suspect it is probably a combination of the required capital expense to fit a patent device to thousands of wagons; worries about interoperability with non-equipped wagons; and possibly the structural impact of taking traction and buffing shocks directly through wooden underframe wagons. Nonetheless, another intriguing "what if". I'm sure that, for those with suitable references, they might be able to drag up similar photos of the device being trialled on other railways, as I believe it was a private venture, not an invention directly of the LBSCR.

Tom

 

There were problems associated... I understand that you could only have so many fitted wagons together before the combined vacuum leaks became unsustainable, and then there were problems finding space for vacuum cylinders, especially when wagons were tipped. The solution for both of these was to have long wheelbase high capacity airbraked wagons, but none of the infrastructure would work for that. Witness, for example, the work the GWR put into LWB 21 ton coal wagons and all the problems they experienced. Then consignment loads were tending to get smaller, and no point in having a 30 ton capacity wagon with a 3 ton consignment in it. Think I'm right in saying that even now the biggest articulated lorries have under 30 tons capacity, and most freight transport is done with far smaller.

 

This highlights my experience yesterday with the U, a pre WW1 design, 2 cylinders, outside Walschaerts valve gear, the model for the BR Standards, yet not adopted for another 30+ years

To say nothing of course of the GWR Diesel Railcars, LMS Shunters etc etc.....................

 

I assume that the USA must be much the same but large bogie wagons appear to be the standard from quite early on

 

Was reading in the latest issue of the railway magazine that eventually ian riley wants to use his jinty for mainline work. Mainly up in scotland & for just shifting the stock for the jacobite between yards & the station.

IIRC the jacobite is load 8 or thereabouts normally, can a 3F manage that kinda weight? Imagine if it's on a fairly level grade it shouldn't struggle too much, of course actually getting it rolling from a stand is the tricky part as always when shifting big loads.

 

A Jinty is more than capable of moving 8 coaches, in fact many more!

 

AIUI US traffic patterns very different, much bigger and heavier trains at very low frequency and long sections. From what I can make out they dd a lot less shunting into refuge sidings.

I've got somewhere a GWR minute which covers the non-introduction of buckeye couplings on coaches. I can't lay my hands on it (a few hundred Nat Archive scans!) but I do recall that the conclusion was that the advantages weren't as great as they seemed to be, what with the need still to go between vehicles to do brake and heat connections. There were other things as well, but IIRC the safety thing was a big part of it. Seems to me shunting 50 or 60 wagons with vacuum brake connections needing to be made and unmade every time might have been a bit painful!

Nowadays AAIU there are block trains with very little shunting and it all ceases to be a problem. Seems to me the railways were on the right track with containerisation but the investment to replace shunting with shuffling of containers between fixed rakes of container flats, plus fast container handling at every goods yard would probably have been impossible, and might not have been enough to defeat long distance road freight anyway.

 

I'm not sure where that story comes from but I don't think Ian Riley needs a loco to move the ECS of the Jacobite, the train engine pulls it in and then runs round and shunts to the other platform. Why employ an additional loco crew? The man himself may be able to answer that one for us.

 

Remember that these locos - and the smaller LNWR Coal Tanks - were used as station pilots at many termini; I can remember the Jinties at Lime Street, although sadly not the Coal Tanks. And rakes of seventeen coaches used this station.

 

BR(S) used to use Drummond M7s (and other elderly tank engines) as carriage shed pilots, which included taking 12 - 13 coach trains the four miles between Clapham Junction and Waterloo, so I don't suppose a Jinty (which is a bit bigger than an M7) would have much problem moving 8 coaches for a few hundred yards!

As has been mentioned upthread, there is a big difference between what a loco can shift in a shunting move for a minute or two, and what it can sustain for a long period; and gradients also make a big difference. We routinely use our P class locos - about 7,500lbf tractive effort, which is not much more than a third of a Jinty - for a "pull off" move that is about 220 tons (6 coaches) without any problems, but it would be interesting to try and get to Horsted Keynes in 15 minutes with that load!

Tom

 

Although not common, Euston too although they would get a shove up Camden bank from the train engine.

 

Looking on how often Tyseley's Panniers get out considering pathing and range, I'd be surprised if anyone else was considering certifying an 0-6-0T for full blown NR (as opposed to say LUL) Something with a bit more speed and range like a Large Prairie or 80XXX would stand a better chance.

 

I think the main problem, Steve, was shunting: goods trains would be formed and reformed several times during a journey. With the conventional unfitted wagons with three-link couplings, remarshaling was easy for a shunter and pole with all the work being done from outside. Once you'd fitted vacuum pipes there was a need to go between to separate and couple these, and to pull the strings unless the shunter was vacuum fitted. Swinging a screw coupling on the end of a shunting pole is hard work (I've tried!) and even the Instanta needs the shunter to go between to adjust it to the short position.

Really, having all trains fully fitted wasn't viable until the permanently coupled block trains appeared.

 

I think most wagon vac hoses spent a large part of the time dangling in the air rather than coupled up

 

In 1925 the Japanese railways converted all their stock to automatic couplers - in one 24 hour period - that's the way to do it.

Dave