2999: Lady of Legend

Blimey .... first it's calls to deport all non-GW kit from the G/WR. Now this Saint business is getting decidedly "purest of the pure". And there was me thinking it was a missing piece in the story of GW loco evolution and hadn't realised they were building an alter for the sole delectation of the worthiest of the faithful. My bad!

Doesn't Dean plus Collett average out at Churchward anyway?

 

my view is to show the twin saint and star families....Saint/Hall/Mod Hall +County if you like and Star Castle King. what a line up that would be.

 

Not in the case of 3127/9017!

 

I'm having a philosophy morning.
It's my belief that 2999 Lady of Legend is 4942 Maindy Hall rebuilt. As it retains many parts of the Hall, there's no call to say the Hall was destroyed to make the Saint, it's still the same loco in a new guise. It's Soul lives on.
Rather the same as the GWR rebuilding many Stars as Castles. They were still Stars but were Castles as well.

 

Sounds like you would enjoy one of Mr Deity's episodes.

 

In my view this is a reasonable way to describe this, and some other projects, rather than as 'New Builds', I'd guess that the reason for the strange 'Hybridisation' of the boiler for 'County of Glamorgan' has more to do with cutting down on 'Red Tape' paperwork than cutting down on manufacturing.

 

Considering both the amount of new material that's going into the County boiler and the extent of modification from the original 8F boiler, approving the design on the basis that it's an existing boiler being repaired seems to be stretching things more than a little. Approving it on the basis that it's to the original County design would presumably be equally easy or difficult with brand new construction.

 

I think the idea was that it would save the tooling costs of a brand new firebox. Possibly, this would have been done differently were they starting now, but they are where they are.

 

Going by my boilermaking days, very little of the original boiler was needed in order to qualify as a rebuild, provided that it was a structural part, ie rivetted or welded rather than bolted on, using this method saved reams of paperwork, I suppose the reasoning was that in order to be legally regarded as new every component had to be new. I understand that there will be a descrepancy in boiler pressure on County of Glamorgan due to the re-use.

 

I believe the new boiler for Lilla on the Festiniog uses the original dome, so is classed as a rebuild. This allowed them to keep the Salter safety valves rather than fit something more modern.

So you can use these things to your advantage some times. Just not when you're trying to fit an 8f sized lump into a County sized hole.

Tim

 

This illustrates my point precisely.

 

I'm not aware there is anything to stop one fitting Salter safety valves to a new boiler should one so desire - they are a perfectly safe and effective way of preventing boiler overpressure, and in modern railway practice the tamper risk is very low.

The guidance I've had from our PED notified body is that you can replace 60% of the boiler in one go, before it's a "new" boiler.
If it's a "new" boiler, then it must be CE marked, which means that some poor mug has to do a full set of design drawings and calculations which must then be approved by the engineering department of a PED notified body (afaik everyone in the UK heritage steam sector uses BES for this). One also has to prepare (i.e. copy and paste) various other pointless documents (e.g. a hazard analysis and operating instructions).
This represents no small amount of work, and thus cost.

Modifying an existing boiler generally requires a design review of the modification, which is a cut down version of the above - a lot depends on how much you intend to alter things.

It's perfectly possible to reuse parts when building a "new" CE marked boiler - for example, when we put together the new boiler for Hudswell-Clarke 1238 we reused the dome casting as it was in good order (We did a separate hydraulic test on it before deeming it fit to attach to the rest of the boiler).

 

I'd be interested to know where the '60% rule' has come from as I'm not aware of any legislative requirement. I suspect your notified body has plucked the figure out of thin air although it is a reasonable one to pick in the absence of anything formal.

 

Whilst I'll admit that I was boilermaking on road engines, there was no mention of 60, or anything other than 100 percent of structural parts, by this I mean parts that were either rivetted or welded to the boiler structure, rather than bolted on fittings. I'm not familiar with the Hudswell Clarke boiler but is the cast dome permanently attached or could it be regarded as a 'Fitting'? The CE scheme is somewhat ambiguous as it basically requires 'responsibility' for a product to be suitable for purpose, so in theory a rusty bucket could be CE marked provided that it was available as a rusty bucket and only suitable for use as such

 

But the critical question would be, what colour is the rusty bucket to be painted?


Keith

 

Hudswell dome is a big steel casting riveted to the boiler shell. We've reused other bits of other boilers too - in my experience, it's quite rare for a "new" boiler to have no bits of the original in it at-all. (I think the boiler for Hunslet 1215 was all new in the end - we were going to reuse the original forged link stays and brackets until, having extracted them from the old boiler, they were found to have cracks in them).

 

I would asume that these were comercial boilers for customers in order to require CE marking.

I must say that I would have problems in my own mind regarding a boiler with 40 percent old components as a new boiler, particularly if the customer was paying for a new boiler, certainly I have replaced a barrell, front tubeplate, inner firebox, stays,tubes and long stays in one go, but neither myself or my boiler inspector consider it to be anything other than a rebuilt boiler.

 

If the customer was to paint the rusty bucket it would void the CE.

 

Only if it is put on the market. The PED is a procurement directive. He can do what he likes with his own bucket.

 

So is this bloomin' Saint going to be ready and in steam for this Christmas then? Perhaps it could be renamed "Saint Nicholas". I presume there wasn't a "Saint Nicholas, or was there?