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Brighton Atlantic: 32424 Beachy Head

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Maunsell man, Oct 20, 2009.

  1. fergusmacg

    fergusmacg Resident of Nat Pres

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    Details are given on this page . . . .

    http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/locos/atlantic/background.html



    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     
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  2. misspentyouth62

    misspentyouth62 Well-Known Member

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    thank you fergusmacg

    some good fortune recycling there! Wheelsets from C2X and Frames from LBSCR B4 :)
     
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  3. Dan Hamblin

    Dan Hamblin Part of the furniture

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    Still as impressive as ever this morning:

    [​IMG]

    Boiler needs to go in for the remaining cab pipework runs to be fabricated.

    Regards,

    Dan
     
  4. 240P15

    240P15 Well-Known Member

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  5. Dag Bonnedal

    Dag Bonnedal New Member

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    The quality of the boiler cladding platework in the last picture of the September report is absolutely amazing!
     
  6. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    A brief update was in the latest e-Newsletter:

    Atlantic Project Update: Tender Loving Care

    With the boiler outside the front of Atlantic House, and the attachment of the main crinolines almost complete, work carries on inside the building on the tender chassis and the ashpan.

    This latter item is made up of various water-jet cut and bent steel parts bolted together to form the substantial ashpan, ready to be fitted under the firebox at the appropriate time.

    Most of the pipework within the tender chassis is now assembled, and sections of hardwood have been screwed into place on the top surface to provide a cushion between it and the tender tank when delivered.

    Three fabrication companies have been asked to quote for the tender tank, but no costings have yet been received, although one has sent representatives to assess the task. A fourth company in Derbyshire also has been identified as a possibility, having already supplied tender tanks for two locomotives on the Great Central Railway and one on the Mid-Hants.

    The smokebox is almost ready to be bolted onto the front of the boiler, having had the chimney temporarily fitted, and the bronze casting for the vacuum feed attached to the side.

    The photo shows the boiler with the crinolines fitted.

    by David Jones, Bluebell Atlantic Group
     
  7. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Latest update:

    https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/locos/atlantic/latest.html

    With work on the tender, and also showing the full extent of the boiler with smokebox (loosely) fitted.

    For those visiting at Branch Line Weekend, there will be a book signing by James Baldwin of his two publications covering the Great Northern and the LBSCR Atlantic locomotives in the Bluebell shop on March 16, Branch Line Weekend, when Atlantic House will be open over the three days.

    Tom
     
  8. 240P15

    240P15 Well-Known Member

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  9. RLinkinS

    RLinkinS Member

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    This was his previous loco. DSC_4111a.jpg
     
  10. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    From the e-newsletter:

    Atlantic Group Update: Tender Construction Tendered

    We had a successful three days over the Branch Line Weekend, taking just short of £2,500 in sales of second-hand books and models. Visitors, including a group from the East Anglian Railway Museum, expressed admiration for current progress on “Beachy Head”, and visitors were able to see the various parts under construction, including the smokebox on the boiler outside and the ashpan and tender inside Atlantic House. ​

    We have now received four quotations for the tender tank and will be placing an order soon, with delivery anticipated in the autumn. They are all within the same price range of £32,000 to £39,000, but the firms vary regarding experience with previous tender construction, so this fact will dictate who is chosen. Once delivered, there is quite a lot of additional work to carry out on pipework, toolboxes, and coal rails.​

    Tony Funnell has been working on the steel sheeting for the back of the firebox and the firehole door assembly, and Keith has started preparing the timber floor of the cab. The locomotive will shortly be moved forwards so that scaffolding can be erected around the cab to enable further painting to be carried out by Richard. ​

    Fred and Malcolm are progressing with various machining tasks on components ready for fitting to the engine at the appropriate time. A special pad has been made to facilitate the lifting of the boiler into the frames once the hydraulic and steam tests have taken place. We have been invited to have Atlantic House open over the STEM Weekend at the end of May Bank Holiday, and we will be open over the Model Railway Weekend at the end of June.​

    By David Jones​
     
  11. Gav106

    Gav106 Well-Known Member

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    Superb as always. Thanks for the update
     
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  12. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Another update, this time concentrating primarily on construction of the tender tank, along with some work on the boiler cladding and ash pan.

    Incidentally, for those unaware - in Stroudley’s day, LBSCR tenders (and tanks on tank engines) were double-skinned, since the locos had condensing gear that meant the water ended up near boiling: the double skins protected the paint (and people!) from being scalded. By the time of the Atlantics, the condensing gear had gone but tenders remained double skinned, probably for no better reason than that was how they had always been! Beachy Head’s tender is being built the same way, though the inner part will be welded rather than riveted.

    https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/locos/atlantic/latest.html

    If you wish to view progress, a reminder that this weekend 29-30 June it's our annual Model Railway Weekend, with lots of layouts, traders and live steam miniature railways, mainly at Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes stations. At Kingscote station, there will be a 71/4 inch miniature steam railway running. Exhibitions will be open from 10am - 5pm on Saturday and 10am - 4pm on Sunday.

    The weekend will also be the first occasion for the public to view inside our brand new locomotive maintenance shed at Sheffield Park, where some of the exhibits will be located. Atlantic House will also be open for those interested to see progress with the construction of our new Brighton H2 Atlantic.

    We will be running an intensive service with three steam trains over the weekend to this timetable.

    Tom
     
  13. Philippakristiana G

    Philippakristiana G New Member

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    I was looking at latest update when your message came through, all I have to say is WOW! Looking good.
     
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  14. Johnb

    Johnb Nat Pres stalwart

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    If the water got that hot how did they get the injectors to work?
     
  15. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    No injectors - Brighton locos in that era had either crosshead driven pumps, or Weir pumps (i.e. a mechanical pump for feed water).

    Tom
     
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  16. Johnb

    Johnb Nat Pres stalwart

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    Thanks, I didn’t know that
     
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  17. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    Some had an injector of a type supposedly able to cope with warm water. Holcroft did not find the example he experienced to be very effective.
     
  18. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    I'm probably going to betray my ignorance with this question, but here goes anyway...

    Assuming the hot water can be dealt with (e.g. use a pump), I'd have thought it would be preferable, on energy efficiency grounds, to cool the working fluid as little as possible before sending it back to the boiler to pick up another load of heat energy. One could even ask if the return to a fluid state was necessary, but I suppose it's easier to deal with it in a fluid state, than gaseous. (I do recall, though, from my reading on Watt's work, that the condenser had a role to play in stationary steam engines - by creating a low pressure zone on one side of the piston, IIRC - but I'm not sure that applies to the usual steam locomotives.)

    Noel
     
  19. Martin Perry

    Martin Perry Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator Friend

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    Correct - many American locos were in fact fitted with Elesco Feedwater heaters to avoid putting cold water into the boiler. They generally employed a feedwater pump to supply the boiler.
    The liquid state is neccesary to achieve the volume required of feedwater.
    Watts engines were single acting, i.e. power was only developed on one side of the piston; all steam locomotives are double-acting, with a power stroke in both directions of piston travel.
     
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  20. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Without massively getting into the thermodynamics of it, if you take water at, say 20C; heat it to 100C (still as water); change state to steam (still at 100C) and then further raise the temperature (and pressure) to say saturated steam at 200psi / 200C; then the really big energy input is the phase change from water to steam (i.e. the latent heat of evaporation); the other amounts of energy are smaller in comparison.

    In a conventional steam loco, however efficient the cylinders are, you put all that energy into the cold water to make hot high pressure steam, and then discard it still as steam, along with the big energy input needed for evaporation. Of all the energy you put in from cold, you only extract the (relatively small) amount needed to raise the temperature of the steam; you lose everything needed to evaporate it in the first place. (As a thought experiment, consider a kettle of cold water arranged so the element remains on all the time. It will boil in a few minutes, but will take hours to boil dry despite maintaining the same power input: that shows you that far more energy is need to turn water at 100C to steam at 100C than was needed to heat the water up from room temperature in the first place).

    Which is why if you have static plant you arrange to condense the exhaust, releasing that energy to heat the feed water and thereby not wasting it. It is also essentially why superheating increases efficiency: because the gas temperature goes up without increasing the pressure, the volume rises or, to put it another way, the mass of steam per unit volume decreases. Lower mass per unit volume means lower mass of water discarded per piston stroke; and therefore each stroke of the piston, after exhausting to air, throws away a smaller mass of steam and therefore less wasted energy in the latent heat of evaporation.

    In a locomotive, the difficulty with trying to extract too much energy from the exhaust steam is two fold: firstly the necessary equipment to do it; secondly the fact that the exhaust steam is used to drive the blast through the fire, so you either can only condense some of the steam (the general solution) or else you have to arrange some kind of forced draught, which means additional machinery, typically in a hostile environment (which was tried, though generally without success. Probably the most successful application of a loco with forced draught, which was done I believe primarily for water saving rather than thermal efficiency reasons, were the South African Henschel Class 25: look at just how much physical plant is dragged round in the tender (and elsewhere) of those!)

    Coming back to Stroudley, in his system of condensing / feedwater heating, about 25% of the steam was recovered, the rest going up the blast pipe to create draught. It was a "surface condenser", which is to say the exhaust steam was piped directly back into the tanks too condense. The impact of that is that the feedwater then gets contaminated with lubricating oil. Stroudley claimed an efficiency saving in coal and also claimed that boiler maintenance didn't go up from any excess corrosion caused by the contaminants. He didn't mention whether the locos were prone to priming, or required more regular washouts! Incidentally, one consequence of the system was that under hard braking, water could surge from the tanks via the condensing pipes back into the exhaust space, from where it would be ejected up the chimney and emerge as a shower of dirty water when the regulator was next opened. I believe the LBSCR had to pay out compensation claims to passengers whose clothes were spoiled as a result, and some drivers were not above trying to "modify" the system to prevent the flow of steam to the tanks, generally using a reasonable sized hammer ... As always with steam locos, ideas that look good on paper may come with other compromises, and in the UK, where coal was cheap and water plentiful, the problems and additional complexity probably always outweighed the benefits. In France, where coal was more expensive, the balance of costs tended to look more favourably on systems such as feedwater heating that reduced fuel costs; likewise in South Africa where water was scarce, the benefits were potentially much greater.

    (Incidentally, in the Watt system, the primary benefit of using a separate condenser wasn't about saving the latent heat of evaporation in the exhaust steam, but because by physically separating the cylinder and condenser, it allowed the cylinder to remain hot; in previous engines each charge of steam had to heat the cylinder, which was then cooled down again to condense the steam and form the vacuum that allowed the piston to be driven by the atmospheric pressure above).

    Tom
     
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