1014 County of Glamorgan

I quite enjoyed listening to that today!

 

crunching some numbers......
of the 213 Locomotives that have left Woodhams Yard since September 1968, by my count 149 or 70% of them have now been returned to steam.
Of those that have not been steamed so far :
Two are used for museum display : 35029(sectioned) & 4248
Three have been used for donor parts where frames have not been cut : 2861, 5227 & 7927 (frames used for County Class)
Three have been used for donor parts where frames have been cut : 3612, 4115 & 48518
One has reputedly had it's boiler scrapped but frames remain? 42859
Hall Class 4942 is included and will return to steam in guise of 2999 Saint Class

That leaves 54 out there that have not yet returned to steam a few of which are imminent such as 6989, 80097, 92134 for example

 

4150 not far away too

 

Quite an update in latest GWS Echo...

• Springs, Brake Gear and some motion to be fitted to Chassis.
• All motion parts should be delivered by end 2019.
• Subject to funding boiler should be finished by Feb 2020.
• Tender frames will be completed in 2019 at Didcot, tender tank construction should have been contracted by date of publishing article.

Suggestion of steaming in 2022.

I am nowt to do with the project so don't shoot the messenger, if you want to read it all yourselves either join the GWS or splash out £3.50 on the Winter 2019 Echo.

 

Can it be any better? https://scontent.fosl3-1.fna.fbcdn....=2a5354dfb15259e9fcadbdee7255c497&oe=5D0BCDBF

Knut

 

that's not the full story though. Of those restored, how many are now set aside awaiting overhaul or deemed worn out and regarded as museum exhibits only?

 

The Locomotives Database at http://www.heritage-railways.com/locosdb/locos.php
has records of 1433 steam locomotives, but only 434 are listed as Operational.

I suspect the figure for operational may be a little high as people tend to announce locos returning to steam, but rarely publicise locos becoming non-operational.

 

that's a useful resource, but I can't see how you can list operational locos.

 

Mark has the advantage of us. It's his database!

 

I use an Access front end to update the website data.

 

I have read some place that the County class were build to replace the older Castle class, but did this actually happen?

 

There was/is a suggestion that the idea was to have a 2-cylinder equivalent of the Castles, but does anyone know for sure why the Counties were built, beyond the fact that they could be built? Certainly the building of the Counties did not cause building of Castles to stop, as that continued till 1950.

 

News from the GCR is that the County smokebox is getting close to completion with the fitting of the door.

 

20 Counties built 8/1945-4/1946
10 Castles built 5/46-7-46
10 Counties built 12/46-4/47
30 Castles built 5/48-8/50
===
70

~26 Saints withdrawn 1945-50
~13 Stars withdrawn 1945-50
1 rebuilt Star withdrawn 50
total 40 (but many more Saints and Stars went early 50s).
So basically Saints and Stars were replaced by Counties and Castles, but fewer Counties were built than Saints withdrawn. The picture is complicated by new Halls and by what appears to be a policy of replacing more lower power locomotives with fewer higher powered ones (Castles were considered cheaper to run than Stars for example due to lower maintenance costs).

 

Thank you very much for your information Jimc!

Knut

 

A case of learning by doing maybe:

After april 47 it is clear that two cylinder locomotives are not good for fast trains .
They either thrash themselves or track to death.

Boilers with 280 lbs shall not have copper fireboxes between frameplates.
The County boiler maintenance costs were more than double of those from Castles.

Mr Cox kept to 250 lbs but tried two cylinder locomotives again 998 times.

 

And the evidence for this is.........?
Ray.

 

Maybe the clue lies in the mere 55 Britannias, 10 Clans and 172 class 5s knocked out after production of Big4 designs ended?

Wot? I woz jus' tryin' to be helpful .... honest guv!

 

Two cylinder machines make up the majority of steam locomotives in the world - amongst which are many engines that were rated for 75mph+ and did so without any kind of damage to the track.

Railway infrastructure has largely got better at withstanding "hammer blow", locomotive design largely included "balancing" at front and centre of design to help eliminate this.

This country physically could not have been without small and medium sized two cylinder locomotives; all of its modern steam fleet in the 50s (with one exception: Duke of Gloucester) were two cylinder and most rated for fast or semi-fast trains.

 

It is just a theory not in contradiction to the building list.
I guess that Counties were cheaper to build than Castles (but not much).