Current and Proposed New-Builds

Not much different to a war on the line weekend

 

That's dangerous talk referring to re-enactors as dummies. And what do many of those on heritage railways do other than re-enact the past?

 

From where did you get this information? I've looked on the official website, FB page and North Bay Engineering's FB page without seeing any reference to the frames being built. Until the shutdown North Bay Engineering were, however, assembling the frames for the Southwold replica.
Just interested.
Ray.

 

Think 'He gist' refers to 'Hengist'.

I can confirm that Mountaineer boiler was finished just before our shut down three weeks ago. We were 1 day of the first hydraulic test, which will now be job number one when we return from the Covid shut down.

Frames have not been started.

David Humphreys
Managing Director
North Bay Railway Group

 

@marshall5
I see that you too have been thrown astray by someone else's lack of proof reading!

 

They have frames built ages ago I’m not sure where they are kept

 

I am assuming you are referring to Blyth or indeed Hengist, not He gist. If it was Blyth, there was a set cut before we got involved, but they were not accurate. As with our recommendation for all new builds, start with the boiler, collect other finished bits, THEN order the frames for them all to be be fitted. When done, you have a rolling chassis which has cylinders fitted which can then have the motion added to enable it to run on air. Also proves the credibility of the scheme. This is the process we are completing with The Southwold Railway Trust and presently, we are finishing phase 3 and part way into phase 4.

1863 Mountaineer Group are using the same approach and will be ordering cylinders and wheels plus other components before the chassis is cut.

 

Many thanks for the information and link regarding the Bloomer boiler.

 

Bigger indeed: with a longer firebox and a longer barrel it became the boiler for the King.
Either end of the firebox the the back plate and the throat plate are practically identical - the
two the biggest pressings, the largest specialist parts, in the second biggest boiler Swindon
ever made.

The boiler proportions are more favourable than the King version: with the smaller grate the ratio of the free gas area through the tubes improves
and the lesser resistance through a shorter tube bundle also helps.

Very pleased indeed that the temption to put the original GWR standard 1 boiler was resisted - the No 1 boiler was tried, found wanting and recognised as that by Churchward himself. The 47xx with the No 7 Boiler, 30 sq ft grate area and all in proportion, was his mature and final masterpiece.

I had better come clean, I think that not running new builds like this misses the point - you
need twenty miles to warm up and settle down a locomotive and then after that you run it seriously, proceeding backwards with a handful of carriages at 25 mph max.......
I can see how the temptation arises to cut corners to get something done -indeed I can understand it - but the result has been to fall between two stools: it may look like it but it
cannot perform as it should and as it increasingly needs to.

The 47xx would be a valuable locomotive on the main line - just what you need over the Devon
banks, up to Savernake, Whiteball, Cockett, Sapperton, Hatton with what must now be commercially a large train. The arguments for it are the same as the P2.

 

Leaky Finders

 

Except even in GWR/BR days they were limited to 60mph because they were inclined to nose about, so goodness knows what limit NR would put on one now. Presumably 50mph. The P2 is being significantly redesigned to try and deal with its design flaws, but its at least a 6ft2 locomotive. I really struggle to see much of a role for a 50mph heavily route limited locomotive, even if it can start a heavier train than anything else out there.

 

Surely all this discussion of 4709's suitability, or otherwise, is irrelevant as ISTR that the GWS publicly stated that they have no future mainline aspirations.
Ray.

 

Some of us are still muttering WIBN.
The abandonment of main line plans is especially disappointing after more than one loco has been redesigned to better fit the modern loading gauge. If the will existed, 4709's pony truck could be redesigned like the P2's to improve the ride. And even if a new no. 7 boiler does not cost much more than a refurbished and disguised no. 1, it will surely cost somewhat more and be able to produce more steam than 4709 is ever likely to use on a preserved line at 25 mph.

 

I recall reading that the ride problems with the 4700s was down to the side play of the coupled trailing axle rather than any issue with the pony truck.

 

If they were really ever serious about running on the mainline then the design should have been run through Vampire if the building group were aware of deficiencies in the performance of the chassis. It looks like this was never considered. The P2 pony truck problem was known about and there were people at at Doncaster who understood this and recommended that it was changed. This change alone pretty well solves the chassis issues though the crank axle was another matter and the analysis tools to enable the improvement of this item were not available 70 years ago. To slavishly build a copy of a 100 year old design without due reference to the conditions of the current time can be seen as an act of folly. The P2 Trust have acted in awareness of the present times with an eye to the future, 4709 appears to be another matter.

 

Who could ever accuse my beloved GWR of fashionable modernism when reactionary conservatism worked just fine?

 

And that is what appears to be the problem. It doesn't work 'just fine' unless the genuine original intention was to build a demonstrator that would serve to meet a very basic requiremen, say ambling along at 20-25 mph with 6 or 7 coaches, very far removed from what the type is supposed to be capable of.
The A1 Trust built an engine which rewards those who invested in it with a standard of performance which illustrates rather well what the class was capable of. 4709 is never going to get the chance.

 

There are two sides to that coin though - mainline running may allow a locomotive to get closer to demonstrating its capabilities, but it enables that opportunity for a relatively small group of people. By contrast, far more people are able to experience, and appreciate, a loco "ambling along at 20 - 25mph with 6 or 7 coaches". A mainline loco might end up transporting few hundred people no more than a dozen or so times per year. A heritage line loco might do that three times per day for a hundred operating days every year.

Don;t assume that somehow mainline running is inherently superior to runing on a heritage line - particularly for a loco built by a charity that will have education and access considerations for what it owns and operates. Heritage line running gives considerably better opportunities for widespread public access than running on the mainline does.

Tom

 

Which does rather raise the question of whether, of we're going to build new locos, be wouldn't be better choosing a design suited to this duty...
Such as all the larger passenger tank/mixed traffic tank classes we're missing from the late pre-grouping, grouping and BR periods.
There are of course the Standard 3 project and the Standard 2 project, which are both eminently sensible (and attractive locos).
I know some groups have tank locos on their "later on" list such as the Fowler 4P 2-6-4T tank for the Patriot group, and the V3 for the A1ST (eventually, after building every tender loco Gresley ever thought of for a few minutes over a drink in the pub).
There are also a couple of quiet groups working on e.g. the G5 and a GER 2-4-2T.
Somehow, none of these get the exposure or prominence of the groups working on silly big locos which are essentially not well suited to the work actually out there to be done...

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

 

I can't disagree with that, but being able to run both on the main line and on heritage lines would be better still. That's what Tornado does and what some of the other new builds will do.