Brighton Atlantic: 32424 Beachy Head

No x-factor to get the money flowing in. Every new-build in progress has an angle to it.

Being cynical, I reckon your best bet for an 0-6-0 would be a scottish one, to get the nationalist pound behind it.

 

Or a Midland Johnson/Deeley 3F

 

Don’t we have a whole thread dedicated to such speculative proposals?

https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/current-and-proposed-new-builds.985610/

Tom

 

Keep up, we're talking about iron filing- based fuelling systems there...

Back on track, is there any surviving correspondence as to how Marsh got the drawings etc out of Doncaster? It always seems incredible to me that Marsh was given them with seemingly no requirement to attribute/pay royalties etc? What was in it for the Great Northern?

I don't know of any other examples of such borrowing, was it common?

 

Back on track indeed: actually discussing Marsh Atlantics!
That seems a good question. In modern times it would cost Company A very little to make copies of its drawings to give to Company B, so it might do so for the goodwill if there was no commercial disadvantage; but in those days just copying the drawings would presumably have consumed a lot of employee time.

 

Sounds like a good excuse to recreate an old LBSC wagon turntable to me...

 

I can see reasons why, but the pricing of the drawings shouldn't the cost of copying, it's the cost to the other party of coming up with a design by another means that is the "value" in the drawings. So that's a lot of value to the goodwill if you do it as a freebie.

(The counter-argument is that the design cost money to make, and if another use of it can be made that isn't competition, any money you make on them is bonus return on a sunk cost)

 

I suppose the GNR and LBSC weren't in competition with each other which may have helped

 

Supposedly the Lord Nelson drawings contributed to the parallel-boilered Royal Scots, but how much was carried over, I don't know.

 

not much . the firebox maybe

 

It might just be relevant that Marsh came from Doncaster where he was Assistant CME to Ivatt and had a not inconsiderable hand in the design of Ivatt's Atlantics. I doubt that obtaining drawing for his old place of work would have been much of a problem for him

Peter

 

There were regular get-togethers of the CME's of the LMS, LNER and Southern. (Mr Collett couldn't be bothered - quelle surprise!) I would guess that a certain amount of back-scratching resulted.
Pat

 

Marsh's role at Doncaster was Chief Assistant Mechanical Engineer and Manager of Doncaster Works. He was appointed there at the same time as HA Ivatt, the beginning of 1896, and it appears that right from the off the two men worked very effectively together and developed a high degree of trust in each other. Marsh was certainly involved in the design of the large Atlantics, and there is some suggestion that the key innovation of wide fireboxes was at his suggestion. In his earlier career, he had been at Swindon where he had been impressed by the steaming of broad gauge engines with very large fireboxes. (According to Marx in his biography of Marsh, the drawings of the Ivatt large Atlantic have an annotation reading "BG firebox", i.e. Broad Gauge).

As with many CMEs at the turn of the last century, the immediate problem confronting Marsh when he moved to Brighton was rapidly increasing train weights - the largest passenger engine on the line at that time being the Billinton saturated 4-4-0s. Marsh took up office on the LBSCR in January 1905, and by March he had received authority for five large locomotives at a cost of £4000 each, with a requirement to draw up designs and tenders for outside construction. Certainly Brighton had access to GNR drawings, though quite how is slightly vague: Marx notes "It is said that Ivatt allowed Marsh to take drawings of the large Atlantic with him to Brighton, perhaps out of recognition that Marsh had been chief assistant mechanical engineer and works manager at Doncaster and closely involved with the design of the GNR 251 class large boiler Atlantics." Which doesn't get us much closer to the truth, except to say it seems it was done in the full knowledge of Doncaster, and wasn't underhand.

It is sometimes said that the H1 is a straight copy of a GNR large Atlantic, but that isn't quite the case: cousins rather than siblings would be more accurate in my view. There are a number of differences: some are cosmetic (such as the shape of the cab); some are a consequence of LBSCR conditions (such as air brakes); some are evolutionary (such as the rear frame being a foot longer, with a corresponding increase in cab size) but some are more fundamental: the LBSCR design had 30psi higher boiler pressure and 2 in longer piston stroke, which must at least have led to some redrawing and recalculation by the drawing office at Brighton.

The contract to build that first batch went to Kitsons in Leeds, who quoted £3,950 delivered for each engine; that was later reduced to £3,905 delivered in grey primer, with the LBSCR responsible for painting. Marsh was clearly in a hurry to see the locos, since he also arranged a bonus to Kitson of £10 per engine for every week that they were delivered in advance of the agreed date. It seems he wanted them ready for the start of the 1906 season.

Another little oddity: when Marsh was appointed to the LBSCR, one of the beaten candidates for the job was Peter Drummond. It is an interesting "might have been" as to how that would have panned out, particularly as Dugald Drummond was in the equivalent role at Eastleigh. Perhaps we wouldn't have had the Atlantics, but a series of larger 4-4-0s akin to the T9 and D15, and some unsuccessful four cylinder LBSCR 4-6-0s.

Just musing further on the Ivatt and Marsh: it wasn't only the Atlantics that showed similarities. Compare an Ivatt C2 (LNER C12) and a Marsh I1.





Tom

 

It's fascinating isn't it?
I'm not surprised the I1 looks like the C2 - if you learn a certain style, you will tend to stick to it, so if the answer is a "4-4-2 tank", you'll probably draw one like the last one you were involved in. Apparently the boiler of a Merchant Navy has a lot of similarities to a P2 boiler (presumably apart from the lack of dampers on an MN) - even as determined an iconoclast as Bullied will end up following some elements.

Likewise, the whole Lord Nelson/Royal Scot thing, there was clearly some review, but nothing specific carried over.

But I can't think of another one like the Atlantic.

 

What about a MSWJ 2-4-0?

Good looking loco, not too small.

 

Small point though, the C12's worked well didn't they? The I1's didn't...

 

They did some jolly fine work ..... after Mr Maunsell gave 'em a once over!

 

That's true, but the whole story is more complicated than I think is sometimes given credence. The general perception is that the I1s were under-boilered, yet the Ivatt locos had comparably-sized boilers, slightly smaller in fact in grate area. The cylinder and valve design was similar on both locos. The Marsh locos were generally considered to be further hamstrung by having condensing gear, which lessened the draft, but so did some of the Ivatt locos.

An important tenet in any loco design is that success or failure is generally measured against the work the loco was designed to do; the I1s were built for mainline semi-fast services that required sustained steaming, at which they failed as built. However, I wonder if they were objectively worse than their Ivatt cousins, or just shown up by being used on more demanding work? As I understand, by time the Marsh I1s were built, the Ivatt Atlantics on the GNR had already been relegated from the more demanding suburban duties to lighter trains.

Tom

 

fair enough

Something about Bankers wasn't it?

 

Something to do with bankers.

Interestingly enough, a non-superheated I3 was one of the hats in the ring for a follow-on project. It probably would have been a useful loco for our conditions, but I suspect a hard sell in fundraising terms.

Tom