LBSCR and GWR valve gear?

Jim, I've a funny feeling we were likely going through records on the LNER and GWR at Kew in the same year! I did all of my research on the LNER board and locomotive committee minutes over a three week period in the summer of 2018.

It has taken me three years to go through the LNER board notes (1923-48) so you have my sympathies for the GWR ones, given you must have had double (or more) the material, given the age of that company.

My observation would be - echoing yours I think - is that the committee minute there doesn't give a context, only an action agreed by the board. That's all it is, ultimately. To read more into that action is the problem. Not enough information is known there to speculate as wildly as we have seen in this thread.

Thank you for sharing that minute. A wonderfully odd bit of railway history for which we may never know the context.

 

Lots of criticism to consider!

Simon bowls a direct ball, but doesn't throw another.

As Jimc probably knows, Don Ashton checked a number of Stroudley valve gears all of Stephensons and all with slide valves. All the expansion links were centrally suspended with a small offset, if my memory is correct.

Don found them to be extremely good.

Going back to 1907, the LBSCR had no use, and never did use, the Churchward/Pearce 'launch' type links.

The 'model' purchased that year according to Jim's research could not have been for the one off Walschaerts 'Bessborough' 326?! It just doesn't make sense Marsh buying this piece of kit whatever it was from the GWR, in my opinion.

I would suggest that although the GWR minutes approved the sale, that does not conclusively prove the sale went through?

Any follow up minutes?

"Mr Marsh formally of the GWR expressed his regret at not requiring the delivery, not now paid for, of the order that he didn't need anyway, as Mr Basil Field knows how to design locos if allowed to by Mr Marsh."

..."Mr Marsh has already spent the money assigned to him by the LBSCR board on other personal matters undisclosed "

!!!

 

What are you on about?

 

Adding to the possibilities in Tom's post #27, one more is that the sale was approved by the GWR Board but someone at one end of the other cancelled the order. That might not have been considered important enough to be reported to the Board.

We are still left with the fact that someone thought having the model at Brighton would be useful, but we may never know why they thought that, exactly what the model was, whether it actually reached there, and if so what use, if any, was made of it.