Loco developement ex Tornado thread

Re: Tornado

Many of us do as shown by the large number who travel far and wide overseas to experience steam as others do it.

 

Re: Tornado

The preservation movement has a finite number of people and funds and they need to be focussed on the projects available, people will only spend money on something they are interested in.

If enough support can be created you can build anything but at the end of the day if your interested in building a 2-3-1K go ahead and start a team to build it.

I think it is an insult to infer that any group or the 'British' are narrow minded because they won't build a loco from another country. If it wasn't for the broad minded thinking that created Tornado in the first place and set the foundations of the new build and rebuild projects that has followed them where would we be?

Dave

 

Re: Tornado

My time with the de Glehn compound in the late 70's gave me enormous respect for French equipment, don't get me wrong but those who built the A1 had clear aims and those who proposed the 5AT had their own goals - horses for courses. Or do you think we should be building an A1? :boink:



After all, it has got twice as many driving wheels and twice as many cylinders as a British A1!!!

Foxy

 

Re: Tornado

Complexity of design goes far beyond how many sets of valve gear a loco has. In spite of its magnificence and efficiency, can 232U1 really be considered a success if its weight limited it to one route? Would be nice to see it back in action again though.

 

Re: Tornado

Sorry to be forthright but this posting misses the point rather comprehensively!

Firstly, because of the "finite number of people and funds" it could be argued there are far too many new build projects already and it would be advisable to concentrate efforts before all those involved are pushing up the daisies and a lot of schemes don't get completed. I would subscribe to this view.

Secondly a 2.3.1K would not clear the the British loading gauge and as at least one example exists there is no point in building another.

Thirdly I don't "infer" that British enthusiasts tend to be narrow minded because they "won't" build a loco from another country. I never suggested they should. It is just they should have a little awareness that in the latter days of steam British practice was being left behind, not only by the French or the Germans but by the Americans as well.

PH

 

Re: Tornado

Part of the weight can be ascribed to the addition of various American "goodies" incorporated to reduce maintenance. For example I have read that only the four big ends needed daily attention from the driver's oilcan. Presumably shortage of steel precluded relaying of, for example, the route to Calais before the non-future of steam propulsion was evident.

An axle load of 23 tonnes for a four cylinder machine is not huge by British standards and I recall that GWR Kings had a limited route availability, at least in their early days.

 

Re: Tornado

I wonder if some of this discussion about the relative merits of British vs French design is slightly missing the point.

Firstly, there are three main variables that the designer has to keep in balance: a boiler that generates sufficient steam for the job efficiently; a front end that can use it effectively; and a frame that is sufficiently strong to cope with the forces thus produced. Get any one of those wrong and the design will not be successful: we can all think of locos where the boiler struggled to keep up with the cylinders, or the front end was asthmatic, or both of those were right but the frames were prone to cracking. Get all three right, and get the initial design requirement right such that the engine is the right size for the job it was designed for, and you have a successful design: in those terms, a Terrier and an A4 were both successful designs, though in all other respects not comparable.

Beyond that, you have to realise that designers were working within a set of financial constraints. Compounding, feedwater heating and some of the other tweaks to thermal efficiency used in the most advanced French designs clearly led to better efficiency and therefore reduced coal consumption. However, they also had higher capital cost, being more complex; only really worked with more highly trained crew (which meant greater investment in training and therefore more cost) and, in some cases, would also have attracted royalty payments on certain features of the design. So in a country without good access to coal, those extra costs were worth paying for, but in Britain, with plentiful cheap steam coal, the extra efficiencies weren't sufficient to pay for the extra building and running costs. But at that point you can't really say the French designs were superior to the British ones of the same period; the most you can say is that, given different initial design constraints, both sets of designers built locos that were the best solution to the constraints in their own country. After all, most British CMEs were competent men who had to be accountable to the board for the financial performance of their designs - while there was a certain conservatism (or low risk, if you prefer) in their designs, it is clear that had the combination of capital and revenue costs attributable to a particular designer been well off beam, they would have been sacked or asked to move on: as happened in the end to JC Craven, WG Beattie, DE Marsh etc.

It is also clear that at certain points in history, British designers were very innovative - or at least, not averse to incorporating best practice from elsewhere. From about 1830 - 1860, there were huge strides in design, particularly as designers struggled with the twin problems of burning coal without smoke, and getting water into the boiler. The solution to one was the brick arch - a British invention. The solution to the other was the injector, a French invention. Both were widely adopted by the end of the nineteenth century, but not before the construction of many weird and wonderful designs with feedwater heating, donkey pumps, split fireboxes and all the other paraphernalia that make mid-nineteenth century locomotives so fascinating. But thereafter, innovation slowed down. Superheating found its role (despite the need for royalty payments to Schmidt in some cases), as did long valve travel, piston valves, steam sanding and other innovations. But compounding was tried and largely abandoned: the extra complexity simply didn't warrant the cost, given the plentiful supply of cheap coal. Feedwater heating was extensively used by Stroudley and others, but the extra thermal efficiency was off-set by the problems of introducing oil into the boiler, and the fact that injectors couldn't be used, resulting in the need to use pumps. No doubt a more sophisticated system, such as the ACFI, could have been used to avoid those problems, but the extra complexity and royalty payments didn't outweigh the thermal gains.

Finally, it is worth remembering that even if British locomotive design seemed a bit conservative, in other respects British Railways (generic, not the nationalised company) were ahead of their continental and particularly their American contemporaries, in particular in the sophistication and safety inherent within our signalling system which was way in advance of what existed in most of the US.

Tom

 

Re: Tornado

A very good and interesting post.
Reminds me of an article I read that stated Chapelon suggest to a at least one American railroad that he could transform their steam superpower and increase both power and thermal efficiency. Got turned down as the Americans wanted to keep things relatively simple and had access to vast amounts of cheap coal. Just cannot remember where I read it. I would argue that the advanced French designs were the answer to a particularly French problem but some of the technology involved was not necessarily suited to countries with access to plentiful good quality coal.

 

Re: Tornado

And yet something that fundamentally improves a design is never unsuitable, its just a case of cost versus benefit analysis.

 

Re: Tornado

An interesting discussion but it ignores the political tides that ebbed and flowed in the period but particularly during the twentieth century when two world wars and a revolution occurred.

 

Re: Tornado

Yes, though the cost-benefit analysis should be everything, not just an afterthought. I'd suggest the "best" design is the one that does what it is designed for with the best combination of capital and revenue costs. If you just have a discussion about TE, ihp per square foot of grate area, ihp per ton and so on, you aren't doing much more than playing "locomotive top trumps" - even though all those parameters (and others) are important factors to consider in the design process.

As an example - on most technical parameters, looking at pure numbers and playing "locomotive top trumps", Bulleid's designs were superior to Maunsell's. Yet I'd suggest that Maunsell was a better servant of the companies he worked for than Bulleid ever was. The more restricted Maunsell was in his initial design constraints, the greater his designs were: witness the Schools, built for restricted loading gauge of the Hastings line; or the way he transformed the Wainwright D and E class into D1 and E1 and gave them a whole new lease of life; or the simple but transforming effect he had on the Urie N15 and S15 by increasing boiler pressure and sorting out the valve events. Whereas Bulleid was a great innovator, but I'd suggest his greatest work was when he had the restraining hand of Gresley to temper his innovative design ideas; and his single greatest design - the Q1 - was a development of a Maunsell progenitor, putting a formidable steam raiser on a proven chassis and motion.

Tom

 

Re: Tornado

I know we are diverging from "Tornado" but I would go even further in this than Tom. One can cite several instances of Bulleid's waywardness. He utilised power operated butterfly firedoors, lifted from America where they worked well, actuated by compressed air. Using steam to actuate them caused problems. He used the wayward Drummond steam reverser rather than the excellent Stirling pattern. In contrast to the products of those graduates of Grandes Ecoles, Chapelon and De Caso, with their grounding in thermodynamics, his express locos used a disproportionate amount of fuel. However it is the sleeve valve episode that really should cause people furiously to think about his reputation.

I have known various people who have had to maintain sleeve valve car or aero engines. One was my own grandfather These things were a pain to look after. The aero engines had to be warmed up most cautiously otherwise they would give trouble. Where motor cars are concerned I can be more specific. If the chauffeur of a sleeve valve Daimler floored the accelerator incautiously on a cold February morning one of the sleeve driving lugs was liable to go "ping". Imagine therefore a steam locomotive with sleeves umpteen times larger than any in a car or aero engine and operating in the grot of an average running shed. Either Bullied never asked anyone with experience of the sharp end of sleeve valve motors or he did not listen to the reply.

Sorry about this Bulleidophiles!

Paul

 

Re: Tornado

Interesting what can happen as a result of folks commenting on the amount of noise Tornado makes.

Spamcan81 you are right, Chapelon did make suggestions with regard to improving the steam "superpower concept" which in grim reality was not very super. Hundreds of locomotives were sold that were hardly suited to the work they had to perform. No wonder it was so easy for the sales people offering diesel-electric alternatives. Today the picture of improved efficiency is most peculiar. The real cost of diesel fuel used by American railroads is very much higher than what they pay. For every dollar spent on fuel the supply of the same has to be protected by defence expenditure and this was six dollars per dollar a few years ago. I wonder how much energy is used to produce six dollars of US goverment tax revenue?

It is not so much the mechanical complexity of improved design that is the major issue for the steam locomotive. The intellectual complexity is seen as more of an issue. In honesty could anyone say that Riddles could have produced the 260 A1 (thanks to paulhitch for reminding me of this one) or David Wardale's class 26? The information was available to enable outstanding achievements to be made but you need the right people for this to happen. Tornado was built because of the people involved. The fact that it will not set new standards is irrelevant. It could have been built to do this but the Trust stuck with their original intention of building a new Peppercorn A1. If after the P2 project the A1 trust do decide to build a version of the Porta alternative that would speak volumes for the quality of the people involved if they have become a team that can take on such a challenge. The development of the steam locomotive pretty well died in the UK after WW2. There were many reasons for this but lack of the right people was one.

 

Re: Tornado

Riddles didn't need to produce the 260A1 so why would he even try? I really don't understand your obsession with wanting everything modernised. We're not talking about a steam renaissance here and it competing with modern diesels and electrics. If I want to see a deGlehn compound at work I'll go to France, not build a Clan on French principles.

 

Re: Tornado

I think 242 A.1 had ensuring steam locomotives did not end up being "gated" from main line use in the U.K. in mind rather than producing competitors for diesel and electric. Excluding yourself of course I do detect insularity in some responses to suggestions for technical improvements.

 

Re: Tornado

If main line steam ends up being "gated" from main line use, I doubt somehow that rebuilding the current main line fleet along Chapelon's principles would "ungate" it.
There is insularity and I know people who consider the Isle of Wight as overseas. I also know people who don't like narrow gauge nor industrial steam but that's their choice. IMO most enthusiasts are trying to recapture the memories of their youth and a 21st century new build with all the improvements under the sun won't do that. I have seen and heard the modern steam locos at work on the Swiss and Austrian rack lines and they are sterile compared to their predecessors. They make about as much noise as a sowing machine and whilst they are technically interesting, they do not stir the soul in the same way as the "blood and guts" spectacle provided by the old technology.

 

Re: Tornado

Your anecdotes about sleeve valves have little relevance. By the time that Bulleid was investigating sleeve valves for steam locomotives, the development problems that plagued the early Bristol aircraft engines had been resolved. The Edwardian era Daimler - Knight engine was more reliable than contemporaneous poppet valve engines and had far longer service intervals. Sleeve valves were developed for steam engines before their application to IC engines and the difficulties Bulleid encountered were not related to any basic defect with the sleeve valve principle. To properly deal with the advantages and disadvantages of sleeve valves would require a PhD thesis. I am not about to write one now.

 

Re: Tornado

I'm not sure why we are beoming obsessed with Chapelon as being the torch-bearer for steam modernisation. I would rather look to Porta's and Wardale's work, which looked to improve thermal efficiency whilst reducing servicing and maintenenace requirements without resorting to compounding etc.

 

Re: Tornado

Anecdotes are about all we have about events seventy years ago. Most of the people with first hand experience are now dead so here are a few more anecdotes (what a loaded word this is in the hands of someone for whom they contain an awkward truth that does not suit them)!

According to a Commander (E) R.N. Rtd. the Bristol Centaurus was more difficult to operate than either American radials or British inlines in Fleet Air Arm aircraft. My dear departed grandfather would have laughed himself hollow to learn that a Edwardian era Daimler Knight was more reliable than contemporary poppet valve engines. Wot! never heard of the Rolls-Royce 40/50? The garage he ran earned good money from repairing broken down sleeve valve Daimlers.

Seemingly Bulleid never troubled to enquire below boardroom level as to the real problems of this very expensive to produce arrangement.

 

Re: Tornado

Don't disagree with this apart from observing that Porta was not anti compounding. They were a generation (or two) later than Chapelon so one might expect things to have moved on. Yet try and suggest that Lempor exhausts might make steam locomotives both more reliable and cheaper to run then a deafening chorus of harrumphs will arise!

PH