Restoring the balance...

I have no gripe with the LNER numbers at York at all, that's (as you say) the way it happened, a matter of fact. It's just a pity there is no LMSR or SR equivalent on their territories as they are under-represented in the NRM (in my view). GWR? well, we are quite well represented elsewhere, rightly so , as the most popular Railway.

 

If anyone's interested the programme is being repeated on BBC2 at 11.20 tonight.
Personally speaking I felt that the excellent archive footage was spoiled by multiple,avoidable, errors in the script. Eg. F.S. was the first British Pacific - sorry The Great Bear and NER Raven Pacifics pre-dated it. "Gresley designed the A1's for the LNER "- wrong, it was a GNR design - and so it went on!! Still worth watching though. Ray.

 

You can't conjure locos out of thin air, though. What is preserved now is all you are going to get - you can't suddenly think, "hmm, what this museum needs is a Midland 3F and an Stanier 8F" and then just go and get them.

What does exist is a result of a combination of factors:

• what the historic companies preserved - the pre-grouping companies that made up the LNER did comparatively well here, whereas the GWR did very badly
• the designation process followed by BR (which tended to preserve "significant" locos over more humdrum, but more typical ones - so KGV got preserved, but there is no NRM pannier tank or 45xx)
• what private organisations preserved (which is why we still have "Gladstone")
• what ended up at Barry (which gives us a preponderance of ex GW, SR and BR standard locos, but fewer LMS and hardly any LNER
• other factors (for example, the economic strategy of the SR meant a lot of Victorian locos survived late enough into the 1960s that there were preservation groups ready to preserve them straight from BR)
• no doubt other factors at play

Those factors explain the stock of what is available: where exactly they ended up then depends who exactly was responsible for preservation. So it is true that there is no "NRM south", nor huge numbers of SR locos in the NRM, but there is the Bluebell railway that has a big collection. Ditto Didcot, which got in early with regard preservation, and clearly makes up in breadth of GWR types for any weakness in that area in the NRM.

<insert tongue lightly in cheek>
If I do have a gripe with the NRM, it's that the really interesting locos tend not to be displayed in easy to see positions. So on my last visit to York, the Wainwright D was tucked down a narrow passage and almost impossible to see in its full glory; the Terrier was in a Children's play area an the Adams T3 wasn't even in York! Quite why such prominence was made of a big blue thing and a big red thing with stripes as somehow being interesting or significant, when a beautiful Terrier was tucked away out of sight, I'lll never know...
<extract tongue from cheek>

Tom

 

There is an NRM pannier: 9400. Admittedly it isn't what you'd call typical of the type.

On the subject of that documentary, it was not only (rightly) nice about Gill Sans, but also celebrated its creator Eric Gill; this despite the fact that the man openly admitted to sexually abusing his own children and dogs. You have to wonder what kind of monkey they used as a researcher.

 

I wasn't suggesting any such thing...merely saying it's a pity it didn't happen. Maybe it's a pity that the NRM wasn't established more centrally perhaps in Derby, but the very reason it wasn't was becuse of the already established Museum in York and it's mostly Eastern collection which formed the core of the NRM collection.

In fairnes neither the Bluebell or Didcot are Museums per say...although Steam is (and it's home to 9400 afaik)

 

Yep. All noise and no action.......
:behindsofa:

 

Or in some pacifics cases, all action and no traction

 

Stop it before that 241 fella comes on all chapeleonic (...it is now) and tells us that noise is the sign of a bad engine and that driving wheels should be compensated etcetera... and that because the programme didnt point out that French locos are miles better then it really was unbalanced...

 

Was the Great Bear bad at that, as well? Wasn't a problem with the LNER & LMS Pacifics.

 

"National-Preservation.Com - Bringing the Heritage Community Together"

Noel

 

You'd have to look at adhesion ratios, i.e. the ratio of adhesion weight:TE

For the Great Bear, it is about 4.83 (i.e. for every ton of Tractive Effort, there is 4.83 tons of adhesion)

For an LNER A3, it is about 4.50

For a Bulleid light pacific in original (280psi) form, it is 3.90.

Since, in equivalent conditions, the friction between rail and wheel is proportional to the weight on the wheel, it's hardly suprising that Bulleid pacifics (especially the light pacifics) had a reputation as being light footed. (Of course, there are other factors to consider, but this is a big one).

Incidentally, for a Maunsell Schools, the ratio is even more extreme, just 3.74. The Schools were, not surprisingly, another class widely regarded as light footed.

Tom

 

So if it's LNER biased, what were all the non LNER engines doing there when I visited a couple of weeks ago? Anyhow, many locos came from the old York museum set up by the LNER. The rest of the Big Four were pretty poor on the preservation front and CoT only survived because the LNER thought it worthy of saving.

 

Only someone as short sighted as a Swindon acolyte could make the accusation of LNER bias at the NRM. As posted elsewhere, if it wasn't for the LNER your precious City Of Truro would have become razor blades years ago. Thank goodness the LNER wasn't as blinkered as the GWR when it came to railway heritage.

 

Pity they couldn't turn all that noise into some extra horsepower.

 

did you read any of the posts before spitting out your bile? this one maybe?

"I wasn't suggesting any such thing...merely saying it's a pity it didn't happen. Maybe it's a pity that the NRM wasn't established more centrally perhaps in Derby, but the very reason it wasn't was becuse of the already established Museum in York and it's mostly Eastern collection which formed the core of the NRM collection"

 

But since there was is hardly any difference between a 1920's GWR loco and a 1950's one (probably made up from bits of 1920's locos anyhow - yes yes i know because the bits were so well made in the first place) then its recycling - a different form of preservation ?
try back building a B1 into a GNR atlantic ?

 

That saved me a job. Thermodynamics only though - for the mechanical side give me Roanoke (with a sackful of Porta mods).

 

If anyone wants to see the much of the archive footage without a slightly dodgy script (personally I thought the TV programme was ok from the part where Pegler bought it onwards....), much of it has been released on two packs of 4 videos from WHSmith (recycled from Eagle Eye productions videos from the 90s/ early 2000s). Very good value for about £10 a go

 

2-3-2 U1 is a fair blend of late American mechanical toughness and Ecole Polytechnique thermodynamics though.

PH