Standards - a Gigantic Waste ?

I think the biggest issue with the Q1s was that they had the braking capacity from a Maunsell Q (from which, due to the limited design time, they were substantially derived, particularly mechanically) but when worked to their full capacity, they could pull much heavier trains. So I think the brakes weren't poor per se, but the very high power to weight ratio in comparison with a "normal" 0-6-0 goods meant they could shift trains that were almost beyond the capacity of the brakes to stop in some circumstances.

Tom

 

Come come now, Lets clear up a few things....
1) Its not my model, its not 5 Inch Guage but i do think its a good looking engine, as is a 141r for that matter even though its french
2) This is the only Internet forum i frequent, and most of my posts have little to do with this particular design
3) Ive never rubbished a 9F. inded im sorry that there isnt a place for more of them to be restored / preserved. even if that meant a bit of surgery to get them mainlining. History has shown that we managed quite well without 2-8-2's we may have managed less well without the 9f...
4) The 2-8-2 Gets mentioned on 9f Threads for very obvious historical reasons. Usually im at pains to point out that changing a 9F would not give you the Cox designed 2-8-2....

I used to find your ripostes as annoying as you find my posts, and nearly as annoying as 141R's ( because he does have a point ?) but now its just funny to see you wound up and fished in. Chill man.

 

You were having a bit of a moment then. French? Well, they did use them .........

I just happen to admire the mechanical design. A great deal could have been learned from them.

My view is that the standards were largely a waste. All of the big four had designs well suited for the areas in which they worked. So the money would have been better spent, in the main, if works overhaul facilities had been improved across the board. The obsession with simplicity was unforgivable.

The sad fact that the design team seemed incapable of designing, or indeed seeing the need for, a first class exhaust system raises in my mind doubts about their overall competance.

I side with the view that the 9f was the best of the lot. It could have been better or rather should have been better but it was the best. The Britannia class, it may have impressed on the old Great Eastern but as was stated by some LNE observers, if the civil engineers had sorted the routes out they could have used the V2s and saved a whole lot of trouble.

As for the smaller classes - largely LM designs in "drag".

I was serious about importing talent from abroad. The L.M. bias in the newly formed B.R. brought nothing new to the table, far from it. The new designs never equaled the standards set elsewhere in the world back in the 1930s.

The steam locomotive. Unfinished business? Nice to finish it if only to see what we missed.

 

I assume this was only a issue on heavy unfitted trains in later years with the decrease in unfitted wagon it would hvae been less of a issue.
I do think there was never enough credit given for the design.
I do think a large part of this was purely down to the appearance of the loco which is not to everyone taste.

A large amount is said about the 1948 exchanges but the problem with these are many most the appoach of the crews that went out with the locos if you are going out with the idea of getting there as quickly as possible you are going to always return poor water and coal consumption.

 

Indeed.

In "Bulleid of the Southern", HAV Bulleid writes:

Given the above, it can't have been so big a problem - sorting out the brake performance sounds like a "nice to have" rather than a "must have". Worth remembering that the S15s on the western section had whacking great double bogie tenders to help them stop.

Tom

 

Maybe a little harsh, how much steam locomotive development really occured post 1945... East Germany with their Reko loks, most of europe focused on utilising the wartime steam fleets and focussing on electrification, where as the French bulk bought from the Americas. America for itself saw the chase to steal the lead in Diesel development.

 

You really do have a bee in your bonnet don't you. What is wrong with simplicity? Shed staff were becoming harder to recruit and it was hoped that simpler designs would improve matters on that front. And when the curtain comes down on everyday commercial steam operations it will be on simple two cylinder designs that have outlasted more complicated designs by several years, just as in France the last locos in traffic were two cylinder simples and not the more complicated multi cylinder compounds.
As for doubting the competence of the design team - quite a ridiculous remark IMHO - maybe you'd care to tell us what you would have brought to the table had you been around at the time.

 

Just because a machine displays a greater intellectual complexity in it's realization does not have to, by extension, lead to a greater level of difficulty and utilization of both time and resources when viewed from the point of day to day maintenance and running. As an example, the car I now drive requires less maintenance time than the car I first owned. It is larger, is more ecconomical in terms of fuel use and is capable of a far higher lifetime mileage. It is also true that it is far more complicated. Back to steam traction; Tornado has recently had some liners repaces after only 16,000 miles. I have available some interesting figures showing average cylinder bore wear of 0.071" over a little over 124,000 miles of running. Valve liner wear is 0.0118" over a little under 50,000 miles of running. No complication involved just better attention devoted to what was really required. This probably involved thinking outside the accepted boxes that ruled so many designers. Lack of development with regard to piston and valve design and their associated tribology cost a great deal. Engines used more fuel than they needed to and required a more costly maintenance schedule. You also were required to build more engines than you would have needed to due to the more frequent repairs needed and then you have to employ staff to carry out the work in facilities that are all too often less than ideal. You may well have been able to afford better facilities if so much money had not been spent building locomotives that were not required and additionally was going to be spent on the costs of maintaining the machines throughout their working lives.

This just a small example of what could have been brought to the table. Not neccessarily by me, it was rather before my time; but others could have done.

 

I honestly think that you haven't the foggiest idea about the state of the country when the BR Standards were conceived. Rationing was still with us and the country was still pretty much skint after having to fight a war. As for what was going on elsewhere, almost everywhere you looked railways were modernising with diesel and electric locos and it was left to simple, rugged locos to fly the steam flag. If BR got it wrong by keeping it simple then so did just about everywhere else that continued to build and use steam post war. It's been said before but if the future really was complicated compounds, how come SNCF ditched them earlier than the rugged two cylinder simples that saw out French steam?
To use your car as an analogy is very poor IMO, the car benefits from the advantages of mass production on a vast scale, far greater than any steam loco construction programme you could mention.

 

Whilst I have some sympathy with yours views, (though I would baulk at going the whole French pre-war hog as regards the BR Stds), I cannot let your statement about Tornado's liners go uncorrected. Here's the quote from the A1 Trust's site............

Wednesday, 13 February 2013 13:29
Many people may be wondering what is being done to Tornado during her winter's rest at Southall. A great deal of routine maintenance has been carried out including the replacement of all three cylinder liners. From the outset, Tornado's cast cylinders have been fitted with 'sacrificial' liners which can be replaced when they start to wear oval or become scored. Since commissioning in 2008, Tornado has racked up over 60,000 miles and during that time she has hed her original liners re-bored once at York.

That's right up there with the ICE cars of that era, if my Moggie Minor was anything to go by.

 

Other railway companies had the same problems, ie when to stop building steam and go for diesel. I bought a DVD on the Norfolk and Western while at the KWVR's WSG and it seems that the last engines built by the N&W was in 1952 and they were scrapped in 1960. I'd be surprised if there were no other instances.

Regards

 

China Rail was still building QJ 2-10-2s into the late 1980s. I visited Datong works in 1988 when 'high tech' prototypes under D Wardale's guidence and an effort of their own were on view but I think production, and the experiments, ended then. Most of these locos had a life of no more than 10 years.

 

The reason why the compounds went first is that most of them were older and had been through the rigours, not only of wartime but also enemy occupation. If any readers doubt the significance of the latter, just look at the memorial outside Caen station and see how many railwaymen ended up at Buchenwald.

Most of the compounds that were built postwar were developments of PLM classes which were not from the most inspired of French design schools. The real "might have beens" were 2-4-2 A.1 and 2-3-2 U.1. of which the former was a rebuild and something of a test bed. However the latter, which was shaded somewhat by its larger compatriot in terms of performance, had the benefit of the latest American maintenance reduction ideas. Again, go across the Channel, have a good look at 2-3-2 U1 in Mulhouse museum and, as Dr. Johnson put it, "clear you mind of cant"!

As for the 1-4-1 R design, this was ordered in bulk at a time when the German army might have had something to say about a bulk order being placed by the French Government in exile with Fives Lille or Societe Alsacienne! So it had to be 100% American in style which meant sturdiness and power output equal first with thermal efficiency a very poor third. Chapelon was able to do something to improve the thermal efficiency of these machines.

Yes, had the British railway system had the benefit of direct input from Chapelon and De Caso and accepted their advice, it would likely have fared better but, as shown above, their viewpoint did not prevail in postwar France. In Britain would they have succeeded any more against Swindonian "we've always done it this way" or that consummate office politician, E.S. Cox. Alas I fear not.

PH

 

The basic idea behind the standards was that 'they could go anywhere and do anything' and be easy to maintain on the sheds with reasonable economy in fuel and lubricants. There were no 'fancy' or 'advanced' (note the grave quotes) exhaust passages because they were all designed to give of their best at medium steaming rates ie to be mixed traffic engines. I think they succeeded, but that doesn't mean to say that some of the regional standard engines would have done that as well.

In my list above I excluded the GW types because of maintenance and loading gauge issues and the Gresleys because of the conjugated valve gear. The three cylinder Peppercorn and Bulleid types had fuel economy issues because of the effects on valve events of driving all cylinders on the middle axle, my solution being to rebuild them. The Maunsell types on the SR where too old to perpetuate and all new shunters should have been what became the Class 08.

Seems easy to me, but Riddles wanted to have a complete range of engines that bore his name. All down to conceit!

Regards

 

I could have sworn peppercorn pacifics had divided drive.

 

And you would be correct. Also the conjugated gear problems were overcome in the 50's and gave reliable service in later years, as borne out by the preserved examples.

 

The last SY 2-8-2s were built in 1999. Although a number of SY are still working, I wonder if any of them are from the 1999 batch.

 

In response to Mr 242, noticed in Mr Cox 's book a little statement to the effect that once the basic grounding was done (draughting wise) the opportunity to 'look at the multinozzle options' would come later... so the potential icing on the cake of the steam circuit wasnt completely lost on that particular Gent. Once in service, modifications to existing designs would be done proposed and tested by other departments ( ie the Swindon/ Rugby 'Boffins') why they we'rent abreast of the latest developments in this respect ( thy did try out a Geisl at least) i am afraid i couldnt tell you.

 

In answer to the original poster's question: no I don't think the Standards were a waste of money. BR needed to stamp its own mark on the locomotive fleet and try to break free of Big Four designs to give itself an identity. New locomotive and rolling stock would represent this as much as new liveries and signage. The LMS and LNER (I can't speak for the GWR or SR, I don't know enough about them) were already starting to replace many of the pre-grouping and early grouping designs with more modern locomotives and the BR Standards simply continued the philosophy of producing rugged, simple steam locomotives that would be easy to operate and easy to maintain.

Were there too many? Yes probably, I don't think there was a need to duplicate the LMS designs of Class 2 and 4 but it would have been very hard for British Railways to show that it was a true collective organisation by simply ruling in favour of these designs over anything on the drawing boards of the LNER, SR and GWR.

What was a gigantic waste of money was the desire to replace steam quickly that occurred in the late 1950s. So many unproven designs, so many designs that hardly lasted longer than the machines they were supposed to replace. The Beeching Report attempted to save the railway system money while BR was committed to huge building programmes of locomotives that it did not need. What a gigantic waste!