Liveries!

Its funny how in certain circles the slightest deviation from pre 1948 condition is held to invalidate the locomotive from carrying a pre BR livery, but yet the same parties don't consider that an equal deviation from pre preservation condition invalidates the locomotive from carrying BR livery.

 

The white livery was a special paint job for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.
24th May 1897.

 

Cheers Dave, I had 1897 in my head but couldn't remember the exact reason why. Knew it was Royalty related though.

 

No. 2053 Greater Britain was also painted red to celebrate the Golden Jubilee:

 

It was painted like that for the Paris exhibition in, I think 1897. The loco is one of Webb's Greater Britain Class 2-2-2-2 compounds (the driving wheels were not coupled). Like a lot of Webb compounds they had many faults. One of the serious ones was the divided drive, the rear wheels were driven by the high pressure outside cylinders and the low pressure cylinder between the frames drove the front drivers. Reversing was by conventional means for the HP engine but the LP relied on a slip eccentric so if the rear drivers slipped on starting the receiver would become choked and LP valve gear would not reverse. There are many stories of these engines and the smaller wheeled John Hick class trying to get a train on the move with the driving wheels rotating in opposite directions. Some of the old Lady of the Lake 2-2-2s were kept well beyond their scrapping date as pilots for the compounds just to help them get the train on the move. When George Whale replaced Webb in 1903 most of the Express compounds were either scrapped or converted to simples.
Webb was looked at as a formidable autocrat who ruled Crewe with a rod of iron but he had a good side to his nature, setting up the Webb orphanage at Crewe and persuaded the board of the LNWR to donate a parcel of land to the community that became Queens Park , a landscaped public open space

 

I'd like to see the evidence for that. It certainly happened with the first three-cylinder compounds, although probably with the regularity claimed, but the answer, a by-pass valve was soon devised to send the exhaust steam from the HP cylinder direct to the blast pipe and not visit the LP cylinder. If it happened with a Greater Britain or John Hick it suggests the driver had not opened the by-pass valve. In other words, driver error.

 

Although, would those drivers ever have been properly instructed on how to drive compounds?

 

I didn’t know about the bypass valve but there is an account of such an incident at Ruston in one of Maskelyne’s books. There were clearly severe design faults for them to be scrapped with such speed

 

Almost certainly. All it took was to say, "Open that valve on starting; close it again after half a turn of the driving wheels and all will be well."

 

We're well off topic here, so apologies.

Yes, there were design flaws, particularly with the early classes, but you can say the same for every loco design. Webb did get the idea to work well: the Teutonics were reckoned to be at least as good as engines from other railways. They were withdrawn by Whale, who had a deep-seated grudge against Webb and destroying the man's life work was a way of getting some satisfaction. See https://www.national-preservation.c...the-lnwr-webb-2-2-2-0-teutonic-class.1199807/ - which was where this discussion should be.

 

Would the LNWR Board have sanctioned the scrapping perfectly good locos though? In all I've read the operating department were just fed up with them.

 

While my understanding of compounds is imperfect, I am puzzled at the suggestion that choking the receiver caused the problem, although perhaps I am misreading your comment. If by "choking" we mean the LP cylinder not being able to use the output from the HP cylinders, that seems to be a potential issue for compounds in any phase of operation - a bit like a submerged submarine, equilibrium is transitory at best. I think the ability of the LP engine to take the HP exhaust is likely to be variable in all states but it is self-regulating, as if the pressure builds up in the receiver, less work is done /steam is used in the HP cylinder as the pressure differential between the two sides of the piston reduces. I think the problem with the uncoupled locos with a slip eccentric was that the slipping of the HP wheelset meant that no forward movement was imparted to allow the drive pin to rotate to the other side of the LP valve eccentric, which I would be inclined to think was the cause of the choking of the receiver, rather than the choking causing the problem.

 

Many thanks for your information Johnb. Much appreciated!

Knut

 

I agree with that. The receivers were simply the exhaust pipes from the HP cylinders to the LP one rout, so small in volume and they could become choked. This reacted on the HP cylinders by creating back pressure, and is probably why many drivers were unable to get good work out of them. The LNWR tradition when high power was needed was to drop the lever down but on the Compounds, this increased to volume of exhaust steam beyond the receiver's capacity, so power output reduced.

The LNWR Board wasn't likely to interfere with Whale's withdrawals. The main problem with Webb's Compounds was that they were too small for the heavier stock which was coming in at the end of he 19th Century (he wasn't alone in this). Webb had been in office for thirty years and was very set in his ways: he had been designing small, cheap locos for all that time and couldn't make the change. Whale was producing big engines suited to the times, so small engines were becoming obsolete. Which do you withdraw, simple engines easy to and cheap to do the work, or complicated Compounds? Whale was pretty safe, at least until he (and Trevithick) were withdrawing them faster than new construction allowed and caused a severe locomotive shortage, which must have taken a lot of explaining!

 

It`s really sad that none of Webb`s compound engines made it into preservation....

 

Hmm! Some of them looked very handsome but surely their performance was at best adquate. Had they not all gone well before Grouping, never mind any later?

 

All the three cylinder had gone, but some of the four cylinder survived to 1927 or 1928.

A loco had to be rather exceptional to warrant preservation in those days, and while some were good, not that good. Even if they'd passed the first hurdle, would they have survived Stanier's cull?

 

As far as I know the uncoupled 3 cylinder ones has all gone by about 1909-10. Whose going to suggest a new build?!

 

Coming soon from renowned railway author Simon Martin "George Whale CME. A debunking of popular stories"