70000 Britannia

Some inter-forum rivalry?
Think there have been some issues in the past.

 

The missing wheel set has reappeared at Ropley. Wont be long before the BR Atlantic is a Pacific once more

 

Info from the works forum( Ian Riley) that the "missing" wheelset was completed on time ( by Christmas) ready for a return to Ropley. As mentioned by an earlier poster, wheelsets pressed onto a new axle. Then new tyres fitted and skimmed down on the wheel lathe to the same diameter as the other four under the loco.
From the images on Ian Riley's site, looks a good job well done. Thankfully we still have this engineering expertise available in the UK.

46118

 

The wheel set also has the axle box's fitted to it and is in Ropley yard on road three.

 

Indeed, the roller bearings and cannon box (axleboxes) were fitted to the new axle before the wheels were pressed to the new axle at the works....

 

That would have been a bit of an embarrassing oversight, if they weren't!!

 

has anything over and above the original BR method of wheel pressing been done (other than tlc) to mitigate against the tendency of Brit wheels to shift on the axle ?

 

If techniques have improved it would make absolute sense to adopt a later version of accepted best practice.
Bearing (no pun!) in mind though the Tangmere RAIB report about modifications, any alternate method would firstly need to be of proven engineering soundness and, secondly, documented for acceptance purposes one would imagine.

 

The problem with the Britannias is not about technique, it is about design. The axle to wheel interface diameters are limited by the bearing/axlebox sizes. I would suggest that instead of the relevant axle diameters being 9"/ 10"/ 9" they should have been 10"/11"/10". It was a bad design error by E.S. Cox and Co. It would be interesting to know what the relevant sizes are on Tornado's axles.

 

Amen std tank, but to change this now might be a tad awkward, bigger horn spaces to accommodate ? strengthening and/or even resizing the frames to compensate for that ?...
Safer to limit the max thrust by lining up the cylinders ? as clans never(?) had this problem ( although a 30,000lb TE/ 250PSI Clan with 9/9/9" axles might !)

 

One of the main Clan jobs in BR days were the Glasgow to Liverpool/ Manchester trains. These were ten bogies, split to five and five at Preston. This was probably the ideal job for them. Ask anything more out of them would probably have led to problems.

 

I saw on Facebook that Britannia is due to go to swanage on the 17th, 18th, 19th of April but the railway touring company is doing a tour to kingswear on the 18th of April which Britannia is due to go on.

 

Photo and small write-up on the MHR blog on the new wheel-set which is now at Ropley.



http://www.watercressline.co.uk/art...tting-longer/6e4e28dc9f08b82564203c4dabfaee30

 

and now fitted,

 

I would be interested in how much interference there is between wheel and Axle, also whether the wheel seat is tapered, were wheels pressed onto their axle with or without tyres fitted?

 

Suggest you join intheworks forum, which has a full set of pictures of the process carried out.

 

Eric Langridge in Part 2 of 'Under 10 CMEs' goes into this in some details in an appendix covering the movement of wheels on Britannias and Black Fives.

Generally, tyres were fitted after wheels were pressed on to their axles.