Best & Worst Locos to Drive

I seem to remember reading that Riddles had experience of driving and specified reversers with a transverse axis because it is easier for a driver to apply fore and aft force on the handle than sideways force as required with a reverser with a longitudinal axis.

 

Yes, that's true, but like many things, it didn't work in practice. He also had a mock up of a Britannia cab made for drivers, firemen and trades union reps to inspect and comment upon, to make sure that everything would be set right for crew comfort. As soon as they entered traffic, however, complaints arrived about draughts and coal dust being drawn into the cab, making them cold and dirty to work. This the reason the early engines developed the big rubber draught excluders between engine and tender, and later engines reverted to a more traditional arrangement with a fall plate.

 

I've heard exactly the same regarding 3F's being better than 4F's, also from an ex Edgeley fireman! Something like 'some 4F's were very slightly more powerful, but everything else was much worse than the 3F'

 

The thing about the 3Fs in comparison with the 4Fs was that they would steam!

 

When we were at ELR on 44222, the poor guy was on the shovel all the time, had utmost respect for him on a red hot day.

And that was 4 coaches, have a tootle up to Ramsbottom!!!

 

I have never heard any footplate man say a good word about the 'bacon slicer', apparently very easy to skin your knuckles on something while you were winding the thing. I don't know I'df anyone knows why but the Caprotti 5s had a conventional LMS type reverser

 

They were once a very common sight, wonder why so many were built (600ish from memory?) when they don't seem to be regarded very highly...

 

talking about the Super D being a difficult to manage oddball, I wonder if the new build George V will be one? same railway, similar era

 

The people ordering the locos weren't doing the driving?

 

Maybe because they did the job asked, and therefore there wasn't pressure to change them? There is an opportunity cost in introducing a new design, for example in re-tooling and the need to stock running sheds with new spares etc. Within the annual works production programme put forward by the CME, it's quite a nuanced decision as to whether the right decision is build another batch of what you have, another batch but incorporating improvements, or take the risk on a new, possibly better (but maybe worse), design; and that nuanced decision may be further influenced by whether the department is inherently conservative in philosophy or not.

Tom

 

Thanks. Although it still seems strange to me to build so many of them if they didn't do the job asked very well? I know the same can be said for other classes of loco, and I'm still quite fond of the 4F, despite never hearing anything good said about them.

 

When it comes to oversupply the best example was the Bulleid Pacifics, the 4Fs did the job and were cheap to build and the shareholders were well ahead of footplate crews in the pecking order.

 

Yes, why did the Southern need 140 pacifics? Some of them ended up on 2 coach locals to Padstow and Wadebridge, a Pacer type job!

Also, staying with the Southern, I remember reading somewhere that Lord Nelsons were tricky to fire

 

Thanks John. I was starting to think if something like that might be the case, eg -

"What do you footplate guys think of the new 4F?"
"Rubbish, the 3F was better"
"Tough, they're cheap to build so you'll be seeing a lot more of them"

 

One of my former girlfriends seemed to manage OK

 

The 4Fs were a Midland design and built to work on that railway, where they performed well. The Midland was odd in its operational methods: every engine of a given class was expected to do the work within that class, irrespective of whether it was nicely run in following a full overhaul or just about to go to Derby for that Heavy General. Consequently, loads were artificially low and the engines had a fairly easy life. Following the Grouping they (with the 'Jinties', 2Ps and Compounds) became LMS standards and were spread throughout the system. This was a result of the LMS's inheriting the Midland system which allowed the Operating Department, under James Anderson who was ex-Midland and firmly believed that that railway's locos could not be improved on. He ordered masses of the class well into LMS days, and a batch was even produced in Stanier's time as there wasn't sufficient time available to design a replacement, which eventually emerged as Ivatt's Class 4 2-6-0.

Other lines, the ex-LNWR especially, were wont to work their engines far harder than the Midland and it was then that the weaknesses showed up: the 4Fs previous work had not required copious amounts of steam, but now it did. Likewise, the undersized axleboxes had given little trouble as the light-ish loads imposed low stresses; that now finished. To be fair to the 4Fs, they did the job, if not in an exemplary manner. I think the number actually built was 772.

LNWR footplates were awful things. The floor itself was built up on each side so that the fireman worked in a trough in the middle. Everything was badly placed and he had to learn quickly how to avoid smashing his hand on different controls as he swung the shovel. The injectors were below the middle of the cab and it was impossible to see if water was flowing or if one had knocked off; you did it all by ear. The driver had a similar problem: there was no indicator scale to the reverser so he had to move to full gear in one direction then count - and remember - how many turns he'd pulled it back. Again, controls were scattered all over the place and sitting down on the move wasn't really an option. Oh, and the regulator. This was a double beat type and if it picked up the water, and on the Super Ds especially this was common, it was impossible to close. The fact that the brakes were almost useless merely added to the fun when this happened!

 

(Deep breath ...) You have to look at the loco allocations - some of those duties existed as filling in turns because the loco was there, in steam, having worked down on a bigger train. As such, using a too big loco for a small train was much cheaper than having a suitably-sized loco steamed specifically just to cover the duty.

Some of the Southern diagrams were very difficult to devise optimal motive power for. As an example, the ACE might leave Waterloo with 13 or 14 coaches - clearly a pacific job as far as Salisbury, where there would be a loco change. Another pacific to Exeter, still with 13 or 14 on and Honiton bank (7 or 8 miles of 1 in 80) to clear, with maybe one coach dropped at Sidmouth Junction. So still clearly a Pacific job.

Get to Exeter, with about 12 or 13 coaches; split out the restaurant car and break the remainder into maybe five for North Devon and six or seven for the North Cornwall line. The North Devon job still requires a pacific (there's three miles of 1 in 40 on the way, and two miles of 1 in 36 coming back). The North Cornwall job is no sinecure either, with a long sustained climb around Dartmoor, mostly at 1 in 70. You get past Okehampton, and the train splits again into a manageable load for a T9, which takes a couple on to Plymouth, but the pacific is still there and has to work to a shed somewhere in any case, so ends up taking the remaining four the last few miles downhill - at essentially zero marginal cost by now - into Wadebridge, probably dropping one for Bude at Halwill Junction. Finally, it drops two at Wadebridge and works through to Padstow and back with a single coach to provide a late afternoon service, but doing it on a thin fire and running the pressure down before going on shed. So "pacific on two coach local" is only half the story; you have to understand how it got there in the first place.

Tom

 

Thanks for this, always enjoy reading your posts on the workings of the LMS, very informative!

 

Yes, thanks Tom and 2968 for your usual interesting and informative replies!

Other locos I heard good reports about were the LMS Ivatt class 2s, both tender and tank versions

 

The Southern Railway was able to afford to build the Bulleid Pacifics during and after WWII in no small measure due to the amount of work the SR did for the Government, all paid for. To be able to get steel for a fleet of new "mixed traffic" locos would have needed considerable political influence, that SR's ownership of Railways and Ports on the South Coast of England would have given it sizeable clout.

Good thing too, Bulleid Pacifics are great!