Best & Worst Locos to Drive

Hmm. Many drivers in BR and previous days were in their sixties; early retirement wasn't heard of then, and many had come down the links to the so-called easier 'old men's link' and away from passenger work. Remember that unfitted goods trains rarely got much above 30 mph and often well below that. And the fireman didn't get much time to stand in the doorway enjoying the breeze with a heavy goods, a long adverse gradient and an engine shy for steam.

But I will agree that most men from then would wonder what all the fuss is about these days!

 

I'm from now, not then, Jim, although my "then" started in 1982, on the footplate, and I wonder what all the fuss is about!

All these Nancies complaining about going tender - first What is the world coming to? Anyone who has worked on a low - tender engine, such as a Manor, will have been variously, roasted by the sun, drenched by the rain and frozen by the winter. It's all character - building stuff Two of my friends were on Taw Valley last week, and I bet they'd have bitten your hand off up to the elbow, if you'd offered them Bradley Manor!

Someone upthread asked if it was easy to learn to fire on a Jinty. Yes, it is, but the general rule is, it's harder to stay on top of a small engine than it is a big one, even though you have to shovel more on the latter. There is much more reserve on a big engine; you have to be much more on your toes on the smaller ones.

A Jinty is a super engine to work on and has lots more power than you would imagine from looking at it. They also go like the wind!

A Pannier is more powerful, but you won't notice that much difference; and the Jinty is a great deal smoother!

As for Steve complaining about having to stand up, he's obviously spent too much time driving those LNER Pacifics

I've spent most of my footplate career standing up. Also, yes, the Prairies are a little on the bijou side in the cab. You learn to cope...and you swear a lot!

Regards,

jtx

 

Same here, wholeheartedly agree; some people these days don't know they're born, always wanting 80xxx tanks and Bulleids! Nothing wrong going tender first with a Manor (or a 7F, 4F, U, T9 etc), whether it be in February with a high wind off the Bristol Channel trying to rip the storm sheet off or this time of year topping up the sun tan! The older engines are generally more fun/challenging. The main thing is we can still go out and fire or drive a steam engine, whatever type it may be, just be thankful for that.

 

PTx48 little Polish 750mm 0-8-0 tender loco's, absolute corkers

 

Most of my footplate experience was firing. For various reasons (but mostly because I was never that interested in driving) I think I only drove three times on the K & ESR, though I was a fireman for 8 years.

Austerity 0-6-0; horrible to work in; very cramped for trying to get the coal down to the front end, with bits and bobs stuck out all over the place; also, if you had the sort of coal which burns into fluffy ash that clings together, so it won't fall through to the ashpan however much you use the rake, trying to shovel it all out with that damn scoop in and out of the firehole door without half of it ending on the floorboards was a ****** of a job. Rough riding, due to 11 foot wheelbase, but had no trouble taking five Mk.Is and a van up Tenterden Bank.

Yankee Tank; some and some. Injectors picked up reliably if you used the old 'slam the water valve shut then slam it open again' technique, but even more inclined to waggle from side to side when climbing Tenterden Bank with a full load - that 10 foot wheelbase was ideal for Southampton Docks, but not good for branchline speeds. Having what seemed like half the firebox inside the cab was handy in the depths of winter, but flipping murder in hot muggy weather. One of our firemen was on a Yank from Monday to Friday in a heatwave, and lost over a stone! As for that very long grate, with very little depth from grate to crown plate, and that appalling oven door / flap combination - I'd like to have forced the designer to shovel a bunkerful of coal through it on a sweltering hot day, and see how he felt by the end! I can only assume that he had a pathological hatred of firemen - or that he'd only dealt with engines fitted with mechanical stokers.

The Norwegian 2-6-0; a peach of an engine! Rode like a coach, steamed like a good 'un, and the wrap around cab gave really good protection to the driver when running tender first - she even had rear-view mirrors, as built! And a very roomy, well laid out cab all round. The only bit I had problems with was judging the depth of the fire. The grate was so deep, unless you had an enormous back end in, you couldn't see the top of it at all.

Western Pannier 1638; cab layout a bit awkward, but really opened my eyes to how rough-riding the Austerities were. She was designed for running at speed as well as shunting, and it showed (I understand that the Austerity's designers expected them to work at about 5-6mph - and that showed, too . . . ).

Excellent forward visibility was much better than the Yank, and put the Austerities to shame. Good steamers, easy to fire, and powerful for their size. Mind, the way she was built made me wonder if the blokes at Swindon drawing office looked at a certain component, and said "an inch thick should do it; inch and a quarter would be ample - so tell 'em to use inch and a half, Charlie!" You can imagine my thoughts when I was told she was what Swindon considered "a lightweight pannier"!

The Jinty we had for a short loan - another peach! A delight to fire, free-steaming, very comfortable ride, no awkwardness with the cab layout - and far more powerful on banks than I'd have expected for an engine with her dimensions. I was VERY sorry to see her go.

SECR P-class: external dimensions were little larger than the Terriers, but the cab still seemed plenty big enough; easy to fire, free-steaming, and a comfortable ride. The only tricky bit when I was a steam raiser was lighting up without totally blacking out the cab - until I read a book written by a fireman who'd worked on SECR engines, then it was easy. Forget about a pile of coal just under the door - build a pyramid of wood in the centre of the grate, but leave the edges of the grate completely clear. Then pile coal all around the edge until only the very top of the wood pyramid showed. Splosh a tin can of old cleaners' paraffin onto the wood, light it, and relax! The burning wood throws out enough heat to get a steady draught going, the coal round the edge of the grate is deep enough to slow the air flowing through it, so doesn't catch too quick and chuck out clouds of smoke, and what little smoke there is drifts steadily towards the chimney, even with the fire doors open! Then, as the wood burns down, the coal gradually collapses inwards on top of it, bring the whole lot alight, but slowly enough to avoid clouds of black smoke. I found it worked equally well on the pannier, and so saved the firemen a heck of a lot of work cleaning the cab when they booked on.

And then, the Terriers . . . I can only assume they were designed to be fired by skinny nine year old boys whose arms were so long that their knuckles dragged on the ground! I LOATHED the damn things from the first time I worked on one, and never changed my views. The cab seemed about half the size of that of the P-class. The injector water valve had to be turned to right position, then clamped in place with a wing nut, or it would fly shut as soon as you let go of it, and it fed water so fast that you had to watch it like a hawk or it would knock the pressure back in the tiny boiler in no time at all. The grate and boiler were so tiny that you couldn't relax for a moment, but had to keep constantly trickle feeding both, and heaven help you if you let even the smallest hole appear in the fire - the pressure would drop like a brick. And that firehole - what on earth was the designer thinking of when he put the bottom edge of it dead level with the tops of the floorboards? I know the Terriers were very popular with some crews, but I HATED the things!

And, finally, the cream of the crop - the Ivatt 2MT tender engine. A doddle to fire; keep the back end full, and the blast will shiver the coal down the slope to feed the front without you lifting a finger. As for firing over the flap - I found it easy, even for filling up the back corners, and even though I'd never worked on a left-hand drive loco before.

"Rides like a coach, steams like a witch", as the saying goes - and for that engine, it said the truth! The exhaust steam injector was easy-peasy to use, the water valve could be throttled through enough of a range that you could tweak it to just the feed rate you wanted. The dampers were adjusted not with pull rods with notches in, but with screws turned by brass wheels at floor level.

How Mr Ivatt achieved it, I don't know, but you could sit on the fireman's seat and tweak the wheels round with the toe of your boot with no effort - yet when you took your toe off the wheels, they stayed exactly where you'd left them! With those dampers and the exhaust injector, even though I was far from being a top-link fireman, I found it dead easy to keep the needle just short of the red line as though I'd glued it in place. All this, and a rocking grate and hopper ashpan? Happy days, indeed!

As for her power on the banks - I can only assume that Mr Ivatt's idea of 2 was about 50% bigger than those of other railways. Class 2? Class 2?? You could have fooled me . . .

But this little story tells all. On my first trip on the Ivatt, we got back to Tenderden, and the bloke who'd arranged the loan came and asked me what I thought of her. Without a moment's hesitation, I said:

"Can we have two more, please?"

He cracked up laughing, and replied:

"Kes, I've asked three firemen that question so far - and all three of you said the same!"

Mr Ivatt - may you rest in peace, satisfaction, and pride in a job well done, sir!

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(note - for all sorts of tediously complicated reasons, I was known as Kes at the time, but - being a scholar and a gentleman - I'll spare you the dreary details!)

 

Cannot comment from personal experience. I do suspect that individual specimens of the "A1x" vary dramatically one from another. They can produce astonishing performances.

Your comparison of the ease of firing a 2MT compared with an "Austerity" corresponds with what I have been told. The sheer economy of the Ivatt ought to be mentioned as well. Those who assert that a superheater and a modern front end are of minimal value on short runs would appear to be plain wrong.

It is of some interest to learn that H.G. Ivatt, despite a career spent largely in works management, had infinitely more idea of what footplate staff needed than the rather reactionary operating officers who had wanted cosmetically updated 1P and 2F types. Their opposite numbers on the Southern, who are said to have encountered the tank version of the 2MT at Bath Green Park were different and made sure they got some of the pitifully small number made. They had requested something similar of O.V.S. Bulleid as an M7 replacement and got the Leader instead!

The fact that only four of the tank engine version and none at all of the closely related B.R. type survived is IMHO one of the biggest mistakes of the early preservation era.

PH

 

The comments on the Ivatt class 2 echo what an ex BR fireman from Bury (26D) I used to know on the East Lancs said, he loved them. Said they rode well, steamed well and were easy to fire, his favourite locos

 

I share Mr Enright's views on the two types we've both fired: Austerity 0-6-0ST and Ivatt Class 2. To be fair to the Austerity, it was intended as a shunter and not to run long distances, so the firing would not normally be done on the move, but had to be so in branch line service. I passed for firing on 6443 on the SVR in 1970 and it was a wonderful engine. You could fire it with a teaspoon and you'd still have plenty of steam!

 

I like the sound of that technique.

 

I was told exactly the same by many people on the K & ESR, Paul; some of the older K & ESR drivers and firemen liked them because, as long as you handled them the way they liked, you didn't have to shovel much coal, and they are nippy little beasts, despite the tiny wheels. I've been told by ex-BR crews that they could hit 60 on a decent stretch of track!

Yes, that was another point I noticed when firing one; not just economical on coal, but also on water.

You've reminded me of another point, both in favour of the 2MT and Ivatt's other designs; the drivers I worked with on the K & ESR were full of praise as to how easy our loan 2MT was to prep. As Ivatt put it, he thought everything should be 'getatable' - so that drivers didn't have to crawl into the innards to oil and check everything. It makes perfect sense; the more easy it is for a driver to check all the various bits are in good order - especially when he's pushed for time - the more likely he is to do a thorough job. Plus, of course, it makes shed repairs much quicker, so keeping down their costs, and making best use of what skilled manpower you have.

Yes . . . I remember reading about one of Leader's trials, which was done on a very hot day. At the end of the run, the fireman crawled out of the firing compartment with his overalls as soaked in sweat as if he's been out in a thunderstorm, and one of the managers was rash enough to ask him if there was anything else he'd like to have in that cubbyhole.

"Yes", growled the fireman, "Bulleid!"

Another Southern driver was quoted as referring to the Spam Cans as "the CME's clockwork mice!"

But what I found most illuminating on the Spam Cans was a conversation I was privileged to have - and I don't use that word lightly - with Bert Hooker, who was fireman to Driver Alf Swain on the Merchant Navy in the 1948 Exchange Trials. Talk about "one of nature's gentlemen"! If anyone had the right to swank a bit, it was Bert Hooker, yet he couldn't have been more courteous and friendly, and spoke to everyone as though they were his equals.

Bert came along to a local support group of the K & ESR one night to give us a talk about the Leader, and to explain why it never got off the ground.

(the completely welded boiler suffered from brittleness alongside the welds, because none of the edges were pre-heated before welding, and because the whole boiler wasn't heat-treated afterwards to stress-relieve the metal round the welds - partly because Bulleid hadn't considered that, and, even if he had, the Southern didn't have the facilities to stress relieve anything that big. Once the boiler started being used, the brittle areas of metal just started developing fatigue cracks, and by the time the trials were ended, the boiler was basically scrap)

Bert said that, in his opinion, the only reason the MN showed up as well as it did in the Exchange Trials was because Driver Swain was an artist with the incredibly touchy steam reverser (Bert's opinion, not mine). He said it was typical of Bulleid that even though the Southern had a well-proven and easy to use steam reverser already in service (on Maunsell's Q class), he had to go and design his own! Bert also said that the reverser was bad enough even when the engine was fresh out of the works, with the chain drive valve gear carefully set - but as soon as it started developing any wear at all, the whole thing went haywire. That was exactly what Renold's, the chain makers, predicted would happen when Bulleid first approached them and explained that the chains would have to work in both directions. Despite Renold's advice, Bulleid went ahead and used his chain drive - and, after the first batch of MNs proved Renold's to be right, what did Bulleid do? He went ahead and built another 20 with exactly the same problems, and topped it off by adding 110 West Countrys to the fleet . . .

According to the biography of a Southern fireman, in the post-war years, the SR and later BR(S) had so many of the WC / BoBs that they were even using them on pick-up goods , when a Maunsell Q or even an ex-SECR C class could have done the job better and at far less cost.

Very much so, Paul - and I'm very pleased that one group is building a BR3 from scratch, as every one of them was torched, yet they would be ideal for our preserved lines, which are all - effectively - low-speed branch lines used by stopping passenger trains. I wonder how many of Ivatt 2s or BR3s could have been built for the same money as one Tornado?

With best regards,

Jack

 

IMHO one of the best postings seen on NP

Paul H

 

Thank you very much, Paul!

 

Probably none, because the money wouldn't have turned up.

 

Well, as far as I know, the group building the BR3 are raising the funds they require - and I doubt they'll have any trouble with her earning sufficient revenue to cover the overhaul costs when she's due for her ten yearly.

I'm sure she'll also attract plenty of attention from the gricers, too!

 

Absolutely, but I think you'd struggle to raise money to build a further one...

 

If "the movement" does succeed in growing up then it might.

PH

 

Well it hasn't, and it won't, get over it and stop putting preservationists at large down for "doing it wrong."

 

That bit can't be quite right, since the reverser on a Q is the same basic design as that on most of the original Bulleid pacifics! This was a hybrid design that was based on the Drummond variant in previous use, but incorporating features from the Stirling reverser. (The reverser on the first ten Merchant Navies was closer to pure Drummond pattern, but there was a sequence of improvements to incorporate Stirling and other features into the basic Drummond design). Indeed, the Q class reverser was modified over time to incorporate improvements developed for the Q1 and WC/BB pacifics.

My gut feeling about the reverser used on the Bulleids is that several problems compounded to make it sensitive in use.

The first was that, relative to the Stirling pattern, it had a smaller diameter piston / longer stroke. That increased the racking motion transmitted from the valve gear back to the reverser, which caused wear; the wear in turn caused oil leaks that made it harder to keep the reverser in one position. (In any steam reverser, small steam leaks are tolerable. However, small oil leaks result in the lost oil being replaced by air in the hydraulic cylinder. Air, being compressible, results in the mechanism "hunting" either side of a given point, rather than being rigidly locked into position).

This problem was then made worse in the first ten pacifics by virtue of being squeezed into a very confined location beneath the boiler, making routine maintenance almost impossible. By contrast, the same reverser on a Q class is on the running plate and far more accessible. I believe the accessibility was improved in the WC/BB pacifics and the last twenty MNs which followed suit; however, it was still not brilliant. Most Maunsell locos with screw reversers had a steam clutch that locks the reversing shaft to prevent transmission of such racking forces. 21C1 appears to have had an automatic clutch, but which gave problems. 21C2 - 21C9 appear to have had a manual clutch; the remaining pacifics had no clutch. So presumably the drawing office was unable to come up with a reliable design.

The second was that, as designed, the steam supply was on / off direct to manifold pressure - there was no pilot valve. So when you opened the steam supply, the piston moved in a rush, making it hard to make fine movements. That problem was overcome by adding a pilot valve to the steam supply to allow gentler movements. The problem was probably made worse by the high pressure that the pacifics had. This modification was retrospectively applied to at some of the Q class (and presumably the Q1s). The Bluebell's 541 had the modification made early this year.

The third problem was that the Bulleid motion was lighter than conventional. This meant that movements under steam pressure happened even quicker than perhaps they would have done on a loco using the same reverser with conventional valve gear. In the circumstances, operating the reverser could result in the cut-off changing very rapidly, even in extremis happening sufficiently quickly to go from forward to back gear before the driver could stop the movement. In the circumstances, it is not that surprising that many drivers opted to fix the cut off in one position and drive on the regulator. This latter point seems important to me, but I have never seen it discussed elsewhere, except in an unpublished paper I have discussing the design that was written by someone very familiar with the reversers, both in BR and heritage line use.

So it is not quite right to say that the SR had a reverser available that was better, but Bulleid chose to design his own - rather, the problem with the Bulleid reverser was probably down to a combination of using a powerful mechanism to move lightweight components, coupled with the difficulty of keeping the reverser well maintained. The reverser applied to the Q was of the same basic design, but did not suffer the problems to the same degree.

Tom

 

Temper temper!