South Wales 0-6-2s

Many of the GWR's constituent companies operated 0-6-2 tanks in South Wales. Simple query please; did they run predominantly with the smoke box at the Northern (uphill) direction?
T I A.

 

Yes.

 

For what it is worth, wiki has this to say about the GWR 5600s:

"They also had the tendency to derail, so those driving them preferred them in reverse, where the pony truck was able to guide them around tight curves."

I would think that translates to coming downhill in reverse with pony truck leading would be preferable, unless turning at either end was an option.

 

My old late fellow colleague Dai 'Crunchy' Thomas started at Cae Harris, Dowlais, in 1960. He spent a number of years firing 56xxs till Cae Harris shed was closed.

In one escapade he relayed to me in graphic terms he was on a trip down what is left of the line from Cwm Bargoed to Nelson and then onto Ystrad Mynach to join the original Rhymney Line. At some point just before Bedlinog, 'Crunchy' noticed his driver on the 56xx light his pipe and declare the train (freight) was a runaway, down the long gradient and there was nothing to be done!

All 56xxs worked smokebox first up The Valleys in South Wales.

In the above escapade, the train ran as a 'runaway' for some considerable distance, and was lucky with the line ahead and various junctions being clear.

'Crunchy', who had spent over 40 years paying into his railway pension, dropped dead 2 weeks after he retired in 2006.

Tom Jackson, another colleague, retired in 2016 after 50 years railway service on the footplate. He could remember some of the final TVR and RR 0-6-2 tanks when based at Abercynon. My attempts to extract detailed info from both was simply that they were all 'black tankies'.

Both the above individuals later became infamous with their exploits with 37s and LHCS on the Rhymney -Cardiff commuter trains particularly under GM the late Tom Clift.

Cheers,

Julian

 

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I have seen this Wiki quote but have not heard this derailment allegation previously. Does anybody have any anecdotal evidence one way or the other?

 

pinch of salt required

 

These are the references given at the bottom of the wiki page. I don't have any of these to check against, but one of them might correlate and get one step closer to the source.

1. Casserley, H. C. (1955 (Revised ed. 1960)). The Observer's Book of Railway Locomotives of Britain. Frederick Warne. p. 56. Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. ^ http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/65222/56xx Locomotive Addon.pdf
3. ^ le Fleming, H.M. (April 1958). White, D.E., ed. Part 5: Six-coupled Tank Engines. The Locomotives of the Great Western Railway. RCTS. p. E75.
4. ^ Haresnape, Brian (1978). Collett & Hawksworth Locomotives: A Pictorial History. Shepperton: Ian Allan. p. 38. ISBN 0-7110-0869-8.
5. ^ Morgan, Keith (2002-02-17). "Latest progress on GWR Taffy Tank No. 6695 at Herston Works, Swanage". (Swanage Railway News Gallery - Page 118). Swanage Railway.
6. ^ "Saved loco pulls passengers again". BBC News online. 13 February 2006. Retrieved 10 January 2010.

 

i very much doubt it's true. I would guess someone has seen reports of runaway 56xx and the sand drags that were there to stop them and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

 

I followed one of the wiki links (2) and came up with this:



Still no clue as to where it originates from.

 

Well, we all know why locomotives tend to be driven with smokebox uphill if there's a choice, and if the writer of that text doesn't know that fundamental one wonders what else he doesn't know.

 

There is(was?) a list of DMU accidents on Railcar.Net which makes rather sobering reading for those who talk of 'The Good Old Days' including a number of passenger deaths as a result of runaway freights in South Wales.

I understood though that the 56XX were popular (With drivers I suggest) for passenger work due to their rapid acceleration

 

he seems to be basing his entire knowledge on photographs and making an assumption that they are the way around they normally are for a bogus reason. I think they were "head up" usually because of the boiler water level. I'm not an expert and that's an assumption too

 

Take it the rear carrying wheels were generally not braked.

 

Certainly not on the 56s, and I don't recall seeing it on any of the others. A lot of them were red route restricted, so a reasonable amount of adhesive weight, at least with the tanks full.

I sort of idly wonder why the diesel brake tender wasn't invented earlier... I can imagine a redundant tender with vac brakes filled with water to provide brake power going down the hills, and emptied at the bottom to save effort going up. I suppose water cost money though, so they wouldn't have wanted to throw out 3,000 gallons every trip.

 

an interesting idea, I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to pump the water into the loco tanks or a static tank. How many hours were spent pinning down wagon brakes?

 

Don't mistake me for someone who can do the maths! Its not a period I know anything much about, but presumably one also has to consider the braking performance of a 104 ton 28xx with 7/8 axles braked...

 

There was something of a vogue for pony truck / bogie brakes in Edwardian times, but they seemed to disappear rapidly after: my hunch is that it was hard to get them set up with brake force proportional to the different axle loads which led to locking the pony truck axles on heavy braking.

S&DJR 2-8-0s had them when fitted, as an example. Given all the other wheels on loco and tender were braked, and assuming the brakes were adjusted to give the same braking factor on each axle as a proportion of axle load, removing them removed 9/111 = 8% of the available brake force, and it was probably considered hardly worth having given the difficulties getting it adjusted right.

Tom

 

Several LMS classes had them, including the Horwich Crabs, but they were all removed after Stanier's arrival in 1932. He believed that they 'stiffened the bogie', leading to some derailments.

 

I think bogie brakes were a Midland thing on the LMS, Compounds and a few other types of 4-4-0s had them