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1014 County of Glamorgan

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by aron33, May 22, 2016.

  1. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    Were UK rails OK when Counties were built after WW2?

    The Germans tried two cylinder locomotives with 2 meter drivers for plus 100 km/h trains and gave up and made three cylinder pacifics instead before WW2 on very good rails.

    Did GWR run plus 75 mph trains?
     
  2. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    I've been looking thro Loco cttee minutes at renewals. The Counties seem to have been authorised by the full board between 1940 and 1943 when the loco committee wasn't meeting, and I haven't got copies of that here. There's no mention of them in Loco Commitee minutes from 1944.

    Little sideline. A Castle was costed at £6,400 in 1938, and £10,670 in 1947. Before the war Castles were being built to replace Saints. After the war they weren't listing what replaced what.
     
  3. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    Rails generally ok by the early 50's . Tend to agree with you that the County and the Britannia we're beyond the limits of what traditional British style plate frames could cope with.
    Just as well that anything bigger than 20 inch wouldnt fit the 'standard L1' gauge or 71000 would have been a 2 cylinder disaster ( darling).
     
  4. D1002

    D1002 Resident of Nat Pres

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    1014 now in the loco works at Didcot. (Photo by Frank Dumbleton).
    693440DD-E92B-44C2-B6E6-CEA44BCB73C8.png
     
  5. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    IIRC the County was designed by Hawksworth as an intermediate stage to designing a Pacific to replace the Kings which were then approaching 20 years old thus continuing the Churchward policy of continuous locomotive development. In essence the GWR was the only company not operating a Pacific design and the GWR couldn't afford to be the only operator without one - given the reputations of the companies which did.
     
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  6. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    That touches on something going back to 1908 which has always bugged me. With the obvious increase in length of any pacific, surely (unless unusually generous over-provision had been made) turntable lengths would be an issue, no? I've seen the overall length of No.111 shown as a full six feet longer than a Castle.

    If faithful to the County ethos, with slightly smaller drivers there would've been scope to reduce overall length, when compared with TGB, but surely only by a couple of feet?

    As Fred mentions Hawksworth's putative pacific as a replacement for the King class, would we be looking at a design with no greater route availability? I wonder too, whether the GW had gone down such a path, what it might have meant for those last batches of 'Big40s' produced after nationalisation and for the wider class, the earliest of which were up to six or seven years older than the Kings.

    Another question surrounding 6'-3" drivers (which I'm assuming would have featured) would be whether such a machine would be considered a purely passenger loco, or like the MN/WC pacifics, a more mixed traffic role?

    .... or would gas turbine or diesel traction have proven more tempting to a postwar GW board?
     
  7. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    It's pretty well established this is largely a myth. The Pacific that was sketched out in the drawing office post war was a drawing office project not authorised at a higher level, and Hawksworth had it halted when he heard about it. It seems the chief draughtsman had the authority to kick off studies like that without referring higher up.
    Ironically another example of such a study, 20plus years earlier, was one for a 'compound' 4-6-0 which Stanier and Hawksworth kicked off, and apparently when they showed it to Collett the presentation only lasted about 5 minutes! So Pacific, yes, sort of, Hawksworth no. The County fits well enough in the GW roster as a enlarged Hall/Saint replacement.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2022
  8. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Worth noting that all Pacifics except the SR BOB/WC would have been classified double red by the GWR like the Kings.

    As far as mixed traffic, there's plenty of evidence that the GWR considered the Castles to have a secondary mixed traffic role. Cook records Collett deciding to build more Castles rather than a further lot of 47s.

    I think there's no doubt that alternate propulsion eg gas turbine was attractive to the GW board. The 1947 GW publication, 'Next Station' which is a forward looking exercise, states that 'length and speed of [GWR] trains...'cannot advance very far without extensive reconstruction' , and 'economy in fuel and labour, flexibility in operation, absolute reliability' are design priorities. It goes on to mention gas turbines, oil burning, increased superheat, diesel railcars (success exceeded all expectations) and diesel shunters. No mention at all of larger steam locomotives, and we mustn't forget that 1947 Castles were significantly different to 1923 ones.

    The document also distinguishes between short term needs - Counties and Castles - and longer term. They obviously had great hopes of the gas turbine, but when that proved impractical express diesel power in some form would surely have been inevitable.
     
  9. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Cheers Jim. The rest here is is just me thinking aloud ......(and If it generates sufficient thread drift, perhaps move it somewhere else) There's one obvious question left begging an answers, which is why none of the thinking from Paddington or Swindon ever seems to have involved 'The E Word".

    Surely the core mainlines to Bristol and Birmingham (i.e. the regular stamping ground of the King class) had traffic levels sufficient to justify sparking up? With the coal traffic from S.Wales on top of pre-M4 passenger traffic, I'd have expected there to be a pretty good case for wiring to at least Cardiff too.

    There was by then working knowledge of both ac and dc OHLE, plus the umpteen flavours of Hornby in use around the country, but I can honestly say I never heard then words 'Paddington' and 'electrification' in the same sentence before the 1980s.
     
  10. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think @Jimc would have to advise on the thinking of the GWR at the time, but worth noting that electrification is not the automatic no-brainier it seems.

    Firstly, there is the capital expense of the equipment itself (and new locomotives etc).

    Secondly, there are other issues that potentially complicate the choice. For example, in a world of traditional signalling practice, you have issues of signal sighting if you erect overhead wires - so do you electrify and re signal at the same time? The costs have just gone up.

    Similarly, all the while goods traffic is still traditional wagon load, what do you do in goods yards? Overhead or third rail is problematic so you still really need non electric locos for shunting, and what about handling freight at wayside stations. Even today, deep in third rail territory, the goods trains to container ports like Southampton are still diesel-hauled.

    Those aren’t insurmountable problems: it’s true that there was electrification (both overhead and third rail) in the country well before Nationalisation. But electrification while maintaining essentially Victorian signalling and goods practice at least adds complexities, so maybe not that surprising that on balance dieselisation was seen as a better half-way house to obtain most of the benefits (in cleanliness, labour, availability etc) of moving away from steam, without the significant complexities of electrification.

    Tom
     
  11. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    On electrification, it's noticeable that Britain has been something of an outlier in Europe managing the transition from steam, in that the strategy has basically been diesel first. It feels like the issues you mention, if they did become decision factors, have been allowed to become blockers when they should have been marginal.
     
  12. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    There was a prewar study to electrify west of Taunton.

    https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2509561

    However one may argue that the chaotic mess of the current GWR mainline electrification is interesting in this context. You'd think, though that suburban 3rd rail in W London might have been worth consideration. Immediately post war though, the date of the book it was a non starter. Even the SR had to abandon all their plans.
     
  13. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    The reason for freight to Southampton docks being diesel hauled is largely due to them originating in non third rail/non electric territory. You’d need bi-mode locos at least to cope with 25kv and 750v dc systems. Then there’s the small matter of any non electrified routes the trains traverse.
     
  14. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Much food for thought. I do think we need to keep the sheer amount of goods and mineral traffic, pre-1955 firmly in mind .... certainly us Southern types do. Well north of GW territory, it was primarily coal which justified sparking up the Wath line and it'd be impossible to conceive the same traffic wouldn't have featured in the GW's thinking.

    After posting, I found myself thinking about the GW's staple coal traffic, more specifically the potential for electrification to have accelerated traffic being rather choked by the sheer number of unfitted wagons of bob only knows what age.

    Even I can recognise "Internal Use Only" makings on colliery wagons, but for the rest, out on the mainline? I know nothing of the inspection, maintenance and replacement regimes. Were events in a wagon's life predicated on age, mileage (and would that be 'under load' or total?), construction batch, or simply when bits fell off? For P.O wagons, I'd imagine there had to be some equivalent of today's 'fitness to run' exam, but no clue as to criteria, much less who'd have been responsible. It could have been the wheel tappers and shunters, for all I know.

    I'd imagine mainline coal traffic produced many of the same issues Boyd mentioned with regard to the Festiniog's staple slate traffic. Wagons vanishing into collieries and unrealistic loads, with the collieries complaining about returns of empties and the length of time wagons lay awaiting unloading. In truth, I don't even know how long it takes for a wagon left out in the elements to disintegrate .... functionally, not totally!

    From our side, the principal "what iffery" is often the scenario had nationalisation not happened. In the context of anything touching on King Coal, it needs to be recalled the NCB dates from 1947. Maybe, had some earlier form of MGR setup been possible, the head honchos of rail and coal might've been amenable to giving it a go. I really don't know remotely enough about operations (especially at the colliery end) to begin to speculate

    This is the period where thoughts were already turning to streamlining goods traffic, with large marshaling yards very much in vogue.. I've often seen railway financial returns which show staple mineral traffic as a separate entry to "general goods". How the hell accounting systems coped with the financial journey of any individual load of coal, from part of a trainload leaving Dowlais Top behind a 72xx and rocking up on Dartmoor three days later on the morning pick up goods is way beyond my knowledge.
     
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  15. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    If any stretch of the GWR had been a candidate for electrification either pre-war or post-war, I wouldn't see the main line out of Paddington as being the priority. How about Newton Abbot to Plymouth, originally planned to use external power as an atmospheric railway? The capital cost of electrifying such a short stretch would have been modest. Changing traction at Newton Abbot would have been as easy as adding a pilot (behind the train loco) and weren't locos often changed at Plymouth anyway for trains continuing into Cornwall?
     
  16. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    Right next to the sea wouldn't have been my first choice for experimentation with electrification…

    Simon
     
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  17. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    It wouldn't have been my first choice of where to site a railway in the first place. Even without the occasional reminders from Poseidon, the catchment area on the seaward side isn't all it could be. Same's true of the old Cambrian Coast Line, but as there's scarcely anyone living on the landward side either ......
     
  18. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    West of NA wasn't right by the sea.
     
  19. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    You're right, I'm an oaf, I thought @MellishR was referring to the atmospheric railway route from Exeter to NA…

    Simon
     
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  20. Hunslet589

    Hunslet589 New Member

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    Such an electrification scheme was actually considered pre-war and if memory serves was intended to cover lines west of Exeter.

    One of the drivers was the cost of hauling a whole load of coal into Devon and Cornwall only to load it into tenders and shift it east again.

    The amount saved was marginal at the time and hence the scheme had low priority and profile and was one of several such improvements shelved in 1939 never to be revived.
     

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