Francis Webb,good or bad?

It would appear to antedate the use of this arrangement by Dean

 

Some people managed to be both. For example, I tend to treat anything by Nock on locomotive matters with at least a large pinch of salt. But he is often very good on signalling and safety; read for example his description of the reksignalling of Waterloo in his LSWR history. No doubt that reflected the difference between his profession (in signalling) and his hobby (in loco performance); the problem being that his hobby paid better than his profession when it came to being an author!

Tom

 

In 1903 (Bill Bailey year) the Bavarian Railways received 39 Bay S 3/5 locomotives
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_S_3/5
In 1905 they received 36 smaller (Littlebrothers) P 3/5N
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_P_3/5_N

The small ones were within 5% dimensional identical to the Bill Baileys and ran millions of miles before being scrapped primo 1940.
Even taking different manufacturing quality into consideration it makes no sense that people like Martin Evans(live steam editor)Nock etc claim wihout sources that Bill Baileys were engineering disasters.
What and whose hobby horses were feeded?
The Big wheeled 1903 locomotives were also within 5% dimensions of Whale Experiments but still four-cylinder compounds

 

What does make sense is that although introduced in 1903 all were withdrawn prior to the Grouping (last in 1921), so none achieved so much as an eighteen year lifespan. And yes, I know Whale's penchant to get rid of the Compounds, but many of these of other classes survived well into the 1920s. Of thirty engines, you would expect at least a few of them to have hung on if they were of use.

 

Yes and no.
There was a case of Collett scrapping (by accident he said afterwards) some very well liked not obsolete 0-6-4 welsh tanks.
Some CMEs were primadonnas and not all could sing a pure note.

 

The Armstrongs had a greater cylinder volume than even Churchward's Stars. The contemporary singles were also over cylindered but soon had their cylinders reduced in diameter, however the Armstrongs kept their 20" cylinders until rebuilt so it may be that, while their performance wasn't sparkling the extra starting and pulling away power on the heaviest Bristol expresses was appreciated. At least he only built four of them before following up with the excellent Badmintons and their successors.

 

They did however have a penchant for derailing in yards. It seems more likely that they were scrapped because they were in fact disliked, Collett only found out how new they were after they had gone and presumably wished Swindon had further investigated their defective bogie design first.

 

I read it in GWR exposed.
This means that book authors are not reliable sources?
Rather entertainers?
This does not bring the Thruth of Webb closer and that is almost as important as a lot of other things rigth now.

 

The Barry Railway class L, the only design produced for that railway by John Auld. After the death of his wife some believe that CBC essentially failed to function as CME and that the work was done by John Auld and William Stanier, if this is correct then anything post 1923 owes little to CBC.

 

Both Dean and Collett suffered great personal family tragedies, in contrast Churchward remained single, married only to the Great Western you could say.

 

Not all book authors are reliable sources. That's one of the things that makes things so difficult. I have a couple of books that have enormous numbers of pencil annotations in the margin for statements that don't seem to match up with information elsewhere.
As an example, p90 of Gibson's Great Western Locomotive Design - A Critical Appreciation, which is a book I find particularly problematic (I opened it at random and got this note). Gibson says:
"Churchward adopted [for the Stars] the excellent Franch Pattern big end... which proved remarkably trouble free... This big end was used by Stanier... When K.J. Cook was moved by the British Rail authorities from Swindon to Doncaster he started fitting these big ends to the inside connecting rods of Gresley Pacifics... [which] previously had a particularly pernicious version of the already suspect marine big end..."

On the other hand Cook, in his book, states that the big ends of all the express classes were found not to be satisfactory after the Kings had been a couple of years in service, with the result that Collett made a fundamental change in lubrication, introducing felt pads, and later a design which removed all need for hand finishing. Cook then goes on to say that although he did trial three connecting rods of GWR design on LNER Pacifics, "I could and did modify the Gresley Marine type of big end to embrace all the features desired..."

 

It seems rather exaggerated. Cook's book contains a good number of instances of Collett taking a close and personal interest in engineering improvements and design work. After all Stanier left in 1932, but Cook does say that Collett was not greatly involved in his last 3 or 4 years - 1937/8 on presumably, although Cook also reports on Collett's objections to taking on war work.

 

This is another of those situations where I wonder about the accuracy of what's reported. Four of the Ls had been rebuilt with Standard 4 boilers and their designer, John Auld was Collett's "Docks and Personal Assistant". They were far bigger than the general run of Barry classes. Is it really credible that Collett had no idea how old they were? Let alone if, as others would have it, Collett wasn't doing anything and Stanier and Auld were doing all the work anyway? Far more credible to my mind, that, in the downturn after the general strike, Collett simply couldn't see the need to expend further energy in trying to fix a small and non-standard class. They were 12 years old, so presumably a fair amount of work had been expended on trying to resolve their self derailing propensities.

 

I have some scans of the articles Rous-Marten wrote on the Webb compounds in 1901.
I'm trying to work out if these would be still in copyright.
Can anyone advise?

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Rous-Marten died in 1908, so the author's copyright expired in 1978. Layout copyright lasts 25 years from first publication, so if the actual books, magazines or whatever were published before 1995 then all should be clear.

 

Webb was also unmarried (to try to take it back on topic)

Bloody Great Western, trying to take everything over.

 

Let us read soon please

 

Thank you!

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We really need to resteam Hardwicke to establish this in reality!
His Compounds were a big part on the none fells section on the Races to the North, and whilst not gaining immortality, did their job. One must remember a Great Western taper cost 3 times as much, and the fabled City Class was at this time but a twinkling to Churchward's eye.

 

I'd venture to suggest we also need to keep in mind Churchward's well known terse justification (to a GW board member) concerning the greater cost of his locos when compared with the LNW's "things".