Castles v King Arthurs

Honestly not sure. The earlier suggestion of Oxford sounds OK. I always associate the Nelsons with Bournemouth and the Channel Ports .... and there weren't too many of 'em, so dunno if they ever regularly ventured to Salisbury, or points west.

 

Oh sorry, I thought you meant Arthurs and Castles.

 

I don't think that is quite right - the genesis of the Lord Nelson was for the Eastern section, i.e. Dover / Folkestone traffic. The spec called for a 500 ton train to be hauled at 55 mph average; that route is in many ways much more demanding that the south west mainline, with tough climbs over the north downs and also the need for consistent timekeeping through the maze of lines in South East London. Certainly tougher than the GWR route to Exeter or Bristol. They did of course later appear on the Western section as well.

Tom

 

Did King Arthur's ever venture down the hill to St David's? They couldn't have worked any further, so unlikely, I guess.
Pat

 

My reading of it is that there were five at Stewarts Lane pre-war. Is that right and when were they shifted (I'm guessing Sept 1939)?

 

Townroe also stated in his book that when 850 was first restored to the Main Line in 1980, ex-Southern men contacted the NRM to tell them that they'd have a "Lemon" on their hands in terms of difficulty in getting it to steam. As you say, the Ex-LMS crews had no difficulty, and one chap from Steamtown said it was the best Loco there, better than 4472.

Richard.

 

The change of slope in the grate is generally put down as the reason why they were considered tricky to fire, coupled with low numbers meaning few crews really became sufficiently familiar with them. Interesting in that context to hear that ex-LMS crews got on better.

The other point is that for Southern enginemen, both the King Arthur pattern boiler they were used to, and the Bulleid boilers that followed, were very freely steaming, so it was a high standard to live up to and almost anything below those levels would come in for criticism.

Tom

 

It was mentioned above that the Nelsons were easily handled by firemen with Royal Scot experience; given that the North British Loco Co reportedly used Lord Nelson drawings as the basis for the original Royal Scot design was the firebox design one element that was adopted ?.

 

Now you've done it! This could run and run.

If you look at the Nelson and Scot fireboxes in side elevation, there are many similarities. If you look at the end profile they are very different. Evidence that the Southern sent LN drawings to North British is sketchy, and if they arrived little of the loco, if any, beyond the firebox emerged in the LMS engine. Eric Langridge, a draughtsman at Derby, was adamant that the LN design had no influence, and much of his correspondence with people who disagreed is contained in the book, 'Under ten CMEs' (well worth a read, although his anti-GWR bias is strong: he started work on the LSWR!).

Off we go!

 

I think often the thing which somehow irrevocably casts a class of engines as "difficult" or "tricky" or "disappointing" has nothing to do with their inherent merit if they were removed from their context, and everything to do with the unfamiliarity/difference of certain features.
Examples might include different valve gear, different reversers, left/right hand drive, different injectors, firehole door size and position, oiling/lubrication, grates, etc.
This also means smaller classes tend to be more likely to be labelled as difficult/problematic, while with large classes or new or unusual features introduced rapidly on a series of classes people have to get used to them, there's no choice.
This may explain why e.g. the Bulleids, Gresley conjugated gear, Stanier locos on the LMS tended to be well received (I'm not saying they didn't also have inherent merit, they clearly did).
Smaller classes/unusual engines also tended to take longer/be more costly to repair/maintain (because of unusual parts or requirements) and get scrapped earlier (because they were non-standard and replacement with a standard loco was cheaper).
Some of these things tended to give a poor reputation to locos which didn't deserve them "they only lasted ten or fifteen years" doesn't mean they were no good, only that in changed circumstances other options were better.
However in some cases it is pretty damning of their designers: not taking into account the context their engines were supposed to be designed for is a very big failure, and this should have included listening to engine crew regarding things like ease of operation.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

 

There is a discussion of the Lord Nelson and Royal Scot boilers in A.F. Cook's book on LMS boiler practice: suffice to say they are dimensionally different in a number of ways, so the fireboxes aren't even close to identical in detail. (Clearly, the LN, Royal Scot and Castle are all broadly similarly sized locos, with Belpaire boilers and antecedents in Churchward's original boiler design concepts, so superficially they are similar, particularly in size).

I suspect if LMS men were able in later years to get the best out of the Lord Nelson, it is probably nothing more than being able to deal with the change in angle of the grate, a feature not shared with any other SR loco and therefore something that would have been tricky for SR engine men to have become familiar with. There were after all only 16 Lord Nelsons built, in comparison with well over a hundred locos sharing the basic King Arthur / S15 pattern boiler.

Tom

 

Indeed - on your first point look at the reception afforded to the locomotives of Alexander McDonnell on the NER, who deviated in fairly minor ways from the Edward Fletcher pattern, beloved of the men, and was widely castigated for his changes.

Tom

 

Off topic I know, but I'm not sure that the change of grate angle really has any relevance in getting a Nelson to steam well. A 9F also has an a sloping section to the grate and by common consent they are pretty straightforward to fire.

The issue on Nelson is actually a very low and long brick arch which requires a very flat trajectory on the shovel as it approaches the firehole -it's like firing into a tube. Failure to do this results in the coal hitting the brick arch about three quarters of the way down the box forming a wall which prevents any further coal getting to the front section. With no fire on the front of the grate it won't steam, and it also won't go well if you put a big back end in it either. When we first got Nelson at Ropley it seemed to have issues with insufficient primary air getting through the firebars. The MHR engineering team redesigned the combs in which the firebars sit to give a wider spacing, resulting in a much freer steaming locomotive.

 

Such a simple modification. Back in The day a shed doing this would no doubt been told off for interfering, even if they could have found the time and resources so to do.

 

I could not find any images of Arthurs at St Davids. I did find images of a Nelson at Exeter (I assume Central in 1935 and at Weymouth in 1960) but I assume they were one off rather than regular.

I did find Castles at Salisbury

https://rcts.zenfolio.com/steam-gwr/castle-4-6-0/hA88ACAD2#ha88acad2

A Castle with a Nelson or an Arthur draws a blank.

 

Not quite what you are after but Main Lines to the West by S. Rocksborough-Smith, page 47 has 30452 Sir Meliagrance passing Exeter Central with a train of stone hoppers. Doesn't that imply it would have to pass through St Davids at some point?

 

Not if the train changed locos at Central, as was common.

I had a quick squiz for photos and could find S15s west of St David’s, but not a King Arthur. My feeling is that they were probably weight restricted, and by time the weight restrictions were eased, they had been largely replaced by Bulleid Pacifics for front line duties. (Even with the Bulleids, the rebuilt locos, which were heavier, only made it to Plymouth in the last year or two before transfer up the Western region).

Tom

 

It is described as passing and is on the up through line, 3 July 1958.

 

I wish I had access to the appropriate books, but as I recall the line as far as Meldon was cleared for Merchant Navies, with a new turntable at Okehampton installed specifically for their benefit, the idea presumably being to allow their use on the Meldon ballast trains.

This never happened, because the loaded Meldon duty as far as Exeter Central was almost entirely downhill, with a couple of little rises which could be rushed, and the small matter of the St Davids to Central incline, where the question regarding bankers was "how many" on the stone trains, so the train engine was to a certain extent irrelevant. The piece I read stated that this was generally an N-class duty, but in extremis they'd even taken an Ivatt 2, and that there was something of a game to see how far you could get without opening the regulator.

So presumably Arthurs could have been used west of St. Davids on the stone trains, but there would nearly always have been something more appropriate available. I'd guess than an N took the empties from Exeter to Meldon, turned at Okehampton, brought back the loaded train and was replaced by a 4-6-0 at Exeter Central for the more sustained hard work to Salisbury.

 

I recall hearing a talk given by Bert Hooker many years ago when he stated this reason why some fireman struggled to get Nelsons to steam well.