Francis Webb,good or bad?

In that same light, the steam consumption of live steam injectors seemed to be something that exercised nineteenth century locomotive engineers - though I'm tempted to think that the alternatives either also used steam directly (i.e. a donkey pump) or indirectly (i.e. a feed pump, which will increase the rolling resistance of a loco). With an exhaust steam injector, you do of course recover the latent heat that would otherwise go to waste in that portion of the exhaust steam that is used to drive the injector, which is a small but useful efficiency to have for locos that spend sustained periods working with the regulator open.

Tom

 

Cook mentions related issues when talking about the vacuum versus air brake trials he was involved in in the 20s. The Westinghouse system, although more expensive to construct and maintain, used much less steam than a vacuum system with large and small ejectors. To calculate the GWR crosshead pump usage, which turned out to be close to the Westinghouse, they created a rig which powered a GW vacuum pump with an electric motor to calculate the power consumption.

[corrected injector to ejector!]

 

I think you meant ejectors.

 

Perhaps also worth mentioning that Webb was the first to begin large-scale construction of 8-coupled engines for use in Britain, starting with the 111 "Class A" 3-cylinder 0-8-0s from 1893 onward (Only a few 8-coupled engines had previously run in Britain). Webb was almost a decade ahead of his contemporaries in this respect. The LYR, NER, GNR, GCR & GWR began large-scale construction of 8-coupled types in 1900-3.

At the Grouping of 1923, the LNWR had by far the country's largest numbers of 8-coupled types on its books - 66 2-8-0s, 550 0-8-0s and 30 0-8-2Ts. (Although I should add that several hundred ROD 2-8-0s were either on-loan or in-store).

 

Another surprising thing mentioned by John Chacksfield is FWW's patent number 167 of 12 January 1877 for a system to automatically apply the brakes should a train pass a signal at danger - possibly the first ever idea of ATC and thirty years before Churchward and the GWR. He doesn't say how this system would work, and given that many engines, let alone rolling stock, of the time were devoid of brakes I cannot see how it could function. But Frank Webb was an ingenious and far-sighted man.