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Bulleid Pacifics - Past or Present

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by 34007, May 13, 2008.

  1. 30567

    30567 Part of the furniture Friend

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    What's the scenario? In one scenario with no electrification, plus quite a lot of 73xxx , 76xxx, 80xxx and 82xxx. Or their SR equivalents.

    I suppose one argument for Simon is whether in 1940 the concept of running it on four loco classes was itself reasonable. Yes the point about all those Drummond and Wainwright 4-4-0s being life expired or at the very least in need of cascading (T9, L) is important, but what to replace them with?
     
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  2. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I guess the answer is, (to use @8126 phraseology) a mixture of the "universal tender loco" and "universal tank loco". The fact that the universal tank loco was an abject failure (too much innovation in one development) doesn't invalidate that the point that a very small number of classes might have been sufficient.

    (I'd probably add that, to the four classes suggested by @8126, you need a fifth - a 350hp diesel shunter. With those five you could consider running nearly all of the SR's non-electrified loco-hauled services, bar a few isolated oddments such as Hayling Island, IoW, Lyme Regis, Bodmin and Wenford etc).

    Going back two generations on the SECR, Wainwright built 109 C class goods; 66 H class tank engines and 77 very closely related D / E class 4-4-0s, which was standardisation to a very high degree given a total loco fleet of only 700-odd locos at the time. And going back four generations, Cudworth had done something similar on the SER with, in the latter part of his tenure, no fewer than 110 "118 class" 2-4-0 passenger engines and 53 0-6-0 "standard goods" locos. So even just in the south of England, for every Craven or Beattie, there was a Cudworth; and for every Adams and Drummond building lots of classes of closely-related 4-4-0s, there was a Wainwright building essentially just one.

    Tom
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2020
  3. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    It can be summed up quite simply in my view.

    What were the main issues?
    • Manpower
    • Maintenance
    • Facilities to do above
    • Availability of locomotives - due to age/design/etc of existing fleet
    • Service patterns and passenger numbers
    • Train weights
    What did you need to fulfill the services? Fast and powerful locomotive units with excellent availability and maintainability. Possibly better route availability (less of an issue for the LNER than SR).

    So - high power and fast Pacifics that have a low route availability make an awful lot of sense if the aim is to produce a higher frequency service of decent length trains (9 coaches or above).

    Manpower an issue? Remove the man from the equation as much as possible (oil bath for valve gear, slab sides for cleaning, more modern cab setup and electric lighting - or, if on the LNER, make all new units two cylinder as much as possible and use hopper ashpans, rocker grates and electric lighting where applicable).

    Train weights and speeds - varied - the LNER and SR both went for a large number of new Pacifics in different forms.

    In both cases - LNER and SR - you simplify the designs and their maintainability, the materials choices used and make use of welding as much as possible where castings aren't available (war office work reduced foundry capacity significantly at every railway).

    Regarding the V2s in the 1950s point - it's not relevant. Neither Thompson nor Bulleid were mind readers or fortune tellers. They were not to know the war would end in 1945 and that their respective railways would be nationalised in 1948, nor were they aware of what potential fixes could be applied retrospectively to those classes (one thing of note: the Gresley V2 class was significantly modified with the use of separate cylinder castings, as per Thompson's Pacifics). They can only make decisions based on the information and circumstances they had at the time.

    The V2s had poor availability during the war years, particularly when Thompson took over. Anything below 75% should be seen as poor, in my view, particularly given the numbers of locos within a class. For 1942, the V2 class had an average availability of 71% across the LNER.
     
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  4. Bikermike

    Bikermike Well-Known Member

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    Is there any duty that they undertook that couldn't be done by a pacific or a Q1? carriage shunting at Waterloo is the only one I could think of (hence the ref to M7s). After Leader ran into the sands (assuming it did, which is another thing), conceptually could a Q1 tank be made to work
     
  5. Victor

    Victor Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    Are you criticising railwaymens efforts during the war years ? The men and the equipment they had to work with did a magnificent job and percentages don't come into it.
     
  6. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Actually, I think the percentages absolutely did matter - since reduced availability had a direct consequence on the ability to move the required traffic, which potentially had a direct consequence on the ability to conduct the war, just as it would have been in peace time. Indeed, if you look at Bulleid's justification of the Leader programme to his board, part of it is built around a projected higher average availability, from which was calculated the number of new engines needed to replace a larger number of old ones.

    In the same way, I bet the powers-that-be were absolutely all over statistics such as the ratio of operational to grounded aircraft, or myriad other statistics. How many bombs hit their target? If you don't know statistics like that, how do you plan how many aircraft to send on a raid to give yourself sufficient confidence you destroy it?

    So poring over the statistics is both something that would have been done at the time, and something that provides a valid line of historical study today. It is absolutely not the same as implying criticism of people in maintenance roles at the time.

    Time.
     
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  7. 30567

    30567 Part of the furniture Friend

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    I was wondering about that. Maybe the Hastings line (did light pacifics go there?). Maybe Southampton, Poole and Weymouth dock shunting-- would diesel shunters be OK for that?

    But actually, my questions are more in the area

    Would it have been efficient to have Pacifics on three coach trains between Soton and Andover, Hastings and Ashford, and the more numerous stopping trains on the main line?

    In practice, what was their performance data actually like? Is there a way of getting at the equivalent sort of data to what Simon turned up for the LNER?

    Of course we need to bear in mind the sheer peakiness of the traffic up to the mid fifties. My early memories are of all kinds of locos being used on summer Saturdays --- Ns, Ls, D1s up the bank from Herne Hill to Sydenham, H15s, Urie Arthurs and N15Xs on the SW. That's just before the Standards arrived. Was that just that 110 locos (plus Schools, N15s and LNs) was simply inadequate for the peak in 1955? Or was there a big availability problem?
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2020
  8. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    That's a very funny reading of what Simon said. Anyone even half paying attention to the Thompson thread will know that Simon focuses on how suitable the designs are for the time rather than the capability of the men. Percentages absolutely do come into it as Tom has said, they're essential.
     
  9. Victor

    Victor Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    OK, then I've no doubt that the men and equipment were working to their maximum capabilities at the time.
    The saying goes:- the difficult we do straight away, the impossible takes a bit longer.
    I read Mr SAC's post as implying criticism 0f the workforce and the equipment during WW2
     
  10. std tank

    std tank Part of the furniture

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    Don't forget the shed ladies that worked during WW2.
     
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  11. Richard Roper

    Richard Roper Well-Known Member

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    One of Bulleid's ideas was based around a double-ended Q1, have a look in Kevin Robertson's "The Leader Project: Fiasco or Triumph?". There are diagrams of several proposed locomotives, before the final design for the Leader was settled on. Even then, the Finished Leader was quite a lot different from the acceptance drawing received by the Southern Railway Board.

    Richard.
     
  12. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Ah, the equipment yes, but not the men (and women). Equipment availability of <75% is far from ideal, and any CME worth his salt is going to be looking at why that is, what the problems are, and what could be done to mitigate.

    You know what, I think there might be a book in that somewhere!...
     
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  13. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think one of the points that you have to look at with regard the Southern was the very high reliance on mixed traffic locos, and the almost complete absence of freight locos. the traffic patterns were such that more or less anything had to be capable, if required, to step in and haul passenger trains. (Equally, many 4-4-0s would, from time to time, be seen hauling goods trains).

    Indeed, I can't think of any example of a Southern loco (or pre-group back to the turn of the century) that had just a three link coupling and no vacuum brake. Maybe some odd anomaly somewhere, but nothing mainstream. The typical Southern 0-6-0 typically had screw couplings, vacuum (or air) brakes, and typically a wheel diameter of around 5'0" - 5'3" or so; the archetypal northern 0-6-0 or 0-8-0 with 4'6" - 4'9" wheels and link couplings built to slog away on mineral traffic at 15mph simply had no equivalent on the SR.

    All of which was a consequence of a traffic pattern that had three defining features: firstly a bias towards passenger traffic when compared with the other lines; secondly the "peakiness" you refer to; and thirdly a huge variety of "special" traffic requiring hauling passenger-rated stock. That special traffic was probably unmatched anywhere else for volume: it included race day specials; school specials at the beginning / end of term; very seasonal fruit traffic; large numbers of military trains; hop pickers trains etc. Just take a look at how many race courses, schools, military bases there were on the SR - that traffic not only required hauling, but would often have associated empty stock moves; and there would be lines of old carriages held in reserve years after they should have gone just to meet a two or three days a year race course special or the annual hop picking excursions.

    As an aside, I've often felt it was very fortunate that it was the SR that was in the forefront of World War II operationally; the evacuation from Dunkirk in particular was, from a railway point of view, handled in a way that I suspect none of the other three companies could have achieved with such aplomb.

    Tom
     
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  14. RalphW

    RalphW Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Administrator Friend

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    OK, but do we know how accurately the availability statistics were collected/collated and is therefore 4% within the bounds of acceptable statistical error? I'm sure in wartime there were slightly more pressing matters to attend to.
     
  15. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    I think we went through the statistics in detail on the relevant thread a little while ago, meanwhile you were butting in complaining how bored you were about the whole thing. Hopefully we can all buy Simon's book soon and read it all for ourselves. Is there any news on that by the way @S.A.C. Martin ?
     
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  16. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    Pray tell me what all this waffle regarding V2 availability etc. has got to do with Bulleid Pacifics.
     
  17. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    No, clearly not Victor. Giving the statistics and the hard evidence of the availability of the locomotives concerned is not in itself a criticism or critique of the men and women operating them.

    I agree: and have said as much in the Thompson thread. For clarity, let me repeat it again here: the men and women who stepped into the shoes of the 150,000 or so railwaymen who left to fight for the allies during WW2 did the best they could under the most severe circumstances imaginable.

    Yes they do: the whole point of having statistics and records such as this is to have an overview on policy development be it engineering, maintenance or operations. Collecting data improves processes because you can analyse them. From an historical point of view, they can also tell us more of what was going on at the time.

    With respect Victor, you are the only one to do this and to be frank it is a habit of yours that you look to criticize me in any way possible.

    So no: I wasn't implying any criticism of the workforce at all. The comment was specific to how the railway dealt with traffic, and below 75% availability would be considered poor.

    That is a good question. We do know this from the archives. The board considered them to be reflective of the actual locomotive fleets and the instructions from the office of the CME (which had been ordering the collection of this data for many years - including throughout Gresley's time as CME) is that the errors are likely within 1%, which is marginal.

    The spreadsheet I collated which gives all of the statistics also shows where errors have been made (where the percentages given don't make sense - like for example a possible mis-translation of data gives some O4s as having 150% availability which isn't possible).

    These statistics are vital. Knowing what your locomotive fleet is doing at any one time throughout the course of a year, or to year's end, year on year, gives you valuable information for decision making.

    I feel strongly that collecting data, gathering evidence and being able to be informed on things is of the utmost importance for a railway now, let alone in WW2 when you had to make the best use of your available resources.

    The "boys own club" view of WW2 and what the railways did is a poor reflection of the vital work done by thousands of cogs in a very big machine. Data collection and interpreting it was no less vital than someone working on the locomotives or driving them. It's a society of people working towards a common goal.
     
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  18. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    We should leave it for the Thompson thread but I am calmly awaiting events to see if it's a yes or no from the potential publisher, who has the full first draft.
     
  19. RalphW

    RalphW Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Administrator Friend

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    No you've got it wrong, Victor was the only one to air his thoughts, however, there are others who think the same way.
    So you don't like criticism, well welcome to the real world where critics abound, if you can't take it then you'd better move on.
    No doubt I will get stick for daring to say that, but I don't care it's only words.
     
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  20. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Apologies, this wasn't of my making this time! The comment was made earlier in the thread asking if Bulleid should have built the 100+ Pacifics and why not something like a V2, for which I then put out the LNER stats.
     

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