Current and Proposed New-Builds

The Southern was already starting to thin out its steam fleet by the 1920s (i.e. scrapping more locos each year than it built) as electrification took hold. So I think a small non-standard class was probably always on borrowed time from that point.

For the LNER ones, I think those that lasted well into the 1950s were from a later superheated batch that had been built after the end of the First World War, so were essentially twenty years younger than the SECR ones. So they had longer lives, but not that much longer.

Tom

 

In a years or so it will change when stowe and beachy head are operational

 

The supply and quality of Coal available in the future needs to be a consideration as there is going to be no new coal mining in the UK or in the EU at some point a coal substitute will be required.

 

daft thought, feel free to shoot me down, but wood? The early US locos ran on it, what, if any, mods would be needed to use this as a fuel?

 

I don't know if wood can burn hot enough to maintain a pressure of 250psi with a loco working hard. Happy to be corrected though.

 

I was told by one footplateman who fired the J class when he was young that "they took a lot of getting hot" which I took to mean that they only ran well one they were superheating. The J class boiler is not much larger than the H class boiler. The other shortcoming is that the piston valves are only 8" diameter, compared to 10" on the D1s and E1s. I suspect that the valve travel was quite short and the power of the locos was restricted by the valves and their travel. After so many excellent designs the Js must have been a disappointment to Robert Surtees.



Sent from my SM-A105FN using Tapatalk

 

This is well discussed on two other threads:
https://national-preservation.com/threads/coal-what-is-the-future.1241955/
https://national-preservation.com/threads/the-threat-to-coal.1417743/

 

For what its worth, my view is 'what gives me something new' as a 'For Example' City of Truro on the main line.

I would like to see some of the pre grouping loco's that have run in preservation back at work, Hardwicke, The Compound & Thundersley spring to mind

Failing that an I3 - a 4-4-2 tank and the first superheated loco's to run in the UK looks interesting

 

Whoops, boo-boo

 

Two nails hit on heads by @Jamessquared. Electrification meant that the SR had surplus passenger engines, and classes that were numerically small or non-standard were likely candidates for scrapping. Apart from the GNSR-type G-class, a number of other 1890s-built 4-4-0s also went in the 1920s & early 1930s, including the LCDR M3s, LBSC B2Xs & LSWR C8s. And Maunsell was able to do what Urie probably wanted to do a decade earlier - scrap the Drummond "Double-Singles"!

The GNSR 4-4-0s survived well on their home turf, but the LNER did eliminate many of its own examples of non-standard types. Thus Hull & Barnsley engines tended to be withdrawn early, as were the M&GN and Metropolitan engines taken over in 1937. Among the Metro engines were the K-class 2-6-4Ts derived from the Maunsell Moguls. Non-standard in LNER-World and scrapped in the 1940s.

https://www.lner.info/locos/L/l2.php

 

Blatantly stolen from @Jamessquared and the NYMR thread but any chance we could see this? Wouldn’t take much, just a little bit of Plywood.

 

Saw the picture posted on Facebook. A very poor attempt at an April Fools joke posted after midday as well. Which means that the poster is the fool

 

Posted at 09:21 apparently https://www.facebook.com/northyorkshiremoorsrailway/posts/4041966892521228 Perhaps you saw a later, "shared" post?

 

Unless you subscribe to Steam Railway, you won’t see theirs until tomorrow. (hint it involves the same loco) It’s only a bit of fun, there’s no need to be so serious.

 

Interesting, was any attempt made to sell the 'non standard' loco's to the Companies where they might be 'standard'

 

Depends on the target railway being interested in a purchase of course! I doubt that by the mid 1920s the LNER were very interested buying five twenty-year old non-superheated 4-4-0s (which by that time in their lives had non-standard ex-Great Northern Railway boilers, just to further confuse matters); nor I doubt was Bulleid very interested in World War II in getting small-wheeled 2-6-4T locos made from 25 year old World War I surplus parts.

Locos wear out. Tales of long survivors are well known, particularly towards the end of steam, but a general rule was that about 30 years was a good lifespan for a steam locomotive - there is normally a sound reason for retention in front line service beyond that, typically either fitting some defined niche (for example, with light axle load or similar); or because new forms of traction are coming in and it is worth keeping an old loco going for another few years rather than build a replacement that then gets rapidly scrapped. So in those terms, you could probably argue that the Metropolitan K class 2-6-4T (built 1925, scrapped 1943 - 48) or the SECR G class 4-4-0s (built 1899, scrapped 1924 - 27) hadn't done too badly and probably didn't;t have large amounts of useful life left had they been sold.

Tom

 

Not so sure this can be generalised using purely age as a basis. The machines designed by the elder Billinton appear to have been martyrs to frame trouble. Similarly, the Metropolitan 0-6-4Ts needed frame replacement after a very short period.

A complete contrast is demonstrated by the Stroudley A1/A1x. W11 still sports the original mainframes she had during the trip to Paris in 1878. Wrought iron or not.

 

However good they might have been, their original owners - the LBSCR - started selling them no more than 26 years after the first one was built. Out of 55 Terriers, the LBSCR had sold 33 of them before the grouping, mostly in the first decade of the twentieth century - when they were about thirty years old; four more were sold or scrapped by the SR by about 1927. So even with good frames, their original owners were making wholesale inroads into disposing of them within 30 years of construction.

The longer survivors were all because they found some niche well away from the front line, typically sold to impecunious minor railway companies. Far less likely that a run-of-the-mill 25 year old saturated 4-4-0 or 2-6-4T would find such a niche - which was the point I was making. There are always exceptions but they are just that - exceptions.

Tom

 

Largely a matter of size. The E1s were nearly as long lived.

 

Surely the earlier withdrawals had much to do with the LBSCR getting round to solving the very PW issues which originally occasioned their creation? The advent of 'motor trains', largely a response to competition from those new fangled electric trams in the early 20th century, undoubtedly helped keep them useful, ditto the Marsh era rebuild to A1x. Also recall those examples which made it into Southern ownership via 'the scenic route' .... 4 from the IWC, plus 1 which returned to the fold via the LSW, then the FY&N, 1 from Newhaven Harbour and 11/2 (by BR days) from the K&ESR. The Brighton Works shunter, which escaped rebuilding to A1x, has to count as a special case, but survive it did and let's not forget the role of the Hayling Branch.