Current and Proposed New-Builds

I too am surprised at the possible price quoted.....the 567 project was fairly realistically priced at £500,000 - but may now be slightly over that with covid etc.

 

£7 million is roughly 2 P2s is it not? Seems a bit excessive. Is it a fairly complicated construction then, in the way that @Jamessquared has described LBSCR designs before?

 

Ok provided this project takes off. Which version of Ben Alder would the group go for. The as built original or rebuilt withdrawn version? Or perhaps a hybrid version that could be fitted with both types of boiler she ran with.

 

If the group have no premises, machinery, etc, it could be that they are allowing for the significant start up costs. It could also be that they hope to pay professional wages for qualified professional team members, hope to employ apprenticeships etc, education facilities etc, all of which could help to justify that mad Scottish woman to pour out government largesse on a Scottish engine for Scotland banner.
If the government coughs up 25% of the 7mil....

 

The only info I've currently got comes from that newspaper article.

IIRC, it was the presence of components which BR decided rendered the original a "hybrid" which led to it's demise.

I can't help but agree about the £7 million price tag. For that much, I'd have thought you could produce a 'Small Ben' and have enough change left over to make d3cent inroads into (say) a 'Barney Goods'.

 

I'm somewhat surprised at the figure, not least because I can't find any indicative cost given on their website. I do wonder if it is the result of a garbled conversation with a journalist? ("How much do you think it will cost?" "Well, the A1 Trust will have spent £7m to build Tornado and Prince of Wales, so these things don't come cheap". [Journalist hears: £7m for one modest-sized Scottish loco].

That may of course be complete whimsy ...

FWIW, the projected cost for the Wainwright E is ~ £1.5m, and that is a more comparable beastie (modest sized, unsuperheated late Victorian / Edwardian 4-4-0 tender engine).

That said, the method of assembly does have an impact on cost. For the major items - wheel centres, axles, tyres, cylinder castings, frame plates etc - you have a relatively small number of potential suppliers, and I doubt there is much difference to be had in those costs, like for like. But what does vary is what you do with them. Groups (such as the Patriot Group) that contract someone else's workshop to do all the erection and fitting of the component parts are paying considerably more for their loco than groups like Beachy Head or 82045 that are doing that assembly themselves. Which still doesn't quite answer the question of the price of Ben Alder, since at least according to the Scotsman article, their initial aim is to collect individual components, and the decision about how and where to carry out the actual build is still pending.

Still, good luck to them. It would make an interesting comparison with the Drummond T9.

Tom

 

They’ve clarified on social media that was indeed the case and a projected build cost of £1-1.25m is anticipated.

 

54398 Ben Adler had been put aside for preservation in 1953 but was scrapped in 1967 because it was not sufficiently in Highland Railway condition. The main issue seems to have been it had a Caledonian Railway standard goods boiler: a suggestion was made for it to obtain an LSWR M7 boiler as being closer to the original one but this came to nothing.

The ironic thing is the locomotive lasted as long as it did because it was fitted with a Caledonian boiler. 16 of the class were so equipped between 1927 and 1930 and although one was withdrawn in 1939 the others lasted until at least 1944 and ten went on to be owned by British Railways. In contrast the four class members who kept a Highland boiler had gone by 1936.

It would make for a more interesting livery debate than usual as in addition to Highland green livery the Highland Railway works at Lochgorm adopted the early LMS red with lining and large numbers with considerably more enthusiasm than some parts of the system did....

( a link to a page showing models painted in the red livery below)

https://highlandmiscellany.com/tag/small-ben/

 

It was a very hard-line purist decision to scrap Ben Alder as "not sufficiently in Highland Railway condition". The replacement Caledonian boiler involved only minor changes - a wider dome, relocation of safety valves from dome to firebox and removal of smokebox wing-plates. The preserved LSWR T9 underwent more substantial changes when it was rebuilt with a superheater plus extended smokebox (with stove-pipe chimney).

https://railway-photography.smugmug.com/LMS-Scotland/-Peter-Drummond/Drummond-designs/i-89LsSHg

A preserved Ben Alder would have been representative of all the Drummond family small 4-4-0s in their original non-superheated condition, a lineage that started with the NBR Abbotsford class of 1877.

 

Wasn't there far more of an attitude in the 60s of prioritising what was original? Green Arrow was deliberately marked as not having the monobloc cylinder arrangement replaced so that it would enter preservation as built, famously now the biggest issue with a potential return to steam. Now in the 21st century I think more rail enthusiasts (and all members of the public) would be happy with a small compromise as long as it looked and sounded about right and was able to pull trains full of fare paying passengers!

 

When John Scholes drew up the list of candidates for preservation none were expected to ever run again so originality and 'first of the class' were more important factors than condition. If you think about it there were far better Crabs than 42700 and 70000 was going to be saved for the nation despite its poor condition rather than 70013 which was a later substitution.
Ray.

 

..which was the original thinking behind the Clan Project. A useful locomotive from new with modern engineering techniques and everything certified. Though originally it was not destined for the main-line. I wish the Patriot project well in the future.

 

https://www.holdenf5.co.uk/news/

"GER 789’s frames have been hot riveted together, the machined cylinders have been installed, the smokebox and footplate have been installed pending riveting plus four new buffers have been bolted to the frames"

Interesting they are not following the P2/Clan driven bolts approach

 

I feel that nowadays there is a prejudice against hot rivetting.
Obviously correct, with the number of ships, locomotives and bridges falling apart (Perhaps they should have used fitted bolts to build the Forth Rail Bridge?)
Pat

 

The Forth Bridge has to flex with the wind, whereas a motion bracket has to stay in its position on the frames as shown on the drawing.

 

There are still some hot rivets on the clan, so I don't think it's a conspiracy, but a new technique that gives advantages and disadvantages.

It seems that a lot of things in new-build are coalescing to "standard practice", so it's interesting when someone does something different.

Not all Victorian engineering was a complete success, but we only ever see the ones that worked.

 

According to 'Design Section of their website, the main reason with the Clan was that they 'were advised the expertise for cold riveting would be hard to find nowadays.'
The skills for riveting are much more than those for bolting, even with fitted bolts, so the decision was taken. It has been shown that some areas are not suitable for bolts and so these have been hot rivetted.
Perhaps this group have a tame rivetter in their midst? Ah yes, I see it is at Tyseley, where they can anything perhaps.

 

I understand that BR tenders were cold rivetted. I can't understand what advantage that confers over hot rivetting (and I'm not alone in that.) Was it one of those Regional things carried over to the Standards by farming out the design work all over the country?
(As an aside, how do get enough ooomph on a cold rivet, it isn't exactly a doddle with a white-hot one?)
Pat

 

Not just BR tenders. Stanier tenders were cold riveted, as well. Cold rivets are machined to a couple of thou bigger than the hole diameter, hammered in and then closed over using a rather large,unwieldy, hydraulic riveting tool. There are still one or two of these riveting tools about. The Avon Valley Railway certainly have one.