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P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by class8mikado, Sep 13, 2013.

  1. Kylchap

    Kylchap Member

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    I find it interesting to ponder what Gresley himself thought of the P2s after they had been in service for 4 or 5 years. Attention would have been focussed on development of the A4 with the streamlined services and the V2, in particular. Attempts had been made to sort out the P2 problems by fitting Walschaerts gear and the A4 front end. Was it considered not worthwhile to go further and redesign the crank axle and pony truck for such a small class? By that time maybe the success of the A4 had made the P2, or its like, less necessary. Perhaps experience with the P1 and P2, and success of the A4 and A1 rebuilt to A3, had convinced him that an 8 coupled express engine was not really needed. Had he lived longer and the war not complicated things, would Gresley have let the P2s complete their lives on V2 duties, would they have been scrapped when the boilers expired, or would they have been rebuilt? Is there any evidence of what Gresley himself thought about these matters?
     
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  2. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    You don't fancy doing the SR, do you? ;)

    The situation there I think is really interesting. The steam loco fleet declined sharply during the grouping era (something like 2,200 at grouping, down to about 1,800 at nationalisation, from memory). OTOH, there was a big increase in electric units (hence the need for fewer steam locos, particularly suburban tank engines). But the electric units were formed, in many cases, by rebuilding redundant steam-era stock onto new under frames, so the motors, control gear etc were new, but often the bodies were made by two old six-wheel carriages made into one new bogie carriage.

    The installation of new power stations, sub stations, third rail etc was presumably all capital expenditure.

    I suspect sorting out all the accounts from which each bit of expenditure was made was a task and a half.

    (Back to the P2. Apologies for thread drift, but that sort of stuff is really interesting).

    Tom
     
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  3. toplight

    toplight Well-Known Member

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    Both the P2 and V2 had the Swing link front bogie, although from reading the stuff on the A1 trusts website they weren't completely identical. With the V2s there were 4 separate derailments in WW2 where the front pony truck came off the track and this was put down to the swing link design itself not working well and poor track maintenance during the war, so the front bogie was redesigned for the V2 and a new design done based on the Stanier 8F, that the LNER were producing during the war, which they were subsequently fitted with.

    Presumably there must have been thought into doing the same with the P2 at the time, so perhaps this was another factor, that instead of replacing the swing link design, they just decided to completely rebuild as a pacific instead.

    There is a lot of stuff somewhere on the P2 website with what the trust had done to analyse the original swing link design, and the newer v2 version and put it all into simulation software to look into it all again to come up with the best solution for the new loco to correct the issues.
     
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  4. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    Back in wibble world - Gauging issues aside, would a ' King' not have been a good fit for the Aberdeen Road ?
     
  5. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    I am not sure if there was any legislation that had the granularity of mandating how a particular asset was accounted for, it seems more to have been practice ingrained in the finance functions of the railways and their auditors (but I am happy to be corrected if you can point to the particular legislation/clauses). Deciding which pot to take money from (from capital or revenue) seems to have been somewhat subjective but generally most post-grouping steam loco expenditure seems to have been treated as renewal or other revenue expenditure. Even if you can point to a loco or two being withdrawn as a nominal consequence of the new loco, the increased revenue potential of the new loco over the old (the "Betterment" as Newton terms it) could theoretically be classified as capital expenditure (Newton notes "[although] it may in practice be charged to Revenue Account" - Revenue Account here being a general umbrella and including the renewals fund, used to distinguish it from Capital Account). The peculiar accounting of railway companies was inspired by the earlier 19th century shenanigans of paying dividends out of the proceeds of share issues (as well as pioneering rail transport, the railway companies also found themselves pioneering corporate legislation and accounting).

    You don't have to look far for examples of locos being treated entirely as renewal expenditure rather than new capex as I think inter alia all the Kings, Castles (those rebuilt from Stars etc may have been partly charged also to repairs), P2s and LNER Pacifics were treated wholly as renewals. Probably similarly on the LMS and SR although I have few sets of relevant accounts to check. For the SR for 1937, there was no capex on steam locos. The loco fleet reduced over the year but £41,000 was spent on "Complete Renewals" covering both those by the company and by "Contractors". The capex by the LNER on steam locos for 1934-1937 was £729, £1097, £724 and £1165 (£ not £000) respectively in each calendar/financial year. Unfortunately during the War, publication of the fuller version of the accounts was suspended so it would be difficult to get any detail covering the A2/2 rebuilds, etc from this source. Almost certainly treated entirely as a renewal as you suggest but perhaps Simon's copies of the minutes show the proposed allocation of the costs.

    The Big Four were very cautious with allocating expenditure to the capital accounts. They still had to fund the renewals fund of course so this does not, except in the very short term, provide any relief to a lack of revenue and as I noted in an earlier post on this topic, the Renewals Fund seemed to be an early example of inflation accounting as annual provision was made on the replacement cost, rather than original cost of the asset. "Rebuild" does not seem to have been a recognised accounting concept even if it was used elsewhere internally, so to say something was classified as a rebuild for accounting purposes as is often stated is not correct (and Tom could add it to his list of Nat Pres shibboleths), there being no accounting distinction between the renewal element of a "rebuild" (in generally understood language of re-engineering an existing loco) and an entirely new loco which was treated for accounting purposes as a renewal (such as the P2s). I think for rebuilds however, it was not uncommon to charge an element to repairs and for instance for LMS Patriots 5502-16, the allocation of costs was split between Improvements, Renewals and Repairs or at least that was what was proposed at the approval stage.

    The discipline of the railway companies in not allocating even apparently legitimate expenditure to capital is notable as if you read the minutes of AGMs, almost the entire focus of the shareholders (and I guess you could say as expected) was on the size of the dividend (and basically all distributable profit was distributed each year so monies had to be held back higher up the waterfall e.g. in the renewal fund, if they wanted to retain cash for a rainy day).
     
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  6. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    I can't point you at legislation, but Ken Cook (Works manager and eventual WR CME) wrote (start of Chapter 13 Swindon Steam) "Railway Accountancy is very strictly controlled by acts of parliament with the object of safeguarding the interests of users of railways against monopolies".
     
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  7. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Well there is legislation, most relevantly the Railway Companies Accounts and Returns Act 1911, which you can read for yourself online at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1-2/34/schedule/FIRST/enacted . Cook seems to be rather muddled if he thought that the accounting legislation safeguarded users from monopolies. That was in the gift of government by its control over the rates which railways could charge and which mergers it would allow - ironically of course ultimately the government, having a few years earlier refused a merger of the three Greats (GCR, GER, GNR) then mandated it as part of the Grouping. However to get back to the main point, if you think about it, it would be difficult to be prescriptive in law over how to treat the accounting for a particular asset. Remember also that the accountants and, to the extent any legislation touches on this, the thought behind the drafting of that legislation, really consider fixed assets as a class, so the principles would apply to erecting a new loco shed (which is the example that Newton gives) as much as a new locomotive, and it still leaves a lot of judgment to the accountants.
     
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  8. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    I had more in mind the comparison between what the P2s could do and what Pacifics could do before or after the War, not during the War. Actually during the War, didn't loads get heavier?
     
  9. Richard Roper

    Richard Roper Well-Known Member

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    Very interesting, I never knew that. Every day is a school day. Thank You Tom!

    Richard.:)
     
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  10. W.Williams

    W.Williams Well-Known Member

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    Do we have enough evidence in timetables and loading's to be able to definitively say this? Its a big ask to get the capital to build 6 new unique machines, the justification for this decision must exist somewhere. Again, im going to make the point that double heading went on in and out of Aberdeen all through BR era
     
  11. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    (Mostly for the mods ...) Is it just me, but we seem to be using the P2 thread to discuss some quite interesting points about historic LNER traffic, accountancy and so on that would best be placed in the Thompson thread; and we are using the Thompson thread to discuss the minutiae of crank axle failures and how they are being investigated by the A1SLT that would best be discussed in the P2 thread. It is very confusing at times!

    (Not a specific comment to @W.Williams by the way; it is everyone ...)

    Tom
     
  12. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    I agree with Tom. But sorting out which posts in each thread should be moved to the other could be a demanding task.
     
  13. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Well, if loads are heavy enough you've no choice but to double head or run a second train. Also, weren't express train speeds reduced across the board during the war?

    I was musing over that: if you decide to build very specialist locomotives for a given task then will that task exist for the life of the locomotives?

    On justification, I fear it is more than possible that the justification hasn't survived. Going through GWR Locomotive Cttee minutes, I've discovered that whenever you get to an interesting decision the minutes state "On circumstances represented the committee decided", in other words they only report the decision. In the case of the GWR anything more interesting was in "guard books", which were effectively scrap books containing documents presented to the committee, but only two or three of them seem to have survived.
     
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  14. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    The pacific boilers were 6feet five at their fatest and could be placed over 4 feet eigth wheels(Like BR44) as 9fs had six feet one boiler over five feet drivers.
     
  15. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    When I've drawn up imaginary locomotives with mix and match components I've found that boiler diameter is often the least of my worries. Firebox placement, ashpan, axle clearance, those are the things that most often scupper some flight of fancy. A wide and shallow firebox locomotive over smallish wheels ought to be a relatively straightforward proposition though.
     
  16. Richard Roper

    Richard Roper Well-Known Member

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  17. Richard Roper

    Richard Roper Well-Known Member

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  18. 242A1

    242A1 Well-Known Member

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    They appear to be making good progress behind the scenes. With delivery scheduled for Spring 2022 and two boilers well under way, given suitable funding this project is moving along very well. They will be looking very closely at the V4 design before too long, you just have to maintain momentum.
     
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  19. ruddingtonrsh56

    ruddingtonrsh56 Member

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    Apologies if this has already been covered - was it ever considered to just simply transfer the P2s to the ECML rather than rebuild them? I remember reading somewhere that 2001 had a very successful test run with 650 tonnes on the ECML when built, and given that Gresley had considered building a 4-8-2 for the extra heavy ECML traffic prior to his untimely death, did anybody in LNER offices ever suggest transferring the 6 Mikados with 44,000lb tractive effort on to these especially heavy services, perhaps swapping them for 6 V2s?
     
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  20. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    Yes, I've thought that too. If part of the problem was a long wheelbase on a twisty route, the straighter ECML would have been less of a problem. Also, their additional power would have been useful on heavy loads during the war.

    Also, with the wheelbase, would 2-8-0s or 0-8-0s have had the same issue?
     
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