Realise a proposed British steam engine

What could have been the supposed benefit of that design over the existing 5'8 moguls (many of which had already been "rebuilt" into Manors and Granges)? Would it have had a smaller boiler to save overall weight, and if so what traffic would it have been good for?

 

I think the point is that to make a no -stop run viable (at least as far as Exeter, if not Plymouth) one trough isn’t enough: you’d really need perhaps three intermediate water troughs at about 50 mile intervals - which would mean in the vicinity of Basingstoke, Salisbury and Yeovil, give or take. Maybe you could eke that out to two sets about 60 miles apart, which would put them near, say, Andover and Templecombe - Sherborne sort of area, so siting would be awkward.

As originally diagrammed (before 1906) the boat trains had non-stop runs of Plymouth - Templecombe snd Templecombe - Waterloo, but that was with flyweight loads of around 100 tons only.

Tom

 

Presumably it was sketched out as a possible answer to the question "what do we replace Bulldogs and Dukedogs with", and clearly the GWR saw insufficient benefit as they didn't build any. The 43s had maintenance issues with front driving wheel tyre wear on heavily curved lines, and I suppose the 4-4-0s were better in that respect. In the end, of course the answer for the locomotive challenge for such lines was DMUs for the few that weren't closed, which reinforces the correctness of the decision not to build.

 

That was certainly my thinking. For the small number of services likely to positively benefit, the 'Pegler Solution' seems more cost effective than water troughs .... unless I've missed some reason to fit pickup gear to bob knows how many tenders on superannuated Drummond 4-4-0s and marginally less obsolescent Maunsell moguls .....

I just got a mental image of a Bulleid profile edition of one of those enormous (Cape Gauge) condensing tenders, as used on SAR Class 25. Of course, as well as being longer than their locos, the design didn't rock up until the 1950s (and took a while to get working properly) ... and in any event, the middle cylinders on the Flat Tops occupy the space where the 25's fitted a condensing pump.

 

Within the limited height of the British loading gauge, it is a tight fit to get a wide firebox over coupled wheels. When the BR 9F 2-10-0 was designed, the firebox height had to be reduced from that on the Britannia Class. Unless small wheels are used, a 4-8-0 design would have the same problem. A possible solution would be to use a narrow firebox such as that on the French 240P.

The 4-8-0 was found in a limited number of countries, with the Hungarian Class 424 probably the most numerous. It was popular in many British Empire territories on narrow-gauge railways, with a couple in Ireland on the 3-ft gauge Londonderry & Lough Swilly Rly.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWIbJOWXYAAKn4e.jpg:large

Or a P10? Three cylinders and 5ft 9in wheels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_P_10

 

Was a sufficient demand identified that would make such a non-stop run commercially attractive?

 

I'm gonna stick by my view that it'd have depended upon precisely who in Southern circles you spoke to, with the only resounding "yes" coming from Waterloo's publicity wallahs!

 

Beyond a few tentative steps in Drummond’s time, I don’t think it was ever a serious proposition. Apart from anything else, beyond Exeter the service pattern and geography had a number of similar-in-importance destinations rather than one primary one; hence the crack named train (the ACE) being somewhat hydra-headed beyond Exeter, constantly splitting and splitting again to serve a number of small coastal towns. It’s a very different geography to, say, the GWR west of Exeter with one spine and a herringbone series of small branches off that one main spine.

Tom

 

Non-stop must have been a significant selling point, adopted by various railways around the world. How much does it matter if you always make an unadvertised stop somewhere for a crew and/or loco change? Are there complaints to the Press?

 

If you want to build a 4-8-0 to fit within the British loading gauge I assume that you want to build an express passenger or even a mixed traffic type. It then depends on the period when you want the design to take place. As developments took place it was found that locomotive driving wheel diameter could be reduced but then without advances in lubrication development and material selection people start getting very concerned about accelerated wear and rising maintenance costs.

If we look at some examples of small wheeled locomotives of the 4-8-0 type we see that they have bar frames (Beira Alta), a narrow box and driving wheels a little over 5' 4" in diameter. UK locomotive works tend not to use bar frames and so there is that to consider. We like to bury a part of our narrow fireboxes between the main plate frames. You might be able to reach a compromise by making use of the trapezoidal box.

We know that we can build 2-8-2 types suitable for the UK loading gauge and these historic designs are capable of further development. You could build a 4-8-0 but why make life more difficult for yourself?

 

It possibly was a selling point, in a way. But to take the LMS 'Coronation Scot': fine if you lived in London or Glasgow, a bit annoying for the people of Rugby, Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stafford, Crewe (including connections to Liverpool, Manchester and North Wales), Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. That's an awful lot of people - and potential paying passengers - who were excluded form these trains.

 

So at one level, say for prestige sake, running a premier non-stop train to Exeter was attractive the reality was something rather different. Ilfracombe, Bude, Padstow and Plymouth tied in with the geography do not offer the same commercial attraction as was to be found elsewhere on other lines. It was probably not a serious proposal as you say, just a pipedream.

 

Not sure this supports the idea of a Bulleid condensing tender or what it conjours up but Bullied in Ireland was seriously interested in having a go with Anderson pressure condensing. He had struck up with Holcroft sometime after 1943 while he was still with Southern Railway and in the 50s sought Holcroft out. Anderson pressure condensing did actually work - happily oblivious to those who insisted that because there was no clear explanation in physics it couldn’t.

I

 

I think I have read some place that Bulleid made a proposal fo a tank- version of his Q1 engine(?) If so, that could be a interesting and distinctive engine!

Knut

 

There were all sorts of proposals en route to The Leader, including a rather neat 2-6-4T based on the Q1, and I think a rather brutish 0-6-4T. Probably the most promising was an attempt to get a Q1 with duplicated controls, so it could have been driven from the left hand side in reverse. For whatever reason it couldn’t be made to work: it might have enhanced Bulleid’s reputation had the reversible go-anywhere engine been the dual control Q1 rather than Leader.

Edit to add: The drawing office worked out various schemes, but one purpose of such schemes is to show what isn’t possible as well as what is. I think a limiting factor on a putative tank engine Q1 would have been the water tanks - both in space (given the very large Q1 boiler) and weight (given the loco already has a high axle load, being right at the limits of just how big you can build an 0-6-0).

Tom

 

Many thanks for your information Tom!

 

...... especially if he'd sorted out the Q1's brakes (the only real gripe about these differently beautiful bruisers) in the process.

 

Outside motion and a well tank.

 

At that point you are basically designing a new locomotive, which wasn't the point of the exercise.

Tom