Articulated Steam Locomotives of North America

No idea about the LMS one but the LNER Garratt was a banking engine and unlikely to run fast enough for this to happen as any kind of regular occurrence.

 

The LMS ones never ran at any speed, they were used on unfitted coal trains on the Midland main line, I was thinking in terms of slipping when starting from rest

 

As you can see, I made no mention of valve gear. You are attributing meaning to my statement that's simply not there. Anything developed as part of anyone's paid employment is usually the property of the employer. As such, any extra payment for such work in the absence of any such clause in that person's contract of employment, would have been over generous.

 

I dont know how many loco's were fitted with Gresley Congugated Valve Gear but I find it hard to imagine that

1. Gresley would have been paid any significant amount in royalties, and
2. Even if he did given the number of loco's I doubt that it would have made a significat difference to the LNER's financ es.

Now if the London Extension of the GCR had never been built .....

 

As far as I know, some twelve coupled locos on the Union Pacific in the USA had the Gresley valve gear, don't know if any more

 

I am loathe to continue this utterly pointless discussion, but for the benefit of those reading (who may by reading your posts think I am somehow trying to peddle some fiction) - the patent you have been talking about is specific for Gresleys conjugated valve gear.

I know this because I have a copy of it in front of me, including the drawings and the documentation relating to its extensions by the patent office.

The patent was not owned by the LNER.

Which brings me back round to the original (exasperating) point that in the original thread, you made two errors. Firstly you assumed the GNR/LNER held the patent. They never did. Gresley did as an individual.

Secondly, regardless of your feelings about whether the use of a patent on the LNER might have had an affect on its finances, I can say categorically that there’s no such evidence for additional payments, or anything out of the ordinary, towards Gresley, who owned the patent, when CME of both railways. I know this because I have the records of Gresleys pay in front of me from the national archives at Kew.

So to sum up:

1) Gresley owned the patent as an individual
2) there’s no evidence to suggest he was paid additionally for its use by his employers

Let that be the final word on it.

 

Gresley did like to double check his thinking when it came to ideas hence his communications with W. E. Dalby which are one example that we know of. As it happens Gresley would have largely been better sticking with his own intuition but that is another matter.

Chapelon and Gresley could be said to be on parallel if not converging paths. Chapelon was fortunate in that he did not have the responsibility of being a CME and all the tasks associated with the post. Also the companies he worked for seemed to be in a better position to financially support and invest in the results of the thinking behind his development work.

Gresley, in so far as the communication mechanisms available at the time allowed, appears to have taken notice of developments elsewhere in the railway world and tried to incorporate features in his own designs. He would have been aware of 3566 and he was in written communication with a number figures including AXC and it would be of no small interest to discover these letters. The P2 was tested at Vitry well before the A4 came onto the scene. Information and ideas were undoubtedly being exchanged and not every exchange would have been recorded though the "mechanical record" might offer some clues.

The Americans failed to recognise that tractive effort was not horsepower. No American diesel locomotive of the 1950s, 60s or 70s could offer the power to weight ratio of a Chapelon compound. If the work of the N & W in conjunction with Westinghouse had been developed single man engine working would have been possible and multiple unit working.

 

UP 9000 class. AFAIK the only examples so fitted in the USA.

 

Alco held the license for the Gresley conjugated valve gear in the US.
Before the UP 4-12-2 there were a few 4-10-2 using the Gresley motion.
The NYC had a few 4-8-2 rebuilds, the Louisville and Kentucky had some 2-8-2 s in 1924, and the Chicago and Rock Island had some 3-cylinder 4-6-2 s, also in 1924, all fitted with Gresley valve gear. There may be a couple of other American users of his valve gear.
After the 1920s it was hardly ever used in the US and many of those fitted with the gear were converted to 2-cylinders in the 1930s.

 

Thanks for expanding my knowledge of the use of Gresley’s gear in the USA.

 

The Australians also used the gear in a few applications too, with varying degrees of success

 

The 57 and 58 Class Locomotives used the same design of cast frame, they cylinders were not integral with the frame.

38, 59 and 60 Class locomotives had the cylinders cast integrally with the frame.

 

Also used in Japan IIRC.

 

Surely a 151 is not a Duplex? A Duplex is a rigid framed locomotive with two mechanically separate drive units?

 

Here's a UP 9000 in action:

https://utahrails.net/up/up-4-12-2.mp3

From 1954. No prizes for guessing the valve gear fitted!

 

You raise the issue that the LNER was unable to make effective use of the power of the P1, although it was nowhere near the size of the huge locomotives (both articulated and rigid-frame) used for freight work in North America. The Americans needed to move vast tonnages over great distances along largely single-track main lines. So the locomotives and wagons had to be large enough to achieve that, and the bridges and track strengthened to take them.

Nothing comparable in Continental Europe, where the freight engines for the most part merely kept pace with the passenger, so 4-6-2s were matched by similar-size 2-8-2s and/or 2-10-0s for freight. Same picture with the locos provided by British designers for the Indian Railways. And while Gresley was building his Pacifics and P1s, both Hughes and Fowler outlined 4-6-2 and 2-8-2 designs for the LMS, which of course were not built.

British freight locos had effectively reached a limit on useful size with Churchward's 28XX back in 1903, and it took until 1954 and the 9F to break that limit. The problem of course being our prevalence of primitive low-capacity freight wagons with weak 3-link couplings and no power brakes, so limiting the weight of trains and forcing low-speed operation.

I am unsure whether that was a uniquely British situation, but make one observation. Air-brake equipment seems to have nearly always been fitted from around 1900 to main-line freight locos in Continental Europe, even 0-8-0 and 0-10-0 types that could only have been intended for low-speed work. In Britain, on the other hand, many main-line freight locos remained steam-brake only.

 

Given that cylinders are regarded as a 'consumable' item how do you deal with that on loco's with a cast frame?

 

I believe that one of the constraining factors as to why Britain never significantly modernised its wagon fleet during the steam era was that with private owner wagons and private sidings at industries, the cost of doing so would have been borne by the industrial users, not the railways, whereas the benefit would have primarily accrued to the railway companies. In particular, many colliery facilities (loading, and then subsequent unloading via coal drops or tipplers etc) were based around wagons of a certain length, and changing that would have been very expensive. The GWR I believe tried to introduce high capacity coal wagons but the move was resisted. Hence we got stuck with short wheelbase, generally unbraked goods wagons right up to the 1960s, whereas at the same time our locomotive builders were making modern air-braked goods engines for export.

Tom