Rugby loco testing station

GT3's frame was rather different to that on a Black Five (or Standard Five or any other UK steam loco). The main plates were 2 1/2" thick, there was a long, shallow, bar frame extension at the front end, and the driving wheel spacing was a more compact 7'0" + 7'9" (with 69" diameter driving wheels).

 

Thank you for the additional info, I was aware of the strengthening but not the changes of dimensions. Maybe there was some more in depth reasoning going on then, I would love to see all the detail in the process that led up to the final project.

My apologies for the drift, in my mind discussing a test subject was just about on topic

Back on the subject, was the test station used for anything beyond the last of the steam loco tests? I would think just over 10 years of service isn't a fantastic return on investment on such an installation especially as the results had such a short useful period with BR, so another victim of modernisation?

Does anyone know if the data gathered was shared or sold to any other parties after it has presumably been decided it was of limited value to BR's future development?

 

I'd love to know where the Std 5 frames idea came from. The wheel spacing of 7'+8'6" is quite different to 7'+7'9". The latter is however identical to many GWR 4-6-0s and 2-6-0s!

 

GT3 was the subject of a paper to the ILocoE by J O P Hughes in April 1962. It was originally envisaged as a 4-8-4T loco (not mentioned in the paper I don't think, there is a drawing and short article in the "Oil Engine" magazine for May 1952 as part of a "World Review" article on gas turbine locos, which also includes some info on a proposed Parsons / North British coal fired 0-6-0 + 0 -6-0 gas turbine).

 

And here you can see it without all the branding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/locomotive-testing-station/zv3rf4j

 

My dad saw a 9F in the testing plant when a boy, he sed it was the loudest thinf ever

 

Ah the day's of white smocks...and lesser mortals...brown smocks. I have both....I get some strange looks though....

 

Ok I quite agree about the slight wandering off thread. But IMO it/they add to the main topic of the thread. You just need to look at Simon Martin's couple of threads about Gresley and Thompson, both if which have provided some interesting [if heated] replies one way or another about them. So keep up the memories etc about the Testing plant, otherwise such information about it will be lost to history.

 

You're the first person I've known making that remark about history....Well I don't know you actually. I love talking to people older than me, always have...they're diminishing rapidly as I'm old too ..75 to be exact. At my parents funerals I did the usual eulogies and people were amazed at the detail of their lives, and questioned me how I knew all this....simple I talked to my folk.
I like mooching round auctions and I find it sad seeing photographs, et al, of families being the results of "house clearances"...there's so much history in these things....
The trouble today I feel is, we live in a disposal society, and what's it worth ...sell it..

 

Most kind, thank you for saying. I totally agree it's got heated a few times but in a decade and a bit's worth of discussion it was bound to happen. I am proud of the discussions we've had on the forum, it needs to be done to keep us on our toes for investigating and reporting on railway history. Hopefully it has helped others with their own research and understanding.

+1

 

It's been floating around right from the start - articles saying essentially 'they've taken a standard 4-6-0 frames set and built a prototype on top' when actually AIUI with a bit of battering you could just about make GT3's frames fit with a Manor, and that's about it.... So in reality they were bespoke frames, like everything else about the locomotive.

If you can bear it and have no plans to sleep the 101 page GT3 thread over on RMWeb has some real subject matter experts and this subject comes up more than once!

 

A friend of mine told me that in the BBC of many years ago, stagehands wore brown labcoats whilst the engineers wore white ones.

 

Bang on, @osprey. I have exactly the same sentiments about family photos. I remember my great-aunt's place being cleared and I often wondered what the stories were behind those frozen moments in time captured on film, sitting in frames on the sideboard... and what went on in time either side. If only we could step inside...

As I write, I learned that a friend - now in residential care with dementia - is having his house cleared/sold to pay the bills. A lot of stuff is technical so a society the person is a member of is involved in selecting items for auction but it seems the family now has a skip and a lot less discretion is being applied...

 

Real experts, or model railway ones? I find there's a big difference…

 

Sadly my family had to throw away thousands of photos (prints) after my Dad died- we simply had nowhere to keep so many. We spent a long day (3 of us) going through them and we kept many of family significance; historical interest or great beauty. We tended to keep the ones with people in them and discard the empty, albeit beautiful, landscapes- especially if we had no idea where or when. A sad duty but we looked at every single photo he had taken and in many ways it was a happy family occasion since it brought back cherished memories and gave us a few surprises & mysteries (no pictures of Lew in Brazil, however).

We still haven’t looked at all his slides, now in a heavy suitcase under my bed. One day …

 

Some time ago I went to a local tip to dispose of some garden waste and found a skip filled with 35mm slides of motor cars through the ages. When I mentioned to the site attendant that these were both valuable and historic hence some effort should be made to recover them he simply pointed out that rules forbade any item being recovered once it was placed in any of the skips; yet another valuable item lost to posterity.

Returning to the question of Rugby Testing Station I recall that in the early 1960s Gas turbine 18100 (aka E1000 / 2001) was parked in the yard but whether for storage or test I don't recall.

 

Well, those at the Ribble Steam Railway - who one assumes should be experts in the 12" to the foot stuff - confidently state on their website about the Class 14 diesel that "The final design was based on a standard GWR 94xx 0-6-0 chassis ". Which I think is true in as much as no doubt there is an OO gauge white metal kit for one that can be bodged onto a Lima 94xx chassis ...

Tom

 

Presumably those very thick frame plates were primarily a means to get some adhesive weight given you didn't have a boiler full of water? Hard to imagine they were needed for strength reasons?

Tom

 

How the heck do you find the time to search out these things?

 

If you look at most industrial diesel shutters you’ll find frame plates and buffer beams are on the thick side. Sometimes the front and rear buffer beams are significantly different thicknesses to give a better weight balance.