Current and Proposed New-Builds

At least they have their own funds to commit to the project.

 

Anyone have any clue what they might be planning to do with a Crampton when they have built it?

 

Presumably steam it somewhere?

 

That’s a really good question. Possibly the loco could go somewhere in the southeast, where it would be close to original SER metals.

 

Build a Lady of the Lake and race them over a hill?

 

I’d kinda like to see a SER Crampton run between London Bridge and Ashford via Redhill and Tonbridge.

 

That's not a Crampton though ...

It's a Cudworth 118 class 2-4-0 which were, except for shenanigans with patent coal-burning fireboxes, fairly conventional. They were also very successful and built in (for the era and size of company) huge numbers. In proportion to the company's total stock, they make the LMS' use of Black 5s look like a niche design.

Tom

 

Serve tubes were only slightly larger than normal smoke tubes; larger tubes would not have been advantageous. Their only advantage was that they allowed a shorter boiler barrel and thus saved weight. Locomotives that used them, such as Chapelon's 240A, had boiler barrels only just longer than the firebox. They were also used for the 240Ps. De Caso's Baltics did not have Serve tubes, nor Chapelon's 160A. The latter's tubes were almost entirely all flue tubes with a small number of smoke tubes around the periphery of the tubeplates.

William Dean's No. 36 "The Crocodile" had 150 2.5" Serve tubes. They were exceedingly stiff and rigid and, under the effects of alternate expansion and contraction, their movements were apt to get well out of phase with similar action in other parts of the boiler. The result was that they were inclined to damage the tubeplates, an effect that seriously curtailed the life of the boiler. Because of this, Dean finally confessed himself beaten and gave up using Serve tubes.





Serve tubes in the sectioned boiler of Nord 232 3.1102 in Mulhouse Museum.

 

I’d probably get flak for this, but how would a new LNWR “Greater Britain” look?

 

It would look very pretty and it would be powerful enough to pull typical trains on many of our heritage railways. But it has no prospect of appearing.

 

Its always really interesting to see proposals for long forgotten ( by many) types and yes wouldnt it be nice if -of course it would ... but lets be Honest with ourselves, for the time foreseeable the only new new build likely to enter the fray would be one entirely funded by its ( very rich) proposer and would be something that said proposer wanted to see done.
Suitability, historical significance, availability of some component or popularity with others being of little or probably no importance...

 

I think it would look very much like your photo, except probably in colour.

Tom

 

Ah, but which colour? black, scarlet or off white. All would be legit!

 

It woukd, I suppose, prove or disprove of whether or not Webb compounds were any good

 

It is a very interesting locomotive.
There was a smaller wheels version called John Hicks class for mixed traffic.
Before the last of these went into traffic june 97 ,Webb had admitted defeat and introduced 4 cylinder compounds 4-4-0 that worked well.

New bosses entered and wanted to show how wrong Webb had been and #&cked it up entirely.
The Alfred the Great 4-4-0 design was simplified by omitting the outside high pressure cylinders and putting a bigger boiler of same deep firebox scheme on.
In my album there are drawings of Webb and Whale versions.
LNWR stopped making more of these Precursor/George V designs in 1916.
Mr Cox, who designed locomotives,tells how horrible these Whale things were cracking frames heating bearings etc.
Obvious when going from a well balanced fourcylinder design to a not so two inside cyl locomotive

Webb started building uncoupled Greater Britains and three cylinder compound 0-8-0 with all axles coupled in 1891
This boiler from the Greater Brittain/John Hick and 0-8-0 classes has a long horizontal grate over driver axle level and sired all the future boilers 0-8-0 goods,4-6-0 Bill Baily and thus the whole bunch of Experiment/Prince of wales and 19 inch goods class. Over 500 me thinks.

Webb changed to Four cylinder compounds 4-4-0s in 1897 .
Old between axles grate

The Three cylinder 0-8-0 was redesigned to 4cylinder 1901

He finally designed and built four cylinder compound 4-6-0 Bill Baily, by modifying design for four cylinder 0-8-0 s in 1903.

These needed new cylinders in the war years,but the smart guys decided that the boilers was more usefull on the 0-8-0 that was undergoing the famous Whale change.

Whale wanted more 4-6-0 locomotives but just taking of the outside cylinders of Bill Bailys would have had to small drivers so they got 6 feet drivers instead of the 5 feet on BB.
Frame had to be made a couple of feet longer but the relation between boiler and driver axles is exactly the same and mass distribution is just as bad on all Experiments/Prince of Wales and 19 inch goods.
One of the Webb Alfred the Great four cyl compound from 1902 was kept as -compound, superheated and worked for living until 1928.

 

No other engineers were persuaded to adopt the Webb 3-cylinder system for any length of time.
Some railways borrowed or purchased one or two for trial, but the only railway to go further appears to have been the Oudh & Rohilkund Railway in India. The ORR acquired a batch of 10 Webb-type 2-2-2-0s, built for them in 1884-5 by Dubs of Glasgow. They achieved some success in reduced coal consumption (see link). One was rebuilt in 1893 to a modified design by local engineer Mr John Riekie (spelt Rickie by another source), which involved installing coupling rods to become a more conventional 2-4-0, enlarging the cylinders and altering the cranks to 120 degree phasing instead of 90/135/135. But the Indian class was withdrawn in 1906-7, around the time as the Webb 3-cylinder engines were being withdrawn on the LNWR. According to Mr Ahrons book, a 2-6-0 was also rebuilt in India in 1900 to Mr Riekie's variation of the Webb system, with two outside HP cylinders 20in x 26in (508mm x 660mm) and one inside LP cylinder 31½in x 26in (800mm x 660mm).

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=India&wheel=2-4-0&railroad=or

 

Can someone please remind me what was Webb's rationale for a huge low pressure inside cylinder rather than high pressure inside and low pressure outside?

 

Is it because the LP cylinder is bigger?

 

Loading gauge was certainly part of it, but another consideration was the problem in starting the train with a single high pressure cylinder. It wasn't just the reduced torque this could generate but also that there was a very high chance of it stopping on a bad angle. The Midland Compounds had a complicated regulator valve to allow steam to the low pressure cylinders at small openings to get the train moving, but this would have been an over-complication in Webb's days.

The three cylinder system he adopted was certainly far from ideal as getting the high / low pressure cylinder volumes right was very difficult but it did work. The main problem was the drivers. They had been used to thrashing the simple 'Jumbos' along when the loads were really beyond them, and it worked. But you couldn't thrash a compound: all that happened was you increased the steam into the high-pressure cylinders and the amount of steam they exhausted, This then swamped the receiver and increased back pressure on the high-pressure pistons so the power output actually dropped. Some men used intelligence and figured out what was going on and got good work out of the engines, but many couldn't manage it and didn't. To be fair, with something so different to what they were used to, Webb should have provided guidance on how best to handle them but that never happened. Despite this, the 'Teutonics' performed work equal to anything on other railways at the time.

Webb believed - correctly - that coupling the wheels increased running resistance and reduced performance, so the 'double single' was introduced (he wasn't the only designer to use it). The irony is that he had just about got the three-cylinder system useable when he abandoned it and went to four cylinders, and had to start the development process all over again.

 

As far as I know, the only other use of uncoupled pairs of driving wheels was Drummond on the South Western, but with four cylinders and simple expansion, they were 4-2-2-0s, and, like the Webb compounds, not very good.