Accounting for Steam Locomotives (ex Flying Scotsman thread)

If you look at the whole post which included the comment in question, you'll see that your interpretation of the latter part in question is at odds with the remainder of the post. I refute entirely your accusation.

 

It's NP, surely we should be discussing what colour ink was used for the accounts?

It does seem a bit daft all the experiments and improvements with steam locos, when large parts of the rest of the railway essentially stagnated for a hundred years and stayed incredibly inefficient. For example, collieries weren't forced or had any incentive to upgrade or improve their facilities, hence why for pretty much a century the vast majority of coal was carried in wagons that didn't change in design, basically 9' wheelbase open wagons with no automatic brakes.

As impressive as a 9F on a eighty 16 tonners is, that's only about 1300 tons of coal being carried. Germany was using 44s on trains of air braked bogie hoppers - 25 hoppers could carry twice the amount of coal in about two thirds of the length. Getting back to Gresley, the P1s were powerful enough to haul trains too long for the loops. Bogie wagons would've had more capacity in fewer wagons, allowing them to reach their full potential.

 

I find it worryingly illustrative that loads of MoS 9' steel mineral wagons were sent to France after the war. In spite of their infrastructure being smashed by the war, they sent them back pretty sharpish...

 

We all have room for improvement. Perhaps having read Col Rogers' book, you should go back and read some of your comments on M. Chapelon?

 

I think plenty of NP members have enjoyed your posts and would welcome more, judging by your 9,495 'Likes' received so far. So I hope you'll decide to leave them visible.

 

The usual suspects have now all turned up, of course, adding nothing to the topic at hand, but all passing comment on me.

Funny that.

Absolutely.

I’m a qualified railway engineer, with a decade working on the railway, twice published railway historian, currently undertaking a peer reviewed PhD on the development of high speed rail at the University of Southampton that specialises in research on railway engineering and business finance. Add to that a decade in the financial services industry and a degree, eight years with the MNLPS as treasurer, and that’s my proof of academic, work and practical background on railways.

What are your credentials exactly? What makes you think your opinions are correct and backed up by evidence?

Colonel Rogers, to be blunt, is a poor historian and nothing is going to convince me otherwise having read all of his books, and keeping them on the shelf for posterity as an exercise in how to - not - write a railway history book. Happily it is amongst volumes from other writers I rate very highly (FYI for the thread; go read Anthony Leslie Dawson’s book on Lion, it is one of the best books on early locomotive history that has been put together).

My views on Chapelon are my own: I am entitled to hold them. Whether any one places value on them is another matter but I have come to my own conclusions from my own research.

 

I don’t know, I am weary (as I am sure all of you are) with how threads get derailed every time I appear.

TBH, Nat Pres has done well out of my research, it’s had its time, I think closing the chapter might be the best thing for everyone.\

Maybe the best compromise is asking for the threads to be locked and left in situ for anyone who needs a reference or reminder to some of the evidence found and discussion had.

Either way, I am tired of being singled out and bullied on Nat Pres. Not Bulleid, I add for brevity!

 

Thanks - I recall NP got a mention in the acknowledgements for the Thompson book so it'd be nice if future readers can still find that and other threads including your postings. I sometimes find it a pleasure to look back on old threads about various things including the posts by various people who no longer contribute for whatever the reasons.

It's a pity some members don't seem to know how to (as someone put it up-thread) disagree agreeably. I think somebody else said (though I can't find it now) something like people shouldn't be bothered because the level of 'aggro' (for want of a better word) on this board is a lot milder than some other places on social media. I think that's true for the most part. It's also one of the best things about NP and we should be bothered enough to try and keep it that way.

 

I think that the GW and others had attempts to change the way the collieries worked, seem to have hit resistance. There was a deep unwillingness to invest in productivity on the part of the mine owners and their customers (the local coal merchants were notorious for sitting on wagons for as long as they could using them for storage). I think the collieries tended to do the same with the result that many wagons were found to do only a few trips in revenue service per year? This attitude seems to have been normal among the privately owned companies of the steam era.

 

Fiennes talks about that in his writing as one of the greater challenges of improving productivity. If I remember correctly, the railways also had very limited influence over customers in common carrier days

 

Indeed. I forgot about Fiennes’s comments on the matter.

I feel like the problem wasn’t isolated to the coal industry either. The North Wales slate owners also seem to have been reluctant to invest in the good years. In a number of cases the income from the mine or quarry seems to have been important mainly as a way of maintaining a sizeable estate at the expense of investment in the core business, but it must be more complex than that? Even today UK businesses and the UK state lag on investment in productivity. (Subject for a different thread perhaps).

 

Dear Simon,

There are idiots (call them bullies if you like) on most forums and most are simply that, idiots, rather than deliberately malicious. I can quite understand that being on the receiving end of such comments must feel like being singled out and bullied. I do understand that not challenging false information is probably difficult for someone as academically rigorous as yourself, but you do seem to feed the flames somewhat by responding rather than ignoring them.

It is a great shame that you no longer contribute as much as you have in the past, but your own mental health must take priority and if that means stepping back from the forum then certainly you should do so. However, please do not ask for your previous contributions to be removed, as there must be many, such as myself*, who find them a considerable asset to the forums.

* I speak as a GWR fan, who had little previous knowledge of railways in the ‘opposite’ corner of the country but now possesses a couple of very good books on the subject.

 

One of the early benefits of TOPS in the 1960s was that it identified wagons which were "off the system" by being used as storage in various yards - both privater and BR. Once identified they were either charged for or withdrawn and sold for scrap thus reducing the wagon fleet by a considerable amount and reducing maintenance costs by a large margin.

 

A pedant writes : TOPS wasn't introduced to BR until the 1970s.

 

Full operation throughout BR 1974. Allegedly the money earned from scrapping something like 1/3rd of the wagon fleet paid for the purchase of TOPS (software and hardware).
Pat

 

Didn’t stop things going astray entirely. In the 1980s there was an MGR set that appeared at Margam one night. It was nearly a week before a slightly weary wagon controller from the NE (I think) rang with “it’s a long shot, but I don’t suppose you have a rake of coal hoppers you weren’t expecting do you?” “Yes, we were wondering who to send them back to!”

 

Please don't go away. Just ignore posts that cause you any grief or, if necessary, set a few individuals to be ignored entirely.

 

2 x science B.Sc. A career spent mostly designing analytical gas sampling systems, including difficult measurands such as trace hydrogen chloride.

Re-staying 6106 in Monel, including making the stays (from rod) and fitting them, replacing four rows of crown stays and making and fitting 700-odd stay nuts. The only assistance I had was someone to support the CP drill while drilling out the outer ends. The crown stays had to be done same-size as the GWS didn't have the next size tap. The boiler could not be placed on its' side.

 

GIGO. From experience I can say that TOPS knew where every wagon number was located (or which train it was consisted t0), the actual wagon was a different matter. The problem was the human element. It was not unknown for a driver to be told his train was all ready in 'x' road and then take the wrong one. I have often found the wrong wagon in train when checking consists against reality.
Pat