GWR four-cylinder arrangement?

So, in other words, when the economies of scale shifted from superb bespoke one-offs to less brilliant but highly commoditised one-offs

 

Y6s, As and Js bespoke one-offs? The N&W had hundreds of Class Y!

A 44
J 14
Y1 5
Y2 31
Y3 80
Y4 10
Y5 20
Y6 81

All the class Ys, except the Y1s and Y2s, lasted until the late fifties.

 

Yes, one-offs. In comparison to what was coming out of GE and GM, the N&W steam types were relatively few in number, and lacked the economies of scale that the diesels provided.

Taking your list of Y6, A and J classes, that was a total of 138 locomotives in the three classes, rising to 218 if you include all flavours of Y. That compares against nearly 4000 F7s, and a similar number of GP9s.

I'm with @Jamessquared - railways are economic enterprises, and traction choices are about the economic ability of that enterprise to do the work being asked of it. To me, the superiority of the diesels is not on a Top Trumps set of criteria, but the fact that the railroads could justify replacing steam so quickly and brutally - efficiencies that went much deeper than those criteria allow. The economist in me notes the advantage of low cost coal, but that saving also had a cost in what could not be sold to the wider market.

I don't dispute that these were phenomenal machines - just the contention that their era could have lasted much longer. Just as rail replaced the stagecoach and canal, their day was done not though their fault but because the world had changed.

 

AFAIK the N&W was unusual amongst US Railroads in building its own loco's.

As in the UK it wasnt just the cost of buying and running loco's it was the finance deals that the diesel builders could offer that had an influence

 

The N&W had 191 Ys until 1957; you have a strange definition of one-offs. Where did I state that railways weren't economic enterprises? My only gripe is that the work of Chapelon is constantly misrepresented by those who should know better.

 

Some early Ys were built by Alco and Baldwin.

 

I’ve read about those trials and for a steam enthusiast it’s a great result but elsewhere the 1500hp diesel had already won.

 

It was a design unique to the N&W, with a correspondingly limited supply chain. The diesels from GM, EMD and Alco were mass produced and widely available - as were their parts.

You may also want to check your numbers more carefully - I note that you moved from classes Y6 (81 built), A (43 built) and J (14 built) to "Ys" (where Wiki lists 81 Y6 and 80 Y3).

 

Another thing was crew costs. To get a heavy coal drag over Blue Ridge would involve a Y piloting an A and a Y banking. That’s three crews. Lash up a load of diesels and you only need one crew. The N&W articulated machines were superb and proved they could match or exceed the diesels of the day but even if spares etc would have remained available, they would have still succumbed to diesels eventually, especially when the latter became available in ever more powerful versions.

 

The numbers I gave above came from Wikipedia. Classes Y3 and upwards were still in use until at least 1957.

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

 

I think you will find that the As were rarely, if ever, used on coal drags. They were designed for fast freight and passenger work. They were less suited to coal dragging than the Ys.

 

Thanks - I was going by the class by class pages, which excluded some of the varieties of Y.

 

It's an interesting report on the Class 85, I'm trying to figure out if the effect would make it better or worse than steam, at starting a train under adverse conditions!
There is also the effect that there would be weight transfer from the leading axles to those further back. Having said that I remember reading that the 1500V DC EM1's on the Woodhead line had an arrangement where the bogies were linked together to reduce weight transfer. I can't remember the details but it's possible that all electrics may have been designed that way.

 

I remember the day, actually night, very well; I had long left the railway by then but was enjoying a ride from Warrington to Kingmoor and return courtesy of a friend, an Arpley man at that time. It was intriguing how the amps to that traction motor rose and fell instantly as the sanders were operated and then released. It was also a good indication of how effective the sanders were.

 

All this Americana is very interesting, but all we seem to have established is that by the 1950s. the only places where high-powered coal fired locomotives were still viable was where coal was dirt cheap - which was rather my original point!

Tom

 

You best listen to O Winston Link’s sound recordings then.

 

I have to ask Mr Hermod, how familiar are you with Britain and it's geography?
At times you have stated that any locomotive with driving wheels greater than 5' is an error, and that designing locomotives to operate at more than 75mph is similarly pointless.
KingsX to Waverly is 404 miles. Non-stop on some trains. KX to Aberbeen is 525 miles.
Euston to Glasgow is 401 miles, with a total climb of 3400 feet.
Our country is 95,000 sq.miles
Our longest passenger route is Aberdeen-Penzance, 774 miles
Prior to 1948, every rail route had a rival, so all of our passenger services had to be competitive.

In contrast, Denmark is in total, 16,000 square miles. and its highest point is 500ft above sea level.
My son walks every day from our house at 520 feet, down to 60' then up again to school at 330' . In 2 miles.
From Copenhagen, going west, the land stretches 60 miles. Thats it. Longest run from Copenhagen is the same as Paddington to Swindon.
Padborg to Fredrikshavn is a scant 200 miles- same as Paddington to Swansea.

Our railways might have been better if they mad been planned by a more tidy minded government who prevented route-duplication Or if our government wanted to dissuade commoners from travelling so limited train speed to 50mph. But that isn't what happened here, and in consequence, our engineers built beautiful, fast passenger locomotives that served us pretty well.
Gresley's A4's managed KX-Edinburgh in 6 hours for 400 miles in 1937. Today that Fredrikshavn-Padborg train takes the same 6 hours for half the miles.
So why do you want to tear our locomotives apart?

 

It is an old -engineer pass-time to see if more can be had for less.
Danish constructed diesel Lyntog from 1935 could have done 400miles in 6 hours non stop.
BR 9f survived sprints at 90 mph.
A modified WD 2-10-0 (two cylinder compound 4-8-0 with balancing ) can do 400 miles in 6 hours and use less coal than a streamlined A4.

 

I'd like to see the evidence! Even with balancing, which would not eliminate all the out of balance stresses anyway (you can't balance to 100% of the reciprocating masses), and which becomes ever more problematic as speed rises, you still have inertia forces to contend with as with any other reciprocating machinery, such as the breakdown of the oil film at the end of each stroke.

You seem to be obsessed with obtaining the minimum fuel consumption linked with the maximum power output to the exclusion of all other factors. The railways didn't see it that way: their job was to move goods and passengers from A to B as efficiently as possible. Fuel consumption was a part of that efficiency quest but by no means all of it. In the same way, the power output had to be sufficient to meet the loads and timetable with a bit to spare; more than that was wasted. You might say that raising the power output allows a faster train and a better timetable, but it then requires that all other trains have their speeds increased too to make way for the faster running. This was a fundamental flaw with the LNER 'Coronation', the LMS 'Coronation Scot' and the GWR 'Cheltenham Flyer': moving the slower traffic ahead of them out of the way. Possible with a coal train but passengers on other expresses tend to object to being shunted into a siding to allow the prestige train to overtake them.

Comparison with other countries, France and America, don't work as their conditions were different from each other and both were different to those applying in Britain. Very generally, France had high fuel prices but low labour charges; America had low fuel prices but high labour rates. Britain was somewhere in between. But reducing the coal (or oil) consumption of American engines was rather a waste of time but increasing the maintenance and overhaul requirements would be expensive. In France, extra maintenance was less of a problem but lowering the coal consumption paid dividends - literally!

Speculation as to the 6,000 i.h.p. engine is fine but never did (in Britain anyway) and never would happen because it simply wasn't needed, and would have brought too many other problems if tried. Drawing up hypothetical designs is fine as a personal hobby and if you enjoy it, that's all that matters. But don't expect others to join in with what they can clearly see as a time wasting exercise.

 

It is my sincere opinion that a two cylinder compound 4-6-0 somewhat like a B16/4 could have pulled uttely superfluous upper class citizens non stop from one end of England to the other like it was done by three and four cylinder simples with 6feet nine drivers.
I asked for a GA of a King to see some structural details and was sent a very good scan.
Thank You.
The rest of the thread has been the pleasant noise your hear from old fools defending former support to lost cases,be it football,motorbikes ,cars or steam locomotives.
No harm done and has not caused divorces,suizides,child abuse or worse.
But there has not been counterarguments I accept as valid up til here.