The most crappiest or pathetic locos in this country.

Having had a closer look at the photo there are a number of strange things apart from its looks. Coil springs? An inside framed bogie on an outside framer? Bogie coils springs?

What a mess!

Foxy

 

Whilst accredited to Dean, it seems as though a young GJ Churchward had much more to do with this design than his boss did. One theory is that it gave Churchward the chance to experiment without actually having to put his name to it.

 

Well, the Belpaire firebox is certainly one of Churchward's specialities but he never advanced the extended combustion chamber in his later locos like this one! The saddle design of sandbox is and American and Continental trend, again, GJC had travelled to America and Europe to study their innovations so you could probably lay that at his door too - without sand towers however the poor footplate crew would have had to lug pots of the stuff to the boiler top to pour it in, hence all the extra footsteps up the smokebox; not a clever piece of design!

Foxy

 

Wasn't the GWR 4-6-0 Prototype 4-6-0 Dean's No.36, which looked like a stretched Duke? That monster looks like the 4-6-0 Kruger to me. The sandbox I believe was to give the loco enough pull in the Valleys before it hit the mainline to London.

 

What, by weight alone! :tongue: Usually the saddle type sand boxes have multiple feed pipes so the two coming off this thing look pretty paltry!

Foxy

 

The amount of sand capable of being carried would be significantly greater, I believe.

 

Ironically that's one feature he probably should have resurrected: it seems likely to me that a combustion chamber and shorter tubes was what was required to make the Great Bear boiler produce steam.

The other strange thing about the Krugers is that several of the boilers were reused in Swindon works where they carried on, apparently satisfactorily, for about another 50 years...

 

This is true. Swindon decided they were far too young to be scrapped, so put them to work providing steam for the works which they did 'till virtually the end of steam.

 

The crazeyiest thing about this loco is it was built for an electrification scheme that didn't happen for another 70 years, but it survived long enough for the Woodhead route (right voltage etc) to be fully electrified, yet it was never used or even tried on it on it. Why? With the shortage of special metals during the war the LNER must have thought it pretty important not to scrap it, and BR hung on to it for a good few years and then when it could finaly do something usefull, it was scrapped!

 

That says more about your taste than the loco! :lol:

 

the LMS garrett

or

Webb Compounds

 

Or Garratt even.

 

Spelling is not the be all and end all, unless perhaps you get Bullied about it.

 

The Garratts did the job they were designed to do. They were mechanically weak, particularly around the axleboxes, and had a host of other problems, including short lap, short travel valves. They could have and should have been so much better, but could be described as 'adequate', if only just.

The Webb compounds came in three types: the truely awful, the not too bad and some that were quite good. Their main problem - at least, the quite good ones' problem - was that they were simply too small when tare weight rose dramatically around the turn of the century and thay had insufficient power to work the traffic. The LNWR and Webb compounds were not alone in this; many other railways found that their locos were similarly underpowered. Francis Webb though had made a few enemies in his time as King of Crewe: the new General Manager, Frederick Harrison, who arrived at Crewe works to tell Webb that he - Harrison - was the boss, but left very quickly, never to return while Webb was in power; and George Whale, the Running Superintendent who had to find enough engines to double head the suddenly much heavier trains. Once Webb retired on medical grounds, these two did a very effective hatchet job on old Frankie, and generations of writers have continued the assassination. Not everyone agrees. Have a look at 'F. W. Webb, in the right place at the right time' by J. E. Chacksfield, The Oakwood Press 2007, ISBN 978 0 85361 657 3 for a more balanced view.

There were a few truely awful Webb compounds and the Bill Baileys are instantly thought of; they even looked wrong. but some of the four-cylinder compounds were on a par with what other railways were building at the same time.

 

But since there is also a steam loco type, albeit road, by the name of Garrett, it helps to get the right one. And it's the designer's name so a common courtesy to get it correct.

 

Many of the first generation diesel classes dreamed up in the 1955 Modernisation Plan

 

I do remember reading an article, maybe in a Trains annual, by an old LNWR driver who reckoned the Bill Baileys were all right. The second batch were actually built by Whale who could have cancelled them if they were that bad.

I think the thing that sunk the Webb Compounds was the uncoupled drivers - this must have made the situation when the train weights suddenly increased very difficult indeed. Also, I seem to recall that that effect of the increase in train weights was more sudden on the LNWR due to them being stuck with 6 wheel stock longer than other lines because of some limitation at Woverton. It's quite right that it affected other lines/locos too - even wholly successful designs like the Stirling singles (and probably would have got old Patrick sacked if he had had as bad a relationship with his management as Mr Webb).

The freight and later passenger (4cyl) ones seem generally to have been reasonable - one lasted until 1928 I think. Its probably impossible at this distance to get at the truth through the official and semi-official propoganda put out at the time - all of which was tied up with power politics both within the LNWR and with Crewe town.

 

The LMS garatts surely were a missed opportunity - the fact that the LMS interfered in the design led tham to be much less effective than they could have been and meant that a blight hung over any suggestion to use Garratts in the future - pity, as the express ones for the Highland would have been pretty impressive!

 

I have it! The Pickersgill 3cyl Caledonian express locos. Even less use than the first Drummond 4-6-0's or the Horwich Baltic tanks. Having said which, here's another idea - least successful wheel arrangement (or unluckiest!) - for which Baltic tanks would be a prime contender.

 

I believe the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest experimented with a Webb 2-2-2-0 compound, I wonder what they thought of it.

Foxy