New builds - how many will ever really work?

Really? When was that then? Even the "Modified Halls" preceeded the County class, so I don't think the County was a base for anything - other than perhaps one of the rumoured Hawksworth pacific designs, and even there the one based on a King is the more credible.

 

Sorry, I meant the saint class , looks like i got my history wrong

 

The design of the county seems a bit odd..

My take on it,
The design was an War Austerity thing.. whilst GWR was having its designs regulated by the government due to the war.. they came up with a passenger version of an 8F as a potential post war new Castle replacement as it could be built using somewhat GWR / WD standard parts...

After all the war wasn't over and 8F's were still being built, to have a standardised production line of something potentially exportable would make sense..

It's beginning looked like it didn't meet its potential, whilst there was urgent need of new passenger locomotives... and the usual british "need it yesterday" midway into the County's construction.. and after the end of government imposition...new Castles started to be built as a tried and tested option... and so remained an odd ball with the class wrapped up at 30 and then when the peak died down by the mid50's.. the R & D team took another look at it and added the double chimneys to all.

Had the war gone on another few years the County may have been a much larger class, but in reality was it not just a slightly improved Black 5 ?

Pacific.. I'm a none believer.

 

The County boiler differed in many respects from the 8F design, not least because of the increase in pressure. The washout plugs at the top of the firebox sides were in different places - something which I doubt will be replicated in the "new build" version. So it wasn't an 8F or WD "standard part" - Swindon just used the opportunity of using the existing 8F flanging blocks to make the firebox. Everything else was pure GWR, using similar features to the recently introduced Modified Halls.

I doubt you will find any LMS follower (or sensible GW one for that matter) who would agree that the County was a slight improvement on the Black 5! More like an upgraded Modified Hall. It's been suggested that the County was a "test bed" for future designs. The higher boiler pressure (subsequently reduced) certainly was, but the County turned out to be a bit of a "dead end". They did useful work on the Devon banks, but otherwise were undistinguished.
I too am sceptical about a new pacific ever being made. The GWR was actively looking at gas turbine traction as the way forward at this time, and existing steam designs were more than adequate for the traffic. A pacific would have been in interesting though - new build anyone? :-0))

 

I must admit to not being much of an expert on things Swindonian (wrong side of Wiltshire for me...) but I always assumed that, had the GWR produced a new pacific design, it would not have been too different from a Stanier Princess Royal class. That looks pretty standard Swindon to me, but with a few more sensible modifications such as outside valve gear etc. Others more knowledgeable than me may have a more expert view.

Tom

 

Depends on your definition of improvement of course: it was certainly appreciably more powerful, but had they got it right it really should have rated with a Britannia.
The obvious way to upgrade a Hall would have been to put a Castle boiler on, but that would have made for a much longer Loco. The Std 15 was quite a stumpy boiler - shorter even than the Std 1.

 

So is it that 6MT just wasn't what the network required...

Most regions had 5MT and classes 7 or 8 for both passenger and freight.
There overall wasn't many 6MT classes, Even the Clans didn't live up to expectation ?

 

When you look back at the motive power history of our railways it really makes you wonder. I guess the plethora of classes pre 1948 can be justified by the need to replace obsolete designs, though of course many old designs staggered on on secondary duties. But as for the BR Stds, how on earth did they justify so many different classes? I really can't see the need for the Class 3's, the 4MT 4-6-0 duty could be covered by 5MTs and the case for the Clans escapes me too. I reckon you could easily cover all duties with the 2MT/2MTT, 4MT/4MTT, 5MT, Brit & 9F. And then they repeated the whole nonsense again with the diesels. Or am I wrong?

 

You have to bear in mind that when the 3MT, 4MT and 6MT types were designed, many routes had weight restrictions that were subsequently lifted. The 'Clans' were originally intended for the Highland line. The fact that they were deployed instead on the Glasgow-Manchester run, on duties that really warranted a class 7 loco, led to their reputation for not being up to the job. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

What kind if work in the 1960's needed something bigger than a hall, b1, schools, or black 5... But was uneconomic for a castle, a1, Scot, or WC ?

The only successful 6mt I can see is the V2 2-6-2's..

 

Thinking of Scotland I guess there were two lines where a lot of double-heading went on that a slightly bigger engine could have eliminated without something the size of a Princess/Princess Coronation or Britannia. The West Highlands had extensive double-heading on reasonably short trains - 8/9 coaches. I believe a Black 5 had a limit of 225 tons on the WHL which isn't very much but perhaps a slightly bigger engine would have meant that two engines wouldn't be needed. I don't believe pacifics would have ever been used on the WHL though because of the curvature of the track and weight restrictions in many places.

The Highland Mainline did have a lot of double-heading or piloting at some places. Say a bigger engine of Class 6 power might have meant dropping piloting up Drumochter and Slochd for everything except the heaviest trains although one would imagine the sleeper services (after steam they went to 3 Sulzer Type 2s to work the service regularly!) would have required some assistance.

Years ago I read a very well written article about the numerous types of GWR 2 cylinder 4-6-0s and how if a few bridges had been strengthened and other civil engineering improvements made then it wouldn't have been necessary to produce so many different types of locomotives to meet traffic requirements. Perhaps a similar case could have been made on certain mainline and secondary routes so that bigger engines such at Britannias could have run up to Inverness instead of two Black 5s.

 

I think you're quite right. But even more, why on earth, for instance, did they bother to build a Class 2 262T at all? The GW, for instance, did exactly the same work with 6 wheel engines that were about two thirds of the weight and probably approaching two thirds of the cost to build. Incidentally am I right in thinking that the LNER (and Southern of course) didn't really build any light passenger tank engines? With hindsight you would think that what BR should have done instead of the Class 2s was build AEC engined railcars... I wonder how many branch lines would have stayed profitable if they'd run their traffic with a clean and nippy pair of 36 ton railcars instead of 64 tons of Mk1 coaches and 63 tons of 2MT and the accompanying soot and grime, which, much as we love it now, doesn't go that well with clean white shirts on the way to the office?

 

Aren't many BR standards modified exising designs? The 73000, 75000, 76000, 78000, 80000 and 84000 pure LMS?

Didn't the Southern at one point have more LMS 41xxx and 42xxx tanks that BR versions?

 

Don't know about the LNER. But on the SR in the 1920s and 1930s, nearly all the available capital was going on electrification, so there was severely limited capital available for new steam engines. In those circumstances, small engines were eked out way beyond their years, rather than building new small passenger engines. Thus, while there was no new southern light passenger tank, there were plenty of SECR H classes, LBSCR radial tanks, LSWR M7s etc that carried on working hard well into what - in human terms - would be retirement age. So there was still a requirement for light passenger tank engines; it's just the SR chose to fill it by repairs to old engines rather than building new ones. Eventually, that policy became untenable: the result was the Leader (which failed) and large numbers of LMS / BR Standard 2-6-2s and 2-6-4s flooding the southern region.

Of course, the benefit to today's preservationists is that relatively large numbers of small victorian engines, especially tank engines, survived on the SR into preservation in a way their equivalents on the other lines didn't. Had, for example, the GWR followed the same policy as the SR, there would probably be a preserved 517 class or two sitting at Didcot, but the 14xx would never have been built. Whereas the Southern devotee can see no fewer than 10 LBSC Terriers, an E tank, an E4 0-6-2 (LBSC); two M7s; an O2; an 0415 radial tank; two 0298 well tanks (LSWR); an H tank; four P tanks (SECR) all preserved and all except the SECR ones 19th century.

It's a good point, though if you are still in the freight business you need a loco to haul that. Hence the preponderance of mixed traffic branch locos. If you made a concerted decision to abandon freight, then you could convert the branch lines to DMUs and remove a lot of point work and signalling as well, so you'd have cheaper infrastructure as well as cheaper and cleaner locos. But hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Tom

 

The plethora of different sizes were in large part down to civil engineering restrictions and lack of cooperation between CME and Civils. Stanier tackled some of them on the LMS which is why his locos didn't have high cylinders like the Crabs. There really is not enough difference in cost of running a Clan vs a Britannia to be worth building the two types for economy, you would only do it if you needed 6P power somewhere a Britannia couldn't go.

The LNER built lots of small passenger tanks but they were all 0-6-2's for suburban work, which free'd up older suburban types for rural branches. And the LNER was relatively poor, so relied on cascading locos for all sorts of secondary traffic.

Why a 2MT 2-6-2? Kinder on track, easier to maintain, better riding than an 0-6-0. An 0-6-0 with outside cylinders is an unwieldy animal. Cost of building an engine outweighed by ease of maintenance.

Cost and civil engineering together are highly important influences on loco design and tend to get forgotten by people asking 'why didn't he build so-and-so'. Gresley wouldn't have built the J39's through choice - he wanted something more like the later K1 but it was vetoed on cost grounds.

 

Found this website. I never realised there were so many new builds.

New Build Steam | New standard gauge steam locomotives in the UK

 

The ultimate new build. Have fun!
Our Gang - The Sun Down Limited (1924)


keith .

 

Soooooooooooo politically incorrect! I love it!

Foxy