New builds - how many will ever really work?

Ah ok! It is hard to tell the difference in text speak right enough!

 

If you have the time and the inclination, go back through the many hundreds of topics and thousands of posts on this forum and you will find that the livery that a loco will carry is the prime subject for discussion, whether it is a new build or not. It also seems to be the norm for any new build project to order the name and number plates as soon as the first pennies roll in.

 

Livery and plates should be the last components to go on a locomotive, be it new, restored or overhauled !!

 

I thought it was the regulator, fitted by the youngest member of the team?

 

Spoken by a person who is a member of a group that has a fully painted cab complete with cabside numberplates.

 

A fair comment S.A.C. Martin although I would say that some of the most strident objections to antics of a particular individual were from individuals heavily involved in new build projects. Their objections seemed to centre on the potential damage it does to their own project's reputation. That being said, positive encouragement and constructive criticism should be the order of the day, and should someone be clearly trolling or intentionally being a nuisance then perhaps either ignoring them or reporting them should be the procedure carried out by all. I of course hope that the individual in question and who is at the centre of this discussion maintains their passion for railways and is able to channel it into a positive contribution somewhere, either by becoming involved in a restoration project and perhaps apprenticing himself to learn the needed skills which might prove beneficial should he decide to participate in a new-build project someday.

Feedback should be always constructive and equally if person posting here about an intended project irrespective of its seriousness must be open to constructive feedback. To be fair, the lack of openness demonstrated by the individual in question certainly contributed to the thread's rapid downhill spiral.

As to LYD I hope to see her in steam one day. The L&B was a fascinating little railway in a picturesque part of the country.

 

I suspect there are two different factors affecting the order you do things, one being the engineering logic and the other being publicity/public relations. From the engineering POV shouldn't the first few years of a new build project be spent filling a storage system in a shed or container with hundreds if not thousands of carefully machined and then inhibited and stored components, quite possibly after having started with recreating various items of tooling? Once you have the components together then isn't it simply simply a case of setting out the frames and other big stuff and erecting the locomotive (and doing all the custom made fiddly bits of course). However I rather suspect that showing off photos of racks of bins filled with shapeless wrapped brown lumps may not be the best way of improving the project's income stream or keeping up the enthusiasm of your volunteers: its so good to *see* stuff.

 

Fully painted? It is not its final coat, it will be painted again once the loco is complete.

The cab was completed as a publicity tool for Crewe Works open day in 2005(?) and was used as such up until 2010 when it was fitted to the frames. The numberplates were completed after a donation from someone was made specifically for them, the person concerned wanted to see them made and put their money where their mouth is.

 

I wonder if we're moving past the days of new "groups" forming to build locomotives so much as financing the building of one. There's obviously a lot of engineering talent out there, and in particular a lot of locomotive works touting for business.

If you could hire in a group who have previously built a new locomotive before, to act as the compliance officers necessary for building to mainline standard, for example, you could in theory have locomotives built up from components by a lot of different companies in the railway world as long as they all met the criteria put down in the compliance.

Further, if, for instance, we accept that the time to build a new locomotive may be anything from 10-20 years (and aim at that accordingly) what is to stop a group of youngsters approaching a project with the attitude "we don't have the necessary skills, but we can hire people who do" and raising the money themselves over X period of time towards a completed locomotive at the end of it?

This does seem to be what is happening with the G5 project, though I will readily admit my knowledge of the project and its inner workings are limited, if not nonexistent, and I say this based only on that I am observing of the G5 through its website and mentions in the railway press. I apologise in advance if the above is not a fair description of the way the G5 group operates.

 

I think S.A.C. Martin that you make a valid point, and furthermore I think that there is no shame in raising money for a newbuild constructed by one or more established pre-existing firms and groups rather than raising and operating a design and engineering team for oneself. After all, expertise is finite.

There is already a group that is not unlike this apart from your G5 example - the 762 Lyn project. I believe that a fair proportion (I am not quite sure how much) of the design, manufacture and assembly of their loco is to be done by outside parties.

 

Regarding the last two posts the patriot project has been running like this since the begining I undersatnd much volunteer design work goes on behind the scenes but the engineering is contrated out to Llangollen Railway Boro Foundry South Devon Railway Tysley etc and many other smaller firms.
There sales and promotion is strong and consistant with good progress being made in a short time period ....operating like this has not let them get bogged down in finding a railway to be based at, waiting for the right people to come along and build it and best of all not get stuck in some railways politics and other peoples egos
Staying at arms length and forming nothing but a customer contractor relationship makes a lot of sense

 

Even a project ostensibly being "built" at one railway will likely have parts made in a huge variety of manufacturers and other lines.

For example, to take the Brighton Atlantic. The work is obviously based at the Bluebell, but the wheels were pressed onto their axles by Ian Riley; the tyres were turned at the SDR; the frames were cut by Corus; many of the castings have been made by a foundry in I believe Somerset (from patterns made in house); and numerous other small engineering firms have made parts as diverse as springs, a four-start screw thread for the reverse; the water-cut motion;; the parts for the cylinders etc etc.

Ultimately, even the best equipped line won't have facilities for every engineering process needed and it makes sense for these to be contracted out (for example, I believe the SDR pretty much do all the wheel turning for most heritage groups). There is also a cost-benefit analysis to be done for producing parts which you could make in house (probably slowly, using traditional methods) but which could maybe be made faster externally using modern methods: this is particularly beneficial for making large numbers of identical bits. Similarly it may be beneficial to have the main forms made externally, and do the detailed machining and finishing in house.

I think such outsourcing is likely to be the future of such projects. Even if you outsourced everything, there is still a huge amount of work to do in producing drawings, sourcing suitable suppliers and in the overall project management to ensure you have access to the right bits at the right time.

Tom

 

Meh! Cheers, Martin

Although if one engages FULL pedant mode it's actually the nut that holds the regulator handle on, isn't it?

Best,
Mark

 

It's interesting that we're now acknowledging - and to some extent, with the examples on offer, validating "customer-contractor" relationships.

I do think if railway preservation thought outside the box a little bit more, the opportunities for new builds using the measurements of existing locomotives might offer some relief for new build and restoration groups. For example, a new build Clan will require parts which are shared by the 7MT and 8MT standard classes - new patterns might benefit all four locomotives (70000, 700013, 71000, 72010). Arguably a new build P2 will produce a lot of the components necessary for a Thompson Pacific of A2/2 or A2/3 form.

One thing which has amused me is the thought that measuring up the D11 and the D49 survivors could produce patterns for a Thompson D Class, The Morpeth, but I doubt there would be many if anyone wanting to donate to that idea! The point being, mainly that a lot of the new builds seem to be of locomotives for which there is little surviving or no similar surviving locomotives in place. There's even the train of thought which suggests pooling resources for standard components to fit a variety of classes - we've mentioned the plethora of similar pre-grouping 4-4-0s before - brings a uniformed and helpful solution to the problem of building.

Ultimately I think new builds - or even conversions ala the Standard 2MT at the Bluebell, may be the order of the day in years to come, along with the obvious and necessary restorations of unique crowd pullers (such as the Holden B12 - stunning machine). Rather, becoming the norm as well as sitting alongside the current perceived norm.

 

The problem I will always have with this argument is why would you build a new engine when an existing engine can be repaired anyway using the same process to build new parts but without the need to construct an entirely new locomotive in one go.

 

It's a fair question Neil. My answer would be - to offer something different that no one living has seen before, or to complement the rolling stock/locomotive stock of a railway. A new build GCR 4-4-0 (which has been mooted, I believe) to pull the under restoration genuine GCR coaches makes some commercial sense - "new", and "old" in terms of presenting an historically accurate, period piece.

But I don't disagree with the cut of your jibe, if the thought process above in terms of spectacle is not necessary.

 

On the subject of new builds of existing locos I'm a bit surprised no-one has mooted a replica of Lion, I don't see her being restored any time soon.

 

I think at the end of the day people like variety. From personally being on a sales stand and talking to Joe public so many people say I would really like to see a patriot again. So I suppose if enough people want to see one and Will pay for it then it Will be done.