Another possible GWS newbuild 4-2-2 Dean Single

Any bits from 44901 that could be used, now the boiler has been sold?

 

'Cut and shut' a pair of driving wheels?

 

Let's hope that serves as a catalyst to a few more lines to think about restoring lighter (wooden bodied) rolling stock!

Tom

 

No need. Since the County won't really be a County due to compromises surrounding the use of an 8F firebox, I'm sure the Dean Singe could still be made to run with a pair of 6' drivers off a Black 5.

 

I think you all know that beyond a very few ancillaries, that are often moved between locos both now and then, a Dean Single would not be utilising parts from any "genuine" locomotive.

So perhaps the comments on "cut and shuts" could be put into their proper threads rather than bandied about with regard to this suggestion.

 

Never a taper boiler, didn't fit between the wheels...
There were rather more variations, which also involved cabs.
As built they had narrow cabs, inside the springs, and raised round top fireboxes on Class M boilers, 11'6 barrel, 4'3 diameter, 6'4 firebox
Belpaire boxes seem to have always had wide cabs outside the springs, but there were three main varieties,
Class M boilers, without domes
Std 2 boilers, untapered, no dome, 11' barrel, 4'5 diameter, 7' firebox and pitched rather higher to clear the wheels.
Class M boilers, with domes,

With the domeless std 2 boilers they had much shorter chimneys and really looked very different. I find it them rather good looking like that too. In a dreamworld in which money is no problem it would be rather fun to have both a round box and a Standard 2 boiler and be able to swap them over so as to do alternate boiler tickets with a different boiler.


On potential performance - well, Duke of Connaught took Truro's train from Bristol to Paddington at a start to stop average of 70mph... You wouldn't want to go hill climbing in the north, but on Brunel's billard table... I wonder whether a 7'8 single might be allowed a little more than 75mph?

 

Ah, my mistake. At a glance one would put it down as a taper boiler simply through familiarity with GWR 20th century practice, but I remember that various engines had large parallel boilers.

I would imagine them going for the as built style.

 

Were any of the boilers used on the singles common to the Dean goods?

 

Never acording to my sources on the 7'8 4-2-2s. The Dean Goods (P Class) boiler was a lot shorter and a bit fatter. Boiler length and the resulting weight on the leading wheels was of course why they ended up as 4-2-2s, the first batch having been built as very much ugly duckling 2-2-2s.
I think the P class boiler may have been used on some of the smaller wheeled 2-2-2s at some stage in their lives: the similar Std (Armstrong) Goods boilers certainly were. In general though there was one set of boilers for 6wheel locos, a set for eight wheel and a set for 10 wheelers. So 0-6-0s and 2-2-2s used the same boilers (O, P, Std 10), as did 4-2-2s, 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s (Std 2 and Std 4) and 4-6-0s and 2-8-0s (Std 1, Std 7 etc).

 

Resurrecting this thread - did anything ever become of the Dean Single proposal?

 

ISTR the chap (I think he was known as 'Taff') who was doing the design work died several years ago. Didn't the GWS recently say that they weren't planning any more new builds for the foreseeable future?
Ray.

 

That would be a sensible policy - overhaul some of the engines they have and hire them out.

 

No, paint the Spinner green and give it a copper cap and bonnet. Sorted

 

Ah, thanks very much - RIP Taff, and too bad.

 

Maybe if any had survived long enough in service, they might have received a Stanier boiler?!?!!!
I believe in fact in the early Stanier days there were proposals to fit Stanier boilers (and cylinders, and other improvements) to some of the more numerous larger, newer pre-grouping locos which needed a bit more oompf. Certainly this was considered for the L&Y Dreadnaughts, possibly also e.g. the larger/newer ex-Highland 4-6-0s, ex-LNWR, etc.
However the ex-LNWR locos were already very tired and the frames were thought not to be able to take the extra power.
Meanwhile it was calculated it would be cheaper to simply replace the Dreadnaughts, Clans, Rivers, etc. with standard LMS locos.
Similarly a proposal for a Class 4 LMS standard loco never happened because it was calculated to be more economical to build more Class 5s and make the necessary civil engineering improvements (and to thrash older locos in the meantime: e.g. the Clans etc. on the Oban line).
The GWR seems to have had some similar conclusions, but the economics on the Southern and LNER seem to have been different.


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It should not be overlooked that there was also a substantial "scrap and build" policy on the Southern. The difference was that most of the "new build" was EMU motor coaches. Maunsell scrapped a large number of the older passenger engines, for example the ex-SER Q/Q1 suburban tanks, all gone by 1930:

http://www.semgonline.com/steam/SER_Q_Q1.html

A misleading impression is sometimes given by the handful of ancient engines that escaped culls and survived on niche duties. Many enthusiasts know that 3 Beattie well-tanks survived into the 1960s, but few know that another 82 of the same class had been scrapped by 1900.

 

Some good points well made!

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You have made some very important points, but at least as far as the Southern is concerned, we must be grateful for those older locos which DID survive, Preservation would be a lot poorer without the two surviving Beattie Well Tanks and other locos which lasted many years after their classmates started being withdrawn - the Adams Radial Tank, Terriers (first withdrawal as far back as 1898) or O2s (non-IOW examples had all gone some years earlier) and the T3.

We can also be thankful that if some classes like the SER Q & Q1 suburban tanks were deemed surplus to requirements back in SR days (Along with some less than successful designs such as the LB&SCR B2xs or the L&SWR C8s) other classes carried on more or less intact into BR days, thus resulting in one or more examples surviving into preservation - M7s, T9, E4, C, H, P for example

 

Were the B2x class 'unsuccessful' .... or merely a smaller mainline design doomed by events? My understanding is that although the underboilered original design could justify that term, the rebuilds went pretty quickly (June 1929 to April 1933) ahead of impending electrification, with the downturn in taffic, post 1929 financial crash doubtless accelerating the process.

 

You may be correct. The B2xs don't get a good press in most of the books I have read but it may have been redundancy rather than poor performace which saw them off. After all, a lot of Adams 4-4-0s went at the same time and these were good machines, just rather old.

Mind you, the B4xs lasted much longer - into the 1950s - and yet some drivers regarded them as absolutely awful. No. 2070 was a particularly bad steamer, yet in its unrebuilt form as no. 70 Holyrood, it broke the record for London to Brighton by steam, hitting 90mph and completing the journey in a time which has never been beaten.