Is a real Bulldog possible ?

Hear hear! 9017 is beautiful as she is. Then again so is 9351...

 

But how many are operational ?, even those for who it's a question of when rather than if, it shows it's usually a very long process, I'd just like to see a few running before we add to the number of part built kits round the country.

 

Are most not narrow/broad gauge or relatively small early replica's like Rocket ?, I take your point, but a Clan or 47XX is somewhat bigger than Lyd.

 

they must be just as complex to build, only smaller

 

Maybe we could find enough 8F parts and build a genuine Doncaster 8F ?

 

Probably a minority view, but as someone with an interest in Cambrian railways, 9017 is more interesting to me in her current form as a loco created to serve the rickety rails of the former Cambrian routes than as its predecessors in general GWR service! Which just goes to prove that if you get enough rail enthusiasts together you can probably find an case for any course of action.

 

one of the preserved PRAIREEs has a boiler off a GWR BIRD class double framed loco! you could 'pinch' that and build a replica of SEAGULL or SKYLARK - last of the class!

 

well then in that case, City of Truro had a brand new boiler fitted in the late 50s when she came out of the Museum. We could fit THAT one to the Prairie, make it more genuine.

9017s rerebuilding wouldn't be a case of losing a loco, we would be gaining another. Never going to happen because the last Bulldog went out of service before the period remembered by most living active enthusiasts, and in any case, were it built, SOMEONE would want it in BR black.

 

there is a serious point to be made here even though rebuilding 3217 will never happen

The GWR existed for well over 100 years. Almost all the preserved locos (and ALL the active ones) come from the last 40 years of that existence. It would be nice for a replica to address that imbalance, a Dean Single perhaps?
(OK I know there was an awful lot of Broad Gauge involved in that 100 years, but there is a whole GWR standard gauge era that could be demonstrated better for posterity



Or (I didn't photoshop this )

 

I thought the GWS already had a project in the pipeline for a Dean Single?

Tom

 

Hope so.

 

Only if they can pinch the wheels of the Caledonian Single.

 

not big enough

 

Well the County is going to have a lower pressure boiler with 8F bits so I don't suppose a few inches of the driving wheels will bother them too much.

 

I can just about see the point that (apologies to GWR nerds that will know the exact minutiae of difference between the classes), if a suitable boiler was available, that you could endlessly shuffle the same underframe between "Dukedog" and "Bulldog" forms provided you didn't want to see both simultaneously; and while running as a Bulldog, the Dukedog wouldn't exactly be lost.

I suspect the hope of "new" money might be a chimera though. At least in as much as I have a feel for the wider BRPS membership, I haven't noticed it is a seething hotbed of GWR afficionadoes all desperately keen to see some long-lost GWR class recreated. And equally, it is hard to imagine that the wider diaspora of GWR fans would be sufficiently enthused to pay the money for the recreation, if the end result was that the loco nonetheless remained predominantly based in Sussex, a long way from the GWR heartlands of Wales, the West Country and West Midlands! Ask anyone involved in the fundraising side for locomotives, and they will tell you it is a constant uphill struggle. So this just has the feeling too me of not being special enough: the wrong project in the wrong place. As others have said, a Bulldog is simply not different enough from City of Truro to have the kind of mass appeal that would generate new funding.

Some locos are just gone, destined never to be seen again, even if a helpful leg-up of some parts remains. Be thankful for what we do have!

Tom

 

A Bulldog is as different from a City as a Castle is to a Hall, a Duke even more so. On your thinking, they may as well give up on the Grange recreation (not to mention the Saint and the County) because it is more or less identical to those locos!

Boiler's are more or less disposable components on a loco, hardly a loco in preservation carries an original one. If it could be swapped without alteration to the frames, then what is lost?

 

Now if you build a GWR taper boiler for the bulldog and curved frames for the duke, you could combine the two you would have a curved frame bulldog as well as retaining 9017 intact!

 

the point of the the thread surely though is that a resultant Bulldog would be authentic GWR