LNWR George the Fifth Steam Locomotive Trust and proposed new build

Is the oft stated weakness in the con rod of Joy Valve gear locos a real problem or one that is simply enshrined in folk lore? How many actual failures have there been?

 

E.S. Cox wrote that on the LYR the driving pin tended to break, resulting in "dropped motion" whilst on the LNWR it was the rods themselves which was much nastier. He actually redesigned the LNWR pattern rod himself and claimed the redesign reduced the problem.

PH

 

Steve, I'm not involved with the engineering side of things so I can't provide a definitive answer although if you like I can ask those who are. I'm personally unsure of how many failures there were (some of our LNWR society members might have the answer) or even whether the failures were broadly related to or exacerbated by the removal of the centre-bearing. As Paul Hitch has stated, there were a few failures of the con-rods, notably on a Prince of Wales class outside Crewe in the early LMS days. This resulted in a redesign of the con-rod. We have our hands on the LNWR and LMS sets of drawings and we have also been discussing the issue with knowledgeable folk as Tyseley and elsewhere. I can't say at this stage what the decision will be but we will of course of the benefit of 100 years of improvements in metallurgy and processes at our disposal at the very least.

 

It might be worth your while to have a chat with Boston Lodge. "Lyd" has Joy valve gear and they had to work it out more or less from scratch.

Regards,

jtx

 

Thanks for the tip. I'll pass that on to the fellows dealing with it.

 

Lyd on the WHR - YouTube

Here is the sound more Joy valve gear in action as Lyd conquers a 1in 40 climb on the WHR . The new blastpipe souinds good.

Keith

 

Greetings all.

In the interests of collating all official information on the progress of the LNWR George the Fifth Steam Locomotive Trust in one place on National Preservation, I am resurrecting this thread after a long hiatus. However, while this thread has been dormant the LGFSLT certainly hasn't. Progress has been made and I thought it high time that we provide a overview of where we are at and our immediate plans.

Since our last post in January this year, fabrication has begun with the spinning of the outer smokebox door completed through our supplier, Keyte Smith Ltd of Bingham, Nottinghamshire. You can read more about it on our News blog as well as view photos here: Progress on the Smokebox Door and here: More on the Smokebox Door.

Work has now commenced on the completion of the central boss, dart, dart handle, hand-wheel and dart-collar. The completed components will then be fixed to the already completed door profile, which will give us the first full-sized LNWR smoke-box door with the original hand-wheel and dart seen since the 1940′s. This we plan to display at galas and the like to build interest in the project. More can be read here: July Update.

Thanks to our growing and increasingly widespread supporter base (acknowledging too the tremendous support shown to us by the 700 member strong LNWR Society) we are now at the stage to commence fabrication of the frame-plates, however a lot of critical behind-the scenes work and research is taking place in relation to suppliers, requirements for mainline running and analysis of the deficiencies within the original design etc. To this end we are very fortunate to have the support and tremendous expertise of the likes of Richard Coleby, Peter Stanton, Peter Skellon and Ted Talbot among others. More can be read about this here: Richard Coleby, here: Those Flimsy Frames and here: Building a Full Head of Steam! We are also in the process of taking on further expertise but as the negotiations are ongoing we'll leave it at that.

As to the press, we've appeared in Heritage Hub, Steam Railway and the Stephenson Locomotive Society Journal.

Further developments are ongoing at the time of writing. We have been speaking with a number of interested partners with regards to a permanent home for the Trust and the parts. This is a matter that we intend to resolve in the very near future especially given our intention to appoint a supplier for the frame-plates.

There is more that I'd like to say at this stage but given the sensitivity of the deliberations and negotiations I'll wait until we have concrete information to share. You can follow us at: News Blog, Twitter, Facebook. Information on 'How to Help' can be found here: How to Help.

Thanks for your time.

 

And in another piece of fantastic news that I'm only just in receipt of from one of the Trustees, I can hereby confirm that the LNWR George the Fifth Steam Locomotive Trust has successfully met the required conditions for our first tranche of matched funding from our anonymos benefactor. Originally we were to receive matched funding at £10,000 (see the first post on this thread for the details) however recently he kindly agreed to lower that threshold to £5000 minus Gift Aid. What this means that the project will be receipt of an additional £5,000 through a Charities Aid Foundation voucher, which he has paid. We are of course, grateful to him and to all our donors in assisting us get to this point.

And just to reiterate, there is a commitment to match our funding until 50k is reached.

As you can imagine, this is a real filip to the project and means that we can begin to initiate our plans beyond the fabrication of the frame-plates.

 

Great news for the project.

 

Very well done, nice to see the progress!

 

Thank you to you and Dan Hill for the kind words. We hope to have be able to share more information in the near future wiith the member of National Preservation.

 

In light of Steam Railway's small article in the current issue on our progress, I would like to take the opportunity to correct a few errors, some which may have been apparent to the more observant readers. As many would know, the LNWR George the Fifth Class were 4-4-0's, not 4-6-0's as the article stated. That being said, they were powerful engines for their size, with a tractive effort of almost 21 thousand lbf.

I can also clarify that we have already received the first tranche of matched funding of £5000 and are well on the way to raising the funds to meet our second tranche. The matched funding is not dependent upon the Trust raising £50k before matched funding can be called upon but is issued as matched funding at £5000 increments up to £50k. This means that in addition to almost completing the smokebox door, which we hope to display publicly, we NOW have the funds to order the frames whereas the article implies that we haven't. I think this distinction is critical to understand the seriousness of this project. We are however, in negotiations with suppliers and prospective homebases - both, we'd of course need to finalise before proceeding with such large components. We have an ideal arrangement in mind with regards to the latter however we're investigating excellent several options.

I've attached a link to our recent news update showing a few recent photos of the smokebox door's boss, dart, handle and wheel in progress with one of our suppliers.

Further Progress on the Smokebox Door.

As I've stated, the more ambitious project of constructing the frame-plates will be the next task to tackle. This is funded but of course we welcome funding to take us beyond this stage and to get us to our second tranche of matched funding which will accelerate the next phase.

We of course, thank Steam Railway for the article and their support and recommend that everyone support the railway preservation press. Thanks too for the support on National Preservation.

 

Hello everyone. I've refrained from posting until we have something adequately substantive to say. For those of you following our progress, you will know that while the start has been slow and steady, progress is nonetheless being made. You can read more about it on our blog, which is listed in my signature below.

What I wanted to announce was that is that an auction will be conducted on the 26th April at the Crewe Heritage Centre where a significant piece of railway memorabilia , generously donated to the trust will be auctioned. To quote our blog:

 

Thankyou for the info Knotty.

on a side note has the project managed to find a home yet? i went to crewe hc today and they said they would be interested to hear from you. Now that LNWR Crewe are leaving there should be a big free up of space

 

Hey there Gary. Thanks for the info!

I'm personally not involved with the negotiations but I can say that we've been talking to a number of groups and forging partnerships although we have nothing concrete to announce as yet. I'll definitely pass on the information. If they're unaware of this, I'm sure they'd be very keen to hear it.

Glad to hear about the progress with your build by the way. She looks magnificent! Kudos to the team and something for us to aspire to.

 

Just a brief update to say that members of the Trust will be at Quorn Station from noon tomorrow and through to the 21st for the Great Central Railway's Easter Vintage Festival. There we will be displaying the completed smokebox door to the public for the first time. Shortly after Easter we hope to make some critical announcements pertaining to a temporary home and the next phase of fabrication, which promises to be major. The need for a home and a place to securely store the parts has to date prevented us from taking on the next planned stage.