42424 - New Build Fowler Tank

as it turned out, yes, and yet it was innovative but too late in the game. Far more interesting from a historical point of view than just one more 2 cylinder loco with taper boiler . walscherts valve gear and belpaire firebox (or what ever).

I would concede the Saint if it's type was not well represented by it's descendants

 

As CME, Bulleid was clearly correct to be thinking about ways to operate the Company's traffic more efficiently, with respect all of capital outlay, maintenance costs, quality of fuel available and consideration for staff working conditions. As such, it was entirely proper that designs, including innovative ones, were worked up by his drawing office.

It's at that point that things go wrong. It must have quickly become obvious that the design route was taking them to a loco two and a half times the weight of the design it was supposed to replace (hardly the Q1 austerity saving of metal there!); it would be reliant on at least two technologies that had never previously been widely adopted in railway practice (sleeve valves and dry-sided firebox); and then to add insult to injury, they started having to lay compromise upon compromise: offset the boiler to provide space for the fireman, but then add ballast weight to correct the weight distribution. At that point, any pragmatic engineer must have realised that they had well and truly backed themselves into a blind alley - at which point, not a single scrap of metal should have been cut. The Leader was not a technological near miss: no amount of tweaks and refinements and working out bugs once running could disguise the fact that it weighed 90 tons more than the supposedly antiquated Victorian engines it was supposed to replace.

The Southern already had huge experience of multiple unit working, and also had been successfully operating diesel traction since the 1930s. So quite why they didn't put two and two together and realise that the solution to lightly-trafficked branch lines was a diesel multiple unit is one of those great mysteries of management. In Bulleid's defence, all I would say is that he can't have been solely culpable: the rest of the board should have offered a restraining hand. It's hard to imagine that such a design would have gone beyond the drawing board while HA Walker was General Manager; I can only assume that, as a non-exec director in advancing years and declining health, he maybe didn't feel he had the authority or stamina or wider board support to rein Bulleid in.

Tom

 

I could not understand why sleeve valves were used on this at all. The Paget loco on the Midland had them and it didn't work well and they were also used in some late model propellor engined aircraft engines and also in some cars, I think Daimlers had them.

Apparently, they were prone to failure in these appplications and if they couldn't be made to work in the relatively technical environment of up market cars and aircraft, what chance did you have in a steam running shed?

What did the trials of them on 3239 show up which was experimentally fitted with them?

As for a new build suggestion, what about an LNWR Claughton? Some parts were common to the Patriot?

 

The Saint does represent an important step in GWR loco policy. That said, it'll be the atlantic version if/when the conversion occurs that really interests me. How many british atlantics survive? 2? And one wonders if they'll be steamed in the foreseeable future...

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting for a minute that any 1840s or 50s new-build schemes are actually going to come to fruition any time soon. I'm not even suggesting that that would be desirable. If such locos wouldn't really be useful to preserved lines, why spend lots of money building them? Even if we could build them, could we supply enough coaches and infrastructure of the correct period to put them into context?

In any case, one has to recognise that, outside publicly-funded museums, railway preservation is essentially driven by market forces. The engines that are built or restored will be those which people want, not necessarily those which they "ought to have". There's nothing wrong with that - I only think that we should be honest about it.

And for the record no, the A1 would not have been my first choice of new-build design (even as a devoted fan of the LNER pacifics!). But that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed seeing and riding behind 60163. The Patriot wouldn't have been a high priority for me either, but I was still curious enough to go and see her at Warley back in 2013 (and I even threw a fiver in the donation bucket - having come to gawp at the engine, it would have been rude not to!). Just because I might not have done things a certain way myself, doesn't mean I'm not going to make the most of what we have. Life's too short for that!

 

All perfectly true -- so why on earth did CIE then allow him to have another go?

 

When you consider the LMS Diesel twins were exactly contemporary to Bulleid's Leader on the Southern, that's when you realise how utterly, utterly mad and totally wasteful the whole idea was.

Many people cite Bulleid as a genius: I personally, the more I read on him and look at his work on the southern in the full context of the war effort, see him as an entirely selfish individual looking to make his mark on railway history in various ways and doing so (but at what cost?) Incredibly, his reputation has soared whilst the likes of Thompson, Hawksworth and Ivatt have been sidelined. For me, Bulleid was at his best with the excellent Q1 class and its a great pity the simplicity and elegance of that engineering was not repeated on his later designs.

 

Innovative? Not even slightly. Sleeve valves already used previously in a number of railway applications and all had shown to not be entirely up to the rigours of the steam railway and technology of the time. The cab at each end of the locomotive was already on the LMS diesel twins and on a number of American steam and diesel applications. The boiler offset with the fireman in a cramped compartment in the middle was dangerous beyond belief. The whole thing was around 85-90 tonnes heavier than the locomotives it was meant to be comparable to with higher axle loading.

One cannot help but feel that a new design of largely conventional, austere steam locomotive with push pull apparatus to operate the existing rolling stock until such time as diesels became available would have been a better bet all round and would have replaced a large number of pre grouping and grouping locomotives. It's what Thompson's B1, L1 and Peppercorn's K1s did on the LNER, Hawksworth provided the excellent 94xx and 15xx tank engines similarly, Fairburn and then Ivatt provided extremely useful 2-6-4Ts and 2-6-0s - the Southern got excellent 0-6-0s and then over a hundred Pacifics and one totally pointless one-off with two part built successors - all to be scrapped - to their name.

 

There's a new one being built in Sussex as well Agree with you about wanting to see the Saint as an Atlantic: I'm hoping that it stays in that form long enough to get her and Beachy Head together at some point.

Tom

 

Ah of course, and yes it would be a nice comparison. BR classified the H2s and Saints both as 4P so a similar size.

 

The drawing office was working on a Q1 with the controls duplicated across the cab such that it could be driven from either side of the cab and therefore was suitable for fast reverse working. That would pretty much have met your brief. With hindsight, one can see that they gave up pursuing that line far too easily: I can only assume that, to Bulleid's mind, it was a bit too pedestrian.

As for modern traction, while Bulleid was working on the Leader, he was also responsible for the mechanical design of both mainline diesels - designed before, but introduced after the Ivatt diesels - and mainline electric locos, all of which were reasonably successful straight off the drawing board!

Tom

 

Some of Bulleids designs were good, his EMUs lasted until the 1980s, or if you include the derived 4EPB, 1995. Agree some of his ideas on steam were not practical. Also, did the Southern really need 140 Pacifics? Some of them ended up on two coach locals to places like Padstow and Wadebridge, a Pacer type job!

 

Handy for modellers though...

 

You're quite right to pull me up on that Tom: I had quite forgot about Bulleid's diesels. These were the forerunners to the class 40, no? The Bulleid electrics - but especially the double decker EMU - were very nice machines.

I had no idea about the Q1 with duplicated controls. That would have been something. Probably very useful.

 

the CIE version of Leader was reckoned to be pretty good, even rescued a failed diesel apparently. It got overtaken by the diesel invasion which was much earlier in Ireland than the UK and CIE lost interest when Bullied retired.

It's my opinion that Bulleid could see the diesels coming and was frustrated by this, wishing to be a great steam designer like others (HNG for instance) and indulged his fantasies at the expense of the railway companies and their customers before it was too late. In other words, he was enjoying himself and no one said "no!"

 

The work of Burt and McCollum, Ricardo, Fedden, Hewland and Duckworth is worth checking out if you wish to find out more about sleeve valves. Engines could give very impressive results using variations of this valve type though these were all i.c. The work that was required to achieve these measures of success was far beyond what Bulleid and the works of the Southern could hope to achieve with steam.

Nothing much wrong with wanting 100% adhesive weight but bearing in mind what Beyer Peacock could achieve with the Garratt type when having to meet weight and loading gauge requirements, well you can understand wanting to do something different, wanting to experiment but in the immediate post war years someone should have reigned the man back somewhat. 150 tons for a tractive effort of 26,00 lbf. It makes you wonder who was carrying out any real thinking.

 

This is the thing I simply don't understand. If Bulleid was in any other role, in any other industry, pulling these sort of stunts, particularly during and immediately post war, he'd have got the sack.

Can you imagine that sort of thing happening today without the indignation of the media? Wouldn't happen.

Yet Bulleid is revered and his contemporaries largely castigated, dismissed or forgotten!

The sensibilities of railway enthusiasm, to me, ignore the context of decisions in engineering for the most part and concentrate on the most subjective views possible. A cult of personality, one could argue...

But what relevance has this to Fowler? To me he got a lot of his engineering right and it's a shame more from his designs, and his contemporaries, hasn't survived.

So for me a Fowler tank engine looks incredibly sensible compared to the madcap things we've previously discussed here.

Just one request from me (applies to the Patriot too actually). LMS livery first please. Not enough engines in pre grouping and grouping liveries in steam at the minute.

And to think I once bemoaned the Duchess staying as 6233 for so long...!

 

I think we should take an NRM approach to what is a gap and what is merely a trainspotter wet-dream. What locos would the NRM consider would fill a gap in The National Collection? I'd bet there aren't many.

 

A dear old friend of mine explained it quite well. Britain was emerging from a war and bland austerity was everywhere. Then the Bulleid Pacifics started appearing, Visually striking and with bright colours, the very antithesis of bland austerity. He first saw a Bulleid at Chatham c.1946, he was bowled over and the impression stuck. He was not alone.

 

I'd love to know what Holcroft thought about Bulleid. Think that would be most interesting. He gives me the impression he's holding a lot back in Locomotive Adventure, but I wouldn't like to guess what.