4464 Bittern to do 90mph on ECML - 29 June & 27 July 2013

Mine too.

 

Stanier may well have taken the de Glehn/GW white metalling detail with him to the LMS. Ken J Cook was a Western man until 1951 and was then transferred to the LNE after Nationalisation and he introduced this bearing form and the optical alignment. Stanier? No.

 

Plenty of questionable tales like this exist, I recall one that a Saint/Star did 120MPH light engine.

 

Just to amplify slightly on 242A1's comment about Kenneth Cook, a Swindon man who worked his latter years at Doncaster. In his book he gives little space to his time at Doncaster but says:
" Perhaps I was able to do a few useful things amongst which might be mentioned the overcoming of long-standing troubles with the Pacific inside connecting rods, the rebuilding of the Pacifics generally, but particularly the A3s with optical equipment...."

Peter Townend in his book "Top Shed" has much of interest in respect of the Pacifics bearings, axleboxes, etc, too much to repeat here, but a good read if you have that book, starting on page 145.
In short though it boiled down to a high standard of maintenance, including regular mileage exam.s

46118

 

Yes that's repeated at length in W Tuplin's book 'Saints and Sinners'. I think Collett was on the footplate at the time along with a few other luminaries. It was a Saint that did it, apparently.

 

I've read some of Tuplin's stuff, to say that he was GWR biased is an understatement.

 

That's not quite true. He's a big fan of Churchward but not much so of Collett or Hawksworth. He seems to admire Churchward's ability to learn from other people, particularly from abroad, and his standardisation programme. Also his engines were just better than other contemporaries. I enjoy his strident style of writing, he certainly doesn't engage in the sentimental guff that a lot of writers have done and, I'm sure you'd admire this, he calls a spade a spade!

 

So what is the theoretical top speed of an A4? I'm afraid the calculations are beyond me but there are enough clever people on here to work it out.

 

And finally............................................. link below for my effort from Saturday! (as always click on slideshow for best view!)

Streaky Bittern................ [/URL]


And also video from the same location, not mine but a mates.............

Great Bittern [/URL]

 

He wrote some rubbish about double chimneys/exhausts that's for sure. All well and good admiring Churchward but things moved on.

 

You could pretty much say that about any steam locomotive engineer!

 

York to London with Bittern was a good and memorable experience as was the northbound trip several months ago and the trip reports cover most of feelings I had except that I enjoyed very congenial company and good food as well!
In July 1963 I was lucky to be on the LCGB York trip with 60007 with a top speed of 103mph and a cab ride through Welwyn until being firmly told to RETURN thru the tender whence I had unofficially ventured, to the surprise of the Inspector! We all thought that was the end of fast A4 running let alone steam south of Hithchin

Kings Cross was magic and I stayed with 2NatPres members until22.30 talking mainline steam as it's an excellent station to eat and drink!

This trip was the greater achievement than 1963. ! My log suggests far,far fewer trains south of Doncaster on a summer afternoon in1963!
I feel NR did us proud to even allow the 90mph journey. Many thanks to JH MHR DB etc
Worth every penny!!

Ray Mason

 

Gresley wanted a crack at 130 but that not so nice Mr. Hitler put paid to those plans.

 

Agreed but my take on Tuplin was that anything that wasn't Churchward wasn't up to scratch.

 

He does seem to like the Gresley pacifics once they had sorted out their initial problems but you does have a liking for Churchward. Each to their own!

 

Yes, 2903 in May 1906. Although Tuplin wrote about this, he is not the source. It came out in local newspapers in Jan 1932 when the driver retired. The Railway Magazine wrote to Charles Collett and he confirmed it had happened and that he had been on the footplate:

It appears that in May 1906, No. 2903 one of the newly introduced 2-cylinder 4-6-0 locomotives and herself fresh from the shops was taken for a trial run light from Swindon to Stoke Gifford, with the intention, after running the engine round the Filton-Patchway triangle, of having "a sharp run" back. Signal checks were experienced, however, and No. 2903 was then stopped at Chipping Sodbury until "line clear" had been obtained through to Wootton Bassett, after which she was re-started, and there was evidently some running of a very startling order down the 1 in 300 from Badminton to Little Somerford. The timing for some distance by the mileposts with a stop watch was given as 120 miles per hour, and the clocking between the signal-boxes of Little Somerford and Hullavington was booked as two minutes for the 4½ miles.
(The Railway Magazine, April 1932)

If an A4 driver claimed 140 mph and Sir N Gresley then confirmed it in writing (let alone saying he had been on the footplate) - then I think we would all be happy to take it as a fact. In this case perhaps the 120 is in doubt - but was 2903 driven hard light engine down ten miles of 1:300? - Yes. Did it reach a very high speed? - Yes (as you would expect running a light engine hard downhill).

 

Someone needed to think about error bars, though...

For example, "two minutes for the 4½ miles". How did they time two minutes? Did they just look at the times the signalmen wrote down - if so, is it normal practice to write times down to the nearest second? And were the clocks synchronised?

As an example, 4.5 miles in 2 minutes is 135mph! But suppose it passed box A at, say, xx.00:45 and the signalman wrote down xx:01; and it passed box B at xx.03:15 and the signalman wrote down xx.03. So, an apparent two minutes between boxes is actually 2.5 minutes; an average of only 108mph. And that is only a fifteen second rounding up or down at each end. Suppose the two boxes also had clocks that were running, in one case, six seconds fast of railway time and one six seconds slow. Now the actual time is 2:42 and the average speed 100mph. And that is before you consider whether the actual distance between boxes isn't 4.5 miles, but maybe 4miles 35 chains; or that maybe one signalman wrote the time down as the engine passed the box and the other when he saw the tail lamp; or the reaction times to actually look round and read the clock weren't identical.

The point is - maybe the loco went exceptionally fast. But equally, maybe it didn't. Trying to infer a top speed by taking a record of a short time over a short distance is fraught with inaccuracies; or, to put it another way, the uncertainty on the answer gets bigger as the distance between timing points gets shorter.

Still, the GWR had form with that sort of thing!

Tom

 

Very true "two minutes for the 4½ miles" could mean a wide range of speeds. However the 120 claim was from stopwatch and mileposts: "The timing for some distance by the mileposts with a stop watch was given as 120 miles per hour"