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46235 City of Birmingham

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Linesider, Jan 11, 2009.

  1. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    They did, and the money thus saved was transferred to the running department provide additional time to drivers to prepare their locos ;)

    Tom
     
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  2. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Being serious ...

    Going back a couple of generations, the experience of Craven on the LBSCR shows what happens without standardisation. He had a philosophy (perhaps too grand a word) of designing specific designs for specific duties, with the result that I believe the largest single homogeneous class on the Brighton at that time constituted only twelve locos. It is possible (though I'd suggest unproven) that such matching of motive power to demand produced savings in daily running: what is undeniable is that for much of his reign, locomotive availability was only around 50 - 60% on account of long periods spent under repair where every component was bespoke, and the sidings of some of the country stations bore witness with long lines of locos awaiting their trip to the works for overhaul, sometimes for several years on end. Some of that was on account of the inconvenient layout of Brighton works, but much of it must have been a direct consequence of non-standardisation meaning that when an engine di enter the works, it spent a long time there.

    Repair costs rarely feature in locomotive "top trumps", neither now nor in the heyday of train-spotting in the last century, when enthusiasts tend(ed) to fixate far more on raw numbers like TE, ihp and so on. To take another example, Dugald Drummond was rather partial to all sorts of firebox dodges to extract the last calorie out of burning coal, and no doubt he had the pounds of coal per indicated horsepower-hour to back him up. Notwithstanding, as soon as Urie took over - a man well versed in workshop practice - he stripped out all the complex fireboxes, added superheaters and cut the repair costs per mile...

    Tom
     
  3. 8126

    8126 Member

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    I think you'll find that was the period most of the other companies started thinking that locos with outside cylinders would really work well with outside valve gear, something the GWR picked up rather late in the day ;). Ivatt even got to authorise a Black 5 shaped joke at their expense 25 years later.

    Yes, good valve events were a gospel spread from Swindon by varied means, but for nearly all the major companies 1900 to 1920 was when a close approximation to the final form of the British steam locomotive evolved. Ignoring GWR designs, at the end of it you have big outside cylinder 4-6-0s, mixed traffic 2-6-0s, 2-6-4Ts, heavy 2-8-0s, series production Pacifics just round the corner (and all with outside valve gear), superheat as standard on main line designs. Some stagnation...
     
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  4. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Thing is there were also advantages to the inside Stephenson's gear. There's a judgement call to make. There seems to be a very good case to suggest that the valve events for the Gw implementation of Stephenson's are significantly superior, especially to LMS walschaerts, and there are also maintenance advantages in not having to take down the valve gear to attend to connecting and coupling rod bearings. It shouldn't be forgotten that the Gw had no intrinsic opposition to outside walschaerts, which they fitted on the railmotors from around 1904, and the VOR locos in the 20s. It was also considered in the 40s for studies of what became the County class and a 440 that was never built. It all seems like considered decisions.

    Unless you are just playing top trumps with headline dimensions you have to consider the whole package, and that's difficult if not impossible. I've heard it said that Gw locomotives would never have survived maintenance practice at LMS sheds for instance, but then again they didn't have to. At this distance we probably don't have the data to calculate TCO, which in the end is all that matters.

    No doubt that prep time was greater for the inside valve gear locos, but did that extra time and examination result in better maintained locos, fewer failures on the road, small faults fixed before they became big? That might mean it was cost effective, - at least on Gw managed sheds with Gw trained staff. We're not going to know the answers, and in any case the balance will have changed over the years.

    Just seems to me naive to try and reduce complex business decisions to a 4 legs good 2 legs bad level, even tho I freely admit I'm probably as guilty of doing it as any other enthusiast.
     
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  5. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Not with you on this one, Jimc. Firstly, it must be said that Stephenson's gear did have some advantages over Walscheart's, especially in the variable lead the former allowed, but was impossible with the latter. I can't agree though with your assertion that the outside gear made coupling and connecting rod bushes less accessible: all that was needed was to remove the return crank from its pin, four nuts on most LMS designs. No further dismantling of the gear was needed. Valve gear maintenance - and repair - was far easier when everything was outside the frames so any balance of accessibility lay definitely with the outside gear.

    Outside gear not only allowed for faster preparation but also easier examination so faults and defects were more easily found; remember that all the illumination at a driver's disposal was a duck lamp giving a small and very smoky flame - not ideal. Outside the frames, this wouldn't be needed during daylight, but inside them was a different matter. It could be very dark in there, even during the day. And the extra time used for preparing inside geared locos had to be used for just that: it didn't necessarily allow extra time for in-depth component examination.

    The GWR certainly made some progress post-Churchward, but it was mostly in detail design - important in itself, no doubt. But major design features such as higher superheat, mechanical lubricators and outside gear, all of which could have (and eventually did make) made a good machine better, passed it by.
     
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  6. NOTFORME_99

    NOTFORME_99 New Member

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    " Ivatt even got to authorise a Black 5 shaped joke at their expense 25 years later. "

    But the Black 5 with outside Stephenson's gear was a much better machine . So I think the joke was on the LMS for not seeing the potential for so long, perhaps LMS stagnation ?
     
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  7. andalfi1

    andalfi1 Well-Known Member

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    4767-Strong engine...
     
  8. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Funnily enough, while almost all crews, both in BR and preservation days, were unanimous that 4767 was a stronger engine than the Walschaert's geared machines, test results were the reverse. It was similar with Horwich Crabs, well regarded by footplatemen but apparently lacking on tests.

    The Stephenson's gear, as implied in my post above, did give a stronger engine at starting and low speeds, but this would not necessarily follow through at higher speeds, and there might have been other issues, such as maintaining the eccentrics and an awful lot of pin joints. Not sure what this has to do with 6235 though!
     
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  9. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    But that kind of thing is my point. The design office knew about higher superheat, mechanical lubricators ad outside valve gear and had used all of them either in production or on experimental locomotives. They knew that increased superheat improved thermal efficiency, but required much greater attention to lubrication, and that mechanical lubricators tended to be less economical with oil than a good driver. Oil consumption was a headline overhead, separated on the reports to the board, and something that was taken very seriously. With high superheat came increased oil consumption, increased maintenance (carbonisation etc), increased wear and so on.

    So what we are talking about cannot be stagnation, or ignorance or stupidity as enthusiasts like to say. These are clearly reasonably considered engineering and business decisions which have to be made and then reconsidered as circumstances change. I am in no position to say whether they got those decisions right every (or even any) time. Presumably there was a date when it was right to start planning for the introduction of higher superheat. That must have been some time between about 1918 and 1943 (when they did). I have no idea how you could find out when that date was. But its pointless making comparisons with the LMS, who were forced into high superheat when they couldn't get their new engines to steam well without it. At least that's an easy business decision!
     
  10. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think you make a big assumption that these were rational engineering or business decisions. I find it just as easy to believe that the designs were considered "good enough" as they were, and there was no pressure to reconsider until something happened that forced a reconsideration. That isn't to suggest that the drawing office were idle or negligent, merely that they were working within a well worn groove and didn't feel the need to change.
     
  11. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Not really, no. Logically, diverting the heat away from evaporation to raise the temperature of steam already generated reduces the heat available to boil the water, and so would reduce steam making capacity. The LMS (and LNER and SR) used high superheat because it improved the locos' efficiency, produced greater power (allowing the use of smaller or, in heavier cases, a single engine instead of double heading, although this latter was not a feature of GWR operation) and reduced water and - more significantly - coal consumption. The economies there surely outweighed any increase in oil used. In any case, the only poor steaming LMS loco was the Class 5XP, later called 'Jubilees', and these had a whole range of boiler proportion problems; low superheat was only one of them, and not the most important. It was the need to make these locos steam and the experimental data this provided which led to the adoption of more optimum tube length / surface area ratios, tube heating surface to grate area ratios and the adoption of moderate rather than high degree superheat (most went from 14 elements to no more than 21, some to 24 and some Black Fives to 28.

    As to lubrication, drivers generally would over-oil their locos on the basis of 'the more the better', and this applied as much to sight feed and manual as to mechanical lubrication.

    The GWR had good engines which, like almost everything, were capable of improvement. They chose not to do this, and retained standard parts - and ideas - when better was readily available. Standardisation certainly brought economies of scale, etc., but was a bar to improvement and development. The Midland Railway was a prime example of this, and its outdated practices dogged the LMS until, ironically, William Stanier forced a break from its standardisation principles.
     
  12. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    For sure. In a rationally managed business you leave the things that are "good enough" and concentrate on the things that aren't. Certainly no shortage of them. Thinking on recent events, just think how much easier things would be now if someone back in the day had figured a really improved way of designing and building locomotive suspension that eliminated breaking springs...

    Did they? I have no way of knowing. Do you?

    In "Recent developments in Cylinder Lubrication", W H Pearce, GWR Swindon Engineering Society, October 22nd 1931 K J Cook mentions that oil consumption was so high that it was listed separately in the company’s annual accounts, and H G Johnson says that “there had been more money and time spent, and experiments carried out, on lubrication than on any other portion of locomotive equipment” during the preceding ten years. In the discussion on a paper in "Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Volume 78". March 1910 Churchward said "It has been found on the Great Western Railway, in the course of a considerable amount of work with superheating, that the question of lubrication must be specially attended to, and unless the lubrication is not only effective and sufficient, but also continuous, there is certain to be trouble from high superheat. While in the discussion on "The late G.J. Churchward's locomotive development on the Great Western Railway", K. J. Cook, Journal of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers Volume 40, Journal 214, Paper 492 Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 1950 H.M. Le Fleming notes that in the 1921-1925 period GWR engines did not suffer the heavy carbonisation seen on other lines.

    I don't think it does us any favours to over simplify with hindsight what must have been complex decisions, and we should also remember that in those days limited recording and accounting practices meant that it was much harder to establish what is and isn't profitable than it is now. If you're not certain whether, on balance, increasing the degree of superheat will save money or cost it, but you are certain that changing the big end lubrication design so that the big ends don't fail at high speed will save money, which should you devote time and effort to?
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2016
  13. JJG Koopmans

    JJG Koopmans Member

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    Do you mind my commenting? The extra BTU's in superheated steam are available for the locomotives effort, less superheat means one needs to evaporate more water and the huge amount of evaporation btu's is thrown away in the exhausted steam. As a consequence superheat reduces steam raising capability only marginally, proof of this is the change of tubes for flues with superheat elements, the evap.area is reduced without any consequence.
    Also coal quality comes in as a factor, the superior coal quality of the GWR needed less extra air which poorer coal needs, however, this last situation is better suited for superheat.
    Kind regards
    Jos Koopmans
     
  14. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    I know - and agree with - what you're say, Jos, but that's a slightly different issue: the extra efficiency of superheated steam and the heat needed to raise the temperature more than made up for the reduction in heat available to boil the water in the first place. True. But high degree superheat did not guarantee a good steaming boiler; on the contrary, many a saturated engine had a boiler capable of raising more than enough steam, and in the case of the 5XPs, the low superheat temperature wasn't the cause of their problems although it did exacerbate them. But I don't think we're miles apart in our viewpoints.

    Your comments regarding oil and its costs are very interesting, Jimc, and quite new to me. But the GWR obviously took it seriously. In 1930 the LMS celebrated the centenary of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway with a big exhibition at Wavertree Playground, Liverpool. The GWR sent (amongst others) King 6029, and after the event the Chief Loco Inspector, H.J. Robinson, wrote a very nice letter to the Agecroft Shed master, Eric Mason, also known as 'Rivington', and quoted in his 'My Life with Locomotives':

    "We had a good time in Liverpool and Manchester and I think all railwaymen took a great liking to our engine 6029. When we left Old Oak Common shed for the exhibition at Liverpool we had four tons of coal on the tender, and on arriving back we had 30 cwts. left. We did not take coal anywhere, and only took one tank of water which we obtained at Agecroft shed, and eight pints of oil, so we were not much trouble to anyone, were we? I must say we were treated with every respect at all sheds, and duly arrived back at Bushbury on time with everything in order."

    I doubt that any other Railway would have mentioned the oil consumption! I have to admit that, even running light engine, these figures are quite impressive.
     
  15. JJG Koopmans

    JJG Koopmans Member

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    Your last remark made me look again into Collett's paper for the 1924 First World Power Conference. Apart from the 2.83 lbs/DHP Hour coal the locomotive used 4.3 pints of oil per 100 miles. Ninety-two years ago today!
    Kind regards
    Jos Koopmans
     

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