Advanced steam tech for narrow gauge locos

May I offer some considerations? The law now clearly identifies 15" gauge and over as the benchmark where more stringent statuatory requirements apply and a traditionally "miniature" installation (e.g. Rhyl, Blackpool and the 20" North Bay Railway) is readily identifiable by an exposed driving position on a 'near scale' loco (i.e. under Greenley's 1/3 full size). That ought to cover Sir Arthur's recreated locos, most definitely NG in concept. Running services to a published non-weather dependent timetable has to be another prerequisite.

The only significant lines I can think of which blur this territory are the 121/4" gauge (ex-2ft gauge, ex-15" gauge) Fairbourne Railway and the 12" gauge Ruislip Lido line, both of which their websites describe as narrow gauge and both run services to a published timetable, but given the "Think 15" gauge and above" advice on the Forums page, we have a convenient cop-out, which I'm quite content to hide behind. AFAIK that just leaves the Groudle Glen, but as it's never been subject to UK railway legislation anyway, we could always discuss it under "International" if anyone's going to get that picky!

 

On the Isle of Man all railways carrying the public, irrespective of gauge, come under the IoM Railways Act and are subject to the same regulation and inspection - including our own 7 1/4"g Orchid Line.
Ray.

 

Interesting... so, more stringent that over here. Of interest Ray, when did those regs come in? AIUI, the IMR was originally inspected by a BoT official (was it Col. Rich?) who was invited to perform that function.

 

The only loco I know to have this arrangement was a 3.5" gauge "Super Schools" built by Roy Donaldson in Ashford (he was a talented engineer who worked in Ashford works). It was described in the Model Engineer magazine on 17 June 1966 by LBSC. Until this point I did not realise that the idea had originated with Chapelon. The loco also had semi conjugated valve gear which I suspect Harold Holcroft had a hand in designing. The locomotive was stolen several years ago but re-appeared in the last couple of years

 

That by it self is an interesting story I am sure there are lots of people who would have liked to have know where it has been all this time.

It is surprising to find that a lot of items that go missing are in some cases still in full public view but people don't always realise this

Colin

 

I seem to recall Nana Mouskouri making a similar observation in Bloomsbury!

 

The current act is from 1982 IIRC (I'd have to look on the mess room noticeboard to be sure!) and the inspector is part of the H&S team. When the Act was written there were no public miniature railways here so the bit of the U.K. legislation that exempts lines under 15?" was omitted. It's really not very onerous to comply but we have an annual inspection, run according to an approved rulebook and all active members are competence tested. The Orchid Line is track circuited and linked to an automated signalling system whilst the passenger trains have a guard and automatic vacuum brakes are fitted to every carriage. On a busy day we can carry over 800 people.
Ray.

 

The preheater works like the Crosti scheme by putting feed water where smoke temperature is low.
If smoke is cooled more than in usual locomotives sulphuric acid start to condense which is a no -no.

 

The best new narrow gauge steam locomotive is probably all adhession.The Orenstein and Koppel 0-6-0 that drove Matheran railway for many,many years will be my starting point when looto comes my way.There is a O&K 0-8-0 sugar beet locomotive running every summer saturday near Copenhagen.

https://get.google.com/albumarchive.../AF1QipOwr8GMJ1eSpV-uNiX_6bMAO1sLD5GUD825O-bJ

 

The Chapelon advice of having low resistance steam ways has worked miracles for big fast locootives.
The somewhat untried last advice was compounding and heat the whole outher surface of the high pressure cylinder and only apply reheat between high pressure exhaust and low pressure inlet.
Small narrow gauge locomotives have low piston speeds and obscene ratios between steam cylinder volumes doing the work and surfaces trying to do ugly things on the wrong times.
If Chapelon says it is beneficial on a 3000 hp locomotive it will be even more on a 30 hp .
The Matheran 740 can be a very good test case as there is no space problems putting on a Bigger diameter low pressure cylinder.Where is Matheran 740 these days and what happens?

 

It's at Alston on the South Tynedale Railway.
It's also fine as it is - it got up the Matheran hills fine for decades...

 

I think that the experimental 160A1 will remain the best example of the application of compounding to steam locomotives for some time yet. The locomotive that was being built by Phil Girdlestone is a true second generation machine. There were some compromises due to the views/needs of these who were having it built but these can probably be dealt with. Maximising what can be achieved with simple expansion will be a worthy first goal.

 

A large proportion of what I have done is on the narrow gauge . This includes rack locos which are worked to the limit. Conversions to soya oil fireing are not small accomplishments when you have to go back and figure out the short fallings of previous attempts. Somthing like 50 redraughtings later most of the are sub three foot gauge with one that pushes the limits of development to the point where it falls beyond a Lempor. Even my current project is at 15" and is a delight to work on in that size. It has some modern technology in it most notably the valves, steam circuit and draughting.

Once you get any bigger things become difficult to deal with both for paper work and physically.

Yes I have a super 15 " 2-8-2 or 4-8-2 in my head with compounding and everything else I have developed. It would be an affordable project to do and easy to verify the results but like everything it needs the money to make it happen. There are more sub standard gauge projects to come but to build something like my drawing would be a major step forward in developing steam technology.

 

It is.
When coal-burning is outlawed more expensive fuels demand max thermal efficiency.
It is faster and cheaper to try 24 inch gauge than full size.
If the Matheran thing is efficiency optimized and tested against a DHR class B it will get television coverage and be fun.

 

It's easier to start with a blank paper. You can only go so far with a modified loco, and even then there is always some one wanting to take it backwards to how it was built.

It is enevatable that coal will be restricted in its use so more efficiency and cleaner fuels need to be used. Postponing the enevatable will only make things more difficult if the work is not done now to comply with the future which will come eventually.

 

15 inch gauge sounds interesting.
A 6 tons locomotive can be scaled from this

http://tzgorahovica.hr/tourism/lokomotive-ciro

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=lok&datum=1940&page=10&size=38

And will be able to go 8% up on a curve with 12m radius pulling a 6 tons train.
Many wheels to look at.

 

Hi there are two threads to this story, which I hope we can continue to explore the first is what can be done, to keep the current fleet of heritage steam locos working inside of the current and future 'green' energy developments and legislation and the second thread is where to start from in a new concept.

I am sure that Nigel has come up against it more times that he cares to recall, but I do get there is a feeling in our community that the steam engine must be preserved as is or in some cases as was.

That is fine to a point, however as you will see from below we have to face a number of factors that weren't about at the time, but are now part of everyday life.

The thing is in my own industry of electricity it is constantly changing we get new rules and regulations at least ever ten years or so technology make huge advances, battery technology has changed 100% in the last twenty years or so, smaller and more powerful batteries are now available, when I started out we only had the lead acid battery as is used in cars at the time for most applications, there where a few area's that have different batteries in them, but with the introduction of computers into the office, the growth of UPS systems to keep those computer systems running in case of power failure also grew, this lead to a fundamental rethink about the battery and battery technology.

I have shared my personal view point on steam engineering with many people, but I have come to the conclusion that there is a still a lot to be done and which can be improved, like it or not many of our young folk can't get as excited about getting dirty or having to get oil everywhere and to maintain a steam locomotive like it used to be. It is not there fault, as this is just a symptom of today health and safety world. Don't get me wrong where H&S is required then it is a good thing, as if something does go wrong then we need a system that holds those that cause the problem to be accountable. That said, some people also use H&S legislation as an excuse not to try or to think about improvement to the system which is just as bad. but as an excuse to just scrap what they have and replace it with something which is totally in appropriate or fails to do the job it was meant to do.

So what to do? Well I glad to say that there are enough visionary's out there that feel the same way, Nigel for one, Shaun McMahon, James Evans and Martyn Bane and others also come to mind. As I see it, we have two duties of care to achieve, 1 is to make sure that the knowledge base we have now does not just die out when the likes of the above are no longer with us and 2 to encourage the next generation to take up heavy engineering as a profession and to learn from the past. There is no point in my view in trying to reinvent the wheel when we already have one.

The second or even third generation of steam locomotives needs to start from somewhere, taking on board what Nigel has come up with is an excellent start, I am hoping that in the next few months some progress can be made to bring everyone together and at least one may be two new projects can be launched to work along side of each other to develop our thinking on the steam engine, both will due to costs be 2ft/60cm gauge, not only that, But I think there is more mileage and various conditions at different railways which are not repeated else where so all this technology can get a real test.

Since I have a family issue to deal with right now I may not be able to answer any of this for a while but please keep posting and I will get back to this list ASAP.

 

It should not be forgotten that the original client has pulled out and so anyone who takes this project on will be able include any new technology they so desire to have.