Castle at waterloo ?

yes, used to work the Reading to Guildford line so i guess they'd be OK most everywhere

 

Unfortunately, there aren't any main line certified Manors at the moment, and I wouldn't have thought that there will be for the foreseeable future now the SVR have stepped away from the main line.

 

Err, not very likely I think. IIRC, Manors are the least gauge-friendly of the GW 4-6-0s, since they are very wide over the cylinders and the cylinders are mounted quite low. They may have relatively low axle-weights but I suspect there are very few ex-SR lines that they would ever have fitted comfortably, and especially not now that platforms have been rebuilt in so many places.

 

Mind you, 7802 did visit the Swanage Railway in 2010 without causing any collateral damage, which came as quite a surprise. I remember that the railway made a statement after upgrading its axle loadings some years ago that it could now accommodate any class of locomotive except GWR outside-cylindered 4-6-0s.

 

Oh dear, and I was starting to think that your posts were some of the more sensible ones. Shame to have spolit it like that.

 

What a strange and rather inaccurate comment to make and clearly you don't recall correctly.
Manors are in fact very slightly narrower than Halls, Granges, 28xx etc.
With all outside cyl GW locos the max width is at one height only unlike, say, a King Arthur. Generally the max width with GW 2 cyl locos is somewhat below platform level.
Manors are lower than many types and fit, unmodified, within the current NR height requirement.

When 7802 visited the Swanage Railway several years ago there were only two tight places:
1. Herston Halt (constructed in the preservation era) which needed a 10 mph restriction
2. Swanage platform to run round point where the loco was fine pointing towards Wareham but would have fouled the platform coping if it had pointed towards Swanage.

 

You say that as if being a WCRC owned class 7 based down south has no bearing on that.

It's height on Manor cylinders as well as width that's an issue as the width seems to be most critical at a certain height which coincides mostly with Manors, hence they can be barred from places that Halls can go.

It is a concern if 6880 eventually goes mainline as planned as in theory the cylinders would be in the same alignment as a Manor.

 

I think you may have missed the insertion of tongue into cheek during a period when the thread had gone a bit whimsical...

Tom

 

Any chance amid the froth that someone could actually answer this OP as it is a very intriguing question.

The semantics of rebuilding the SR Pacifics is interesting but off topic here. Tangmere and City of Wells (plus others running on private lines only) have all proved over the years since 1967 that a well maintained original can do the biz' thereby vindicating those performance aspects of the design which exclude daily availability. My guess is that Tangmere's track record of sporadic unplanned unavailability versus the rebuilt Clan Line does also vindicate the rebuild decision from an operational availability weighted perspective (which was what mattered to management at the time) but without access to the owning group's records of what actually went wrong/broke that view is guesswork so could obviously be proved wrong.

 

Would this thread be better placed in "Steam Traction"?

It is very interesting but has never really covered a current steam hauled train, as do virtually all other threads in this section.