Current and Proposed New-Builds

Your memory is excellent for someone your age!

 

Re: post #640. Never the best of them Jim. The matter I raised was over consistency of materials, most especially in pre-Bessemer days. Whether or not acceptable process and specification standards exist for earlier grades of iron and steel, I dunno.

Perhaps, if a new build can get a producer or a University interested, there could even be scope for establishing standards acceptable to acceptance bodies. When all's said and done, how the stuff which makes up a loco was produced is an equally important aspect of how our railways developed.

 

They must have been reasonably ok right from the off. And got better of course as time went on. The North Western & probably other company's had thier own steel works , they would have made their steel to the standards of the time ,& acceptable for railway work . The only instance I know of , from memory again! of say a crank axle breaking, were the Sturrock singles of the 1860s on the GNR , but I think there was a unique fault with them, from memory. (its a long time since I read the book!)

 

It would be interesting to know just which companies did what, component manufacturing wise and how 'in-house' capabilities developed from loco repair to construction over time. Even the GW bought in all their locos in the very earliest days and it was the quality of many of these, as much as cost, which led to the decision to go down the DIY route. Quite a few 'railway built' locos, in reality, were closer to machining and assembly jobs using bought in components, especially for many less-than-mighty pre-grouping railways.

If this aspect takes off, it's got 'seperate thread' written all over it!

 

Well, there is an interesting question about the relationship between private builders & main line companies, North British seem to have worked with all the Big Four bar the GWR

 

I doubt that materials were reasonable right from the off. It was a question of using what they had and learning as they went along. Apart from non-ferrous materials there was only wrought and cast iron to use. Wrought iron was generally used for boilers and Low Moor iron had an enviable reputation as being the best for this purpose. Wrought iron was also used for axles and the primitive forging techniques inevitably meant that forging laps were endemic in them. Casting techniques were also fairly primitive and the difficulties of casting large wheels meant that the castings were frequently flawed and cracked. Many early wheels were cast with gaps in the ring to void this and key pieces were fitted before a hoop tyre was shrunk on.

 

You mean the Big Three, then?

 

The P2s and 35020 may have slipped your memory. Those were design faults really, but there are designs which are inherently poor and those for which a slightly better material would have eliminated the problem, if you catch my drift. As for quality of metallurgy, I think it was E.S. Cox who referred to Claughtons shelling Rugby station with bits of broken tyre in the immediate post WW1 era. There's a tale in one of Norman McKillop's books of the A3 (Windsor Lad) which lost a coupled wheel tyre mid run without the driver realising it, told by the driver in question, so even in latter years all was not necessarily as it should have been.

 

They built 100 57xx class engines.

 

Wasn't the Shipton-on-Cherwell accident caused by a fractured tyre causing the train to derail?

Tom

 

Yes it was, also the tyres were then secured to the rims by four countersunk rivets rather than heat shrinking

 

Yes id forgotten about those, in that i thought we were taking about early engines. The GWR didnt buy any engines from outside until the 40s because after Brunel's 'freaks' , (dont forget though this was early days, as someone said they were learning as they went) Daniel Gooch produced some exellent designs first with the North Star & then with the Firefly's. His lasting contribution though was in creating & keeping up to date Swindon Works.

 

Er, not quite. North Star was by Stephensons and was a success because it did not suffer from Brunel's weird ideas about locomotive design. Daniel Gooch developed the Firefly type from it.

PH

 

Yes, I think it was one of a pair of 5'6" gauge engines from a cancelled order, and Daniel Gooch got RS&Co to alter them to the 7 foot gauge. He'd been an apprentice to the Stephensons and knew them well.

 

For a few years in the early days of the GWR standard gauge, before Wolverhampton started new construction, Gooch's practise was to build goods engines at Swindon but to order passenger engines from private builders such as Sharp Stewart, Geo. England and Beyer Peacock. He seems to have been sufficiently impressed with the new firm of Beyer Peacock to later order further goods engines leaving the design to them.

 

But weren't the Fire Fly class and all the early Gooch designs built by outside companies? I thought the first GWR built locomotive was the 8ft single Great Western in 1846, by which time the GWR had over 100 locomotives. Then there were also all the outside built narrow gauge locomotives being built for what became the GWR Northern division in 1854 on.

 

Deleted duplicate of JimC's post at the same time.

BTW Further locos from private builders resumed in 20s not 40s (5700, 5600 classes).

 

'Vulcan', the first GWR engine delivered in 1837, was built by Messers. Tayleur & Co which became the Vulcan Foundry Company. Initially that company seems to have been looked upon favorably - Daniel Gooch's comment given in 'Red for Danger' was "The North Star and the six from the Vulcan Foundry Company were the only ones I could at all depend upon." Firefly was delivered in 1840 while, as you say, the first locomotive built entirely at Swindon, 'Great Western', was not turned out until April 1846.

 

!! FX sound of penny dropping !! I was getting all confused because I thought he meant 1840s not 1940s!
There were also 6370-7304 of the 4300 class, built by RSH in 1921, and the 1101s in 1926, the latter being Swindon's strange reluctance to build 0-4-0Ts. I think before that the mid 1860s was about the last time new locomotives had been purchased.

 

They were , but after these & when Gooch had got Swindon works up & running most construction was there as Gooch wanted to make sure of quality & standardisation which he did. Admitted there was a lot of outside contracts as has been said, one of the large orders which has'nt been mentioned was for broad gauge 4.4.0 saddle tanks , a lot of which went to Avonside .
Back to the thread ! an engine which seemed to start off well, but which I hav'nt heard of for a while is the L NW King George the Fifth, any news of this?