GWR 94xx Pannier Tanks, ex-Edward Thompson Thread.

Ok so to take it back to the 94xx. There were apparently 382 S100's left over at the end of the war. With it clear that shunting would be handed over to diesels rather than steam, so any steam option would be short term - would it not have been more sensible for the GWR to buy themselves a batch of USA tanks as the Southern had done?

Why borrow from the S100 to design the 15xx when you can just buy up surplus S100s?

 

I don't know the answer (I'm hoping Jim might

But some possible theories to discuss as to why a home-built 94xx may have been preferable to a USA tank:

1) Spares situation on shed (better to have fittings in common with other locos)
2) Financial: use of scarce foreign currency as against sterling
3) Government pressure to keep UK heavy industry in work at the end of the war

Tom

 

Or J94s? There were also plenty of those, as the LNER did.

 

Yeah, but they really are Fugly ...

Tom

 

You can't put a copper safety valve on it...

More seriously, one of the footplate memoirs mentions a general feeling that for the western, nationalisation was only temporary, and they could be back off doing their own thing in the mid 50s. If that was a genuine sentiment, you can see why they wanted to keep the flow of their own designs going.

Also, from a logistical point of view, they did have the standardisation down pat, and a forrin engine would complicate everything (spares, maintenance assumptions, traffic assumptions, operational and crew training etc)in a way it wouldn't in less coherently-engineered lines.

My money's still on the absence of ability to encrust with non-ferrous metals though.

 

can we stop referring to austeritys as [ insert company here] class [ insert number here ]

 

I believe it was an experiment on behalf of and paid for by one of the locomotive companies.

 

They did go their own way a bit though. Diesel hydraulics when everyone else had diesel electrics.

 

To play devil's advocate:

1: With 382 available there seem to be ample spares - afterall didn't the SR buy one to serve as a spares loco? If you are going to build a boutique bunch of station shunters (which is what the 15xx were) why not just follow the Southern lead - buy 11, keep one for spares.
2: That govt organisations such as the NCB bought them would suggest that it wasn't that much of a concern.
3: Given all the things that needed reconstructing in the UK at the end of WW2 (unlike WW1) it seems unlikely to me that that there would have been a shortage of work for industry. But if you did want to keep them doing things then RSH were already building Austerities, so if you need an 0-6-0 wouldn't it have been more efficient to just build another 100 of the engines you were already building?

 

If you buy one as a spares loco, you have to keep the others near it. With a 15xx, it uses parts available from the gates of Wolverhampton to the shining seas of Penzance. Compared to the southern, where Reigate had a different stash to Guildford, the advantage to sticking with group standards was huge.

I think @Jamessquared's point about industry was re USA dock tanks, not hunslet austerities.

But you still can't put a brass bonnet on the safety-valves of either.

 

If you don't want to go down the S100 route because of industry or currency then go for austerities.

Why would a fleet of 10 engines that were based at either Old Oak Common or South Wales need spares from Penzance or Wolverhampton? The S100 would do the job of the 15xx perfectly well.

As for the 94xx if the LNER and industries across the country could use austerities, then I find it hard to imagine that spares were that hard to find.

 

Did they borrow from the S100? Beyond both being shortish wheelbase outside cylinder locomotives with outside Walschaerts gear, scarcely a radical proposition, did they really have much in common? The 15 drives the middle wheels, the S100 the back, the boiler is entirely different... Given the design aim, a locomotive that can work long hours without having to be serviced on a pit, and as many as possible of the GWR kit of parts what else would it look like? Its not as if outside walschaerts was a novelty for the GW. When it was needed it was fitted - on the railcars and the VOR locomotives. And an awful lot of the parts on the 15s were still GWR standard, wheels, brakes, boiler and fittings, not many of the consumables weren't common with other classes.

As for the 94s, they are clearly a trip locomotive that can shunt, not a dedicated shunter. The superheating on the first lot tells that story. Like all GW trip locos they had to be able to go reasonably far and reasonably fast. The S100 record of axlebox problems on extended runs in BR days would render them a poor choice, even without all the complications of being utterly non standard. And I think if you lined up the Riddles Austerities against a 94 at 40 or 50mph it wouldn't even be a contest. The diesel shunters of the day were no better at trip work either. And again largely standard parts. The austerity parts might be available, but they still have to be stocked. I've heard it said that GWR sheds ran with a far smaller spares stock than other lines.

 

The argument seems to be 'but we have spare parts for these engines'

Do we have any records of 94xx doing 50? How often was that happening?

Austerities were clearly able to do trip working. S100s less so but they would have been perfectly usable in place of the 15xx. The statement that the GWR borrowed from S100 is a line in the SREmG entry (I can't vouch for the claim beyond that)

I find it hard to imagine that holding the spares for a class of locomotives which were already in widespread use throughout the rest of the country would have been more onerous or costly than designing and building two new designs (that shared already existing common parts).

 

Question arising from that point (and apologies if it's a daft one): Swindon and Wolverhampton aside, what degree of repairs were handled elsewhere on the GW? For instance, did Laira have a wheel drop? Could Llanelli replace flues of superheater elements? Could Machynlleth or Aberystwyth handle piston rings?

 

The biggest thing is probably consumables that needed to be held at every shed, fire bars, brake blocks and the like. Multiply those and that is a lot of extra parts. And it's not just the parts themselves, they have to be shelved and stored, room in the storeroom etc

There was a hierarchy of repairs. At the top were the factories who could actually manufacture major parts, Swindon, Wolverhampton and post grouping Caerphilly. Then next on the list were regional centres like Newton Abbot. Beyond that larger sheds had repair shops that could manage more routine tasks with lifting equipment.

[Later] According to RCTS Swindon, Wolverhampton and Caerphilly were the factories, Newton Abbot, Barry and until 1952 Worcester could carry out heavy repairs, whilst running repairs could be carried out at all major sheds - presumably those, like Didcot, which possessed a lifting shop.

In my youth I ran a parts department at a motorcycle shop, which probably isn't too different from being storeman at a running shed. In my experience the issue isn't headline items like frames or cylinders. They aren't needed too often and with luck could be scheduled. The issue was the pieces the fitters needed every day. How many different oil filters do I have to stock? Have I got room on the shelf for one more type, or do I need to reorganise a whole rack in order to get space for another. All this adds up. Even on an organisation as efficient as the GWR if you have to order up a part that's another 24hours on the repair and the loco out of service... Sorry, rant over...

 

Speed is always a vexed question, but I've seen comments on other fora from ex WR running staff claiming that 94 passenger trips were timetabled for 50mph max running which implies speeds in the 40s were a daily occurrence.

 

The real key about spares here is IMO, the difference between GW and others. GW held parts on a company-wide basis, and could allocate engines accordingly. No other railway had that global flexibility. An engine with different consumables means you have to ship those consumables to the new shed, different build philosophy means your fitters have to learn what to do over again, the crews need to learn how to make it work best etc. By contrast, you could simply move a GW engine from Penzance to Wolverhampton and it would be ready to go at max efficiency when it got there. No other company had that almost total flexibility.

Had there been another round of big engines, I think the GWs sytems may have been strained by it, but for a shunter it's not worth it.

 

Were the S100s built down to a price? The SR ones needed new fireboxes after 4 years of use. The 15XXs used a standard no. 10 boiler, same as fitted to 2251s and 94XXs, so there would a significant cost saving there. There's other things to consider - the coal capacity was minimal, the axleboxes overheated if more than just trundling about, and there were dimensional differences between different makers. It took nearly a year for the Southern to make all the locos usable for their purposes.

More to the point, why did the GWR decide they needed 10 new locos for ECS shunts at Paddington? Why not use more 94XXs, or 57XXs if overall weight was an issue? I'm sure someone knows, but it seems odd to me that a very small class was built for a very specific job, that could easily have been covered by other locos, either new or cascaded from elsewhere.

 

Are we not into the vagaries of what constitutes a "class" - even the Southern would have to admit they are a new sort of loco, but they are also just 10 more number 10 boilers trundling about (and other consumables). From a spares point of view they are little more than whatever lines you need for the valve gear.