LH & RH Drive

Stephenson's Rocket

 

Re: LH & RH Drive

Tom

What about the T3 - No.563 - at Shildon? Just happened to be on it today while cleaning the Duchess next to it and guess what - it is also a RH drive loco.

Peter James

 

Re: LH & RH Drive

D'oh! How did I forget! I've edited my post so it at least stands as a complete list in one place, but have given due note of the source of the correction.

Off now to worship and contemplate at the Book of Bradley and say 100 "Hail Adams" in suitable penance...

Tom

 

Is it LHD? I don't remember. I'm not quite that old!

 

Nor am I!

But the reverser - a footpedal in the floor - is on the left side of the footlate, as is the valve linkage.

 

Bit of trivia, the W&LLR Beyer Peacocks 822 and 823 (RHD) have the pole-reverser and drain cocks controls on the firemans side (i.e. on the left). The fireman work these following verbal instructions from the driver (but some seam to know each other so well that no communication is required!)

It has long been speculated that they were LHD when built by Beyer Peacock and either the GWR or the Cambrian changed them to RHD, but the surviving drawings, photographs and archelology on the locos has failed to be conclusive of this. Both the Cambrian (who specified the locos as the W&LLRCo's vertically integrated train operator with a 99 year franchise!) and the GWR were a RHD railways.

There is another speculative theory that the locos reused some Walcheats valve gear components from a cancelled order for some locomotives for the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway - the W&L locos were orginally allocated the works numbers 4418 and 4419 but they were subsequenty re-issued to some Argentinian 2-6-0s and the W&L locos given out-of-series 3496 and 3497 that had been previously allocated to the cancelled BAGSR locos.

G.

 

Many moons ago, 1996/7 IIRC I was a trainee fireman to the late Pasco Rowe, on leaving Llan on the first trip of the day, just as we passed the signal box I leant down and closed the drain cocks (where most drives asked for them to be closed) Mr Rowe was less than impressed that I had done this of my own accord and asked for them to be opened again, explaining the need to leave them open till you heard a change in pitch of the escaping steam denoting that the cylinders were running dry, so duly instructed I closed them, when the fireman who I was on with asked if he wanted the engine notching back, we were told, no there is no need, so he drove the entire trip down in full gear (I assume as punishment for acting out of turn)

For reasons I can no longer remember we arrived quite late in Welshpool and so quickly watered, and coupled back on to the train, to receive the right away almost immediately, having had no time to build the fire, I had to fire the loco up the bank (The engine remaining in full gear) we did make it up without any stops, but crested the top of the bank with a huge fire and the bare minimum water, at which point the loco was asked to be notched back, I then spent the rest of the return trip trying to not let the loco blow off. I did not touch the shovel again on the whole way back to Llan, although as I handed the loco over to the lunchtime relief I glanced into the fire box to see quite a large expanse of fire bar looking back at me, but the pressure gauge was still pointing the correct way!

I learnt far more other trip than any other I had undertaken on the WLLR, and by the end of the day when Pasco was filling in my training card he did say I coped quite well considering! In many ways I still appreciate the lesson! I never did pass out at the WLLR going off to uni up north at the end of the summer and then never returning to my parents house. I now drive past the WLLR on my way to the WHR wondering if I had persevered how soon I would have passed out as a fireman.

 

That's fascinating!

Also worth remembering that, in the days before power-operated brakes on engines and continuous brakes on the train, stopping was considered the fireman's responsibility - which is why the handbrake is always on the fireman's side. I have a vague recollection of some loco of fairly ancient vintage that I once went on the footplate of (or maybe saw a picture of - I honestly can't remember), which at some rebuild in the depths of time, had a vacuum brake fitted, but the control was on the fireman's side, preserving the old tradition.

Tom

 

Worth noting that the ATCs experimented with by other railways in the Edwardian/Interwar period differed in one important respect from the GW's - they were all partially mechanical, which in that sort of game allows reliability issues to creep in. Something only has to be a hair's breadth out of alignment... Moreover mechanical is more maintenance intensive and more expensive in the first instance. Some were also not fail-safe - the GW's was.

GW ATC really was the forerunner of modern AWS. The other railway's experiments were interesting, and well-meaning, but technological dead-ends. The GW is my favourite railway it's true, but in this I speak from plenty of reading and I am speaking as objectively as I can. I think it would be fair to say that the GW with its installation of ATC was at the forefront of signalling safety in the interwar period. Time and again the BoT recommended its use elsewhere, time and again that was ignored on cost grounds - remember, the worst accident on the British Railway network in peacetime would (almost certainly) not have occurred had GW-style ATC been in place at Harrow and Wealdstone.

 

Would ATC have applied the brakes if the driver didn't respond to the warnings?

 

Yes, it would. Only if the driver had cancelled the warning would the brakes have remained off.

 

Yes, first paragraph here.
Automatic Train Control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Or for a more in-depth study:

http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/rail/atcgwr.htm

Very interesting reading, which also explains the superiority of this system over the LU's tripcock system for this application.

 

Interestingly, the hand brake on the W&LLR Beyer Peacocks is on the RHS (drivers side) and Tom's observations does add to the probability that the W&L engines were subjected to a compromised modification to convert them from LHD to RHD, which could explain their strange cab layout with the reverser and drain cocks controls on the firemans side (LHS).
Unfortunatly, I understand that no conclusive evidence has yet come to light that the vacuum brake controls were originally on the LHS (the GWR replaced the vacuum brake system with their standard equipment when the locos were re-built).

Gareth

 

Strictly speaking, the GWR system was also mechanical in that a contact ramp physically raised the locomotive shoe, which again brought in alignment and wear issues. This was one reason why it wasn't accepted by BR as a standard system and AWS was developed from the Hudd system. The result was entirely electro-magnetic, which resolved a few problems.

There is tendency, even in the Accident Inspectors' reports, to comment that a particular accident would not have occurred had ATC or AWS been in use, but the reality is that there were many instances of signals being passed at danger, sometimes leading to collision, after the universal use of AWS. AWS also retained a visual reminder to the driver that he had cancelled the warning after passing the last signal, although even this was not always effective. It was this which led to the more recent introducion of TPWS, which system cannot be easily bypassed by the simple pressing of a cancelling button or trigger.

Great emphasis is often laid on the GWR's progressive attitude of introducing ATC while the other railways did not, but this ignores the fact that these spent their money in a different way, by upgrading the signalling systems to make it easier to see and interpret them, usually by the introduction of colour light signals in place of semaphores. Both signalling upgrades and ATC were expensive introductions, and while both working in harmony was the ideal, no company could afford the massive investment that this would intail. So the LMS, LNER and Southern adopted systems less likely to be run through, but without any backup system, the GWR left a less visible system in place, but with the backup to deal with over-runs. You pays your money and takes your choice!

 

Do I have a vague recollection (or have I just made this up in my head) that whilst as an LMS product the 8F's were LH drive, the ex Turkish one at Toddington is actually RH drive?

 

If you will forgive me for being slightly pedantic, stopping the train was always the Driver's responsibility as part of the overall movement of the train (if you see what I mean), you are right that the fireman was the body on the footplate who physically applied the handbrake but it was still up to the driver to tell him if it needed applying more or less - and certainly the Driver who would carry the can for stopping in the wrong place! The Beattie well tanks have the steam brake control on the fireman's side as did the Stroudley E1s when first fitted so I guess it was presumed that the chap applying the brake before would continue to do so, but I think it was pretty soon standardised on the driver's side.

 

It is probably the Stroudley E tanks I was thinking about, having read up on them a lot when we had the thread about 110 moving to the IoW. I wonder if the Terriers were also initially set up like that when first given power brakes? The old East London lines duty must have been knackering for the fireman before the Terriers wrere given power brakes: somethig like 13 stops in 9 miles, each made by hand and with wooden brake blocks: then shovel a bit of coal in at the platform before starting off again for the next two minute sprint...

Tom

 

Complete conjecture, but did the change come about with continuous brakes? When it was the old hand brake acting only on the engine being replaced by a steam brake it is more of a like-for-like replacement. When the LBSC introduced Westinghouse air on the whole train perhaps this was more of a 'new' system in addition and therefore they went back to the drawing board and placed it with the driver?

 

Some North British built engines were made as RH drive for use in Turkey and possibly elswhere, and some sent abroard as LH drive were converted later.