Loco to Tender Couplings

Tender overhauls tend to take a shorter time than loco overhauls. If the WD engines and tenders had been constructed on a 1:1 basis, then there would have been a float of spare tenders waiting at works for engine overhauls to complete.

Some railways deliberately built fewer tenders than locos for this reason.

 

One of the railways that built fewer tenders than locomotives was the LNWR, routinely changing tenders during overhauls at Crewe so they must have been used to the compatibility issues as some LNWR locos were steam braked and some vacuum, while some had a strange system where the tender brakes were applied by a pull rod connected to the locomotive steam brake cylinder. The LNWR always had something of a cheapskate reputation and an even worse one for poor locomotive brakes to the extent that E.S. Cox commented that he didn't understand how the LNWR managed to work unbraked freight trains at all.

 

Are there any photos of the Stanier 8Fs with WD tenders?

 

Sort of.



This is nothing to do with the Exchanges. It shows WD500, now preserved as BR 8773, following its return from the Middle East and overhaul at Derby and prior to being moved to the Longmoor Military Railway. No tenders were brought back from the Middle East in 1952 to accompany the five 8Fs returned for overhaul as they were supposed to be returned there, but the changed political situation made this undesirable. This WD tender was attached just for the movement to Longmoor.

I have no photos of 8Fs so fitted for the 1948 Exchanges.

 

That's perfectly good enough for me! Thank you.

 

There was a photograph of 8647 attached to a WD tender in the Friends of the National Railway Museum review last year.

 

The LNWR was not unique in using a single steam-brake cylinder to operate brakes on both engine and tender. Some NER goods locos had a similar arrangement. The large Q7 0-8-0s were modified in early BR days to have separate steam brake cylinders on engine and tender.

On railways that used vacuum train braking, there was a division of opinion among engineers over whether the brakes on the engine and tender should be operated by vacuum or steam. Steam brake advocates were probably a majority, with that being the choice for the BR Standard locomotive range of the 1950s.

Tenders often outlasted the engines for which they had been built, and that was another reason why railways could end up with a surplus of tenders. Some tenders got re-used in ancillary roles such as water carriers, sludge carriers or snow-plough chassis. But others got re-used with new engines, avoiding the need for new tender construction. I think the GWR Granges and Manors re-used tenders from the 43XX engines that they replaced, while both GWR and LMS re-used ex-ROD tenders. The LNER built a batch of 25 new O2-class 2-8-0s in 1942, which took LNER standard tenders formerly paired with D49 4-4-0s. The D49s were given surplus tenders of GCR and NER build. I believe that the preserved D49 "Morayshire" still has a GCR tender?