New builds - how many will ever really work?

Would it not make more sense to build the shed, or acquire one, before the locomotive is ready for final assembly? I appreciate that you are utilising the Llangollen's resources but it's still nice to have a 'home', into which your loco can immediately be put for safe storage.

 

Well although that would be a great idea we have to build the loco by 2018 so ALL funds will be going on the loco. We will have to see how money comes in after the build if we are able to do so.

 

i tthink Id rather see resources put into modern boilers for existing locos, but then "he who pays the Piper..."

 

They may not have done in the past, but I suspect such things will in the future. This is an area where the youngsters are streets ahead of the majority of most of us, and an area where many new build (and existing rail groups) could actually do with catching up. Just had a look at the Claud group website - puts the majority of railway ones in the shade.

These large projects - thats a lot more than engineering involved.

 

I know a "Sperm" thats going to build a new "Gresley Garratt"!!! Rumour is it could be twins, so thats the Managing Director and Chief Mechanical Engineer sorted - LOLOL

 

I am sure that if a highly qualified engineer were to come along to the lads founding the J39 group and say 'hey I have the expertise to design and build your locomotive - here are my credentials' the current engineering director would gladly step aside. I am sure that the young men founding the GWS all those years ago quickly gained the support of adults with the necessary experience and qualifications to look after the assets with which the GWS rapidly became entrusted with, and who were able to train the teenagers in question too.

Right now, the presence of an Engineering Director is fairly academic - although as a point of call for networking and getting copies of the relevant papers from the NRM - which I have noticed the group in question have made a start on - it is sensible to have someone with a basic remit to look after the engineering side of things. By the time they are anywhere near cutting metal either the current engineering director will be old enough and suitably qualified to look after things, or a more experienced person will have taken over.

I don't see anything wrong in titles in a society or group. In a re-enactment society of which I am a member, I hold the rank of 'Corporal', but I would never dream of considering myself anywhere near the necessary levels of understanding to be a private, let alone a corporal, in the modern army. If said Engineering Director was spuriously signing himself off as 'Joe Bloggs (CEng)' now that would be a problem.

 

This thread hasn't half drawn some long silent posters out of the closet.

 

If the teenage founders of this project are not qualified "engineers",provided they are stubborn enough to persist in their aims, listen study and learn they will in time become the skilled team to see it through.

 

Age ,or lack of it isnt the question here, what is, or should be are the persons who are doing the designing, organising and fund raising got the necessary skills , and experienced back up to do it, i have seen school age kids make live steam 5 inch engines from scratch so there are young engineers out there who have the knowledge to up scale to full size and most are members of clubs, societies etc where i would imagine older people have given advise and offered practical help and passed on their mechanical skills to the younger generations.
remember it was kids of school age who started our movement they all had to learn we should welcome anything that keeps the younger generations involved and keen to follow in our own foot steps

 

The UK steam era saw incredible diversity. Almost to the end. So it's no wonder there are so many different ideas as to what locos should be built now. But there is only so much expertise and cash around so inevitably a good number of new build projects will fail. Such is life.

If the UK had standardised it's loco fleet decades before the end, then maybe modern day expertise and funding would have concentrated not on maintaining a very wide fleet of different classes and on bringing back lost classes, but on setting up a line/lines where a limited number of similar classes could operate at normal design speeds on a regular basis.

But you can't re-write history.

Thankfully, for those who love such machines, Tornado has been an outstanding success. And, for my preferences , the Brighton Atlantic project looks like that will come to fruition too.

 

Actually the railmotor is not a new build, it is a restoration, much of it had to be new, just like any other restoration.

 

as an essex boy, I'd love to see the Claud make it.

I don't think there is any concern with the commitee being young. Rememeber, if the preversation movement is limited to people who remember the days of steam, then it will die out very soon. Given the long timeframes of new-builds, I think that starting young, they should have not only the enthusiam to carry on but the ability to still be alive to see it run !

Lots of the great engineers started out young, and didn't have access to many of the engineering learning resources we have now.


Of the other things ... I'd like to see one P2 built. Can't see the point in having two

And the GWR 4-6-0s, especially the Saint ... although most of these are starting out with a collection of bits of other trains so should be easier to fit together.


Anybody fancy building a Paget Engine ?

 

I for one hate it (I'm only 25) when on the stand and older people ask me why I like steam because I'm not old enough to remember it. Hang on I have been going to steam railways for years. Been on mainline tours since I was 8, yes it might not be as common but maybe when I hear the sound of a gwr bark or a stanier hooter its rare and exciting.

So actually I have grown up with steam.

 

I think the above is an excellent post and probably a good example of the forward thinking preservation will need from now, and in the future. I do think channeling the youthful enthusiasm and determination towards a common shared goal, hand in hand with engineering expertise is a great idea, however I wonder if we are all missing a trick here.

In the preserved J17 there is an otherwise identical boiler and smokebox setup which could be used for measuring up towards the building of a true D14 Claud Hamilton (as built, in other words, by the GER), and of course, the same GER tender that would be required for a D14 (the preserved B12/3 also shares this design of tender).

Of course, you would still be building a new locomotive from scratch, and have all the associated problems of funding to go with it, but by careful examination and familiarization of types with common shared parts, it makes the job a lot easier in the long run, and particularly if the largest component - the boiler - can be replicated more easily as a result of having one to measure up in the first place.

If managed carefully, I think a new build D14 could be a very real possibility in the decades to come.

 

What's missing? Genuine question - I've read through this entire thread and haven't seen any mention of a project within the site's remit that's not on it already. Always happy to be pointed towards anything that should be there and isn't, though.

 

So you were talking to me then.

 

I thought you both knew each other, from Cauldon Lowe?