Saint Class 135 ish mph

The problem with Flying Scotsman's run is that the evidence doesn't quite tie up. We don't have the original dyno car roll - and the three hand drawn graphs (two published in the Railway Magazine Jan 1935 and one in the NRM) are all different - one only showing 98 mph. The graph in the NRM - which I went to look at last year - shows an acceleration from 95 to 100 mph in less than a mile - which is very hard to reconcile with the laws of physics. Plus C J Allen only clocked 97 mph.


I don't believe 2903 did 135 mph (Collett did not claim that) and perhaps it didn't do 120 mph, but there is no reason to doubt well over 100 - that's quite within the laws of physics for a light engine with a long downhill and some motivated people on the footplate. If you still doubt that then do you also doubt that K J Cook timed a Castle at about 108 mph? This in a serious book full of dry engineering details.

The summer of 1927 was a very wet one which resulted in sodden conditions of track in some places and this in turn gave rise to reports of rough riding of some engines of the Castle Class.... we had engines brought to Works as they were reported and after examination and dealing with any minor defects we could find, we ran them on light engine trials on which Hannington and I rode.... For our own high speed trials we crossed over to the down side of the main line at Rodbourne Lane Signal Box shortly before the 1.55pm train from Paddington was due. This train divided at Swindon, the front portion going to South Wales via Badminton and the rear portion followed to Bristol via Bath. We followed the latter train, by which time the former was getting well ahead.....

We indicated to the signalmen as we passed their boxes that we wanted a good run up. On this occasion, somewhere near Coalpit Heath, we passed the 10.50am Neyland to Paddington express coming up, so by the time we had run round the triangle at Filton, we had a clear road which enabled us to open out....

...for our special trials we always had Jimmy Howard. He was rather a 'red' but a good engineman and always ready to run hard if we wanted it. (By 'red' Cook is referring to the driver's political views) He opened up at Stoke Gifford and by Coalpit Heath we were doing 79....

Our galloping ground really started between Chipping Sodbury and Badminton. We were going really well when we entered the tunnel and opened out as we emerged. But we still hovered at 98; Jimmy eased the regulator and looked across expecting me to tell him that we had reached 100 but I went across and said "No good Jimmy, you will have to get a move on" at which he dropped the reversing gear into 35 per cent cut-off, opened to full throttle and we shot up to 108. Timing by stopwatch, although graduated for miles an hour over quarter mile distances, I would not vouch for the last mile or two but I would definitely say that we were running at 105 and she rode quite steadily. Brinkworth up distant signal was on, the Neyland express had not cleared Wootton Bassett so we had to make a full brake application.

 

But they did do that with newly overhauled express locos regularly. There are many accounts of it published. Collett didn't ride many I'd wager and exceeding 100 would have been rare in the extreme

 

Yep. Every new and repaired locomotive had a high speed light engine test run with some of the works staff on board - at least a junior fitter. The typical run was at moderate speed outwards, the the locomotive would be checked over for warm bearings and the like, then high speed on the way back. Holcroft records one such run, on one of the very derailment prone 3521 0-4-4s like this:
“the outward journey was made bunker first and at a moderate speed… the driver went ‘hell-for-leather’ on the return trip to give the engine a good shake-up – and he succeeded! Although I have travelled extensively since on all kinds of engines and at speeds over 100mph there was never a trip like this one. It had to be experienced to be believed, for the lateral oscillation was terrific: the motion imparted to the footplate could be likened to that of a terrier shaking a rat!”
This would have been nothing like 100mph, but the point is made that they were pushing it hard.
Examples like this and the Cook anecdote make it clear that high speed light engine test runs were routine, and signalmen (on the standard test routes) and drivers were well used to dealing with the implications, but Cook's note also suggests that high 90s was more usual than 100plus.
The other thing about the Cook note is that it makes it clear that the engineers of the time were well aware of the limitations of their timing apparatus. By the 1930s Cook had a mph calibrated stopwatch, but this was after the invention of the 1/100 sec stopwatch in 1916. If we take my **guess** that Collett had only a 1 second or half second stopwatch then he would have known well that a reading of 120 only meant somewhere, anywhere, between 112 and 128.

 

From the April 1932 Railway Magazine...

Two Miles a Minute

During January last a statement obtained wide currency in the daily press that Mr. H. J. Robinson, then just about to retire from the position of Chief Locomotive Inspector on the Great Western Railway, had been responsible for driving a locomotive in this country at a speed of 120 miles per hour. It is needless to say that readers of The Railway Magazine who are familiar with all the speeds hitherto claimed as railway records, and in particular with the figure of 102-3 m.p.h. achieved down Wellington bank of the G.W.R. on May 9, 1904, which from that day to this has had an unchallenged supremacy, are interested to know on what authority this new claim has been made, as is evidenced by the extensive correspondence we have received on the subject. We therefore wrote Mr. C. B. Collett, the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, who communicated to us an interesting account of what actually occurred.

It appears that in May, 1906, No. 2903 one of the newly introduced 2-cylinder 4-6-0 locomotives and herself fresh from the shops was taken for a trial run light from Swindon to Stoke Gifford, with the intention, after running the engine round the Filton-Patchway triangle, of having "a sharp run" back. Signal checks were experienced, however, and No. 2903 was then stopped at Chipping Sodbury until "line clear" had been obtained through to Wootton Bassett, after which she was re-started, and there was evidently some running of a very startling order down the 1 in 300 from Badminton to Little Somerford.

The purpose of the run was to demonstrate that an engine taken straight from the shops could be run at over 100 miles per hour. Those on the footplate included Mr. Collett, who was then Assistant Manager of the Locomotive Works, Mr. G. H. Flewellen, who was Locomotive Inspector, and the Foreman of the Erecting Shop, Mr. Evans. The timing for some distance by the mileposts with a stop watch was given as 120 miles per hour, and the clocking between the signal-boxes of Little Somerford and Hullavington was booked as two minutes for the 4½ miles.

Mr. Collett points out that, while the object of running a new engine on its first trip at over 100 miles per hour was achieved, the timing could not be regarded as accurate and that the 102-3 m.p.h. record of "City of Truro" in 1904, made under the personal observation of one of the most careful recorders of his time the late Charles Rous-Marten with the aid of a chronograph reading to one-fifth parts of a second, must remain the best duly authenticated railway speed record that this country has yet witnessed.

 

The newspaper report that triggered the Railway Magazine to write to Collett...

 

Well folks, there you have it - far more than just a big fish story, but less than a fully authenticated properly timed record.

One strongly suspects that the correspondence received by the Railway Magazine from your grandfathers and great-grandfathers will have borne a distinct resemblance to the posts in this thread...

 

None of this "proves" anything; save that we have a similar tendency towards wishful thinking in such matters as the Americans.

PH

 

no one has claimed they can prove it. I'm amazed you could think Mr Collett would indulge in wishful thinking.

 

Why on earth should it evoke any surprise or any amazement? Only the Pope is supposed to be infallible.

PH

 

View attachment 27137

Is this post Trump revisionism or what?

The original roll does not exist but the LNER's record keeping exists and you have also access, I hope, to the incredible raft of evidence regarding how seriously Sir Nigel Gresley took the speed records.

If Collett is somehow papally infallible with absolutely no documented evidence whatsoever, then Gresley, who accepted Scotsman, Papyrus, Silver Link and Mallard all did 100mph or over (and is well known in LNER circles for only claiming a maximum of 125mph, not 126mph, for Mallard) surely has more sway given his absolute insistence on a more scientific approach to locomotive development through testing (to the extent the first locomotive on the Rugby testing plant was 60007).

The copy of the graph in the NRM is more believable in my view than Cecil J Allen's timekeeping.

Sorry, but a man holding a stop watch and watching for mile posts is not as accurate as a dynamometer car, which is looked after and specially calibrated for a very specific purpose - to record all the different data required more accurately.

It is utterly ludicrous to suggest Flying Scotsman did not achieve 100mph with the knowledge we have on LNER practice and the copies of the rolls we have.

I am inclined to completely ignore Nock's timekeeping, for consistency's sake as I do with all other timekeepers - it's not an exact science and it is absolutely nowhere near as accurate as the dynamometer car records.

Yet a locomotive of higher power, better steaming capability, on a run for the exact purpose of achieving an authenticated 100mph is somehow incapable of doing so.

A Saint is not a Castle and just because one might be true does not also follow that the other is too!

I'm not sure why this piece - which is a completely different event to that being discussed - is relevant.

It does not address the fundamental question of did the Saint go over 100mph (let alone the 120mph+ suggested!)

I would suggest the above is a red herring which should have its own thread to discuss. It certainly does not add credence to the Saint claim. Any more perhaps than Mallard's run in some way makes Scotsman's run more credible.

They are separate events and should be treated on their own merits and evidence.

 

I think that train recording on a stopwatch is actually very accurate because you can plot the speed for each quarter mile and an anomaly stands out like a sore thumb, much as Rous-Martin's 102.3 did. I don't doubt Truro did somewhere around 100 as did Scotsman, and I don't doubt the word of the senior GWR officials involved with the Saint escapade, they claim around 120 and we have seen that their timing may be inaccurate by quite a margin ether side of that. The signalbox times seem to indicate a maximum of more than 120was the likelihood. I'd pay more heed to Collett saying the Saint did around 120 than I would to some unknown on here rubbishing it

 

Have we? Show me the data. Show me the actual logs. Show me something other than a couple of written accounts from a couple of people that can stand scrutiny. One of which was 20 years after the event.

Wouldn't stand up in court! Unlike Scotsman's record.

And that is entirely up to you.

I prefer to deal with authenticated speed records whereby there is more of a scientific approach than stopwatches and hearsay.

 

At one time a class 5 was tested with different grades of reciprocating balance.20 % was intolerable on engine and in train .
At 60% on greased rails driving wheels were lifting and 40 % was applied as standard and was also the percentage applied to BR standar two cylinder engines.
120 mph on a two cylinder Saint has not been pleasant.

 

You really shouldn't say that. This is where granularity comes in again.

Signal box passing times were recorded to the nearest 1/2 minute. Supposing those two boxes were exactly 4.5 miles apart then 2.5 minutes between them would be *anywhere* between 90mph and 135 mph and 2 minutes anywhere between 108 and 180 (!). If they were slightly less than 4.5 miles the numbers come down. All you can say about the signal box numbers is that they are compatible with what little Collett said about the stopwatch numbers.

If you had a whole heap of numbers then you could start considering probabilities about where numbers fall in the possible range, but with one number you really must not.

It would be interesting, if the theoretical calcs some people actually have any real world value, to calculate the theoretical limits for a Castle and a Saint light engine. The Saint obviously has a lot less brute power, but only two sets of valves and two sets of pistons generating friction.

 

I don't think Trump would have posted a copy of the NRM speed curve clearly showing 100 mph for you to see. For both FS and 2903 I have laid out the evidence and given you my interpretation of it - and by providing the original data allow you to draw your own conclusions.

I'm quite sure the FS was capable of 100 mph - it's just doubtful what happened on that day in November 1934 - as I said the curve looks impossible. Perhaps someone would like to estimate the cylinder power required for that final acceleration. I've no axe to grind and no wish to be an iconoclast - and would be happy to see an explanation of that speed curve.

For locomotives running light engine the power/weight ratio is more important than the absolute power. A 110 ton Saint requires less power to run at 100 mph than a 150 ton LNER pacific. (BTW did FS still have short travel valves in 1934?)

The relevance of the 1927 run by 5000 is that (1) it shows that high speed light engine trials were normal practice at Swindon and (2) the signalmen were used to this and it wasn't as unsafe as it first appears.

In a different book (Speed Records on Britain's Railways) where Nock describes 100 mph runs by Kings from light engine Didcot to Swindon you get the same explanation on how these trials were conducted. Ample preparation was made to ensure a clear road on these occasions, and the signalmen concerned knew what to expect as these engines came flying through Challow and Uffington doing their ton.

Perhaps doubters would like to explain exactly what they don't believe.

1 - Do they believe that Swindon never carried out light engine trials? (There are multiple independent sources from the 1840s onwards - when Iron Duke locomotives were ran at 78 mph down Dauntsey Bank)
2 - Do they believe that high speeds were never reached? (High speeds were technically feasible - and multiple sources say it happened)
3 - That Henry Robinson - who within the last year had been the inspector on the footplate for several world record runs on the Cheltenham Flyer and had looked after Royal Trains and spoken to Royalty during his career as Chief Locomotive Inspector - would invent a tale to give to the press on his retirement?
4 - That Charles Collett would take the time to embellish this tale with odd details and put his name and reputation against it?

If you want you can decide that lots of things have been fabricated - but that is the slippery slope to believing that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare and that the Moon Landings were faked. In this case suggest you apply Occam's Razor - and go with the simplest explanation - that 2903 did run at a very high speed.

 

read back the thread and you'll see someone provided the figures for various stopwatches.

 

No-one is talking about records. Not then, not now.

'course with any other form of transport people would be falling on the floor laughing about just about all the major steam records anyway. Down a steep hill? No run in the other direction? No recording of wind strength? Go away and do it properly would be the typical response.

For example Campbell was killed doing the opposite direction run of a speed record attempt. His first run was 20mph over the existing record, but it was never considered a new record because he didn't complete the second run.

So, actually, there's no way Scotsman's record would stand up in an independent court either.

 

Interesting post Jim. Let me have a think on that. A good example with Campbell there.

Logically, are you suggesting no railway speed records should stand perhaps?

 

This whole thread reminds me of the X files poster

"I want to believe"