Tyseley Single Wheeler.

In what respect? I've touched my injector the same number of times i've touched my feed pump, and the feed pump does a lot more work!
Daniel

 

Also worth remembering that no energy is free - a live steam injector will use steam, but a feed pump will also absorb energy as increased rolling resistance. So I doubt there is much extra efficiency, though the ability to also have feed water heating must be an advantage. Inherently, the Beattie feedwater heating system is a better one than the Stroudley system, IMHO. I suspect for the 19th century railway companies licence fees were also part of the equation: I think all the Beattie engines with donkey pumps had to carry a plaque saying "Beattie's patent" and I think he got a royalty. Presumably, if they had used injectors, Giffard would have been owed a royalty.

The other disadvantage of pumps of course is that you can't use them while static, which explains why Beattie also went to the extra expense and complexity of fitting a separate donkey pump. Stories of Stroudley's engines running up and down nearby sidings to top the boiler up aren't unknown, and I've even heard a story somewhere of greasing the rails and deliberately allowing an engine to slip so that the pumps could be run.

Tom

 

This has been possible in the preservation era, on the narrow gauge. The Welshpool & Llanfair's Joan was originally fitted with feed pumps for work in Antigua, because the weather there was hot enough to heat up the water in the side tanks so that the injectors couldn't pick up. When first restored by the W&L she kept a feed pump on one side with an injector fitted on the other. I am not sure when the second feed pump was finally removed but I think it had gone by the 1990s.

 

Agreed! Beautiful model of a beautiful loco. Lucky as we are to still have 30585 and 30587, I'd love to see one of Beattie's designs recreated in original form one day...one could get a little carried away with the possibilities of new builds...!

 

Tom -

The Tyseley Bloomer as gradually conceived (in discussions from May 1986) was supposed to represent this type of engine as it would have appeared when the LNWR's 'Southern Division' was a separate entity, i.e. with lots of gleaming brasswork, elaborate and colourful livery, engine number on the chimney front etc. In April 1862 the Southern Division engines were taken over by Crewe, they were renumbered from 601 upwards and painted all-over green with black bands: no polished brasswork, no numberplates and no number on the chimney. So the Tyseley engine was intended to be in the earlier, near-original, less-familiar and more 'glamorous' style of pre-1862.

There was a complication, in that some Bloomers were painted a very dark red "plum colour" in 1861 which, by a mistake, had been described as "vermilion" - a notion apparently so fascinating that dozens of paintings have since appeared, showing S Div engines in bright red. But the colours of the lining on this dark red were (and are) quite unknown, so it seemed better to try to reproduce the earlier green livery on the Tyseley engine; this might also have helped to demolish the spurious "vermilion" legend.

So the loco wasn't to be in "mid-1860s form" but c1860, or at least pre-April 1862. Coal firing would have been very common by then, and as to the injectors I'm pretty sure there was never any intention of trying to reproduce the 1860s Giffard type, whose pipework was very prominent on engines so equipped. As the injector on the Tyseley engine would be more or less out of sight (the crosshead pumps on the original engines were well hidden behind the frameplates and beneath the footplates) I suppose specifying an injector was simpler and more convenient.

But all this seems rather academic now.

Harry.

 

It is interesting to hear that Tyseley has agreed to host another new-build project (Holden F5 - see their website), albeit externally funded.

 

On the Chinese QJ and JS types, which were no doubt copies of US practice, a steam driven centrifugal pump was used to pump the feedwater to the feedwater heater, a so-called open-type which sat in the top of the smokebox, the heated water then being pumped into the boiler with a reciprocating steam driven pump. In practice, the feedwater pump system seemed to fall into disuse and Wardale was characteristically unimpressed at the system's capability, even when working. I gather from Bruce, "The Steam Locomotive in America", that the closed-type feedwater heater only needed one pump.

 

I have yet to finish reading the Red Devil and presume that this is mentioned in there. However, if I've understood what you are saying correctly, the idea of having what is in effect two pumps in series with an intervening reservoir sounds to be an operational horror and a design concept destined to failure.

 

Just like the Stephensons, then, and almost all the loco engineers in between them. "Mavericks" like Crompton and Bulleid only really deviated a small amount from the current orthodoxy. Even seemingly radical departures from normal practice, such as Gresley's "Hush-hush" or Stanier's Turbomotive, were experimenting with well-accepted technology in other fields. But I'm digressing quite a long way from The Bloomer...

 

Thanks Harry

I guess my interest in things like injectors and coke burning, where appropriate, is really a philosophical one about new builds, especially early new builds. Clearly, no-one would build an 1860's "single" as a practical traffic engine, so there has to be more benefit than that. Part of that benefit, to me, seems to me about replicating features, even obsolete ones, so as to give an insight into the operational problems faced by loco men of old.

As an example, before the Midland pattern of coal-burning firebox became universal, other designers had their own attempts to solve the problem. Beattie, for example, came up with a solution that involved two grates, separated by a transverse water-filled partition that rose part of the way up the firebox, but with the front and back portions communicating with each other at the top. There were two fire hole doors, one above the other. The top door was used to fire the front grate, in which a small but fiercely burning coke fire was placed. The lower door fed the back grate, which was fed with coal - the unburnt gases from which were consumed over the coke fire before going through the tubes. As a design, it was said to be very effective in its aim of preventing smoke, and Beattie claimed - probably with some justification - that his engines were amongst the most economical in the country in running cost. Of course, the downside was that his fireboxes were expensive to manufacture and prone to leaks on account of the complex shape and differential heating, so no doubt what was gained in coal bill was lost in first cost and maintenance. But if ever a new-build was contemplated, it would certainly be interesting to have the complex dual-fuel firebox!

Of course, that may be a hopelessly naive and romantic view...

PS - for anyone wanting to see what an actual installation of a Giffard injector looked like, here's one:

http://basilicafields.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/ser_235_241.jpg (Source: http://basilicafields.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/the-south-eastern/)

It's a SER Cudworth 235 class, re-boilered with a Stirling boiler (and conventional firebox!) but otherwise as built.

I only include that picture because, for all the fans of M7s and H tanks and Caley 0-4-4Ts and the like, that South Eastern Railway design was the very first 0-4-4T in the country, a wheel arrangement that later became near-universal for suburban tank engines.

Tom

 

Interesting spring/compensated suspension arrangement. This is a rather smart looking loco.

Steve B

 

Hmm, as someone who has done battle with a Giffard injector in the past, I can't see one on that locomotive. That's not to say it didn't have one but, as the both the steam valve spindle and steam cone have to be physically moved up and down by a lever to get the injector to pick up, it has to be in physically reach of the fireman so has to be mounted in or just under the cab and there is no obvious sign of one on that loco.

Getting a Giffard injector to pick up is a challenge in itself and using one teaches you a lot about injector control pretty quickly.

 

Ah, my mistake then - I was assuming the gubbins by the smokebox was thus! Certainly several photos of SER locos of that vintage I have seen have similar pipework at the front. (There also appears to be a second water supply mid way along the barrel; possibly from an auxiliary feed pump arrangement?)

Much as I'm a fan of all things Southern, it rather looks to me like at some point it lost an argument with the buffer stops at Cannon Street! With regard the suspension arrangements, I suspect that even in those days, the SER permanent way wasn't amongst the smoothest in the country.

Tom

 

How did he expect anyone to fire this sort of thing? Seperate fire one in front of the other....and a thin one furthest away? Must have been interesting running, especially with the military style discipline of the railways at the time...