Who should have been in the BR design team?

It's certainly an intriguing question: did the steam locos built by BR after 1948 (including but not limited to the Standards) actually pay for themselves through reduced maintenance costs, or (with the benefit of hindsight) would it actually have worked out cheaper to go on patching up their inherited steam fleet until 1968? I don't know whether anyone could ever answer that question with confidence, since it would involve a lot of speculation about the costs of continuing to run locos which, in the event, were withdrawn.

Nevertheless, I quite agree that some sort of steam stopgap was needed until electrification was achieved (and it should have been electrification rather than dieselisation, at least on the main lines - it's such a shame that the political will to do it wasn't there. So much for the railways being better off in public ownership!). It's just a question of whether that stopgap should have been the Standards, or something else.

Now there's an interesting thought! I remember David Ward arguing in a magazine article years ago that the Britannias should never have been built - he argued that most regions (particularly the LMR) really needed class 8 power rather than class 7. Apparently the GE section was the only region to actually make a bid for any of the new Britannias!

Moreover, apparently the SR decided after nationlisation that they had built too many Light Pacifics and tried to offload some to other regions! So, rather than build the Britannias, send 25 Light Pacifics to the GE section - job done

 

Interesting that the Standard 5MT owed so much above the running plate to the LMS and below was almost a copy of the Thompson B1, including the 6ft 2in wheels. The running plate being a law unto itself, of course, and in line with the other standards.

 

The sound of an approaching hobbyhorse?

PH

 

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

Tom

 

Et tu Brute!

Paul H

 

Indeed - I don't absolve myself from my own comment...

Tom

 

The post WW2 strategic transport plan introduced by the Attlee government assumed that steam would continue for many years until electrification could be introduced. It is also thanks to their vision that an integrated rail, bus and ferry system existed until the 1970s. The political will certainly existed then. However, all changed when the Tories formed the Government in 1951. Nothing much changed until 1953 and then the gradual dismantling of the nascent integrated system began.

Your throwaway remark, "So much for the railways being better off in public ownership!" would be more accurately written, "So much for the railways being better off under a Tory government!".

 

Amen to that John ( much earlier post about caprotti fives) , but being allowed to run a bit faster might make a fair comparison difficult. Apart from the wheel diameter i dont see any similarity with the B1. Not that theres anything wring with a B1
Another approach to The standard 5mt might have been to put the next standard wheel size down on (5ft 8) instead of the next size up, hardly any 'design work' required there...

I agree that the Brits were an odd one - should have been a three cylinder 7-8p if at all
The LMS didnt need any 7mt's with all the reboilered scots, and the umming and arring as to reboilering the Patriots put paid to the Clans as a class size worth taking trouble to get right . A 250psi Clan would still have been an asset to the GE Section...

 

Look at the valve gear arrangement and the coupled wheelbase. Pure LNER outline there.

 

Actually Simon you may be right as i dont recall which part of the committee were given the motion to deal with, but frames wise its Derby with a bit of Brighton

 

The first of the 5MTs was built at Doncaster - bit of a clue to the designers, no? The bulk of the design work was actually at the Doncaster drawing offices under ex-LNER men.

 

According to Cox (if we are to believe him?) a committee was set up under Western region chairmanship to to examine all fittings and renewable parts and to recommend the best for standardising for future construction. One of the few parts from the LNER was the 3 bar slidebars - but nothing to do with the frames. It seems the three bar slidebars were used for the bogie locos and the two bar LMS type for the pony truck designs. The original class 5 mixed traffic was to have been a wide firebox pacific, but R Bond felt the LMS class 5 boiler would be better, so it became a 4-6-0 based on the black 5

 

That's interesting - but if it was based on the LMS black five, why does the choice of wheel diameter, cylinder size and the valve gear type appear to be LNER choices? All three are very much in line with the B1, not the Black Five. Happily accept the boiler, cab and tender are LMS in origin. I had no idea it was intended to be a Pacific though - that's an intriguing thought. What would that have looked like?

There is, incidentally, an outline drawing in RCTS' LNER books (the volume for the B-class locomotives, I forget the volume number at the minute) which shows the standard 5MT boiler being proposed for fitting to a B1 chassis in the event of standardising on that boiler across a number of 4-6-0s.

 

Wheel size? to standardise on the pacific wheels? - Cylinder size? to adjust the TE due to bigger wheels? Valve gear? The drop link to the radius rod doesn't match Blk 5 or B1 detail and beyond that you're getting into way too much detail. Just shows the B1 was a good model, even if they didn't actually copy it.

 

An interesting thought - was this the case? The B1 used V2 wheel centres originally and this was changed on later production batches.

Perhaps I should say that I see a lot of the influence of the B1 in it, perhaps? In much the same way you can see the influence of the Stanier Black Five in the boiler, cab and tender, of course.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=f...F20-greatest-harry-enfield-characters;590;300

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

You could make a good argument that Churchward was still better at standardisation after his death than Riddles was when alive...

 

Bonds feelings were that the regional class 5's were masters of their intended duties and were therefore neither expensive to maintain or heavy on fuel and that no benefit would be gained by making them 4-6-2's
(or even 2-6-2's) which more expensive to build, Cox was still keen on the 'light pacific ' idea so the spec was uprated to class 6 ie the Clan.
As with many of the Standards the drive to keep the axle loadings down to get the maximum route availability turned out to be unneccessary as the condition of the permanent way improved
A 3 Cylinder Standard Pacific (nearly class 8), not neccessarilly as puissant as 71000, and a 250psi clan ( nearly class 7) would have been a better fit.
Were 2 x class 4's and a class 3 (tender engines) really neccessary ?

 

*were