Why did the GWR not use smoke deflectors?

Presumably, the best frontage for smoke deflection is that of the A4s, as the air-flow is mostly forced upwards to lift the exhaust.

 

Not necessary if the vehicles had been fitted with slam locks as was the case everywhere else prior to Grouping. It was old fashioned in 1947 just as fitting slam locks to Mk IIIs was old fashioned at a time when the same bodyshells being used in stock for Eire were being equipped with plug doors.

PH

 

Why for that matter did Britain persist with outward opening doors for that matter, when corridor stock removed the need (to avoid banging the knees of people seated inside) for this? Many people must have been injured or killed over the years as a result. The persistence, in Hawksworth stock, of a type of lock which the passenger, in any absence of platform staff, had to open the window and lean out to turn the door handle to the fully closed position is at least one stage more reactionary.

PH

 

True, of course. So when exactly were the enlarged smokeboxes and shorter chimneys fitted?

 

completely missing the point, it's ridiculous that you are using door locks (catches you mean) to try to further the usual anti-GWR tosh, so I'd better spell it out........

"the G.W.R. had retreated into "not invented here"

not so, ......GWR was moving into Gas Turbine technology, not only not "from here" but from a completely different Country.


To expand , I could mention AWS (which to be fair WAS "invented here") diesel railcars (from AEC originally) and Diesel Shunters (largely EE) Rather more important than door catches I think.

 

You might be surprised by the number of passengers who now expect the door to open automatically & the number who look for the button to press to open them. Before long a range of leaflets will be needed!

 

I merely used door locks to illustrate that an pre-occupation with "we have always done it this way" was not confined to motive power issues. Nor was it confined to the G.W.R. It is a classic technique for people who don't want to change to espouse something two steps ahead which is beyond contemporary techniques and thus will fail.

The diesel railcars were not merely "from AEC originally", they were AEC in conception, even AEC maintained for a number of years. Without the luggage of railway backgrounds the AEC technical people (I actually knew one in his latter years) had the gremlins sorted quite early on but the intricacies of the system of footplatemens links caused big problems. Driver X could be trained to drive the machine admirably but was then transferred away. Some months later he would come back having forgotten much of what he had been taught and proceed to wreck the transmission in his first journey. Unlike today, few people had experience of driving private cars.

I am going on about the railcars as it has often puzzled people why the same railway that constructed antiques like the 14xx also made the railcars. The answer is they had next to nothing to do with each other, indeed I seem to recall that the original pressure behind the railcar programme had come from a different part of the management structure than that associated with steam power.

PH

 

Much as it pains me to defend the honour of the GWR management, I don't think you can ascribe the lack of smoke deflectors to a "not invented here" syndrome. Smoke deflectors have operational problems (primarily, restricted view), so it is only worth fitting them if, by doing so, you solve a bigger problem (i.e. restricted view due to drifting steam). Clearly that wasn't a significant problem on GWR Locos, so why would you go to the expense of fitting extra equipment to solve a non problem? To demonstrate the "not invented here" syndrome, I think you would have to demonstrate that the GWR management were blind to a problem of drifting steam and did nothing to fix it, but I don't think there is any evidence for that.

As for supposedly antiquated door locks: whenever you change the design of a standard component, you have to balance the gain in doing so against the cost in re-tooling, introducing new maintenance procedures and holding additional spares for perhaps 25 years during the changeover from one design to another. It's entirely conceivable that the management felt there was insufficient financial gain to be had in changing the design: is there evidence that they were paying out large amounts of money each year in compensation to passengers injured by incorrectly fastened doors? If not, what was the incentive to change?

Tom

 

Some time between 1898 and 1923 the L.B.S.C.R. (not exactly noted for lavish spending on rolling stock) did make this change.

Paul H.

 

exactly.....the same appiles to what someone said earlier about looking for a door button on heritage stock. People in the GWR arae knew which way the door handles worked and thought nothing of it. There was no need to change.

As for the 14xx class being antiquated, well, they only looked that way. In truth all steam locos were antiquated . By the time the Standards came out and marginally modernised them, they were a true anachronism only built because the Country was totally skint having sent all it's reserves to the USA to pay for WW2. Even poor little Ireland dieselised well before GB.

 

And so they did everywhere else. It was no reason not to modernise.

PH

 

The GWR didn't need 'smoke deflectors' due to their antiquated exhaust design which would eject smoke, steam and char into orbit and provides entertainment to the lineside fraternity to this day

 

i'm afraid it is a good reason not to modernise. Once you get two systems in use it causes complications and the risk of handles not being turned on older stock increases.

Just because the GWR didn't progress in this area doesn't justify what you said about "not invented here". I think it's just a sound-bite you've picked up somewhere used to bash the GWR

 

But they also had a completely different pattern of traffic: far more suburban trains, with far more people getting on and off with short journeys between. Easy to imagine in the circumstances that the cost / benefit (in terms of better punctuality due to more positive locking / reduced claims for injury compensation) was beneficial on the Brighton with all its suburban traffic, and not beneficial on the GWR with a greater proportion of long distance traffic.

Just because one company modernises in one way and another doesn't is not necessarily proof of a stick-in-the-mud attitude of the latter company. For example, the fact that the LSWR introduced widespread electrification around London and the GWR didn't is simply a demonstration that they had a different pattern of traffic.

To conclusively demonstrate "not invented here", you have to identify a problem and show that a company refused to solve it despite the fact that there was a cost-benefit in doing so. I suspect that would be exceptionally hard to prove without significant research.

Tom

 

Hardly. Until I had experienced the door fittings on a Hawksworth era carriage I had no idea that such an antiquated arrangement persisted after WWII. At least a quarter of a century out of date. The door arrangements on an HST were equally reactionary in their time and there is no doubt they were productive of fatalities. Modifications were duly made.

PH

 

but leaving aside the door handles, do you accept that the GWR did adopt ideas "not invented here" ?

 

What is it wth people and the 4800/1400... The genesis of the design is well documented in Cook. Collet did not want to build 0-4-2T, but after much rumination they eventually came to the conclusion that to deliver a 41T locomotive to do the required duties they had no real choice. Outside cylinders?I think that would not have been popular with the passengers... The design was throughly modernised over their predecessors with all the updates that other 20thC designes were getting, drumhead smokeboxes, better bearings and shopping life, all the rest of it.

And on overall policy, arguably the two highest priorities for a railway company should be safety and profitability. Which lines scored best in those factors?