You've won The Euros

But with central boiler and oil firing, Bulleid WAS right!

 

Thinking further, restore "Pet" & "Wren" to working order.
On a more serious note; pay for six people from every preservation centre to become qualified first aiders and for a comprehensive kit at every centre.
With that massive Euro millions win though, you could also afford to set up a training school so that volunteers from assorted lines could learn at least the basics of boiler smith etc

 

Oooh 150mil to spend, right...

Full Size..
Extend the North Norfolk Railway out of Holt to the old track bed and as far west as possible.
Buy as much of the Cromer-Norwich branch as possible, to be given to the NNR.
Build 3 B17's; a Sandringham Class, a Footballer Class, & a streamlined variant. All to mainline standard.
Build a new Claud Hamilton, again to mainline standard.
Build something LNER and small for heritage lines, such as an F4/5/6.
Pay for the upgrade of the B12 & J15 (Y14) to main line standard.
Fund the steaming of Mallard/City of Birmingham/Green Arrow. Just to see a discussion where cost isn't an issue.
Approx cost £50m

Of course all of that would be subject to whether the NNR would actually want the extra track to maintain, whether the NRM would allow restoration of Mallard/Green Arrow, & if I could find someone capable of managing 5 new builds.

Narrow Gauge...
Help the Corris & Talylynn railways financially, possibly find a way of joining the 2 together.
Build a new version of Bedgellert on the Ffestiniog.
Help out the Fairbourne railway, possibly buy the whole lot and move it somewhere better with tourism.
Try and get Cackler out of Thursford to be restored.
Buy as many Hunslets as I can get. Love Hunslets, can't get enough of them.
Approx cost £10m

Miniature (7.25")
Build the largest 7.25 railway centre in the uk, buy many many locos.
Host the best annual gathering of 7.25 gauge.
Approx cost £5m

With the other £85m I'd end up buying stuff as and when it came available, and use it to help with running costs.

 

You might also want to find a way to stop the fireman melting, but other than that, I would love to see a Leader.

 

I'm mildly interested to hear what you guys would do when it turned out that yes, the whole concept was up the chute, and scrapping them was the best thing to do with them...

 

Mechanical stoker electrally controled from the cab would prevent the fireman from melting, either that or encase the firemans position with a cold water jacket to keep the heat down to managable levels, how about if it had a fan fed system that took water from the tank, and curculated it around cooling ducts and returned it to the tank

 

Wouldn't mind putting a few quid in to getting a good few miles of Somerset and Dorset line up and running again.

 

The Leader was designed to replace the elderly tank engines working branch services around the Southern.

Basically, as a design it was a resounding success with just one or two little teething issues, that could be easily sorted out as follows:

1) For the designed duties of moving two or three coaches at relatively low speeds, 150 tons of metal was clearly extravagant. So a modest weight reduction programme down to, ooh, about 60 tons, would be undertaken.

2) Having reduced the weight, clearly the loco does not need to be supported on six axles - four should be ample to support the weight without an excessive axle load.

3) The redesigned, lighter loco would also be shorter, so in order to allow adequate space for the firebox and ashpan, two of the axles would need smaller "carrying" wheels, leaving two axles with larger "driving" wheels.

4) A single driving cab would simplify construction and, as the redesigned loco is shorter, visibility should be adequate whichever way the loco is travelling. By a system of rods and compressed air (supplied from a small pump mounted alongside the boiler), it might be possible to control the locomotive remotely from its carriages, saving time by not needing to "run round" at each end of the journey.

5) The relatively low speeds attained and frequent stopping and starting do not place great demands on the boiler, so a simplified, more conventional boiler could be provided, dispensing with the superheater and novel firebox construction. An airier cab should mean that environmental conditions for the fireman would be more tolerable, as well as improving communication between driver and fireman.

6) The simpler, shorter, rigid frame mean that a smaller number of larger cylinders, which could be double-acting, would suffice for propulsion. The lower pressure and greater amount of space would also mean a simpler, more reliable system of slide valves could be employed.

Apart from that, the basic concept was sound and large parts could be incorporated into the revised design. Obviously, as a production rather than a prototype, livery would follow the then corporate standards of lined black.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here it is: the production Leader Mark II with all the major problems ironed out:



Hmmm ... somewhere the design process may have gone astray...

Tom

 

Do what all great engineers do, keep at it until it works.

 

Actually, that's not necessarily what great engineers do: sometimes they cut their losses and scrap what is obviously an evolutionary dead end. If they didn't, we'd still be waiting for Atmospheric trains on the Dawlish sea wall, and the GWR would have collapsed in an ignominious heap ca. 1838 while Gooch wrestled with trying to improve the rubbish motive power he was bequeathed by Brunel, rather than doing the sensible thing of scrapping the lot and going to an established and successful locomotive builder to order some well-designed and reliable locos.

Tom

 

Very much so. The atmospheric is a nice example because as a fundamental principle Brunel was smack on. It isn't a great idea to drag all your fuel and energy production around with you: much better to have it all by the side of the line. However when it came to it the technology of the time wasn't up to it, and for the concept to work it had to wait for electricity generation and a conductor rail instead of a pipe and air pumps.

 

So rather than upgrade the M7's it would be a better idea to design a new loco, Leader for instance

I take your point, but the Leader was never finished, it could have worked, it needed effort and refinement, which at the time wasn't available. It doesn't mean the idea was bad, just the execution.

 

So what part of the idea was good bearing in mind the conditions and engineering capabilities of the time? Obviously not the sleeve valve cylinders, nor the transmission. The power bogie setup would have been better done as a Garratt, the firebox was a nonsense, the rest of the boiler wasn't that radical. The off centre boiler was a ridiculous idea, especially when one has to deal with a British loading gauge, the suspension was flawed... Look round the world and you have to think that a Garratt would have been a far better solution, but you can give it an air smoothed casing if you like.

 

Exactly!
A garratt would have been far better.
As for modifying it to be oil fired, etc., why not just go for a diesel? That's what Mr B himself concluded after the Turfburner.

 

The turfburner worked quite well, although I believe that CIE experienced a similar policy shift to BR, so it was only ever going to be an experiment. If I win the Euro Millions, I'd fund a Leader just for the hell of it. If a P2 costs £5 million, it would be fair to guess that even a worst case scenario with a new Leader would give me change to finance the restoration of 34010, the materials for another tender and and construct a brand new Bulleid Light Pacific boiler for SLL to increase turnaround and keep their fleet earning revenue. Mods would include centred boiler with redesigned water-jacket firebox to allow access doors on both sides of the firemans position, modified smokebox to ensure a vacuum could be maintained and the cab remained cool enough to work in, and ample storage in the water/coal tank to ensure plenty of plastic battery-powered fans were to hand. A large vent in the roof would also come in handy. I'd also think about reducing wheel diameter to bring the beast within basic tolerances (after negotiating a derogation with NR), and limit its length to that of a Mk. I carriage. Simples! Now where's that couple of quid?

 

A couple more for the SVR:
Extend to Burlish halt
Extend as far as possible on the Tenbury line
Re-instate the Kinlet sidings complete with signal box as per pre-1920s, or maybe just the ground frames as per 1920s onwards
Pick an extinct class of loco that was used on the line during GWR/BR(W) days, prehaps one of the ex-OWW 2-4-0s.

 

I thought 1 & 2 were happening? Maybe 1 isn't as far as Burlish maybe... I always thought we should do somthing with the Tenbury line though. I'll add to mine build a replica of W22W or buy the one at KESR for use on Burlish/ Tenbury Jcn shuttles!

 

Even a Garratt is off-beam for what was really needed!

Looking at the justification for the Leader, I can't help but conclude that it was a solution looking for a problem. Realistically, the design should never have progressed beyond a concept: the fault for that must lie as much with the General Manager as with Bulleid.

The starting point was a discussion in late 1944 in which the CME (Bulleid) and the Traffic Manager (Richards), were asked to make a joint presentation to the board on the suggested locomotive construction programme for 1946. They agreed on ten dock shunters for Southampton and 25 Light Pacifics, but Bulleid wanted 25 more Q1s, whereas the traffic manager wanted tank engines, being concerned about the capability of a Q1 to run well in reverse (with respect signal sighting, etc). Evidently, Bulleid agreed, since the joint recommendation to the General Manager was the dock tanks, the West Countries, and 25 passenger tank engines.

That got Bulleid into overdrive mode, and a whole series of designs were worked through: first an 0-6-2T and an 0-6-4T based on the Q1, which naturally the traffic department loved and Bulleid thought too dull. Then there were proto-thoughts about a bogie locomotive, which Bulleid was dissuaded from on account of excessive novelty. Then followed some experiments with duplicating the controls of a Q1 so the crew could swap sides when running backwards, keeping the driver on the correct side to see the signals. Then a 2-6-2T; a 2-6-4T; a 4-6-4T all using the Q1 boiler.

Then there was a big, and weird, leap from everything before (which was somewhat conventional) to something decidedly unconventional: an 0-4-4-4-0T. Each axle had a three-cylinder high-speed geared engine (so 18 cylinders in all!), with a Pacific boiler but beefed up to 350psi. That idea was dropped as quick as it arose, to be replaced by another more conventional 4-6-4T, but with the 350psi boiler.

Then, the first design that bore much resemblance to the Leader: another inside-cylinder 4-6-4T, but this time double-ended, oil-fired and with an indication of the water tube boiler design.

By now it was early 1946 and there was still no decision on the design of loco proposed to be built that year! Bulleid was still fixated on power bogies, and the next designs incorporated them; two variants of 0-4-4-0T, the "boiler on a well wagon" concept, but with a ludicrously short boiler sketched out.

Finally Bulleid felt he was getting somewhere, so asked the Traffic Department for a formal specification. The men in the running sheds probably just wanted something to replace the increasingly elderly M7s, but the specification as delivered seems to me to be basically asking for a tank engine West Country: 256 tons on the Okehampton and Halwill Junction line; 325 tons to Barnstaple and Ilfracombe; 320 tons to Swanage; 450 tons Brookwood to Waterloo; all at 50 - 60mph with a range of 60 miles for water and 120 miles for coal.

There was then a series of 0-6-6-0T designs slowly honing in towards the Leader as built, and eventually outline permission to build 25 was obtained. At which point the Motive Power Superintendent seemed to get cold feet, making a desperate plea not to commit to more than five engines of such untried design and with so many novel features! So the order went out for 5 locos as prototypes from an eventual order of 25.

The rest, as they say, is history, but it seems to me that the design originated from a horribly confused specification. The men on the ground just wanted slightly better tank engines - to which its should be mentioned that by not many years later, Brighton was building excellent big tank engines by the hundred, both Fairburn and Standard. The Traffic Manager seemed eventually to want something of the capability of a West Country, but with reversible running capability. It was not as if turntables were in short supply, but if they were, then presumably building more of the Bulleid-Raworth diesels in the 1600hp - 2000hp range would have been suitable. And if preparation time by the crew and double-ending were really important, the GWR (dread word!) had, to their credit, demonstrated that double-ended diesel railcars and Multiple Units were technically feasible and reliable about a decade or more earlier. Instead, we got the Leader ...

I can't help but feel that, though the design concept was ultimately Bulleid's, in all honesty Missenden should have reined in on the design much earlier and got Bulleid and Richards to agree on a more conventional scheme.

Tom

 

If I won the lottery…

No.500, Edward Thompson, L.N.E.R. 1946 livery, complete with spartan stovepipe chimney, shaded gold leaf lettering and electric lighting. Roller bearings throughout and an improved set of frames to eliminate the weaknesses of the Thompson front end. If it can be done on Stanier's Princesses and all of the GWR 4-6-0s, it can be done on a Thompson Pacific.

I would have it built to mainline standards and have built a set of scumbled teak liveried, but steel bodied, Thompson coaches to run behind it on the mainline. Home base to be the Bluebell (nearest main line connected preserved railway to my home town south of the river) and to be lined up with the other LNER express locomotives at Barrow Hill every year.

 

And I'd pay for it to be rebuilt to proper LNER standards, i.e. Gresley.