owd sweedy wrote:In Backtrack magazine some years ago there was an interesting article on Archibald Sturrock's steam tender/booster which he designed in the early 1860's and patented in 1863, IIRC, there were 50 (or so) in traffic.
As mentioned here... http://www.lner.info/co/GNR/locomotives.shtml
In 1866 Patrick Sterling took over and that was the end of the steam tender. I must have a look thorough my back issues and see if I can find it.
Cheeers
Owd Sweedy.
Ottawa.
Rather than physically looking through all of your collection (which I know is an enjoyable if time consuming experience), I find that this web site is a most useful short cut:-
Thanks John for the link to that web site, what a great resource, and yes that is the issue that has the article. I started looking through back issues last night and kept getting sidelined! It is funny how so many old articles that originally you may have skimmed over as not being too interesting, on revisiting years later become a "must read". Three hours well wasted and I didn't get very far, and my kids wonder why I don't have time for Facebook!
Cheers,
Owd Sweedy.
Interesting to see the inclined rather than upright riser pipe for the water pick-up gear avoiding the rear tender bogie. That's more logical geometry for effective water pick-up, to my way of thinking, although it looks like use of a standard scoop involved firstly turning the highly turbulent water flow up to the vertical before then turning it back to approx 45 degrees, perhaps nullifying any gain.
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there were in fact many reasons for the sturrock steam tenders being abandoned. not least cold hard cash, the steam tender cost more to instal, and run, but the tracks were not able to accept the loads that could be carried by the locos. in the same way that one of the early STIRLING, not sterling, 0-6-0's was not able to be used to its full extent because the relief sidings were not long enough to take advantage of the extra carrying capacity of longer trains of wagons.
one of the many stories about the demise of the steam tenders is that the drivers and firemen complained about using two engines with the same wages, but it is likely there were more reasons, not least that sturrock had been accused of being profligate with his budget, and stirling preferred engines that required minimal maintenance and
could be used more effectively. his attitude towards the suburban carriages with short buffers is well explained in that he hated the thought of two items being out of use when it might only be one. later of course it was an argument used against gresley and the artics.
I know you weren't talking about capitals. We all make occasional errors, I definitely do, but you chose to highlight someone's single spelling error whilst your contributions are almost entirely devoid of the capital letters that are required, even at quite basic levels of use of written English!
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Maybe I have been dealing with our cousins overseas too long, but that is not the same as getting a person's name wrong, especially when they are so well known. I see lots of people lose all sense of proportion when someone talks out of place about HNG, so Patrick Stirling should get the same treatment.
We have spell check, and if you are using a Proper name, then surely it is pretty easy to get it right.
Going quickly back to Sturrock, the last time I was back home I found a book called Great Northern Locomotive Engineers, Volume One: 1846 - 1881 by F.A.S. Brown, Published by George Allen and Unwin in 1966. It has quite a bit about Sturrock's time at the Great Northern including the development and demise of the steam tender. After a report by Stirling on its performance, which highlighted the heavy maintenance costs, the board decided in 1866 to remove the mechanism from existing locomotives as they came in for heavy repairs. There was another report in 1868 which showed that although engines with steam tenders could pull marginally more, they were heavier on coal, oil and maintenance. I think by 1878 they were all gone, as Stirling reported that of the 210 engines completed with or prepared for a steam tender, all had been rebuilt.
Brown certainly covers the introduction of the steam tender, and basically its demise. However, many facts were unavailable to him at the time he completed the book, 1966.
What is certain now is that only 50 steam tenders were ever actually used in traffic. These were fitted to the locos in the series 400-440 plus the initial 10 prototypes which were used on existing locos. Many of the other units that were ordered were completed without tenders, whilst others quite quickly had the steam tender mechanism cancelled before delivery even though this was expensive.
There is this strange and unknown period when Sturrock proferred his resignation in November 1865, and Stirling publicallly took over in October 1866. During this time, it seems that the Loco Committee held in abeyance the production of more steam tenders, amongst the known reasons is the fact that when working properly, they could haul trains that were likely to block the level crossings at Lincoln Central, particularly the Ox-Bow, which made their extra costs not worth it. Stirling himself fell in to a similar trap with his West Riding class of 0-6-0's which also hauled trains that were often too long for the relief sidings, before 4 track main line.
As with all tender details, on almost all railways, because people were not that bothered about the tender in the early days, so little is recorded separately about them, which makes getting it historically correct difficult.
back to the steam tenders, cant have been succesfull as River Esk at Ravenglass was fitted, since removed and parts used to build River Mite, question is did the big companys re-use their leftover parts for smaller loco's ?
So shouldn't that be Sturrock, not sturrock, and likewise a capital letter at the start of each sentence 
