Drawings

[Colombo]

John,

We lads at York were strongly of the LNER persuasion due to the technological influences of Doncaster to the South, Darlington to the North, the presence of the mighty 50A, the finest station in the country and the best trains.

Swindon produced only three types of locos, pannier tanks, prairie tanks and 4-6-0 clones. They painted them in GWR green and we had to paint our express locos the same colour. Without doubt their engines were efficient and pretty. Eventually they followed the diesel hydraulic route. Swindon was right again but in a minority of one, and so we all know what happened next.

No LMS pacifics ever came to York. As far as we were concerned the Midland Railway small engine policy could still have operated.

We never saw any Southern or GW locos at York at all.

Yes I am an LNER/ECML partisan and proud of it.

(.........and fairly sick that there are 31 spam-cans in preservation).

Colombo

[PaulG]

The Great Eastern Railway Society has a very large collection of original GER/LNER drawings.

We have assisted NNR (for the B-12) and F5 loco trust with copies; have you been in contact regarding the J-15?

Contact through the web site

www.gersociety.org.uk

Regards

Paul

[60114]

no but i shall now, b12 drawings could be helpful too

[daveinstoke]

I do have a copy of Historic Locomotive drawings by F J Roche. & published by Ian Allen. This book has some very fine detail drawings too.
L.N.E.R Locomotives Listed are,
B1
A3
L1
N7
N2
J39
J69
A2 Peppercorn
A1 No113
A1 Peppercorn
B12 with Belpaire firebox
G.C Imminghamclass 4-6-0
All Tender drawings as well.
Dave.

[John B]

Colombo,

Yes I wholeheartedly agree about "partisan and proud of it", it is a very strange thing to even contemplate "other" railways. If an engine is not in either Doncaster apple green or possessing a strong LNER heritage then it is somehow not quite right, always and forever a little foreign and something really does seem to stick in the craw.

But, Bulleid?!?!?

Here's his biographical timeline taken from the Bulleid Society website at:

http://www.locos-in-profile.co.uk/Bulle ... _ovsb.html

21st January 1901
Joined Great Northern Railway at Doncaster as a four-year Premium Apprentice under HA Ivatt.

January 1906
First job as Personal Assistant to Webster, Locomotive Running Superintendent

January 1907
Personal Assistant to Wintour, Doncaster Works Manager.

March 1908
Test Engineer with French Westinghouse at Freinville near Paris.

June 1908
Promoted to Assistant Works Manager and Chief Draughtsman.

1912
Rejoined Great Northern Railway as Personal Assistant to Nigel Gresley (6 years his senior).

March 1919
Return to Great Northern Railway, Doncaster as Manager, Carriage and Wagon Works.

1923
At the Grouping the Great Northern becomes part of London and North Eastern Railway. Bulleid moves to London as assistant to Nigel Gresley.

1925
2-8-8-2 Garratt and P1 2-8-2 freight locomotives with boosters.
Locomotive exchange with GWR leads to long travel valves being adopted on LNER.

1934
P2 'Cock o’ the North', Kylchap double blast pipe and chimney, Lentz rotary cam poppet valves and wedge shaped front. Travels with locomotive when it goes to France for tests.

1935
A1 'Flying Scotsman' makes speed run to Leeds to test timing of new Silver Jubilee service with Bulleid on the footplate. A4 Silver Link streamlined train.

By my reckoning that's 34 years service to both the constituent companies
of and the LNER itself, sorry Colombo the man has an impeccable pedigree though I do agree it's a shame he squandered all his hard won knowledge on the Shambling Railway and the Crazy Irish Enterprise!

Thirty one spam-cans that's just priceless!

Didn't Spam cans have a key which enabled you to get inside! Ah!?!?Spam fritters too, to say nothing of the "Lumberjacks song" a la Monty Python - Ha Ha!?

Cheers

[richard]

It could be argued that Bulleid did his best work with the LNER, and he tried to be too revolutionary with his SR and Irish locomotives.
If you try too many novel things at once, you will be bitten by teething problems. For an example, look at BR's rebuilding of the spam cans.

It seems that he needed someone like Gresley to tone him down a bit

There's another what-if - what if Bulleid and Thompson became a double-act after Gresley died?


Richard

[Colombo]

We are well off the thread now, but what if....Di Woodham had been a Geordie and had a scrap yard at Middlesborough, a contract with a Spanish steelworks at Bilbao that never was fulfilled and he had ended up with 200 LNER locomotives which had then gone into preservation. There would have been apple green all over the country.

A string of J72s and V3s on the Bluebell line, Didcot full of V2s and J27s, the SVR reliant on B16s and Q6s, A2s at Mallaig, the possibilities are endless.

Still, if the SF writers are correct and there are parallel universes, somewhen it may be happening.

Colombo.

[John B]

I know we have gone off topic but I could not resist this.

I like the “What if” syndrome Colombo and would like to add my own thoughts, dreams and flights of fancy to yours.

What if steam persisted on BR and they realised it was going to be the motive power of the future. What direction would it have taken?

Say they electrified the ECML and heated the locomotives boilers with electric elements – not a lump of coal in sight but still a steam engine (but cleaner). Just imagine it, Pantographs fuelling a steam loco?? (no familiar smell of burning coal - sad) None stop runs of marathon proportions would become the norm.

Or, say they came up with a 4-8-4 with 8’ coupled driving wheels and the tender completely given over to carrying water. Powered by six rotary cylinders mounted in the mainframe between the driving wheels, with a choice of oil, coal, electric or nuclear fusion steam producing plants depending on the cheapest and most available fuel at the time. There would be no external valve gear.

Nuclear fusion would be brilliant in a steam engine as it would be a very small compact power unit providing a never-ending fuel supply.

Steam technology largely ceased in the 1960’s with the last steam engine rolling off the production line, but if research had continued we would have more thermally efficient, lighter, faster engines managing on only half the previous amounts of coal and water.

More cylinders could be incorporated into locomotives, how would a Deltic patterned steam engine work out?? And would it be used to power electric motors? How would using titanium or some other metal that will never rust affect efficiency and hopefully extend the life of the loco into huge running periods between servicing.

Imagine an eleven coach train fully mounted in solar panels feeding the heated water into the steam engine before superheating, thus requiring less energy to achieve useable levels of steam.

Or even steam driven DMU’s (Perish the thought)

Or steam driven turbine powered locomotives, (didn’t someone actually try this??)

I’d better leave it there before the little men in white coats appear and whisk (or should that be Wiske) me away.

There is a place in heaven, I have it on good authority, where steam trains run all day long through beautiful English countryside, they have nothing but LNER engines and they are desperately short of firemen and drivers across all known classes. Or, perhaps it’s the parallel universe of your own choice which does it for you?

“Lose your dreams and you lose your mind”
(The Rolling Stones)

Cheers

[Jammie667]

you know that doesn't actually sound as crazy as you think. lol.
i reckon that could be done now we have moved so far technologically. there must be some scope for presenting the idea to a railway company, surely richard branson would buy in to it! lol.
i mean y not electrify steam locomotives, the only output would be pure steam, no carbon etc from burning coal.
there's definitely a viable idea there somewhere.
as for the place in heaven, i'm damned sure i'll be booking myself a ticket lol.

[Colombo]

In actual fact there are few ideas to improve the basic steam locomotive, however far fetched, that have not been tried somewhere are other. Only a few ever caught on. Examples that made it are superheated steam, compounding and rotary poppet valve gear.

Some ideas only nearly made it like the Sentinel steam railcar, which even got as far as steam multiple units, because some sets were built and delivered to Egypt after the war. I believe one has been repatriated and is undergoing restoration.

We have articulated locomotives like the Garratt, the Fairlie, the Mallet and the Meyer, all in preservation in GB.

The Paget locomotive was a hybrid steam/diesel locomotive that was tried out around York, I think.

Around the world, I believe the electric steam principle has been tried in Austria, or Switzerland. Setting aside the obvious H&S issues, a nuclear powered steam locomotive is perfectly possible as it would operate in the same way as a nuclear submarine. This would be history repeating itself, because the development of WW2 submarines lead to the production of large high speed diesel engines, the basis of our modern diesel locomotive.

I have said that I do not think that nuclear powered steam has ever been tried. Who knows what went on behind the Iron Curtain? There is one photograph that I would like to share with you which is for me an enigma. Nobody can tell me what sort of locomotive is depicted in the attached photograph which was published in the Daily Telegraph on 19 September 2000. It was taken in Korea at a ceremony put on to celebrate the opening of a railway connecting the Communist North with South Korea.

No one can tell me what sort of locomotive this is. I can see a boiler a bit like like a Crosti loco, with a small offset chimney, one bogie with a pony truck and perhaps three driven axles, outside springing and presumably inside valve gear. The locomotive is called Heart's Desire.

So come on, get your thinking caps on. What is it?

Colombo

[richard]

"Paget" locomotive - is this what I know as the Kitson-Still?
Used a Still cycle with double-acting cylinders (apparently used successfully on many marine engines). Mainly diesel, but steam could be added (to the opposite side of the cylinders) for starting and extra power.
Small boiler which could also be used for coach heating.

Prototype worked and even hauled some LNER revenue-earning trains, but development virtually bankrupted Kitsons who could not afford to develop it into a production locomotive.

Sorry can't help with the Korean photo.

There's also an Argentinean designer who is well thought of re. late/modern steam design, and there's the 5AT project for a modern UK 4-6-0 for excursion work. My own opinion is that the 5AT guys do not have a workable business model though...

http://www.5at.co.uk/

Richard

[jdtoronto]

No one can tell me what sort of locomotive this is. I can see a boiler a bit like like a Crosti loco, with a small offset chimney, one bogie with a pony truck and perhaps three driven axles, outside springing and presumably inside valve gear. The locomotive is called Heart's Desire.

So come on, get your thinking caps on. What is it?

Colombo

Maybe because it isn't a loco at all?

See this page: http://www.steam.dial.pipex.com/asia.htm#NKorea

John

[Colombo]

Richard,

You are right. I did mean the Kitson Still Locomotive which operated on a steam/diesel system. The Paget was an unusual multicylinder design of steam locomotive and can be seen on http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/L ... /paget.htm

Like the Leader and the Hush Hush, this also had a firebrick lined firebox.

Colombo

[Colombo]

John D

Thanks for finding the web site which explains that the enigmatic "locomotive" may be a mobile steam turbo generator. That description certainly fits the bits of the loco that we can see in the photograph.

Colombo

[61650GTFC]

Drawings for many LNER locos and coaches are made by Isinglass drawings and can be found at www.edgson.net/isinglass.