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The Clayton Type 1 - Class 17

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Journeyman

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Wasn’t it because BR still felt there would be a number of local goods trains which would need to shunt yards en route? The central cab would provide a good view when shunting without the need for the driver to keep on changing ends.
Fair enough - I always wondered why Type 1s all only had one cab. It seemed to create more problems than it ever solved, but that sounds like a credible reason. Unfortunately creating the class 17 involved not just one unreliable engine, but two!
 
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Bevan Price

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I'm intrigued as to what services a steam heat 17 would be used on. There seemed to be virtually no demand for passenger type 1s, and surely DMUs took over most services using small steam locos?
It was summer, so no heat required, but in 1965 I saw D85xx arriving at Stirling with the Edinburgh portion of a service to Oban (via Callander). A Class 27 worked the train (from Glasgow Buchanan St.) through to Oban.
 

Journeyman

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It was summer, so no heat required, but in 1965 I saw D8568 arriving at Stirling with the Edinburgh portion of a service to Oban (via Callander). A Class 27 worked the train (from Glasgow Buchanan St.) through to Oban.
Interesting! Final summer over that route, of course.

Apparently class 17s weren't unknown on Waverley Line local passenger trains as well. Someone needs to build a time machine.
 

D6130

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Very interesting article and drawings. One point notes is there doesn’t appear to have a 2nd mans seat for when double manned
As with the class 20s, the secondman sat in the opposite direction driver's seat which was able to pivot through 360 degrees.
 

Clayton

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I used to stay with my grandparents near Ayr in the 60s and saw a lot of Claytons on freight trains along with 20s and the last steamers. They were so common and so unusual that my mother and I dubbed them Scottish diesels. About 1971 I got into spotting and went up eager to take their numbers, but they had vanished, apart from one in a siding on the way up near Carlisle.
 

delt1c

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Although none were built with a boiler, at least 2 locos were retro fitted with boilers for use on ECS moves into Glasgow Central.
Which 2 were they as never heard of that before.
 

ac6000cw

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Wasn’t it because BR still felt there would be a number of local goods trains which would need to shunt yards en route? The central cab would provide a good view when shunting without the need for the driver to keep on changing ends.
Which I've always assumed is the main reason for the popularity of centre (or offset centre) cab locos for local freight/shunting work in other countries.

Wonder how they'd have got on if Paxmans had been allowed to deliver the engines as they wanted, not what they were instructed to build.
Out of interest, what engines did Paxmans want to supply/build?
 

Irascible

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However, an extra 100 Class 20s were ordered, so there was perceived to be a need for Type 1s.

Always wondered why they didn't order 60 or so more 37s instead. That's probably a hindsight thing though.

Out of interest, what engines did Paxmans want to supply/build?

They were specced with aluminium crankcases, but Paxmans had run into trouble with them & wanted to supply cast-iron ones instead. BR apparently said no, and they ended up having to replace them anyway... and at that point you have an engine that hasn't been properly tested in it's installation either.

There's a bit about the ZH in the 17s here - https://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxrailt.htm
 

d9009alycidon

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Passenger workings were rare, but they did turn up on Summer Saturday specials to Ayr nd places like that. Oddest use was on the East Kilbride branch with a rake of 4 BR Std non corridor coaches. I stayed at Coatdyke with my bedroom window looking out on the embankment to the east of the station from when I was 7 until I was 24 so I saw a lot of them on coal and scrap trains going through Coatdyke station, sometimes you could see the plume of black smoke before the train appeared, they were always in pairs! D8500 was treated as a bit of a pet by Polmadie and was used on ECS workings from Larkfield to Central and was always in immaculate condition whenever I saw it, it was one of the ones transferred to the LMR for banking duties on Shap at the end of steam. Last memory was an early Glasgow Works open day when there were plenty of them to see awaiting scrapping.
 

Capybara

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I saw a couple working around Newcastle in about 1971. They were gone shortly after that.

From this link in the photo forum, it appears that a lot of them ended up in Ardrossan.
 

Harvester

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I saw a couple working around Newcastle in about 1971. They were gone shortly after that.

On an afternoon visit to Newcastle in August 1964, I noted some of Gateshead’s newly allocated engines (D8595, D8598 and D9600) working locally. D8556 which was Haymarket allocated at the time, was surprisingly on Gateshead shed.
 

Peter C

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Would either of these photos from the SVR Autumn Diesel Gala 2019 be of interest in this thread? Both my own photos.

I don't know if they did this for the whole gala, but the day I went (5.10.2019), they had the Class 14 and the Class 17 running together at one point - giving a nice comparison between the two:
20191005_140223.jpg20191005_183656.jpg

-Peter
 

Peter C

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Nice photos. I like the headcode!
Thanks very much! The headcode was certainly a nice touch (and I must admit I didn't realise until looking closer at the engine at the time...) :D
I thought I had a photo of the Class 14 and Class 17 together in the frame, but turns out I don't, so I'll try and find the video and upload that to YouTube at some point.

-Peter
 

Strathclyder

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If they'd wanted something even lighter then how about an 'Anglicised' CIE/IE cl. 141 (introduced in 1962, same year as the cl.17) - dual-cab, 960 hp, only 67 tonnes and 44 feet long (and lasted nearly 50 years in service).
Funny you should mention the CIÉ 141s and the very similar 181s; they were bascially a dual-cab version of the eariler 121 class (built December 1960 - January 1961) and were a different answer to the same overarching problem.

Being EMDs, the 121s had bullet-proof reliability and excellent availability firmly on side, but the view when driving 'bonnet-first' was far from ideal. One solution was to lash them up 'bonnet-to-bonnet' - much like what was often done with the 20s - but the 141s/181s were designed to directly address this issue and they did so to great effect. Pity we didn't take a variant of the 141/181 design at the time, but buying locos from overseas suppliers was no doubt viewed dimly by those controlling the purse-strings, putting questions like shrinking the design down to fit our loading gauge firmly to one side.

Here is a example of 121s working 'bonnet-to-bonnet' (from the Brian Flannigan Flickr collection) to illustrate the above point.

 
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