Tank Engines on Long-Distance Goods Workings

[Dr_Paul]

Following on from 'Tank Engines on Express Workings', what do we know about the use of tank engines on long-distance goods workings?

My dad recalls travelling from London to Swansea during the Second World War and seeing long coal trains being pulled by tank locomotives on the GWR main line on the English side of the Severn Tunnel. These may well have been 7200 class, which took six tons of coal and 2400 gallons of water. They would have needed to have refilled the tanks if the journeys were of any length: did they have scoops for refilling from water-troughs?

 

[30907]

The 72xxs certainly got as far as Salisbury from S Wales, and I suspect London.
Can't find a reference to water scoops, but I don't think they would have been effective at 25mph anyway.

 

[Taunton]

The 72xx from South Wales did indeed get to Salisbury, and on the main line commonly as far as Swindon. Most were based in South Wales, indeed the largest allocation was at Severn Tunnel Junction, but in usual GW style there were some scattered round the system; for a long while Newton Abbot had a few. They had what looked like a very large bunker, but in fact the lower half was a water tank, connected with the side tanks.

The GWR had also long used 0-6-0T tanks on mainstream general goods services, though this reduced over time. The ubiquitous pannier tanks were quite at home on the main line from one district to the next. For water supply such services were regularly looped, at points where they could take water again.

Apart from coal/water capacity, the advantage of a tender loco in the days of unbraked goods was it gave the loco crew additional wheels for braking. An 0-6-0 of either type has six wheels for this, but with a tender has an additional six wheels, and they were used. Some more modern locos had vacuum braked tenders, but common was a substantial handbrake, generally operated by the fireman under driver's direction. David L Smith's classic books about the G&SW a century ago describes the extraordinary issues with handling loose coupled freight trains, wholly there with tender locos.