Unnecessary Steam Classes

[Taunton]

And yet the operating dept treated them differently. Taunton may be able to confirm, but I believe The Bristolian in some of the 1950s timetables was diagrammed for a Castle on most weekdays, when it was seven coaches, but on a Friday it was eight coaches, and King diagram.

Indeed. Bristol Bath Road long had just one King allocated, for years 6000 King George V himself, and it did used to take the Friday afternoon Bristolian up to Paddington, coming back certainly in summer on an overnight service which on Fridays were substantially reinforced with extra coaches. Rest of the week it had various diagrams as well. You don't see it often in photos of course but the several overnight West of England services with all the mail and newspapers etc as well as passenger coaches were all regular King work as well, they were very good at blasting heavy loads away from all the intermediate stops these trains made.

I can just remember the last of them, probably summer 1962. Not many but maybe one a day by then. From the footbridge west of Taunton you could spot a King half a mile back up the line in the station platform by the plate across in front of the bogie wheels. When they set off the exhaust was far heavier than a Castle, it's a wonder they didn't blast the paving slabs of the bridge up in the air. Although never allocated there, Taunton shed as the halfway-point had more than their expected share of turns on them as many WofE expresses were remanned there; Laira or Old Oak crews would turn round there to get home within the day, and so Taunton did a lot of express work to these two places. Drivers enjoyed them, fireman found them a notable challenge over a Castle. I don't think they got paid any more.

 

[70014IronDuke]

.....
I have always been puzzled why the LNER needed so many Pacifics; there wasn't that many express departures from kings Cross on a weekday but a lot of trains had an engine change at Grantham...
...

The GN main line on a summer Saturday was a darned busy route! Remember, quite a few trains would see B1 haulage. And the LNER pacifics were used for Trans- penine expresses from York. Plus Edinburgh and Glasgow to Aberdeen.

Arguably, it wasn't that the LNER had too many 8P locos, but the LMS had too few.
For instance, the MML did not get anything better than 6P Jubilees until 1958. I've always argued the traffic managers should have lobbied for at least half a dozen Britannias, better still 10, to accelerate Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds Expresses from 1954 or so. (Yes, they were drafted in in 1958, but that was for the Manchester trains.) We did, of course, get the Holbeck Brits towards the end, but they would have made a real impact in 1954.

 

[Spartacus]

The GN main line on a summer Saturday was a darned busy route! Remember, quite a few trains would see B1 haulage. And the LNER pacifics were used for Trans- penine expresses from York. Plus Edinburgh and Glasgow to Aberdeen.

Arguably, it wasn't that the LNER had too many 8P locos, but the LMS had too few.
For instance, the MML did not get anything better than 6P Jubilees until 1958. I've always argued the traffic managers should have lobbied for at least half a dozen Britannias, better still 10, to accelerate Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds Expresses from 1954 or so. (Yes, they were drafted in in 1958, but that was for the Manchester trains.) We did, of course, get the Holbeck Brits towards the end, but they would have made a real impact in 1954.

Most certainly too few, with Polmadie even ending up with a small allocation of LNER A2s in the 60s.

 

[Merle Haggard]

For instance, the MML did not get anything better than 6P Jubilees until 1958. I've always argued the traffic managers should have lobbied for at least half a dozen Britannias, better still 10, to accelerate Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds Expresses from 1954 or so. (Yes, they were drafted in in 1958, but that was for the Manchester trains.) We did, of course, get the Holbeck Brits towards the end, but they would have made a real impact in 1954.

Thank you, I have the following observations from memory - but open to be corrected.

I'm pretty sure that Scots were banned from Derby - Manchester, and possibly South, at least until the 1950s. The Midland route suffered from weak bridges and was generally a small engine line - they called their 4F 0-6-0s 'Big Goods...'.

I remember Brittanias appearing for a short period on expresses through Wellingborough, but I think I recollect that Trains Illustrated reported that they had suffered strained frames because of the curvatures of the line through the Peak, and had only a short stay.

There was a period, just before I started spotting, when the trains on the Midland were accelerated, and CM&EE, cornered because there weren't enough 7Ps, employed 2P 4-4-0s as pilots to 'Black Fives' and 'Jubilees', on the logic that 2 + 5 = 7. The 2Ps had spent their previous decades ambling around on offices' saloons or on 3 coach cross country trains and were not entirely up to the job. Older spotters said that the sport was to look at the coupling between the tender of the 2P and the train engine - often slack. There's the anecdote that a Jubilee driver at St Pancras was told that his train was 2 over for a 6P, and a 2P was on the way from K-Town to be his pilot. His response was 'it's bad enough having 2 extra coaches to pull, without having to push one of those b----- things as well!'

Another piece of CM&EE legerdemain was to how a shortage of 6Ps was overcome - reclassify the Crabs to 6P5F (steam production and tractive effort about the same as a Black 5, but hey! that's solved it.

Once the first diesels arrived, the Scottish Coronations didn't seem to have much work and the mileages of the always-Scottish ones were much lower than the English ones. In my spotting days they never seemed to get South of Carlisle, apart from Crewe works visits. The Scottish region had a rather brutal interpretation of the 1.1.63 reduction in assets (BTC > BRB) and chopped a few then (as well, of course, as all their 'Clans'). And the last straw for the Coronations was the reduced OLE clearance south of Rugby, with the dreaded yellow band (the ban was south of Crewe, but I think the actual start of reduced clearance was Rugby.

But of course an EE4 was the perfect replacement ...

 

[chorleyjeff]

Another piece of CM&EE legerdemain was to how a shortage of 6Ps was overcome - reclassify the Crabs to 6P5F (steam production and tractive effort about the same as a Black 5, but hey! that's solved it.

The Crabs were 6P for standard timed trains only. ie they handled 6P loads but not at speed. Whereas Black 5s could run express timings such as double heading the Royal Scot it was unimaginable that Crabs could do that.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Thank you, I have the following observations from memory - but open to be corrected.

I'm pretty sure that Scots were banned from Derby - Manchester, and possibly South, at least until the 1950s. The Midland route suffered from weak bridges and was generally a small engine line - they called their 4F 0-6-0s 'Big Goods...'.

I remember Brittanias appearing for a short period on expresses through Wellingborough, but I think I recollect that Trains Illustrated reported that they had suffered strained frames because of the curvatures of the line through the Peak, and had only a short stay.

AIUI, the Midland saw accelerated services to Manchester from 1957, because of the WCML electrification work, but only had Jubilees (and one Patriot at Derby - I'm not sure why!). The Jubilees struggled to keep time with 9 on. So they drafted in both Scots and Britannias from 1958 - including, for example, the poorly utiilsed 70004 and 70014 from Stewarts Lane.. I believe the bridges were too weak for unrebuilt Scots - so I suppose the 2A boilered locos were ok. (Or it could have been a combination of strengthening the bridges AND a lower axle load + hammer blow.)

I didn't know about it at the time, but yes, there were reports of frame cracking on Brits using the Peak Forest line. But they certainly used them into 1960 and almost certainly in 61 too. Probably in part because they had nothing else after the Metrovicks proved so disastrous.

Holbeck also had 70053/4 in 60-61 and maybe into 62. I have an abiding memory of one of these - I forget which one - on the up Thames-Clyde one evening in 61 at about 18.30 climbing towards the bridge carrying the MML over the Bedford-Bletchley line with the sun shining from the west to illuminate the entire train - engine and full rake of maroon carriages gleaming in the strong summer sunlight.

But by then Cl 45s were taking over most of the workings. It might have been the last ever TC to have steam for all I know - bar Peak failures.

Another piece of CM&EE legerdemain was to how a shortage of 6Ps was overcome - reclassify the Crabs to 6P5F (steam production and tractive effort about the same as a Black 5, but hey! that's solved it.

Crabs were not that common on the Midland, and NEVER on passenger workings.

Except ... one day, the down semi fast, approx 11.15 St Pancras - Leicester, pulled into Bedford Midland Rd at around 12.20 - that is on time - behind .... a crab! (It would usually be anything from a Black 5 to a rebuilt Scot or Patriot.) Now this train took water and an up express was scheduled to pass before the semi-fast crossed back over to the down main. Again, the up express was usually a Scot or sometimes a Jubilee (I think it was from Sheffield or some such.) Pegs went off and through she roared behind .... a crab! Again, on time. Amazing. Never saw another before or since. This would have been 60 or 61.

 

[Merle Haggard]

The Crabs were 6P for standard timed trains only. ie they handled 6P loads but not at speed. Whereas Black 5s could run express timings such as double heading the Royal Scot it was unimaginable that Crabs could do that.

Thanks for that explanation. One use for Crabs (although I've only seen photos) was on Summer Saturday trains taking workers from towns in Lancashire (in the days when many towns all over the country had one major industry and the whole town had the same week off) to Blackpool etc. Heavy trains, gradients (particularly East Lancs) but not tight timings - it all makes sense.

Crabs were not that common on the Midland, and NEVER on passenger workings.

Except ... one day, the down semi fast, approx 11.15 St Pancras - Leicester, pulled into Bedford Midland Rd at around 12.20 - that is on time - behind .... a crab! (It would usually be anything from a Black 5 to a rebuilt Scot or Patriot.) Now this train took water and an up express was scheduled to pass before the semi-fast crossed back over to the down main. Again, the up express was usually a Scot or sometimes a Jubilee (I think it was from Sheffield or some such.) Pegs went off and through she roared behind .... a crab! Again, on time. Amazing. Never saw another before or since. This would have been 60 or 61.

Similarly, and perhaps because of the rarity, I can still remember travelling on two Crab-hauled trains.

One was waiting for the train home to Northampton at Roade, after a day's spotting. My train approached on the down slow and running alongside was an express on the down fast. From the vertical columns of steam, the locos of both trains were working hard until the driver of my train shut off at the last minute and it was clear that the two trains had been racing, because at that point there were whistling exchanges and gesticulation from both crews, leaning out of their cabs. The Northampton train was hauled by a Crab and had clearly given the express a run for its money. It ran past me with the brakes grinding and, when the train stopped only the last coach was in the platform. Still vivid in my memory!

 

[alexl92]

Does anyone know why, even though the Standard 4 2-6-0 and Standard 3 2-6-0 shared a 5' 3" wheel diameter, the 4MT had 16-spoke wheels whilst the 3MT had 17-spoke? Doesn't seem to make any sense on a 'standard' design?