That does sound a great concept, a mini-King. Maybe Newton Abbott would have been a sensible place, given it was often a long stop anyway & had a large shed.
Yes, they took 5000 Launceston Castle on loan and wanted to order 50 or have w copy of the design drawings, but as it wasn’t granted Royal Scots were built instead, along the Lord Nelson outline.
That is correct. The GWR refused to lend the LMS a set of Castle drawings, but Maunsell was far more cooperative and lent a set of Lord Nelson drawings which were passed to the North British who proceeded to design the Royal Scots. Not being constrained by Midland practices, the NB designed locos with well sized bearings and long travel valves. As far as I know, The Royal Scots worked well "out of the box" - as you might have expected from a steam loco from the NB (the less said about their later diesels the best...).
...or Q1.
Gresley got the GNR job as a relatively young man.
If Stanier had evolved the Star class, I wonder if it would have been similar to a Castle or whether he would have tried something new.
I think that an improved 4700 Class 2-8-0 with 5' 8" driving wheels might have been best for the Devon banks. You tend to get better adhesion with 4 rather than 3 driving axles. And it could have eliminated the need for much of the double-heading.
He may well have had a hand in it anyway. It would depend a lot whether it was evolved at Swindon or Crewe(!).
I poked around at boilers last night after that part of the discussion came up. The 4700 already has 5' 8" drivers, the boiler is more or less a short King boiler with less superheater area ( which you could increase, ofc ), but it's also got two cyls with about 2/3ds the volume of a King & marginally less than a Castle. It was also somewhat restricted in route availability, although I don't know/can't remember how badly. Anyone got any numbers for steam production for Swindon/Stanier/others boilers? GWR Standard 1 vs LMS ... whatever the Black 5/Jubilee boiler was ( 3? ) would tell a lot if you're speculating.
It makes me wonder what course LMS motive power might have followed iif Charles Fairburn hadn't died so suddenly - he was by training an electrical engineer and 10000 and 10001 were conceived during his time as CME.
Yes, I'd agree with that, in terms of something that didn't exist beforehand. It was interesting that (IIRC) the GWR initially tended to use them for lightly-loaded secondary mainline services, rather than on branch lines, although I think they moved onto those later on.
Yes, definitely.
It was in some areas - the development of ATC was a good example of that, but in contrast it stayed with lower-quadrant semaphores and seemed rather lukewarm about power signalling. I think it was quite good at PR too - trains like the 'Cheltenham Flyer' were run as much for PR value as anything else.
ATC was a definite innovation, but in a somewhat earlier era when the GWR was incontrovertibly forward looking. It also produced the principles of Swindon locomotive design that hardly changed during the Big 4 era, according to you point of view either because the GWR didn't really need anything better or because it had become a bit ossified (apart from the railcars in both cases). I'd say all of the big 4 were good at PR in their own ways, but the LPTB was probably better than any of them.
Pure speculation, but (if Fairburn hadn't died) I suspect the LMS would have looked seriously at electrification of at least the southern end of the WCML - it was already familiar with suburban electrification (Euston-Watford, Wirral/Liverpool area, Manchester-Bury-Holcombe Brook etc.) - and the traffic density should have made it the obvious choice to replace steam, even over diesels, provided the investment capital was available.
Yes, no question it advanced the 'state of the art' in steam loco design and construction, years before most other railways probably even thought about standardising major component parts across the fleet etc. and being able to 'mix and match' sub-assemblies to produce different loco types.
However this wouldn't have been possible in the short period between Fairburn's appointment and nationalisation due to the general economic situation in the aftermath of WW2. Even the electrification and signalling schemes started pre-war on other companies didn't complete until the 1950s. It would have needed the LMS to continue for maybe another decade, or maybe Fairburn getting the top job at British Railways.
I don't think the GWR had much to learn on motive power (or indeed much else) from the minor companies it swallowed up in 1923, and taken as a whole their locomotives were probably streets ahead of anything the other companies inherited at Grouping. But yes, avoiding the clash of personalities and empires, that afflicted the LMS in particular, allowed them to forge ahead without the stagnation the LMS suffered in the Fowler era.
The railcars were initially used on the likes of Birmingham to Cardiff, but indeed as single units they more supplemented than replaced the existing service. They were the result of some co-operation between the GWR and the AEC bus manufacturer, whose factory was right beside the line at Southall, and if you look at the driving cab of the railcars, and a contemporary AEC bus, you recognise a number of components the same. The bodies of the first ones were built by Park Royal, a major bus body builder, who AEC actually owned as well. The real step forward was the last pair built, as a 3-car set, with single-end driving cabs and an intermediate trailer, AEC engines and semi-automatic gearbox - exactly how hundreds of Modernisation Plan dmus were done.
I'd say Churchward left the GWR an entire generation ahead - the others only really caught up by the mid/end of the '30s & that's after Collett was happy to leave the steam side more or less alone. You can just imagine Fred Hawksworth's increasingly frequent grumblings to Stanier about how much he envied Stanier's job & how Mr Collett still hadn't retired!
Well the GWR had just a couple of years beforehand given up their own branded bus services, transferring them to the likes of Western National, who they still owned 50%. They bought their buses of course from AEC etc rather than building their own, so it likely seemed natural to continue. I wonder if anyone from their old "Road Motor Department" was in on the railcar project.
It wouldn't surprise me if the 'railcar project' started out as informal 'what if' discussions between AEC and GWR "Road Motor Department" people. After all, the GWR mainline ran past the AEC headquarters at Southall, so no doubt someone there mused on alternative markets for their diesel engines and transmissions...
I think something would have to have happened to Mr Collett for him not to have the job at all. If he'd retired before 1931 & handed the job to Stanier then you have an interesting hunt for a suitable CME. As Taunton said Collett was 61 when the LMS came looking around - he might have fit in very well given how good an administrator he was, but whether he could have wrestled the equivalent of Stanier's products out of the three LMS works is another matter.
Oops - I didn't look up the dates of Fairburn's appointment and death...
I would’ve been interested to see what Collett’s idea of original standardisation would’ve been.
I presume Fairburn, under Stanier, took a leading role in the Wirral electrification in 1938. Hopefully with something better than the additional compartment units for the Watford DC and Southport lines, produced about 1930, which looked like they were from Victorian times.
You could probably do a lot with a Royal Scot & a Swindonesque boiler - various combos of cyls & drivers & so forth. What Collett would have done for heavy freight is something to think about, I think the Super D had had it's day.
You need to be better informed about the latest high-tech methods.
