Many railways used various codes - yet another fascinating online rabbit hole down which to dive!
Apropos 18-inch gauge railways, there is a Learned Tome on this subject, published a few years ago, and available on eBay for £££silly...
I complete my fifteenth lustrum in August (if I live), so might treat myself to an early present.
BTW, the little Hunslets at Deptford were oil-fired, but the Sand Hutton four were converted to coal-firing. Apparently. they carried about 4cwt of coal in a corner of the (fortunately) spacious cab.
They make excellent large-scale models, and I once had the fun of driving a 5-inch gauge version - about one-quarter full size, I suppose. It was scratchbuilt, so to speak, and pre-dated the lovely Maxitrak kit!
BTW, the little Hunslets at Deptford were oil-fired, but the Sand Hutton four were converted to coal-firing. Apparently. they carried about 4cwt of coal in a corner of the (fortunately) spacious cab.
And had a funnel on the front buffer beam for filling the well tank.
They also sometimes carried a large Bucket (the sort of thing we called a Pail when I was a lad), hung on the smokebox door handle, for putting water into the said funnel. Apparently, the SHLR had no proper water tank(s) for engine supply - just wells at Bossall and at Sand Hutton.
A bit of a chore for the driver - filling was necessary on every trip - and for Sir Robert himself, if he was taking a turn at the regulator. Providing a decent water supply was one of those jobs, perhaps, that featured on his 'To Do' list, but Death intervened...
Apparently, the SHLR had no proper water tank(s) for engine supply - just wells at Bossall and at Sand Hutton.
So long as they didn't pick up fish, as mentioned in the Thomas books (also by David Smith in "Tales of the Glasgow & South Western" - apparently some drivers liked have fish in the tanks as they felt they kept the water clean).
The Sand Hutton carriage survives at the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway; the 15" "glass coach" went to Ravenglass but doesn't seem to be there now, However "Synolda" is there and is, I believe, in working order.
I don't know - even the 4-wheelers look pretty hefty to me, and both they and the bogie carriages had teak bodies. Mind you, double-heading seems to have been quite common.
The "What did you do in the holidays" conversation I had with my two student railway devotees had the three of us discussing the newly reopened to passengers line between Birmingham New Street and Kings Norton in south west Birmingham.
They were deeply impressed I had beaten them to trying the line out and knew more about it all than they ever expect from anyone who is not as obsessed by all matters railway as they are. I didn't tell them I'd travelled the route often enough on diverted trains over the years.
The Cross City line is far more useful to me on a regular basis, but this has the advantage of connecting well to buses home as well.
Sir Robert would probably have known how well the Heywood engines performed on the much less hilly Eaton Railway, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated similar locomotives for the easy grades of the Sand Hutton line, even if a builder could have been found after Heywood's death in 1916.
The sale of the Deptford stock came at just the right time - maybe Sir Robert (an Army officer) found a real bargain!
Although they had to buy new rails and relay a lot of track, in order to be able to use the locos. But more "miniature" locos would have been very expensive, not to mention rather silly for a "working" railway. The Deptford locos were hardly smooth riding, either.
I can vouch for the fact that the 2-foot gauge Quarry Hunslets aren't especially smooth riding, either, Cheerful and Co-operative Little Engines that they are.
Sir Robert Walker was a very wealthy man, but clearly had a 'no frills' working railway in mind, and that's what the SHLR turned out to be.
Indeed - the brickworks was a principal source of traffic, but K Hartley (in his little book on the SHLR, published in 1964) expressed the thought that the railway might have continued in operation beyond the closure of the works in 1929, had Sir Robert not died in February 1930.
AIUI, operations continued, managed by Sir Robert's brother Patrick, until some time in 1932. Had Sir Robert lived to a reasonable old age (he would have been 74 when Hartley's book was published), part at least of the railway might just have survived into preservation...
With and I have just had an interesting and enjoyable day at the Holy of Holies, the York Railway Museum. As well as the locos and carriages, what an amazing collection of related artifacts. I liked the explanation of how signalmen worked too.
That is quite amazing! I'm surprised it can go so far East as I know the erstwhile New York Central had a much tighter loading gauge than the Union Pacific. But I'm sure they know what they're doing!
It makes a Gresley A4 look like a toy train (although, I have to say, Big Boy isn't exactly sleek like the A4! However I know you had your streamliners too).
One of the familiar landmarks on the West Highland Railway has always been the snow shed over the Cruach rock cutting, a little north of Rannoch station. I thought I was losing my mind (again) when I didn't see it last week, but it turns out that after more than a century it has been dismantled. It was in pretty rough condition, but I wonder if there is a replacement on the way? The Moor is a wild place (and one of my favourite places in Scotland).
It's such a great shame that, in 1945, the LMS scrapped the last three LNWR express locomotives rather than preserving them.
Not quite. The last Claughton, 6004, lasted until 1949. It was, though, one that had been rebuilt with a larger boiler. And I suppose some bits of Claughtons, such as wheel bosses, were still part of original condition Patriots on through into the early 1960s.
6004 was allocated 46004 but never got as far as receiving it. A highway engineer I knew back in the 1990s who had been a trainspotter during and just after the war, told me that he had seen it more than once. It was reputed that underneath its postwar grime, it remained red until it was scrapped, but that you could not tell.
As for the comparison, Halls, of course only had two cylinders, but Stars, Castles and Kings had four. I have always heard that when it came to performance, Claughtons were rarely any better than 'iffy', unpredictable and like most LNWR locos, roughly put together. Works practices at Crewe improved remarkably in the 1930s.
I am not sure when the last in original condition survived until. Most were cleared out in the 1930s, replaced by Jubilees and Black 5s.
A good resource is The Claughton and Patriot 4-6-0s by George Toms and Bob Essery. They confirm that the Claughtons were lightly built, though this was due to pressure from the civil engineers to reduce weight. The cylinders were (4) 16x26" with 6'9" driving wheels compared with the Halls' (2) 18.5x30" with 6' 0"drivers, so for the same speed on the road, the Hall had a considerably higher piston speed than the Claughton. I don't know much about GWR detail design, but this might suggest that their lubrication systems had to be much better than on other railways.
A modernised 'new build' Claughton is a very happy thought.
I also seem to remember that the Claughton's had a design flaw, in that it was necessary to lift the boiler off the frames in order to do some basic maintenance to the inside cylinders or oil feeds ... or something. I understand that railway design staff didn't seem to talk to the shed staff "out in the big wide world" to eliminate such problems.
Comments
Apropos 18-inch gauge railways, there is a Learned Tome on this subject, published a few years ago, and available on eBay for £££silly...
I complete my fifteenth lustrum in August (if I live), so might treat myself to an early present.
BTW, the little Hunslets at Deptford were oil-fired, but the Sand Hutton four were converted to coal-firing. Apparently. they carried about 4cwt of coal in a corner of the (fortunately) spacious cab.
They make excellent large-scale models, and I once had the fun of driving a 5-inch gauge version - about one-quarter full size, I suppose. It was scratchbuilt, so to speak, and pre-dated the lovely Maxitrak kit!
A bit of a chore for the driver - filling was necessary on every trip - and for Sir Robert himself, if he was taking a turn at the regulator. Providing a decent water supply was one of those jobs, perhaps, that featured on his 'To Do' list, but Death intervened...
Here she is at Ravenglass last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knqntHlQTKA
Synolda was Sir Robert's first wife. After their divorce, he remarried, and so one of the little Hunslets was named Esme, after Lady Walker II...
And no-one was in the carriages yet!
They were deeply impressed I had beaten them to trying the line out and knew more about it all than they ever expect from anyone who is not as obsessed by all matters railway as they are. I didn't tell them I'd travelled the route often enough on diverted trains over the years.
The Cross City line is far more useful to me on a regular basis, but this has the advantage of connecting well to buses home as well.
The sale of the Deptford stock came at just the right time - maybe Sir Robert (an Army officer) found a real bargain!
Sir Robert Walker was a very wealthy man, but clearly had a 'no frills' working railway in mind, and that's what the SHLR turned out to be.
AIUI, operations continued, managed by Sir Robert's brother Patrick, until some time in 1932. Had Sir Robert lived to a reasonable old age (he would have been 74 when Hartley's book was published), part at least of the railway might just have survived into preservation...
Incidentally his brother Geoffrey wrote the thriller "Rogue Male".
Indeed - a most splendid Beast. There are numerous videos, of course, of the class working immense freight trains on their native heath.
(I do wish press people would learn to differentiate between locomotive and train...).
That is quite amazing! I'm surprised it can go so far East as I know the erstwhile New York Central had a much tighter loading gauge than the Union Pacific. But I'm sure they know what they're doing!
It makes a Gresley A4 look like a toy train (although, I have to say, Big Boy isn't exactly sleek like the A4! However I know you had your streamliners too).
To my amusement, AI thinks Claughton Hall was a Claughton.
It's such a great shame that, in 1945, the LMS scrapped the last three LNWR express locomotives rather than preserving them.
Parts of what is, in effect, a giant kit are currently being produced:
https://advanced-steam.org/projects/george-v-project/
6004 was allocated 46004 but never got as far as receiving it. A highway engineer I knew back in the 1990s who had been a trainspotter during and just after the war, told me that he had seen it more than once. It was reputed that underneath its postwar grime, it remained red until it was scrapped, but that you could not tell.
As for the comparison, Halls, of course only had two cylinders, but Stars, Castles and Kings had four. I have always heard that when it came to performance, Claughtons were rarely any better than 'iffy', unpredictable and like most LNWR locos, roughly put together. Works practices at Crewe improved remarkably in the 1930s.
I am not sure when the last in original condition survived until. Most were cleared out in the 1930s, replaced by Jubilees and Black 5s.
A modernised 'new build' Claughton is a very happy thought.
I also seem to remember that the Claughton's had a design flaw, in that it was necessary to lift the boiler off the frames in order to do some basic maintenance to the inside cylinders or oil feeds ... or something. I understand that railway design staff didn't seem to talk to the shed staff "out in the big wide world" to eliminate such problems.