Power reverse gear in UK locomotive

I found many USA locomotive equiped with power reverse gear and I found some BR standard locomotive also equiped with it. Does pre-gouping design equip with power reverse gear? such as LMS 5F and GWR Hall class. If they do, could someone give me some picture about it? Thanks a lot.

Hi. Welcome belatedly to the forum.
By "reverse gear" - not a term I've heard, but Wikipedia implies it is US usage - I think you mean the "reverser" in the cab?

Steam reversers were fitted by Bulleid to his Pacifics on the Southern Railway. They were notoriously unreliable at maintaining the cut-off, and along with the chain-link valve-gear were removed when they were rebuilt.

The other major user (much to my surprise!) was the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, and this qualifies as pre-grouping. The mechanism was designed by James Stirling, but the locos were H S Wainwright designs (Maunsell on the SR perpetuated the practice for the Q class goods loco, but reverted to a screw reverser for his main line engines).

Just as an aside, the LMS Black Five and GWR Hall classes were pre-nationalisation, not pre-grouping, designs.

I suspect that the smaller size of British locos, compared with elsewhere but especially the USA, meant that the motion components were lighter, and so a simpler manual reverser mechanism was adequate.

The reverser comes in three types, pole, screw and power.

Pole is best for shunting locos where lots of direction changes are required, but can be difficult to notch up with steam on. However really tough drivers will still try to beat the engine and won’t reduce power whilst notching up.

Screw is best for notching up with steam on and you can alter the cut off in small amounts, however with some types of loco shunting with a screw reverser is hell, depends on the number of turns.

Power reversers sit in the middle, easy to change direction and easy to notch up, when well maintained that is!

For those unsure of the terms notch up and cut off (I’ll undoubtedly be shot down for oversimplification here ) think of notching up as changing gear, the cut off relates to where the steam ports are cut off (closed) in the steam chest.

DelW said:

Just as an aside, the LMS Black Five and GWR Hall classes were pre-nationalisation, not pre-grouping, designs.

I suspect that the smaller size of British locos, compared with elsewhere but especially the USA, meant that the motion components were lighter, and so a simpler manual reverser mechanism was adequate.

Click to expand...

Thanks for poingting out the mistake.