"37106 xit GD"?

[37201xoIM]

(Hoping this is in the right forum - apologies if it isn't!)

I was playing the excellent Hellfire game (www.railrover.co.uk) the other day, and I got the gen that a pretty big NB loco was out on a passenger working... but it set me thinking: it was shown as "37106 xit GD".

Now it might be just my memory, but I don't recall "xit" being "a thing" back then: I always thought that twin-tanked 37s (the "t") were ones where the boiler had been removed, rather than just isolated - because as I understand it, the former boiler water tank was converted into the additional fuel tank. So shouldn't the loco have been "xot" rather than "xit"?

Does anybody know whether that is gibber or I'm right? Were there in fact twin-tanked 37s which retained their isolated boiler?

Any thoughts would be warmly welcomed!

 

[delt1c]

Trying to think back to days we had all the variations, if memory serves me correct it should be xot ( dual braked , no boiler, twin tanks)

 

[theblackwatch]

This post has caused me to go straight upstairs and dig out my some old Platform 5 Motive Power Pocket Books. The 8th and 9th editions of this publications (June 81 and Feb 82) do indeed show it as 'xit GD' but the 7th (Jan 81) and 10th (July 82) editions list it as 'xot GD'. I do wonder if this was an error - even perhaps a deliberate one - in the 8th & 9th editions, as it is the only 37 shown in both books as 'xit'. The late Neil Webster, one of the authors of these books, used to occasionally slip in mistakes into his books as a way of checking the info wasn't been pilfered elsewhere (yes really!).

 

[Elecman]

The late Neil Webster, one of the authors of these books, used to occasionally slip in mistakes into his books as a way of checking the info wasn't been pilfered elsewhere (yes really!).

The Ordnance Survey do exactly the same !

 

[xotGD]

I guess I am the ideal person to contribute to this thread

According to the gen at Class37.co.uk 106 had its boiler removed in 1982, so it may have been twin tank fitted prior to the boiler being removed. So perhaps the first xotGD was in error, this was corrected to xitGD and then changed to xotGD after the boiler was removed.

106 worked the Yarmouth - Newcastle twice in 1983. Happy days!

 

[theblackwatch]

I've gone back a bit further in the Platform 5 books (see, this is why books can be better than everything being 'online'!). The 5th edition (Jan 80) has it as 'xo GD' while the 6th edition (July 80) has it as 'xif GD'. 'f' denotes 'Boiler water tank converted to additional fuel tank'. All the others in the book with this feature are either 'xof or 'vof'. From the next edition, 'f' was changed to 't' in the books. I would agree with @xotGD that the 7th edition was probably incorrect.

I can only guess that, in general, those which had the boiler water tank conversion actually had the boiler removed, but for some reason, 37106 retained the boiler, although obviously it was inoperative as the its water tank was now being used for fuel.

 

[37201xoIM]

That is quite monumentally helpful - I thought the expertise on this forum wouldn't let me down!

Thanks very much indeed - grateful and impressed! And I've learned summat about 37ers that I'd never known back at the time...