New build locos

[Journeyman]

Turbomotive
Fell
4000hp(?) "super Western" (do locos which were never built in the first place count?)
Leader
Kitson-Still

HUGE vote for a Leader! With more accurate precision engineering and the benefit of experience, I think you could make one work quite a lot better than the prototype did, without altering the fundamental design too much. Absolutely extraordinary beast, and the first thing I'd go and see if someone invented time travel.

 

[Marvin]

Big Bertha or one of the LMS Garratts would be my vote.

 

[Steam loco]

Big Bertha or one of the LMS Garratts would be my vote.

I agree with you on big bertha she would be great

 

[Bedpan]

Surely a smaller loco would be cheaper to build and so more could be constructed with available funds. Also I'd like to see something than has to work hard on a preserved railway rather than something that gets to 25mph in three puffs....ie I'd rather travel on the Severn Valley behind one of their pannier tanks than a West Country. On that basis my nomination for a new build would be an LSWR 700 class. The 84XXX (or is it an 82XXX) Standard tank that is currently being build is a great choice - was a shame that none were saved as they would have been ideal for preserved railways.

 

[xotGD]

How about converting a couple of 08s into 13004?

 

[Kingston Flyer]

The 84XXX (or is it an 82XXX) Standard tank that is currently being build is a great choice - was a shame that none were saved as they would have been ideal for preserved railways.

There is one of each being built. 82045 at Bridgnorth on the Severn Valley, and 84022 (I think, but certainly an 84xxx) on the Bluebell

Edit: I have just checked and it is 84030. I was a few out!

 

[Marvin]

I agree with you on big bertha she would be great

Definitely, but it's very unlikely to happen. She was too big for most preserved lines and too slow for mainline work.

How about converting a couple of 08s into 13004?

This would be excellent to see, but would hardly ever have a chance to run due to its low speed.

 

[Flying Phil]

I too am not sure about the Leader - I admire the fact that Bulleid was prepared to challenge conventional thinking - and was recruited by the SR to modernise their non electric part of the railway, but the Leader was always going to be a nightmare for the fireman and the technology of power bogies/sleeve valves and chain drives in the average running shed in the 50's was also waiting to cause problems.

 

[etr221]

Given how useful they would seem to be for a preserved line, a surprising omission from the new build projects has been any of the Edwardian/late pre-grouping big passenger tanks: most obviously the Robinson GCR 4-6-2T (LNER A5), alternatively there are the LNWR Prince of Wales (?) tanks, LBSC J1/J2 4-6-2T, Caledonian 4-6-2T, Whitelegg's (?) 4-6-4T, Hughes's L&Y 4-6-4T,... - too many to remember. Or rebuilding a Southern U back into a K ('River')

 

[AndyW33]

Given how useful they would seem to be for a preserved line, a surprising omission from the new build projects has been any of the Edwardian/late pre-grouping big passenger tanks: most obviously the Robinson GCR 4-6-2T (LNER A5), alternatively there are the LNWR Prince of Wales (?) tanks, LBSC J1/J2 4-6-2T, Caledonian 4-6-2T, Whitelegg's (?) 4-6-4T, Hughes's L&Y 4-6-4T,... - too many to remember. Or rebuilding a Southern U back into a K ('River')

Thing is while some of these classes were excellent and long lived, others, especially the 4-6-4Ts, tended to be heavy on coal and water, and prone to hot axleboxes. Really not what an under-resourced heritage railway needs. There's a reason why most failed to last even as long as WWII or shortly afterwards.

Obviously the Rivers were mechanically fine, really the start (along with Churchward's large 2-6-2Ts) of the modern passenger tanks and some would probably have survived into preservation had they not had that sensitivity to poor track which led to the Sevenoaks disaster.

 

[Pigeon]

I too am not sure about the Leader - I admire the fact that Bulleid was prepared to challenge conventional thinking - and was recruited by the SR to modernise their non electric part of the railway, but the Leader was always going to be a nightmare for the fireman and the technology of power bogies/sleeve valves and chain drives in the average running shed in the 50's was also waiting to cause problems.

Yes, the "average running shed in the 50's" was pretty hostile to anything bar a standard Rocket-on-steroids steam loco; it could be argued that it's less of a surprise that Leader failed than that diesels didn't. As it was, it was that they weren't going to be allowed to that made the difference...

But it wasn't a fundamentally bad design, it was just not well suited to the conditions of the time and the lack of resources to debug it, especially when trying to do it on a busy full-size railway already struggling with post-war dilapidations. A lot of experimental designs ended up being canned because the later stages of development necessarily involved plonking a half-completed thing down on an operating railway and requiring that it performed no less reliably than the tried and tested designs already running. The kind of situation we're talking about, where something as major as a complete locomotive is being built just because a bunch of people think it's fun to do, is considerably less fraught (or can be, at least) and so it is more possible to take it to the point where success or failure speaks for the design itself, and not the dissatisfaction of a management with plenty of more pressing concerns to worry about.

Moreover, since it was experimental, there is no justification for regarding those features which the original experiment showed to be dubious as being set in stone; on the contrary, improving their design is fully in the spirit of the original project. Optimising the design of sleeve valves is a whole sight easier when you can accurately predict thermal distortions using finite element modelling with free software on any old PC, and when technologies such as making parts out of one substance for the bulk material and another substance for coating wear surfaces are so much better developed. And I think using oil firing for the sake of the poor old fireman goes without saying!

 

[Pigeon]

...that sensitivity to poor track which led to the Sevenoaks disaster.

That's another example of a problem which is much easier to avoid now than it was at the time. We now have the extra knowledge from BR's research into wheel/track interactions, plus again computer modelling to accurately predict the performance of a proposed configuration without having to build it and try it out. In the steam era, mitigating poor riding was something that had to be done using little more than trial and error informed by guesswork, and even in the few cases where they thought it was worth trying the results were often not very impressive.