Talk:GWR 1000 Class

Names

The names for all these engines are linked, but they all seem to lead to the county, rather than a page on the individual engine. If the engine itself doesn't have a page, wouldn't it make more sense not to have a link? What does anyone else think? Moonraker12 14:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I concur with that. Noel (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

The normal practice is that we link names to the person, place or thing that the loco was named after; and we link numbers to articles on the individual engines. However, we only create articles on individual locos if they are particularly notable in some way: having been preserved is usually sufficient. None of this class have been preserved (although there is a project to build a new one), so we don't yet have any articles on individual locomotives. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:28, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

No such thing as a Hawksworth Pacific

There's a demolition of the Pacific myth on the Hawksworth talk page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Frederick_Hawksworth 91.125.111.191 (talk) 16:35, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

we could rather use an article on the Hawksworth Pacific, just how far it went, and a refutation of the excess claims, where sourceable. I have at least three books here, excluding Nock, and all ostensibly WP:RS, that claim at least some design work went into this, whether it was Hawksworth's personal effort or not. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:30, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

All sorts of odd things were sketched out in drawing offices, more or less officially. Some studies would be examples why things were impractical. Enthusiasts have a vision of a CME beavering away on his personal drawing board, but it wasn't like that. The CME was chief exec of a department that on the GWR in 1935, for example, comprised 30,000+ people. Some were more hands on that others, but the actual design was a team effort by junior staff that the CME would or wouldn't sign off. In Durrant's Swindon Apprentice, for example, the writer, who was working on design work for the BR standards at the time, includes a basic study of a 14 coupled tank engine he drew up because he disapproved of the use of double headed 9Fs on iron ore trains, and states his management refused to take the idea seriously. That doesn't mean that wikipedia should talk about a Riddles 2-14-4. As for other books repeating the Nock myth, consider xkcd and citogenesis. https://xkcd.com/978/. As Hawksworth was aggressively clear in stating that he never authorised any work on a Pacific and did everything he could to suppress the rumour, to talk about a Hawksworth Pacific and make the related claims in this article is, well, shall we just say its unfair to Hawksworth? 91.125.111.191 (talk) 08:18, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

The "Hawksworth Pacific" exists as a concept. It has gained a life of its own in the railway press. Now if you're so convinced that this never happened (with Hawksworth's involvement at least), then that sounds like the sort of widespread misconception that does deserve a proper debunking. As a section in the Hawksworth article at least. I for one would be interested to see the sources contra listed.

One of the books I have is Barnes, Locomotives That Never Were - this, Swindon 2-10-2Ts, Hawksworth's mid-Wales 4-4-0, BR Standard 2-8-2s (maybe the best loco in the UK, if it had been built) and Bulleid's enlarged express loco. There are plenty of designs with a recorded footprint that's worth discussion, even if no steel was cut. If railway loco articles have any value, more than trainspotting, it's for their place within engineering history and the hypothetical designs are just as important for that. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:01, 26 December 2015 (UTC)