User talk:PST195J

Talkback
-- Red rose64 (talk) 17:24, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Robinson
I've the redlinks for 11B/11C/11D to how they were: this is because GCR Class 11B has 119 incoming links, whereas (discounting John G. Robinson) GCR Classes 11B, 11C and 11D had none. There is nothing to stop an article titled "GCR Class 11B" from covering all three classes: later on, after the article is created, we can always move it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:14, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough - I've decided to see how it goes writing separate articles on 11B, 11C and 11D and have completed a first go at 11B -- PST195J (talk) 08:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally, I would say that a single combined article is the way to go, until/unless you can amass a great amount of information which is distinct between the three classes. After all, their history is intertwined to a high degree: all 40 were built as 11B, and it was really only reboilering which produced the other two classes, and by the end of 1927, all had been rebuilt to 11D spec. See, for example, LNER Gresley Classes A1 and A3 where one article covers two classes, the difference between the two being primarily the boiler.
 * The name "pom-pom" for the GCR 9J 0-6-0 refers to their exhaust sound resembling a QF 1 pounder pom-pom; apparently these engines had a sharper exhaust "bark" compared to earlier classes such as the Pollitt 9H. I've not come across the nickname "Pom-Pom Bogies" in relation to 11B/11C/11D before, but you've refd it, so that's OK.
 * I've removed your signature from Talk:GCR Class 11B. You only need to sign talk pages when adding comments; talk page header templates, such as banners, always go unsigned. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * OK will run with that idea for now. The GCR Class 11C article would have to have been pretty thin based on my sources to date... PST195J (talk) 21:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, according to the RCTS book (part 3B), there were only three of those (and only two at once):
 * 104 was built as 11B in March 1904, rebuilt to 11C (ie with saturated 5'0" diam boiler in place of 4'9") in March 1907; and finally rebuilt to 11D (5'0" superheated boiler) in June 1923.
 * 110 built 11B May 1904, rebuilt 11C May 1907, reverted to 11B August 1918, rebuilt to 11D September 1923.
 * 113 built 11B June 1904, rebuilt 11C October 1918 (boiler ex-no. 110), rebuilt 11D May 1923
 * So, class 11C was in existence for slightly over 19 years, but with only three engines (all of which were 11B and 11D at various times), there's little scope for anything more than a section within the main 11B article.
 * Besides those three, we also have two others recorded as carrying a 5'0" saturated boiler at some point, but which seem to have officially remained as class 11B until rebuilt to 11D spec:
 * 1026 was built as 11B in March 1902, rebuilt with 5'0" saturated boiler in December 1909, rebuilt to 11D in October 1914.
 * 105 built 11B March 1904, rebuilt with 5'0" saturated boiler (ex-no. 1026) August 1914, reverted to 4'9" boiler January 1916, rebuilt to 11D November 1923.
 * This boiler had a firebox 7'0" long (as per the 11B & 11D boilers), whereas the two 11C boilers had fireboxes 8'6" long. This probably explains why 1026/105 remained as class 11B, instead of being reclassified 11C. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:07, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I hadn't picked up on 113 ever being 11C, especially since by 1918 their shortcomings were well known.  My guess would be that this was an 'emergency' reboilering because of the date - late in the Great War by which skilled manpower must have been desperately short - and the suggestion by Martin Smith (1993) that the 11C 8'6" firebox was not well arranged. Probably the boiler was sitting around Gorton since August, and patching it up and fitting it to get a working loco out of 113 made the best sense at the time, even if it wasn't a completely satisfactory boiler.  Surprising that 105 got the boiler from 1026 since according to Smith 1026 also had piston valves when it got the bigger boiler - did 105 get both boiler and valves, I wonder?  That also makes 1026 practically only a superheater short of being an 11D...  Robinson was criticised later - by O.S.Nock at least, I think - for not giving his larger locomotives sufficiently large fireboxes so one wonders whether the unsatisfactory experience with the extended 11C firebox was actually formative in Robinson's later design thinking... But this idle musing is "out of bounds" for any article, unless I can find a prior published idle muse-er! PST195J (talk) 09:14, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly so: we need WP:RS if we are not to violate WP:OR. I think that W.A. Tuplin wrote a book called "Great Central Steam", which might cover areas overlooked by Nock.
 * I agree that the reuse of the boiler from 110 on 113 was most likely because it was spare; after all, it was just over twelve years old and they wouldn't want to scrap it straight away.
 * 105 appears to have retained slide valves when given the boiler from 1026. The RCTS book does not note fitting of piston valves until rebuilding as a superheated 11D in November 1923. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I wonder, could you just check the RCTS view on the cylinder size for the 11Cs? My only good source on them says 19" x 25", which is possible but a slightly odd choice given that 11Bs had 18.5" x 26" and eventually the 11Ds had 19" x 26". The 26" stroke was also something of a standard for Robinson GCR locos. I'm thinking that 25" for the 11Cs may be a misprint. PST195J (talk) 09:15, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * A piston stroke of an odd number of inches is rare... so rare in fact that I can't think of any examples unless you go back to the early days when everybody tried everything! RCTS has stroke 26" for all the GCR 4-4-0s inherited by the LNER, from the Sacré 6B class of 1877 right through to the Improved Directors. Taking the D9s specifically, as built the 11B were $18 1/2$"x26"; the 11C rebuilds were 19"x26"; the 11D rebuilds used the same cylinder blocks as the 11E "Directors", and apparently some early ones used the 11E dimensions of 20"x26", but the later rebuilds were lined up to 19"x26", and the earlier ones may have been so modified as well. The final official GCR dimensions for 11B were $18 1/2$"x26"; for 11C 19"x26"; and the official LNER figure for 11D was also 19"x26". There is a possibility that some 11D were 20"x26" in LNER days, but the records do not show any.
 * If rebuilding for the sake of fitting piston valves instead of slide valves, then changing the cylinder bore at rebuild is just as easy as leaving it alone. Whether or not the type of valves is changed, a change to the piston stroke is a different matter: not only does the cylinder block need to be changed, but also the crank axle (if an inside-cylinder loco) or the coupled wheels (if outside cylinder). It was done sometimes, but not without good reason. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, that confirms my hunch, as you say a change in the stroke implies a changed axle throw and is a big enterprise and I couldn't think of a reason to shorten the throw unless it was something to do with clearance for the long firebox, which seemed pretty unlikely. It may be that just 1021, the prototype 11D, ever got the 20" cylinders, if not it was probably only the early rebuilds in 1913 and 1914 that were to this specification.  1021 is the only one I can reference with confidence.  My sources suggest that the 5' boiler was not quite up to supplying that much steam. PST195J (talk) 08:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree: the RCTS book has "though the new class 11E boiler, which was 5ft. 3in. in diameter and had an 8ft. 6in. firebox and 26 sq. ft. of grate, could supply cylinders of this size [20"x26"] without trouble, it may have been considered a strain on the 11D boiler and it is believed that in later rebuilds, and ultimately in the whole class, the cylinders were lined up to 19in. diameter. Certainly this is the figure in all L.N.E.R. engine diagrams".
 * Further research (using George Dow's trilogy) shows that the MS&LR started using a piston stroke of 26" with the class 6A 0-6-0 of 1874 and class 6B 4-4-0 of 1877, but continued to use 24" (or less often 22") for certain classes until the arrival of Parker in 1887. From then on, every new loco right down to the end of the GCR had a 26" stroke, with the following exceptions:
 * class 3 (LNER F1) 2-4-2T (39 built 1889-93) - 24", which is a mystery, because these engines were designed concurrently with the class 9A (LNER N4) 0-6-2T, which had 26" stroke like other Parker locos. 24" for the class 3 is not a typo in Dow, since (a) Dow gives the figure five times; (b) the RCTS agree with Dow.
 * class 5 (LNER J62) 0-6-0T (12 built 1897) - 20", most likely because the wheels were only 3'6" diameter, and if a longer stroke had been used the big-ends could have fouled something close to rail level.
 * class 15 2-6-0 (20 built 1900, withdrawn 1907-15) - 24", this is explained by being designed by their builders, Baldwin Locomotive Works, with little input from Pollitt.
 * class 5A (LNER J63) 0-6-0T (7 built 1906-14) - 20", see class 5, with which many components were common.
 * I expect that by the late 1880s, Gorton had some machinery set up to produce a 13" crank throw, so it would have been far easier to continue using the 26" stroke than to change. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:34, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I have now found a locomotive class with non-integer crank throw. The LSWR Minerva class of 2-4-0WT (3 built 1856) had cyls 14"x21" - they date from a time when Joseph Hamilton Beattie was trying to find the best dimensions for suburban tank engines, and was juggling dimensions and wheel arrangements before hitting on the 298 class, which had 20" stroke. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)