European Railroad Discussion > Re-badged Southern 4-6-2 on Football Special

On Sunday 15 May 2016 a football special was run for Crystal Palace fans from Clapham Junction to Southampton for the Silver Eagles' last game.  Power was ex-Southern Railway West Country class 4-6-2 34046 "Braunton", which had been re-badged as Battle of Britain class 4-6-2 34052 "Lord Dowding", which was scrapped.  West Country and Battle of Britain class Pacifics are identical, and closely resemble Merchant Navy class Pacifics, which are slightly larger.  For those not familiar with these locomotives, they were originally built between 1945 and 1951 with all-over streamlining, and then were rebuilt in the late 1950s without the streamlining.   Personally, I like the rebuilt versions better.  Braunton/Lord Dowding in these photos is in the rebuilt form.   Unfortunately at Clapham Junction all shots were do-able only from the dark side.  BTW - this engine is owned by Jeremy Hoskings, who is co-owner of the Crystal Palace football club - so it is an all-in-the-family affair!

1.  Special pulling into Clapham Junction Platform 17 from Latchmere Junction.
2.  Special sitting at Clapham Junction.
3.  Special sitting at Clapham Junction.
 

---

---

---

4.  Special leaving Clapham Junction heading for passenger stops at Selhurst (near CP's stadium) and West Croydon.

---

Seems to have a large diameter stack, possibly multi-port exhaust nozzle.

Moves a lot of air through the fire, but with low back pressure, so exhaust velocity out the stack is low, and smoke tends to not go straight up, but trails, back,over the  train. At the end of steam, the drafting preference was to move a great volume of air theough the grates,, but a at a low velocity, Multiple, small nozzles allows plenty of columns of steam under all loco motive speeds.

Starting tends to be great, individual exhaust blasts.....the multi ports allow a steady draft, plenty of capacity to allow copious volumes of steam easy escape ( thus, lower back pressure) while not pulling holes in the fire ---- back at the grate's.  
At high speeds, with the valve gear set for short cut-offs, &  the lesser volume of steam through the  ports still has plenty of column " impingement" surface area to provide drafting plenty of air through the firing grate's....

Also love that Belpaire firebox.....

W.

Well you have certainly exceeded my technical knowledge of the inner workings of steam locomotives! 

dwatry

I admire the British attention to fine engineering design.
In America, we tended to build our engines, big, loud and strong --- need more heat?  Throw on more coal...

In the British approach, it's the same coal, but burn it to hotter temps--- ergo, reduce the velocity of the draft, increase the oxygen through the firebed. Voila'

That approach works very well, a hotter fire, less coal, more steam pressure, and adjust the valve gear's running point --- and she sips the steam while flying... Marvelous...
Also the British preservation efforts are magnificent examples of the Preservation Arts.

I stil am in awe about how well it's done, over there.

Wes Camp

The Bulleid Pacifics had a number of unique engineering features as first constructed - these are described in the Wikipedia articles linked below.   One of these was chain-driven valve gear, which was removed when the locomotives were rebuilt by BR in the 1950s.  The wiki articles also have photos of what they looked like prior to the rebuilding. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_West_Country_and_Battle_of_Britain_classes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Merchant_Navy_class

wcamp1472 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I admire the British attention to fine engineering
> design.
> In America, we tended to build our engines, big,
> loud and strong --- need more heat?  Throw on
> more coal...
>
> In the British approach, it's the same coal, but
> burn it to hotter temps--- ergo, reduce the
> velocity of the draft, increase the oxygen through
> the firebed. Voila'
>
> That approach works very well, a hotter fire, less
> coal, more steam pressure, and adjust the valve
> gear's running point --- and she sips the steam
> while flying... Marvelous...
> Also the British preservation efforts are
> magnificent examples of the Preservation Arts.
>
> I stil am in awe about how well it's done, over
> there.
>
> Wes Camp

I agree, in the UK we (sometimes) tried to make the most of steam power by attempts at technical sophistication, athough US practice appears to have been more wholehearted, using welding, roller bearings on everything, and much more investment in service and maintenance facilities, such as overhead coal hoppers. Double chimneys were also common on more modern American locomotives. It was of course the French in the form of Andre Chapelon and colleagues who gave the lead in the application of science to European steam loco design. Perhaps most importantly, UK steam engines never used mechanical stoking, which meant that the power output of all locos was essentially limited by the shovelling capaciy of a single fireman



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/16 11:03 by spflow.

Due to the rather tight loading gauge, UK locomotives weren't that big compared to their North American cousins.
So they could get away with hand stoking.

wcamp1472 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Seems to have a large diameter stack, possibly
> multi-port exhaust nozzle.

Bullied used the Lemaître exhaust (Jean Lemaître was a mechanical engineer of the Nord Belge railway), firstly on the Lord Nelson 4-6-0s whch he rebuilt in 1938, and then on the heavy (Merchant Navy) and light (West Country/Battle of Britain) pacifics built between 1941 and 1948. He also used it on his strange looking Q1 austerity 0-6-0 and the most bizarre 0-6-6-0T Leader class locomotive, which never turned a wheel in revenue service.

Just a quick note.  Not all of them were rebuilt prior to retirement.  There are also a couple operational in their original guise.

Cheers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/16 07:32 by 4489.

dwatry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On Sunday 15 May 2016 a football special was run
> for Crystal Palace fans from Clapham Junction to
> Southampton for the Silver Eagles' last game. 
> Power was ex-Southern Railway West Country class
> 4-6-2 34046 "Braunton", which had been re-badged
> as Battle of Britain class 4-6-2 34052 "Lord
> Dowding", which was scrapped.  . .   BTW - this engine is owned by Jeremy
> Hoskings, who is co-owner of the Crystal Palace
> football club - so it is an all-in-the-family
> affair!

Given the Crystal Palace connection, I'm surprised that the locomotive was not temporarily re-badged as 34056 "Croydon" for the occasion. That would have been authentic as 34056 was an example of the BB class that was rebuilt.

For what it's worth, Southampton won the game 4-1 to end up 6th. Meanwhile, Crystal Palace ended up in mid-table mediocrity. I saw the train less than a mile from St Mary's stadium in Southampton where the game was played. This is believed to be the first steam hauled soccer special in the UK for almost 50 years.

wcamp1472 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I admire the British attention to fine engineering
> design.
> In America, we tended to build our engines, big,
> loud and strong --- need more heat?  Throw on
> more coal...
>
> In the British approach, it's the same coal, but
> burn it to hotter temps--- ergo, reduce the
> velocity of the draft, increase the oxygen through
> the firebed. Voila'
>
> That approach works very well, a hotter fire, less
> coal, more steam pressure, and adjust the valve
> gear's running point --- and she sips the steam
> while flying... Marvelous...
> Also the British preservation efforts are
> magnificent examples of the Preservation Arts.
>
> I stil am in awe about how well it's done, over
> there.
>
> Wes Camp

Nicely said, but until quite late on in the steam era our loco engineering is best characterised as the Hit and Miss School of Loco Design, unlike, for instance, France where a far more scientific, logical approach was taken. This may have been much to do with the lack of good steam coal in France, which meant that French loco engineers had to develop motive power which was both powerful and economical and which worked on coal which was little short of dust. So the French approach to boiler, blast pipe, firebox and cylinder design was all about getting the most out of every single lb of coal they burnt, one of the reasons why so many French locomotives were compounds.

It didn't always work, the French railway companies still turned out some turkeys from time to time, but in general their engineering was better than ours.

The British 'problem' usually manifested itself when an engineer turned their attention to building larger locomotives, often 10 wheelers (4-6-0) rather than eight (4-4-0). An engineer who turned out perfectly competent, sometimes sparkling, 4-4-0s would, on turning their attention to 4-6-0s, produce ravenous coal burners, which were often inferior to the 4-4-0s they were supposed to replace. This has something to do with the relatively unscientific education and training British loco engineers had, compared, once again, to their French counterparts. This only changed slowly, so British railway companies were still turning out 4-4-0s as late as WW1 which were better than contemporary 4-6-0s. Compare J G Robinson's 2 cylinder Director 4-4-0s of the Great Central with his 4 cylinder Lord Faringdon 4-6-0s, Both were superb looking locomotives, in that slightly old fashioned late-Edwardian style, but the former were by leaps and bounds better engines, fast, economical and well liked by the men who drove them and looked after them. Robinson, like many contemporaries, didn't appreciate the relationship between boiler, cylinders, grate and ash pan.  

It was only through men like Churchward on the GWR, Maunsell on the Southern, Gresley on the LNER and Stanier on the LMS that British design was eventually dragged, kicking and screaming into the 20th century. But even then our aversion to what was deemed complex technology, such as compounding, meant that lb for lb French locomotives were still significantly more efficient than British. 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/16 05:01 by 86235.