British Steam

[mhurley87f]

I suspect there are other UK Forum members / correspondents who would be better qualified than I to list every reason for the populariy of Inside Cylinders and Valve Motions, but here are some.

I think I've heard or read that following on from Rocket, the Stephenson family's next offering was an inside cylinder 2-2-2 which proved to be a smooth runner on the Liverpool and Manchester main line and others , and that design / layout was popular with many later railwasy.

Perhaps this came about through less cause for "nosing" when in full flight I couldn't say. And I suspect there might be an advantage in having the cylinders exhaust spent steam from immediately beneath the smokebox.

Also, early British Railways certainly placed a premium on attractive designs to charm potential shareholders, passengers and freight customers, and such clean looking engines remained the norm until the 1920s or so when ergonomic designs began to be applied.

The Great Western Railway was always bent on doing its own things, and there wasn't a lot wrong with Churchward's way (incidentally he took a keen interest in US design thinking and incorporated any design feature that would work straight out of the box rather than experiment and spend time, money, and energy researching new but untried ideas) until Gresley 's designs took the honours in the 1930s.

Not only did the Great Western stick with right hand drive when all the others settled on left hand drive post the 1923 Grouping, they stuck almost overwhelmingly with inside Stephenson valve motions. The only exceptions were:

the four cylinder express classes i.e. Stars, Castles, and Kings (around 230 or so in total),

one very late design of a short wheel base 0-6-0 shunter (10 in number) , 

narrow gauge locomtoives for the Vale of Rheidol line in Mid-Wales (3 in number), and

some 0-4-0 shunters inherited, in 1923 again, from contractors shifting coal waggons to and from the tipplers at the docks at Swansea, South Wales,

One thing is certain, GWR locomtives were better at getting trains moving than Walschaerts valve engines on other lines, and this is commonly attributed to the negative or very small lead steam when working at long cut-off.

Another plus I was reliably informed by former fitting staff, was that in the case of outside cylinder locomotives, there was no need to take down the valve gear to get at a big end on the infrequent occasions when it might need attention in day to day running. To all intents, the vales were set extremely accurately at main works overhauls, and shouldn't need to be messed about with in-between works visits.

Again, it would be very rare to hear clanking from valve gear, which seemed to be endemic with Walschaerts gear locomtives of the other UK lines.

As for access to oiling points, certainly a pit would be needed, and oiling a 4 cylinder GWR locomotive called for the patience of Job if some accounts are to be believed. I stress oiling, which was done just the once before a normal duty, and not greasing, which I have been given to understand was the US preference. By all means correct me if I'm mistaken on this point.

Anyway, beware I'm not a locomotive engineer, have never worked in any capacity on a UK railway, and all the above comes from what I've read, or what professional railwaymen have told me.

Hwyl,

Martin.

 

[Overmod]

Firelock76

It DID make maintanance more difficult, but the reason for it, as I understand, was the tight clearances on British railway station platforms.  

Not just the platforms!  Look at the comparative size of even 'large' British locomotives compared to North American ones.  A big reason for 3-cylinder designs was that there wasn't adequate room for larger outside cylinders within the restricted loading gage.   (On the other hand, no small reason for Mallard reaching high speed was the smaller frontal area involved...)

Many British prototypes also used the inside cylinders and motionwork to keep all the naughty mechanical bits from showing.  There was adequate cheap labor, and discipline, in those days in Britain.

We can take up the issue of lower dynamic augment with inside cylinders (a la the Belgian 4-4-2s) if desired.

 

[Firelock76]

It DID make maintanance more difficult, but the reason for it, as I understand, was the tight clearances on British railway station platforms.  The valves and pistons located under the frames meant the train could 'snuggle up" to the platform, which was high level as opposed to typical American practice where a step stool was needed for passengers to disembark.

I'd like to hear from our friends across the pond on this one.

[GP-9_Man11786]

I've seen picture of a fair number of British steam locomotives that have their cylinders, main rods and valve gear mounted between the frames instead of outside. This seems like it was a fairly common practice. What was the reason for this? Its seems like it would make maintainence much more difficult.