Mind the shap

[lenny100]

in 1942 the us army worried about the ability of the UK rail system to handle the loads they required to be transported from Glasgow to the us airbases in southern England ordered 4 4,8,8,4, Big Boy steam engines to be shipped over. 3 were lost on transit to the UK due to the transports being sunk, but one was used for two runs before it was shown to be to large to be used on the smaller local lines near the airbases in oxfordshire.
the LMS took over the running of the engine and after a refit to make it compatible with UK roiling stockand it was named Shap Fell and given the number 1050
this engine was used for hauling heavy freight on the west coast main line until 1960 when it made it last run caring parts for the Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor under contruction in cumbria.
the train was scraped in 1965 despite several attempts to preserve this unique part of the British rail history

[sideshowbob9]

A Big Boy! I think it would be just slightly out of gauge! Neat idea though. 

Hope you don't mind a bit of national pride creeping in but I seriously doubt there's anything a Big Boy could do that a double-headed WD or 28xx couldn't. 

[lenny100]

A Big Boy! I think it would be just slightly out of gauge! Neat idea though. 

Hope you don't mind a bit of national pride creeping in but I seriously doubt there's anything a Big Boy could do that a double-headed WD or 28xx couldn't. 

all true but when your given a half compleated kits and told to see what you can do with this then who can refuse

[PR19_Kit]

Now THAT I would like to have seen! 

Sadly there are only two places in the UK that a Big Boy could run, and one of them didn't exist back then. The Great Central main line was built to Berne Gauge so there was an outside chance the Big Boy would fit, but the Menidp Gravel lines weren't built then. I know this because at one time I seriously considered importing a GP-30 diesel to the UK from the Wiconsin Central. I could afford the loco itself (it was STUPIDLY cheap....) but the shipping costs would have been more than my house was worth! Plus there was nowhere here to run it of course.

As for 28xx or WD 2-10-0 outpulling a Big Boy, I'm afraid there's no comparison. A Big Boy's tractive effort is around 135000 lbf, a 28xx is 35000 and a WD even less at 34000. The Big Boy could probably make a good effort at pulling all FOUR of them in a tug-of-war contest. Even the LMS Garratts or the LNER U1 Garratt would have been no match for a Big Boy, at 45000 lbf and 73000 lbf respectively.

I've been to see the Big Boy at the US National Railway Museum at Green Bay Wisconsin (It's NOTHING like York BTW....) and they have it displayed right next to an LNER A4 Pacific. The A4 looks as if it's been built to the wrong scale so VAST is the size difference. Railways in the US are a world apart from ours really.

[Hobbes]

A Big Boy! I think it would be just slightly out of gauge!

Why? I thought the US and UK both use 1435 mm ?

[sideshowbob9]

A Big Boy's tractive effort is around 135000 lbf, a 28xx is 35000 and a WD even less at 34000. The Big Boy could probably make a good effort at pulling all FOUR of them in a tug-of-war contest.

Ah but it couldn't use all of that power on the UK system without busting a signalling block or two! It's too much engine for this country! Hence "it couldn't do anything......" etc.

Why? I thought the US and UK both use 1435 mm ?

I can think of one or two bridges it would foul.....

all true but when your given a half compleated kits and told to see what you can do with this then who can refuse

I wouldn't  


Edit: Oh and I for one would prefer 4 WDs or 28xxs to a Big Boy 

[PR19_Kit]

Why? I thought the US and UK both use 1435 mm ?

There's TRACK gauge and LOADING gauge.

The former is the distance between the inside edge of the rails and has been 4' 8.5" since the dawn of time, recently bastardised into that metric rubbish.

The latter is the size and shape of the hole the locos and rolling stock will go through, and they're MILES different between the UK and US. Even in the US there's a different loading gauge east and west of Chicago, which is why you only see Amtrak's double deck Superliners in the west.

[B777LR]

Looking forwards to seeing a Bigboy in the classic british railways green/black livery, with the addition of those german-type smoke deflectors, and no cow-fender

Like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A3_4472_Flying_Scotsman

Or this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado

Or perhaps armoured like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_train_Hurban

[lenny100]

Looking forwards to seeing a Bigboy in the classic british railways green/black livery, with the addition of those german-type smoke deflectors, and no cow-fender

Like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A3_4472_Flying_Scotsman

Or this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado

Or perhaps armoured like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_train_Hurban

Classic British railways green and black  No......
In my world the big 4 train company's were never nationalised fully and still operate in their company livery's so it LMS Burgundy and gold...........
sorry cant do photos yet as i am up at hollybush house for a top up on my treatment for Combat stress and i forgot to bring a camera with me

[Martin H]

In my world the big 4 train company's were never nationalised fully and still operate in their company livery's so it LMS Burgundy and gold...........

Now your talking!

[ytown2010]

Why? I thought the US and UK both use 1435 mm ?

There's TRACK gauge and LOADING gauge.

The former is the distance between the inside edge of the rails and has been 4' 8.5" since the dawn of time, recently bastardised into that metric rubbish.

The latter is the size and shape of the hole the locos and rolling stock will go through, and they're MILES different between the UK and US. Even in the US there's a different loading gauge east and west of Chicago, which is why you only see Amtrak's double deck Superliners in the west.

Amtrak runs Superliners on the Capitol Limited Chicago-D.C. Anything from New York runs the "Horizon" coaches because of height restrictions.

[PR19_Kit]

Amtrak runs Superliners on the Capitol Limited Chicago-D.C. Anything from New York runs the "Horizon" coaches because of height restrictions.

They must have changed things relatively recently then. When I 'commuted' to Minneapolis in the 80s and 90s I looked at ways of getting there by train from the East Coast, and back then the only Superliner services were west of Chicago. When I first started to look at that trip Amtrak were still using Heritage stock east of Chicago exactly because the loading gauge was not high enough to take the higher stock.

But my point still remains true, there are different 'loading gauges' even in the same country's railways...........

[B777LR]

But my point still remains true, there are different 'loading gauges' even in the same country's railways...........

That said, which countries use the Russian gauge? Why did the Russians end up with their own gauge? Can any train carriage just have it's bogeys swapped, like they do when a train crosses into the Russian gauge system, or is it a special modification?

[GTX]

Why did the Russians end up with their own gauge?

Don't know - but for many years, Australia had at least three different gauges!

Regards,

Greg

[PR19_Kit]

That said, which countries use the Russian gauge? Why did the Russians end up with their own gauge? Can any train carriage just have it's bogeys swapped, like they do when a train crosses into the Russian gauge system, or is it a special modification?

Probably because they were Russian........

Or because they could, it being a HUGE country. Don't forget that when Brunel built the GWR in the 1800s he chose 7' 1/4" as his gauge, much larger than the Russian's 5' or so (4' 11 7/8" actually, but it's really metric 1520 mm)

There are three gauges even larger than the Russians in use now, India has 5' 6", also used by Pakistan, Chile and Argentina. Then Spain uses 5' 5.33", as does Portugal, somewhat logically. Finally Ireland uses 5' 3". The Russian gauge is shared with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Mongolia.

Standard gauge is used for much of the rest of the world, over 50% of the world's railways in fact, but there are loads of narrower gauges everywhere too. The gauge swapping business is normal everyday practice at the Spanish/French border and they can do it fully automatically, as the wheels are un-locked from the axles and slid along before being re-locked. Changing the whole bogie isn't as easy, but it could be done with some pre-planned engineering.

As for why, there are many reasons, not the least is the more stable curving and straight line performance with a wider gauge. There's always been some thoughts that the Russians did it because they didn't want any potential invaders driving their own rolling stock straight onto the Russian tracks, but this tends to be discounted now as when the choice was made in the 1840s 'standard gauge' as such hadn't been universally adopted.