Having visited Webbo's layout in winter, I can confirm that. It gets cold in Canberra, and it was cold that day. Inside the shed, perfect!

Good recreation of the train!

A Coarse Guide to the Steam Locomotive for 'N' Gauge Modellers - Part 99


Hello Chums

The Final, Exhausting Section of Our Gloriously Brief Mini-Series

'Doubling Up - 3'

Nationalisation of the railways occurred in 1948 and RA Riddles, formerly of the LMS, was appointed Railway Executive Member for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Once Mr Ivatt the Younger's deputy on the LMS, Mr Riddles had 'leapfrogged' him on return from Government service during the War. Mr Riddles appeared to have friends in high places on the LMS. In my view, Mr Ivatt would have been a better choice. Mr Riddles' Locomotive Engineering team had a distinct LMS bias and ES Cox was in charge of design. It was intended to produce a range of BR 'Standard' steam locomotives.

Now, I made a slightly controversial point earlier about there being a sting in the tail related to Sam Ell's brilliant work at Swindon on draughting. He achieved extraordinary improvements in steam production for several classes. This, rightly, attracted a great deal of attention.

Here is the quote that, hopefully, proves my point:

'Prior to Ell's work, it had been proposed to fit the larger standard engines with double chimneys as Plate 24 portrays, but this was based upon previous LMS experience where this arrangement had shown marginally more favourable results on the 'Duchess' Pacifics and the Class 5 mixed traffics. However, Ell was able to show the way to better results with correctly proportioned single chimneys than had been obtained formerly with some of the double arrangements, and it was decided to initiate the new series with the simple single arrangement leaving future development work any trend to multiple nozzles at a later date.'¹

Plate 24, from a BR illustration, mentioned in the quote is interesting - a double chimney 'Britannia' with bar frames:





I think the late Mr Cox's quote is fascinating. That use of 'marginally' might have been fair enough for the 'Black Fives', but surely the results of the 1939 trials showed more than a marginal improvement for the 'Princess Coronations' ('Duchesses'). And the quote completely ignores the magnificent '2A' boiler, with double blastpipe and chimney, which transformed any LMS 4-6-0 to which it was fitted. Yes, the 'Princess Coronations' performance in the 1948 Locomotive Exchanges was less than could have been expected but the 'Converted Royal Scots' set the rails on fire (metaphorically!).

Anyway, the BR 'Standards' were to be built with single chimneys. The exception was the sole '8P' Duke of Gloucester. Then, in September 1958, '9F' No. 92178 was turned out from Swindon Works with a double chimney. Her performance was such an immediate success that all new engines from No. 92183 were similarly equipped. Double-chimney '9Fs' were especially popular on passenger work. Some enginemen preferred them to a 'Britannia', finding them both freer steamers and better riding at speed. What a shame no 'Britannias' were fitted with a double chimney.

Then, in 1961, five earlier members of the class were rebuilt with double chimneys (Nos. 92000/1/2/6/79). Some of these saw much use on the Somerset & Dorset (S&D). The years 1960-62 were glorious ones on the S&D with double-chimney '9Fs' in charge of much of the summer traffic. No. 92220 Evening Star worked the last 'Pines Express' over the S&D on 8 September 1962. Nos 92220/4 were at Bath Green Park briefly in 1963 and that was that - the line was left wither away and its '9F' era was over. Such a shame.

I have found a good quote about the wonders of the double-chimney '9Fs':

'For a friend, then working at King's Cross, and his Driver - well used to working on New England's '9F's - the change was dramatic, and initially, puzzling. Given an almost new No. 92183 to find and prepare in the dark ready for a fish working, they noticed nothing unusual until they got out on the road. Then they found that they had something special and altogether different from the '9Fs' they had experienced before. They reckoned that the effortless power and much freer steaming produced something that was truly brilliant. Once on shed at the end of the journey, they found to their surprise that the locomotive had a double blastpipe and chimney and all was explained.² 

There's no doubt the double-chimney 'Nine' was an exceeding good engine and, I'd argue, the best of the 'Standards'. Yet, ES Cox devotes a single sentence [partly!] to them in his British Railways Standard Steam Locomotives:

'Apart from the above, a number of locomotives were fitted with straight forward double chimneys and blastpipes - No. 71000 as already mentioned, 80 of the Class 9 2-10-0s [...]'

As for the fiasco of the Franco-Crosti locomotives - five pages, with more in a later chapter. And there was a mystery amongst the 'Standards'. Mr Cox's sentence continues:

'[...] and, at a later stage, all of the Class 4 4-6-0s allocated to the Southern Region and some of these on the Western Region were altered to take the double arrangement.'

Mr Cox went on to bemoan the fact that Swindon and Eastleigh Works produced different-shaped castings for the double chimneys. He didn't like the Swindon version.




[The Swindon double chimney as fitted to No. 75029. [British Railways photograph]
Please forgive the missing rear of the tender. Whilst this would be typical of my coarse photography, it's actually from the original print. By the way, No. 75029 is, happily, still with us, complete with double chimney. She's on the NYMR and requiring a major overhaul - there's a public appeal open. She was purchased from BR by the late David Shepherd and given the name The Green Knight.]


One wonders why, with all of Sam Ell's know-how, a double chimney was fitted to locomotives of only BR power class '4'. It was found, in single-chimney form, these engines could evaporate 19,600 lb. of water per hour. The double chimney increased this to 22,400 lb. of water per hour. This is an interesting contradiction of the results of Mr Ell's earlier work which implied a properly designed single blastpipe and chimney was the equal of a double arrangement. 

This concludes our discussion of conventional double blastpipes and chimneys. I intend to conclude our ambitiously brief mini-series with a discussion of three of the more exotic arrangements. We'll commence, in the next part, by looking at a New Zealander's adaptation of a Belgian engineer's system. Sounds like such fun!

Once again, SuperSpecial thanks to @martyn for reviewing and commenting on the draft.
 

¹ ES Cox, British Railways Standard Steam Locomotives, Ian Allan. London, 1966, Page 80. Plate 24 is between pages 64 and 65.

² Mike Romans, writing in the Introduction to Locomotives Illustrated, No. 75, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1991, Page 4.

³ ES Cox, British Railways Standard Steam Locomotives, Ian Allan. London, 1966, Page 119.


'N' Gauge is Such Fun!

Many thanks for looking and all best wishes.

Tickety-tonk

John

Try B H Enterprises They have a website with every thing on it .
BUT DONT EXPECT AN INSTANT REPLY SINCE THE BOSS PASSED AWAY HIS SONS ARE DOING THEIR BEST TO KEEP UP WITH ORDERS .
BHENGAUGE@GOOGLEMAIL.COM

Peco do brass wagon buffers heads, but not, AFAIK, suitable bodies. They push in to the ends of model kit buffers beams.

Martyn

Quote from: Bealman on October 15, 2025, 05:02:59 AMI like Tabasco sauce but it's a bit watery.

But which one? I like the green one best:



I discovered what we just call yellow sauce when we were on holiday in Barbados and this is the closest I have found to the real thing. There are always a couple of bottles of this in the cupboard and by pure coincidence I'll be having some later on pork loin chops and rice:



We actually brought some home from Barbados in a 2 litre plastic coke bottle. We made sure it was wrapped well in the suitcase though otherwise I would have had to buy a complete new wardrobe if it had split. Some people may well say that wouldn't have been such a bad thing 

Sixty years later and 148 times smaller - at Spalding MRC last night...



The original pic depicts an 'empties' pickup from Bournemouth Central to Bevois Park in Southampton passing Permanent Way workers with caution on the Up line between Pokesdown Station and Christchurch, Dorset, 9th March 1965.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



 > tickets here <

Quote from: Jollybob on October 18, 2025, 02:07:51 PMDoes anyone know of any suggestions?

The N Gauge Society, which you are showing a membership number for, do these

https://www.ngsjoin.com/ngs-buffers-packs-of-20-911-p.asp

You need to be a member of the 2mm SA but they have a range: https://www.2mm.org.uk/products/shops.php?shop_num=2

Good afternoon gentlemen,

I'm sure that this question has probably been asked already, but since N Brass closed, I found found it quite hard to find a suitable source of wagon buffers from. Does anyone know of any suggestions?

Many thanks,

Rob.