Sleek Locos

[locojoe]

British locos have mostly had a sleek outside appearance, most foreign locos are and were all cluttered up whith all sorts of pipes and pumps ect. Nearly all early British locos had inside cylinders, A classic example of a beautiful sleek looking loco is Wainwrights D class 4-4-0. If you can find a photo of one have a look. Whats your opinion about outside clutter. I know later more modern locos had outside cylinders but I'm talking about older locos.
Alan Locojoe.

[GWR9600]

The earliest locos werent that sleek.

[Gandalf]

Do cylinders poking out of the top of a boiler count as inside or outside ones?
John

[locojoe]

NOT talking about rocket but of a time when British locos were sleek' the example I gave should have given you some idea of what I meant, sorry to have wasted peoples time.Alan locojoe

[swisstrains]

Alan,
You are NOT wasting anyones time. I, for one, know exactly what you mean.
It isn't possible to consider the really early examples of British locos as, for want of a better word, they were "experimental". They were all different and it was a case of adding all the bits together on some sort of chassis to make some sort of useable loco. It was only in later years, when the typical loco shape had been established, that engineers could start to make them pleasant on the eye. It was then that British locos (in my mind) started to excel and the Wainwright D Class locos are a good example of this.
Most "foreign" locos have a more cluttered appearance than ours and none more so than the U.S. monsters. Although an attempt was made by some overseas railways to design a good-looking loco I think this came well below functionality and ease of accessibility in their list of priorities. Even my beloved Swiss steam locos score badly in the appearance stakes because of all the visible pipework but I still think they are better than many of the German and French examples.
Although British attitudes towards loco design did change over the years I think that even the later examples from the Big Four and B.R. were sleeker than most of their foreign counterparts........or maybe I am just biased?

[locojoe]

Thanks for that message John what you have just said is exactly what I meant. 9600 seemed to be telling me I was wrong when I said early Brittish locos were sleek. Alan Locojoe

[billyboy]

when i left the footplate it was to transfer onto a british railway ship (god move too) when we docked in Dieppe i spotted a steam loco waiting to haul a train to Paris. so, i went ashore for a closer look at this steam breathing beastie!
Ok, it was of substancial size and looked quite powerful, but, as for its appearence it was like "a plumers nightmare" pipes untidily fitted everywhere. and when it was due to pull out it emitted this very effemant phweee!! we had better whistles on the little brighton terriers. No the french locos didnt do it for me either Locojoe

[John H-T]

Alan, Sorry I didn' respond first time around. It was an occasion when I just dropped in for a quick look.

I know exactly what you mean! To my mind the beauty of British Locos reached high point in the last few years of the 19th Century. Johnson's designs for the Midland Railwy being a case in point. Fortunately we have the Johnson Spinner at York to remind us of how graceful his designs were.

If you want a real feast of Victorian design at its most graceful try and get hold of "Locomotives I have Known" (Two volumes) by J.N. Maskelyne. They are probably the finest scale drawings ever produced of locomotives of the late 19th-early 20th Century by a man who knew them in their prime.

"Locomotives I have known" was published in 1959 and "A Further Selection of Locomotives I have Known was published (postumously) in 1962.

Maskelyne lived just long enough to attend the naming of Evening Star at Swindon.

I have seen them advertised for £45 the pair which would be a snip for two such fine books. It is a case of: if you only own two railway books, these two should be hign on the list!

Incidentally there is a beautiful drawing of the SECR D Class 4-4-0!

[Trev]

It pains me to say it, but I always thought that the GWR 4-2-2's looked pretty good and sleek. And I like the LSWR T9's as well.

[billyboy]

Ah! yes the "evening star" thats a nice looking loco and no mistake. Dont tell anyone, but i actualy did the tapestry of it during a period of convalesence a few years ago. if anyone fancys trying it, use a lighter blue in the sky and make the signal gantry darker. it gives a kind of 3d effect to the scene.
(and i8 wont tell anyone you are doing needlework...LOL)