: >: : >: Leader was an innovative design, and almost inevitably had faults : >that it : >: might have been possible to cure. BR chopped the finance before this : >could : >: happen. Who knows what success might have achieved if the Bulleid & : >: Southern Railway had continued for a few more years ? : >: : >
: >History proves you're suggestion wrong, whilst I'm a fan of Mr Bullied : >and his designs I'm also a realist, after his service to the Southern : >Rly and BR(s) Bullied went on to be CME of CIR (southern Irish : >railways) were he built a very similar loco to "Leader" except that it : >burnt turf rather than coal - it suffered much of the problems as : >"Leader". The only thing that might have saved the leader project, but : >not the three Leaders built / mostly assembled [1], would have been : >oil burning and thus allowing the fireman to control his boiler : >functions from alongside the driving position. It's a matter of : >history that Leader was being designed at the time that the UK Govt. : >was pushing oil firing onto the railways, as a means to improve the : >post war coal supplies, and that it was *originally* going to be oil : >fired but the whole Govt. backed oil firing project ended before : >Leader was built. : : The fireman still needs to be close to an oil firebox to check the : condition of the fire and even relight it.
Your point being? Yes access would be needed, but it would not have needed to be all the time, unlike with manual coal firing. Also, had it been possible to use oil firing (as intended) the firebox end of the boiler could have been placed so it backed onto one of the cabs - unfortunately having to manually stoke the firebox with coal meant the fire-hole door had to be placed 'amidships', next to the coal bunker...
: : >[1] The boiler in the coal (and turf IIRC) burning locos were off set : >to the locos centre line due to the need, as designed, to allow an : >access way for crew alongside the boiler/bunker. This is also why : >"Leader" ended up being so heavy, as once assembled and weighed it was : >found that the loco was unbalanced to one side (not surprisingly!) : >this mean that the intended passage ways had to be filled with steel : >ballast ingots. : : This shouldn't have been a surprise. Shays had had offset boilers and : balancing ballast for years.
You missed the point, the design had to be adapted during construction/very late in the design stage, I suspect that they knew that balancing ballast would be needed, the problem was that the design had not allowed for it.
: : Other problems included using motorcycle chains not just to drive the : valve gear but also to replace the coupling rods.
Err, wrong, they did not use 'motorcycle chain', you obviously have never seen the internals of the valve gear on the non rebuilt Bullied
4-6-2s... anyway, IIRC, the problem with the 'coupling chain' was with the sprockets and not the chains.
: : The valves themseves were also a disaster. Sleeve valves don't work on : railway applications because the differential expansion of the : different components makes them seize. Which was the main reason the : Leader kept failing.
Hmm, they do work (they were already used in some designs of valve gear), the problem (again, IIRC) was that the Leader used fabricated valves/cylinders and not the more usual cast iron.
: : If he really wanted an articulated, a small Garratt would have been
He didn't want an articulated (locomotive), he wanted a double ended locomotive with the driving cab at the forward end of the direction of travel, a Garratt would have had no advantage over a standard design in this respect.
: much better. But this engine was meant do do the work of everything : from an M7 to a black five. Imagine a Leader and push pull set at : Seaton.
That's a bit like saying, imagine a Class 42 DH Warship in the place of a Pannier tank...
: : Compare with Ivatt, who built excellent, modern engines that were at : the same time orthodox and traditional. :
Ivatt copied what had gone before, he had no interest in furthering the design of the steam locomotive, the LMS had set their sights on a fleet of Diesels.