New Fotopic site - vintage railway images

The LNER and GWR ones were the most successful, but plenty of other lines also had them.

Many of the South Wales lines had GWR pattern railmotors built by outside contractors.

Thought the Drummond machines were small tank engines (2-2-0Ts) designed to work auto-trains. I'd not been aware of any railcars as such from either of the Drummonds...

Didn't last as long as the Lancashire and Yorkshire examples, though. They're a strong contender for "most successful" (did one or two last long enough to pass into BR stock?)

The GWR examples were converted to auto-trailers lasting into BR days. One survived into preservation and is being converted back to a steam rail motor.

.. which suggests that they were good carriages, but perhaps slightly lacking as steam railcars, whereas the L&Y examples seem to have worked rather better as railcars than the other examples. I'll not use this to draw any conclusions about engineering standards at Swindon and Horwich.. ;)

Didcot. Yup.

ISTR the conversion was possible because Swindon re-used the railcar cylinder design in their locomotives for the Vale of Rheidol.

Just not as flexible as small locomotives with trailers.

The Drummond LSWR power units were separated and rebuilt as small

0-4-0 shunters. Indeed a batch were built new for that use - the prototype for the Triang Nellie.

And valve gear.

The Bristol and Exeter operated what was claimed to be the second railmotor in the country in 1848.

Alexandra Docks Co had 2

Barry Railway had 2

Cardiff Railway had 2, plus a spare power unit.

Port Talbot Railway had 1

Rhymney Railway had 2

Taff Vale Railway has 16 plus 2 spare power units.

Three GWR railmotors were sold: 2 to the Port of London Authority (1 & 2) and one to the Nidd Valley Railway (15)

Don't know much about the LNER Sentinel units except that they carried names like Tally-Ho and Forward and were painted apple green and cream

In actual fact the first steam-railmotors were the B&E example and three operated by the Eastern Counties Railway between 1847-1849, Dugald Drumond built two for the Fratton - Havant service around the turn of the century. One of these was loaned to Churchward for trials in 1903, which lead to the GWR enthusiastically adopting them. So far I've not been able to find any information about the LSWR/LSBCR vehicles.

[snip]

No 212, ex railmotor 93. Have they actually started the re-conversion, it was talked about a long time ago?

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John & e-groupies...

Re: Fotopic sites.

Fotopic award you a 'Karma Rating', which means the lower your Karma the more they examine your submitted photos before they approve them as suitable for release to their public viewing sites.

When I first started it used to take several minutes or even an hour or so before the pictures I loaded popped up on a public viewing page, with my Karma Rating set at around 5%.

Having never submitted any pictures of my or anybody else's 'naughty bits', I'm currently enjoying a Karma rating of 80% and my submitted pictures pop up on site less than 2 minutes after I send them, unless the whole Fotopic site is very busy.

Here are a couple of my pictures taken 41 years ago next week.

(or alternatively: )

and

(or alternatively: )

If you have the time and interest, view the whole album at:

If you decide to view the whole album you can either click on each individual thumbnail picture or else just click on the first image and then the others in turn, to take your time studying each picture. If you want to see them at full size, open any image then scroll right down to the very bottom of the page. There you will see a row of options, including one marked 'Full size', so click on it.

If you want to see a continuous slide show, click on the first image then again scroll right down to the very bottom of the page. There you will see another option marked 'Slideshow'. Click on this and all

28 pictures will appear in turn at approximately 10 second intervals.

Enjoy if you wish!

Didcot's website suggests so..

There seems to have been one pre-production prototype before the ECR machine. Like many odd examples of mid-19th century practice, it ended up with Isaac Boulton, who turned it into a (road) steam coach (ref: The chronicles of Boulton's Siding)

It's under way....

And in doing so avoided (in its era) almost any population anywhere between Bath and Poole.

Hence its demise. Pity. First from the cranking viewpoint, I would like to have seen how it might have been covered under diesel traction. It might have been WR hydraulics - or SR 33s maybe. Or - like Exeter Waterloo - started off with one and changed to the other.

The other reason is Poole/Bournemouth is today a somewhat larger, and affluent, conurbation reaching to Wimborne. If the SDJR rail route had survived there could well have been expansion through Broadstone towards Blandford. I'm sure 1960s economics made SDJR a Beeching candidate - but I've often wondered how Westbury Weymouth survived and Bath Bournemouth did not. Apart from suggesting its because the latter was entirely GWR and therefore WR so could not be sacrificed in place of some SR/MR predatory operation.

SDJR electrifed to say Blandford with EMU from Poole - along with Brockenhurst - Ringwood - Wimborne - Poole - another recently developed area, west of Ringwood.

-- Nick

That's a book I haven't read for decades, does it have the incident where a loco was shunted off the end of a temporary siding and disappeared down a hole?

"Tony Polson" wrote

I tend to post the images there anyway Tony.

John.

"D7666" wrote

You could say the same for the Settle & Carlisle once north of Settle, and yet that route is thriving despite the best efforts of British Rail to close it in the past.

John.

Thanks, John. Well done.

Thank you. A gap in my knowledge has been exposed, and I am grateful both for the exposure and for your help in filling in.

Iam

Ay thang yew.

Ian