[34C]

All new tooling of the ubiquitous Black 5 and 8F would seem sensible, the Black 5 in particular has almost no provision for the many variations inflicted on this design. Scope for a competitor to milk Hornby's cash cows?

Going back a bit ref 'Gresley was right'

Gresley's Doncaster team was so very right when it came to the essentials of the pacific design. All the successful subsequent UK pacifics are heavily influenced by that lead, and Thompson was ill advised to discard so much that was well proven, and thereby quite unnecessarily introduced weaknesses in the frame in consequence. And very quickly after Thompson's retirement Pepp proved with the A1 and A2, that Thompson's programme of independent valve gear for each cylinder was fully possible within the established frame layout. So, a false step. (The established process of developments of pre-group classes that continued under Thompson was sensible; in particular the B16/3 and O4/8 and O1 built on what had gone before. As for the B1, it supplies very funny reading in the BR exchange trials, as various commentators try to understand how the significantly more expensive Belpaire firebox taper boilered religion failed to deliver the expected superior performance.)

 

[kristopher1805]

Yes 34c the desire for Thompson to make equal length conrods was behind those long front ends and Pepp simply crunched up the front end to make it look balanced but of course Pepp kept the 3 sets of valve gear that Thompson wanted and yes there was a lot right about the A1/A3/A10 and in this model the conjugated gear seemed to do better, but listen to one at speed and it sounds like a 4 cylinder loco with a missing cylinder and as I said above the V2 when put on the test plant showed it was not doing anything in one direction. So technically Thompson was right to try and even up but not at the cost of the long front end, actually this is one of the reasons I like the A2/1 because the balance looks right. The other issue was the sheer size of the 50 sq ft grate which actually cost coal in order to keep the grate covered. so again the A2/1 with the smaller grate looks right and they could run at very small cut offs, were fast and pulled well, shame there were only 4 of them.
On one point somewhat to my surprise the original A1 was no better in use than the Raven A2 again one suspects the conjugated gear did the A1 no favours whilst the A2 was sound it just looked antideluvian.

So I can add the A2/1 to my list

The other quite interesting effort was the V4, only 2 of them of course, I have one as a kit but a nice manufacturers model would be a nice effort, complicated and expensive as it was the B1 was clearly better in every regard but who knows we might have had a few hundred V4's.

 

[Wolseley]

You can also see the influence of Gresley in the Caledonian 956 class with its conjugated valve gear (Gresley and Pickersgill knew eachother, both being prominent members of the wartime Association of Railway Locomotive Engineers Standard Locomotive Committee). The cylinder dimensions, boiler pressure and grate area of the 956 class were more or less the same as Gresley's 2-6-0s and both used three cylinder propulsion with a derived valve gear for the inside cylinder.

The 956 class were majestic looking locomotives but, unfortunately, the performance of the GNR engines was not replicated.......

 

[34C]

You can also see the influence of Gresley in the Caledonian 956 class with its conjugated valve gear (Gresley and Pickersgill knew each other, both being prominent members of the wartime Association of Railway Locomotive Engineers Standard Locomotive Committee). The cylinder dimensions, boiler pressure and grate area of the 956 class were more or less the same as Gresley's 2-6-0s and both used three cylinder propulsion with a derived valve gear for the inside cylinder.

The 956 class were majestic looking locomotives but, unfortunately, the performance of the GNR engines was not replicated.......

Quite what was fundamentally amiss with the design has never been resolved, and the ill advised tinkering with valve gear did nothing to discover it. Draughting at the grate and ashpan end of the boiler is the usual prime suspect.

[FICTION ALERT] Then again, let's imagine that it had been a real success, capable of matching Gresley's K3 and Raven's B16 designs (either of which could have been used as the standard heavy mixed traffic class for the new LNER). Then they would have been deprecated really rapidly by the Derby-Horwich axis: we're not having something better than any of our efforts left standing... [/FICTION ALERT]

 

[Wolseley]

[FICTION ALERT] Then again, let's imagine that it had been a real success, capable of matching Gresley's K3 and Raven's B16 designs (either of which could have been used as the standard heavy mixed traffic class for the new LNER). Then they would have been deprecated really rapidly by the Derby-Horwich axis: we're not having something better than any of our efforts left standing... [/FICTION ALERT]

Not possibly as far faetched a thought as all that. At the time of the Grouping, there was a Pickersgill design for a massive 2-6-0 that was never built. Hughes was quite impressed with it. The outside cylinders of it would have fouled the loading gauge of most of the English constituents of the LMS, so he redesigned it by modifying and inclining the valve gear (he also gave it a Belpaire firebox in place of Pickersgill's round topped design) and the result? The well known LMS "Crab".

Fiction aside, the Rivers should have had a chance at becoming an LMS standard design, but apparently were not even considered, although the LMS did build another batch of Pickersgill's 60 class 4-6-0s.

 

[34C]

...So I'll stick to the Rivers, A2/1, Q4, A5, N5, rebuilt Crosti 9F, 7F 0-8-0, etc

 

[Wolseley]

That just had me thinking that a Whitelegg Baltic Tank would be nice, but I can't imagine there being any likelihood of a Glasgow & South Western Railway locomotive ever being available as RTR.

 

[34C]

... I can't imagine there being any likelihood of a Glasgow & South Western Railway locomotive ever being available as RTR.

Contra: grounds for optimism.
As the pool of Big Four and later steam designs without RTR OO models shrinks, the net must be cast wider if completely new subjects are to be offered as models.
Wholly or largely neglected pre-grouping companies have really started to get a look in over the past decade: CR, GCR, GER, GNR, LBSCR, LNWR, L&Y, NBR, NER, SECR.
Commercial competition is still expanding to raid the RTR OO customer's wallet.
Scotland has some of the best railway modelling potential of any part of the UK: lovely scenery, shared running rights between companies, as far away from Brunel's great blunders as it is possible to get without exposure to seawater, to name but three.

 

[kristopher1805]

Just add I have 2 K1's as kits but they have fallen apart but a K1/K2 is a good model (I mean the GNR design not the later Thompson) so that would be a useful loco.

 

[34C]

... a K1/K2 is a good model (I mean the GNR design not the later Thompson) so that would be a useful loco.

Any GNR design tender freight class of significantly smaller rating than the 6MT of the K3 would be most welcome. Either the Ivatt/Gresley J6, a 3F 0-6-0, or the 4MT K2 2-6-0 would be good.

My own preference would be the 0-6-0, because this type had emerged as the ubiquitous and essential freight machine within twenty years of the inception of the UK's railway network, and would remain so until just ten years from the final exit of steam traction from that network. The K1/K2 marked Gresley's abandonment of the 0-6-0 for GNR freight purposes, and could be found well beyond the GNR under LNER and BR, with a tranche of the class allocated to Scotland.

 

[kristopher1805]

I have a J6 but it fell apart never quite repaired this one it being a kit of course, but being brutally honest the mass produced models are much better especially more recently than a 40 year old kit would be. So yes a J6 would also be a good choice but I slightly favour the K2 all the same.