North Star: Broad Gauge Pioneer
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Built by Robert Stephenson & Co in 1837 as initially part of a cancelled order for the United States, North Star was the first conventional, reliable locomotive to operate on the fledging 7ft gauge Great Western Railway.
Retired in 1871 the locomotive was tragically scrapped in 1906! Happily a replica was built in 1925.
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'I did once mount the North Star, you know Gooch's 2-2-2 with the double crank driving axle'
'The Titfield Thunderbolt' (1953).
You joke about brunel's drawing room, but if he had designed and built it i'm sure you could fit the entire great western in there. :P
What would Mrs Brunel have made of it, tho? "I'm not having that filthy great thing in my drawing room! Who'se going to dust it? Where's the sofa going to go? It's doesnt even match the drapes!"
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Truly the wife and the trainset is a story as old as the railways themselves haha.
@@legdig Brunel just wanted to model in 12 inches to the foot.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistorymaybe he settled on broad gauge as he got his scales mixed up and was using a scale of 18 inches to the foot. 😄
@@tofu-rocketry Brunel: Histories' real B S Johnson!
Broad gauge locomotives are always lookers, it's quite fascinating how pretty much every locomotive has it's own story.
At the time North Star was scrapped the William Stanier who would later become Collet's assistant then CME of the LMS was Assistant Divisional Superintendent, Westbourne Park. The William Stanier then in a senior administrative post at Swindon was his father, of the same name.
Ah ha...I did not know that the perpetrator was Mr Stanier.
Picturing a world where Stanier didn't bin a bunch of priceless artifacts
The thing extraordinary, is that these old locomotives are nice objects.
Makes me wish there was a full size broad/mixed gauge heritage railway to go visit.. That would be incredible! Actually being able to experience these machines alive an working.. I can only dream ^^;
Well, there is the broad gauge line at Didcot where you can ride in recreated carriages behind the replica engines Fire Fly and Iron Duke.
To be honest ANY working Broad Gauge would be good - both Firefly and Iron Duke are out of ticket and not steamed in years and years. All very sad.
So, a bit like the Didcot railway center on steroids. Yeah, I'd pay to help see it come to fruition.
Also kind of a shame that broad guage was abolished. I'm sure it would've had its uses, much like how narrow guage has its uses. Oh well.
Russia runs trains on Broad gauge.
@@Guitar6tyBrunel's broad gauge is much larger, at 7' not at all compatible.
Its a shame the original along with Lord of the Isles were scrapped in the manner they were. At least we have the replica to enjoy, plus this fantastic video!
What a great story. If only Stanier knew what was around the corner. It would of saved him a lot of trouble and saved us an original Locomotive.
Beautiful Machines from past..still fascinating for younger generation of today...
Thanks for an excellent video. I suppose in the days of a young William Stanier they only looked to the future rather than the preservation of our steam heritage. It is a shame, but at least we have a fine replica.
YESSSS, I love the gwr large gauge locomotives, such impressively rambunctious lively engines
A beautiful locomotive. I enjoy the lines and detail. Like the Iron Dukes, I could only imagine what these would look like rebuilt with cabs!
Broad Gauge locomotives really do look magnificent, thank you for a great video
They're just inflated Stephenson machines.
One day maybe it would be interesting to find out many surviving parts there are in the "replica". Maybe more parts than some authentic 19th century survivors 😂
A lot of it is wooden and fakery. We know for certain the crank axle and driving wheels are original. The boiler is real enough and has an inner firebox and tubes but clearly not the original!
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory it is still a great non working replica of a early board gauge steam engine. I think its building makes up for the sin of destroying the original.
some years ago my Dad took a picture of me standing on the footplate of Fire fly at Didcot railway centre
And here's me thinking all this time it was the Dean Single 'Lord of the Isles' that was sent for scrap by Stanier...
Enjoyable and informative, as always. Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great video very interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it
We could have had two more original Broad Gauge survivors? Why must live in this timeline?
Does anyone know if the model locomotive shown behind Mr. Gooch still survives?
It does indeed. At the National Railway Museum, York.collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co27881/model-of-firefly-class-locomotive-about-1840-model-representation
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Wow! What a beautiful model. I've just look at the pics in the Science Museum display. It's very detailed.
Anthony is it true that Brunel & Robert Stephenson where close friends?
They were indeed. especially after the death of Bobbie's wife. Both died in the same year. We think of them as rivals but they were firm friends.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory thank you. I had heard they where. But I knew you would be the man to know if it was myth.
Brunel, the Steve Jobs of his time, all the ideas and no idea how...
2'00" "The most elegant drawing room". So IKB thought BIG? How's that news? 🙂
@jenniferhough intersting question, but note that one should never say 'Flying Scotsman' in the same sentence as 'Trigger's broom' (whoops 😮) !
Love your output Anthony .... any chance you'll be popping over to Cultra, Whitehead and Downpatrick any time soon? There are more than a few stories to tell there
In an era before a 'standard' layout for a steam railway locomotive had fully evolved, maybe Hurricane was not quite such a bizarre design. It suggests to me the power-drive of a steam paddle-ship, which would not have been completely unfamiliar at that time. Presumably the main failure on Hurricane was the lack of weight over the driving wheels - combined with the wasted weight of the boiler etc.; could this have been sorted by a water-tank over the 'driving' section, maybe combined with coupled rather than single driving wheels? It would then have somewhat resembled a Beyer-Garrett - but perhaps a B-G is itself a bizarre design!
Locomotive layout and design had become very standardised by 1840, entirely thanks to Robert Stephenson first with his Planet class and then with Patentee - North Star is nothing more than a Patentee, same with Firefly. Brunel's specification for locomotives showed he completely did not understand them. Brunel was out of his depth as a railway engineer. He specified a 50psi boiler - which was then the assumed safe working pressure ever since Trevithick. He then specified a 'standard velocity' of 30mph which is an absurdity. But also specified a piston speed not exceeding 280ft per second. Which is very slow, which mean using along-stroke cylinder. It was about half the normal rate at the time. He finished off this bizarre list of requests by stating the locomotive must not weigh more than 8 tons if carried on four wheels and no more than 10 1/2 tons carried on six wheels. Given that Planet of 1830 weighed 9 tons what Brunel was demanding was simply impossible. All of the engines supplied where heavier than 10 1/2 imperial tones. To achive the high speed and low piston speed it meant using massive driving wheels (upto ten feet diameter) but the weight of those wheels meant that boilers became ludicrously small. T E Harrison's articulated locomotives were designed - and patented - to conform with Brunel's bizarre specification. They didn't work, and could not work. They were massively underpowered, and massively inefficient thanks to their long-stroke cylinders; lack of adhesive weight; and flexible steam pipes.
Conversely, the Beyer-Garratt is a perfectly cromulant design. It is an excellent piece of design and far superior to other articulated locomotives such as the Fairlie, Mallet or Meyer. None of those designs allow for a large, deep firebox and have considerable over-hang on curves. Plus boiler size is also limited. The Beyer-Garratt allows for the biggest boiler and firebox as possible, slung between two articulated power units.
Hope this helps
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Very many thanks for such a detailed reply. Certainly Brunel's naivety - in this area at least - is bizarre (was Francis Webb, or any other 'celebrity engineer' as bad?): were there any other consequences, which were perhaps quietly corrected by Gooch and others? - or even any which still have consequences today?
@@ricktownend9144 Brunel's bizarre locomotive specification, and his track system were a very expensive folly but the situation was salvagable by Gooch. He also took George Stephenson's "avoid all the hills" for the flattest route possible to an extreme, hence the GWR being known as the 'Great Way Round.' Yes it was nice and flat but it meant in order to improve timings and services the GWR in the twentieth century had to build additional routes to avoid the meandering nature of Brunel's original line. Something which could have been avoided in the first place if Brunel hadn't been so determined to do things his way and not learn from anyone else.
However, Brunel's choice to use the Atmospheric System on the South Devon Railway was an expensive failure which could not be salvaged and still has repurcussions today in the steep gradiants encountered. Complete disaster for the railway and its directors and shareholders. No one else had been able to make the atmospheric system work, yet Brunel believed he could. Well, he couldn't. He reminds me of John Ericsson - massive ego, massive self-belief, saw themselves as the cleverest person in the room and came up with over-complicated engineering solutions to simple problems.
The impressive performance at 45 mph was only achieved after Brunel and Gooch had spent Christmas Day 1838 working to improve North Star's blast pipe, on its test run on December 29th it achieved 45 mph with a heavy load and carrying the company's Directors consuming 1/3 the quantity of coke it had needed with a light load previously. As delivered earlier in the year the blast pipe was too small and misaligned and its initial very poor performance at high speed had been attributed by the critics of the broad gauge to the atmospheric resistance of the wider train.
Misalignment of the blat pipe very likely due to damage in transit rather than quality of construction by Robert Stephenson & Co. Equally I'm always surprised by the story that the blast pipe orifice was too small, given the otherwise excellent running of the standard Stephenson product and that Robert was very concerned about back pressure - which could have a severe impact on a 50psi boiler locomotive. We've had the replica of Planet at 40-45mph with no problems whatsoever! All North Star was is a bigger version. It always strikes me as a "Stephenson Bad/Brunel Genius" type anecdotal story despite the two men being firm friends. Brunel had a peculiar idea the blast pipe orifice should be cross-shaped, and then disappeard down a dead-end rabbit hole of using fans to draught engines to improve fuel efficiency - see Dr Bailey's paper in the Newcomen Society. The most impressive work on blast pipe and exhaust characteristics in the period was carried out by Richard Peacock.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory The very poor performance presented to the Directors was from tests carried out by Dr Dionysus Lardner and were considered unreliable by Gooch but before responding to the next meeting Gooch decided to experiment with getting better results by increasing the size of the blast pipe also taking care that the steam was discharged up the middle of the chimney. However Brunel had a notion that the tip of the orifice should be made in the form of a cross and it was working to make this less successful design that made the newly married Gooch miss Christmas at home. Regarding the original design, in later years Gooch claimed Gooch claimed to be largely responsible for the original drawings when he was working for R Stephenson and Co. though he may have been confusing North Star with another broad gauge loco ordered for a Russian line.
@@mikebrown3772
Gooch has confused the two American locomotives with two for Russia - As G J H Warren notes it was only in 1880 that Gooch signed the drawings of the two Russian engines and added the spurious story of the two being later North Star and Morning Star. In fact the works drawings for the N Star and M Star exist, and are clearly not the two Russian engines. The two engines for Russia were delivered, unlike the two for America. Whether Gooch deliberately confused the story, or had faulty memory I have no idea but certainly he was mistaken when he said that the Russian engines were the ones which later went to the GWR. His signature on the drawing, or at least a copy of the drawings, is also later.
I couldn't see any flanges on the driving wheels, perhaps they thought it unnecessary !??
Flangeless driving wheels were inherited from Robert Stephenson's patent of 1833 for a six-wheel locomotive so that it could go round sharp curves.
Terrible vandalism by Stanier.
Dumb question: did it have a tender?
Not dumb at all. Yes it did. The replica, however, does not.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Do we have any idea what it might’ve looked like?
@@primrosevale1995 likely the same 6 wheeled design as the other broad gauge replicas
@@primrosevale1995 Very likely standard Stephenson four-wheel tender of the period. It was a standard Stephenson loco other than gauge.
No protection whatsoever for the crew.
True but given how big the boiler is, not much use in putting a weather board on it! Crews had overcoats and caps, and late Mackintoshes issued to them. They were no worse off than the Guards who sat on the roof to control the hand brakes or Mail Guards. The fact they were were issued with overcoats, and with caps, and also unbleached fustian jackets and trousers meant they were in fact better off than many manual labourers or those in outdoor jobs or Sage Coach Guards as they had clothing provided to them (albeit from stoppags from their pay). By the standards of the day GWR locomotive crews were well looked after!
😄👍
My mum’s birthday is tomorrow.
Mr. Stanier was not a lot interested in the past - he disposed of quite a bit of 'heritage' during his tenure.
What I really do not understand is why the gauge was 7ft and 1/4 inch.
I mean why a quarter in and not just 7 feet.
The same can be said for standard gauge four foot 8 and 1/2
The extra half inch was first added on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway on the curves to allow 'extra play' for the wheels. Remember, the track was laid using stone blocks with wrought-iron rails only 15 feet long. Whilst you could bend such fish-belly rails, the curves would not be as smooth as today. As time went on the entire L&MR was relaid to the slighty wider gauge. Thus, any railway which had to connect to it, had to be built to exactly the same gauge. Not that the Manchester & Leeds Railway which formed an end-on junction at Manchester Victoria did. That was laid to 4ft 9in but by using wide tyres L&MR stock could traverse the line, whilst M&L could not.
Both increments were likely added to ease running around curves. This is especially likely with standard gauge as a number of Stephenson's earlier railway such as the Killingworth Colliery line were 4' 8".
@@alexhando8541 It's also worth remembering that Brunel was educated in France - where the best technical education was to be had in those days. And, of course, the French were using metric! So the Broad Gauge is in fact 2140mm gauge. Also worth pointing out Marc Brunel had used such a broad gauge before his son did. One suggestion is that the gauge was derived from Pi (3.14). He could have settled on a simple 2000mm gauge, of course!
English eccentricity.