Stirling Single

[Atlantic 3279]

Wouldn't it be an idea to see what sort of job they make of it before declaring a definite intention to buy?

[James Harrison]

I've ordered one. Yes it's £200, but it's also a year to eighteen months away and at say £20 a month the cost can be paid off before release date. And it's not like every model you can go out and buy costs that much.

[LNER4489]

On Simon's points about being more comfortable when he has seen the APT-E, I have 3 Rapido locos, FP9As and also their dummy B unit, and also their Canadian cars. They are all excellent, and run very well.

I have also seen the production version of the GMD-1s running and they are also excellent.

I know they are not the same as the Stirling single, but Rapido has delivered some excellent models.

I have voted with a deposit. Tom

[john coffin]

Why do I think the original preserved tender is not a Sturrock?

Well some of you may not know that I have been actively studying tenders for almost 20 years now, and been actively involved in drawing and
researching GNR tenders for more than 15, leading to the GNRS tender book for which I produced all the drawings except two, which I also had
to modify. Therein lies an interesting (to some) thing, in that they were the drawings of the vacuum gear. I noticed that the published drawings
had been wrongly identified, ie off when on, and vice versa. I discussed this with Maurice Boddy, and made sure.

However I do have all but two of the known available GA's of GNR tenders from 1854-1923, and the only reason I do not have those two is that
I have not had time in recent years to go to York and check their value to me. Like many of us I do not know what I am doing tomorrow so trying
to book a Wednesday two weeks or so in advance is a pita. So, I both know and understand the varieties of GNR tenders.

My research has included many conversations with Maurice Boddy who was the co author of Stirling Singles, which coincidentally, is 50 years old
this year. We have concluded that Kenneth Leech was wrong is describing the tender as a Sturrock, and it is on his KHL's hypothesis that it has
been denoted for more than 70 years.

Proper research into the Sturrock era shows that of all the tenders produced under his reign, only one, that for No 215, had springs hidden inside
the frames. ALL tenders, built by contractors to Sturrock designs other than this one, had outside springs to the standard GWR style that Sturrock
learnt his trade. Remember the GNR used the same colour scheme as the GWR until well after sturrock had left so why oh why would they convert an
outside spring tender to insider springs?
More to follow

[john coffin]

Many people do not understand how "economical" the Tender shop drawing office were, I have a number of drawings that are over drawn with
different data, and at least one, R16 which was at one time used for drawing a Steam tender, which drawing was mostly removed and then
the sheet was used to show the conversion by Stirling of Sturrock tenders. Now these are outside spring tenders, the time is mid 1870's and
he did not convert them to inside springs. The cost would not have been justified, and frankly it would have been cheaper to build a new
tender and charge it to revenue.

Much of the confusion comes from the drawing R8, which when put into the OPC collection was over written by someone who frankly did
not know what they were doing. The capacity of the small tender is wrong, and the date is not clear, but on the tender list it is clear
that the tender drawing came out after Sturrock had retired. This is the underframe that is still on the tender which has been behind No1
for more than 107 years, but it almost certainly did not ever run with such a tender in revenue service.

More importantly, we do not have any evidence that Doncaster started building tenders before the build of No18, the first loco to come
out of the works in 1868. Mr Hambleton in an excellent series in HMRS journals shows quite clearly that the tender design was a Stirling design
for a "luggage engine" which is the expression used as a fore runner of Mixed Traffic locos. At that time Stirling was still experimenting with wheel
sizes for tenders, so it is not unusual that the tender has a 3ft 6in wheel diameter. Contemporary with this is R9, which is shown in the drawing
list as a tender to replace those steam tenders ordered and cancelled as soon as Stirling took over, and the similarities are striking.

Later in its life the No 1 tender was rebuilt, so far I have found no evidence of when, but maybe in 1924/5 for Shildon, because it went from
a flat bottom tender to a well tank.

More.
Paul

[kimballthurlow]

Hi,
Thank you John for your dissertation about tenders. Very interesting.

May I bring up a point about models being reviewed/researched/speculated on this forum.
I buy models (old Hornby Dublo, Marklin etc) that are made of metal.
Today many models are produced in metal, I believe the Hornby J15 is one of them.
Rarely do I see anyone point out what material is to be used/is used on a new model.
It seems forum members are not interested in construction techniques.
I believe metal models may well have a better longevity.

My C1 Atlantic #251 may turn up here any day now. I still don't know if it is made of metal or not.

regards
Kimball

[john coffin]

When you wonder whether I am whistling Dixie, you might be interested to know that two weeks ago, week 25th March 2015, I was at Shildon
exploring both tenders to determine their provenance and see what else I could tell from them.

There are in fact very few tenders in preservation that originally had outside springs above the footplate, but one I have studied is the Midlant
type from the Kirtley era. Having designed a Kirtley 0-6-0 with two such tenders, I am pretty "au fait" with the design of this kind of tender.
the most important thing to understand is that the tanks are very narrow, because they have to fit between the springs, but also when you check
the soleplate, you will see that the access holes for the springs are in line, not inset like they would have been in a conversion.

The tank on the No 1 tender is much wider, and there is no evidence of spring placement on the soleplate. I climbed all over it again, which I had
also done in 2003 when at Doncaster 150.

Of more interest is the amount of work that would have gone into converting the tender from a flat bottomed one to the well, which would have
meant cutting away the central cross timbers. Sadly Shildon does not have a pit that I could have lain in to check, but I did spend a lot ot time
checking my understanding. I was checking this tender to see which of the drawings I have actually compared with what is there now, I should finish
that drawing in the next couple of weeks, but from initial work I know that the tender claimed to be T1002 is not a 3850 gallon one,
and it does not represent the tender that went behind No1 in 1870.

Could I be wrong, of course, but in the lack of other evidence, I think few can nay say me.
Paul

[Horsetan]

....it's not like every model you can go out and buy costs that much.

It is if you model French, German or Swiss HO.

[Bill Bedford]

well if they cannot get the tender details right on the promotional material, then what hope?/

The old tender is NOT A STURROCK, it is a Stirling tender, I have checked over many years,and can find no evidence of it having been a Sturrock.

So the problem is that Rapido should have advertised this as Stirling single with large tender or Stirling single with small tender?

[john coffin]

No the problem is repeating myth without any caveats, and also expecting NRM staff, who are mainly Science Museum staff to know and understand
about the nuances of ALL the railways they have to know about, so they should check with more than one source before they promote things
as correct.

Remember, when they promoted the introduction of the rebuilt tender last year, they were referring to the Single as a 7 footer on their web site
now how long has York had the loco in stock, and they do not know the difference between 7 and 8 feet?

Paul

[rapidotrains]

Hi guys,

Thanks to Tom for letting me know about this forum.

It sounds like we need to get you all on board with our R&D for the project.

Bill is spearheading the development of the model and he will post drawings and features here as we progress. Though I should warn you that sometimes we have to tell our experts "Sorry, guys. We have to do it this way even though it doesn't meet your standards!" I had to do this with our American FL9 locomotive experts last week. They thought a line on the shell was too thick and I told them "You asked for that line to be made that way and to redo it now would delay the model by a month and look just as bad. We're keeping it!" I haven't yet told them we modified it a different way, finished the modification in three days, and it looks fine now...

Regarding the minimum radius, we have to be conscious of the fact that most railway modellers in the UK use #2 radius curves. If we made the thing with a #4 or larger minimum we'd be turning away a lot of customers.

As the project progresses we will see if it is possible to allow for more prototypical clearances for people who want them. At this point it is too early to tell exactly how we can do that.

We have to balance our desire to match the prototype precisely with the need for this model to work on most people's layouts...

Best regards,

Jason

[Dave]

John Coffin sent you a pm.

[teaky]

Hi guys,

Thanks to Tom for letting me know about this forum.

It sounds like we need to get you all on board with our R&D for the project.

Bill is spearheading the development of the model and he will post drawings and features here as we progress. Though I should warn you that sometimes we have to tell our experts "Sorry, guys. We have to do it this way even though it doesn't meet your standards!" I had to do this with our American FL9 locomotive experts last week. They thought a line on the shell was too thick and I told them "You asked for that line to be made that way and to redo it now would delay the model by a month and look just as bad. We're keeping it!" I haven't yet told them we modified it a different way, finished the modification in three days, and it looks fine now...

Regarding the minimum radius, we have to be conscious of the fact that most railway modellers in the UK use #2 radius curves. If we made the thing with a #4 or larger minimum we'd be turning away a lot of customers.

As the project progresses we will see if it is possible to allow for more prototypical clearances for people who want them. At this point it is too early to tell exactly how we can do that.

We have to balance our desire to match the prototype precisely with the need for this model to work on most people's layouts...

Best regards,

Jason

Welcome aboard Jason.

[Manxman1831]

Hi guys,

Thanks to Tom for letting me know about this forum.

It sounds like we need to get you all on board with our R&D for the project.

Bill is spearheading the development of the model and he will post drawings and features here as we progress. Though I should warn you that sometimes we have to tell our experts "Sorry, guys. We have to do it this way even though it doesn't meet your standards!" I had to do this with our American FL9 locomotive experts last week. They thought a line on the shell was too thick and I told them "You asked for that line to be made that way and to redo it now would delay the model by a month and look just as bad. We're keeping it!" I haven't yet told them we modified it a different way, finished the modification in three days, and it looks fine now...

Regarding the minimum radius, we have to be conscious of the fact that most railway modellers in the UK use #2 radius curves. If we made the thing with a #4 or larger minimum we'd be turning away a lot of customers.

As the project progresses we will see if it is possible to allow for more prototypical clearances for people who want them. At this point it is too early to tell exactly how we can do that.

We have to balance our desire to match the prototype precisely with the need for this model to work on most people's layouts...

Best regards,

Jason

This is what I like about the guys from Canada - always willing to explain things and be very patient with those of us who ought to know better. So long as we can have period costumes for the video when you get to the sample reviews (maybe Steampunk?) should be fun.

[LNER4489]

On tolerances and design and minimum radius, I found myself wondering if Rapido and Locomotion will follow Rapido's normal North American practice of building very few more than they get pre-orders for. It may be different as in partnership with Locomotion and if the UK market is not as used to that practice as over here, but there again it may not be different.

If so, then the production models would have a mostly known customer base. As such you could in theory ask that customer base what minimum radius they need. I'm sure conventional wisdom would say you have to go down to 2nd radius Peco, and I suspect that is probably correct. I wonder what we would actually say though. I am not suggesting different versions which would really mess up the design process and the economics. And I wouldn't want to suggest anything that would deter orders, having to choose different tender types may already be an "obstacle" to overcome in committing a deposit. But once there are enough orders to make it a meaningful number, Sandra could send out a mail and ask - "what will you be operating on and what minimum radius to you want or need" I guess it is unlikely to change anything, but may provide an interesting option, and would certainly give interesting info. What we say on the forum would not be typical, so you would actually have to get a high response rate from a large number of customers to be able to use it for any decision making.

My current layout has 27 inch minimums, but it's replacement in progress is 32. So I would like 30 for instance, which is what I am checking my Graeme King A2/1 against. I guess the info would only be useful early in the development process, so it may be impractical.

Tom

PS For full disclosure, I am in Toronto, and I have visited Rapido HQ, but my interest here is just the models and the idea and what maybe possible.