I have always been fascinated by the short abortive history of late steam locomotive development in the face of the GM “fordization” of diesel manufacturing and it’s sales jauggernaught. I always figured I knew the whole story, from the ridiculously simple and fuel hungry PRR S2, to the N&W Jawn Henry, C&O etc…Overseas across the big pond was a one of a kind sucess story, that oddly was never repeated…LMS 6202, the Turbomotive, which ran from 1936 to 1945 logging some 300,000 miles and was very thermally efficent. Most of us know the story of the still born ACE project which was based on reciprocating power, one wonders why an upgrade of the 6202 was not considered. In reading The Red Devil ny David Wardale, which goes into infinite detail on the subject, there’s no mention of it I can find. Odd.
I’m curious to know how well such a design would hold up under North American maintenance and utilization standards. Historically, European designs, set up for European maintenance practices, have not held up very well on this side of the Pond.
I remember having read that the engine was quite expensive in maintenance and that it was used during WWII only because the LMS needed any engine that could pull a train. Remember that war-related traffic in the UK grew terribly, with subsequent wear on rolling-stock and ROW.
BTW, the Red Devil was not a turbomotive engine. It was a highly improved somehow conventional engine. The only successful turbomotives I know of ran in Sweden. (Fortunately, at least one escaped the torch.)
Crazy Germans hooked up each axle with a V2 configuration pistons, had great running characteristics, though it might have been a bit of a handfull to maintian
I was referring to the ACE which as I mentioned was a reciprocating engine-David Wardale who worked on ACE also was the principle engineer on the Red Devil. I was curious why this technology was not considered for the ACE, not the Red Devil. Is there any reading \ reference material ( maybe in the UK) on the Turbomotive engine?
The “Swedish turbine” link gives a little background on the TGOJ (Traffikaktiebolaget Grangesberg Oxelosund Jarnveg) steam turbines that were the inspiration for the English locomotive. These were the most successfull steam turbine locomtives made having been in service for 20+ years. There was an article in the July 1967 Trains magazine kind as a follow-on to the three part article on the D&H Consolidations.
FWIW, I was in Oxelosund in 1986 for a couple of weeks and was puzzling what TGOJ stood for - then found out from a nearly 20 year old copy of Trains.
The LMS “Turbomotive” in fact ran until 1951. In that year it was rebuilt as a recipocrating simple expansion, 4 cylinder 4-6-2 and named “Princess Anne” after the then infant daughter of the then Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II). In its new guise it resembled a cross between the LMS “Princess” Pacifics (with which it shared the same design of boiler) and the later “Coronation” Pacifics after they’d been de-streamlined. (When originally streamlined one of these later, 6229 “Duchess of Hamilton” visited the USA in 1939 and got marooned there until 1942 due to the outbreak of WW2; during its stay in the US it masqueraded as class leader 6220 “Coronation”)
But 6202’s life in it’s new, more conventional, guise proved to be short lived as it was written off in the Harrow wreck of 1952 (one of the worst in British railway history, over 200 lives lost).
