186 Tender

[StevieB]

Can anyone tell me what tender is currently attached to 186 and what is the best model to produce it from? I think it is a GSWR type C, but I may be mistaken, and the Wainwright C class tender looks close.

Many thanks.

Stephen

[jhb171achill]

Stevie, what is known is that the tender it arrived at Whitehead with is not what it ran with. Rumours abounded for years at Whitehead that it came from a 400, but this is nonsense!

 

In GSR, let alone CIE days, tenders were swopped. This was common in other countries too. I remember seeing steam locos in Indonesia in the 80s at the end of steam. The particular livery they had involved having the loco number on the loco itself and the tender. So you got B5002 paired with the tender from B5008, B5004 with B5010 and so on.

 

CIE and GSR were no exception to this. The GNR numbered tenders in a separate series because they knew they'd be swopped. However, swops were generally within a class (but not always). CIE inherited a wide range of non standard locos, so swopping between classes was quite common as well as between locos within a class.

 

It's probably impossible to say at this stage where 186s tender originated, but we can be sure that it would have travelled around behind many locos of several classes!

 

Photographic evidence shows that this type of tender was often found with the J15 class. It may well have designed with them in mind, or not!

[Horsetan]

On 1/17/2014 at 12:31 PM, jhb171achill said:

Stevie, what is known is that the tender it arrived at Whitehead with is not what it ran with. Rumours abounded for years at Whitehead that it came from a 400, but this is nonsense!....

Having also been interested in 186's large tender, there are some photos of the same general type attached to "500" class 4-6-0s.

[jhb171achill]

3 hours ago, Horsetan said:

Having also been interested in 186's large tender, there are some photos of the same general type attached to "500" class 4-6-0s.

Yes, there were several variations. Michael McMahon’s book on GSR locos has the best account I’ve seen of GSR tenders. This may be taken as the definitive work on such things.

[Horsetan]

19 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Yes, there were several variations. Michael McMahon’s book on GSR locos has the best account I’ve seen of GSR tenders. This may be taken as the definitive work on such things.

The Class 400 tenders appear in photos to be longer than those attached to the 500s.

OT but pity no 400/500s survived; they seemed to have been long-lived engines and quite handy.

[leslie10646]

I hadn't thought about the 400s outlasting the 500s - which were much better engines, if you believe the late Drew Donaldson.

I can't comment on how good 402 was, but it's notable that Drew had 409 on his famous layout as it was his favourite of a Class which were a poor investment for GSWR - just look at the number of rebuilds, trying to get them right! That said, they were handsome locos!

I haven't got a copy of the 101 book here, so will have to look up just which tender 186 ran with. They appeared behind many different tenders latterly.

[jhb171achill]

According to jhb171Senior, his father considered the 400s a mixed bag - good ones and bad. Doubtless, as you say, due to the many variations as time progressed....

I wondered myself why not more 500s.....

[Mayner]

It might be worth while contacting Richard Mclaughlin (irrsdrawings@gmail.com) and the authors of Locomotives of the GSR https://newirishlines.org/contact/ to establish whether they have access to a GSWR  3345 gal (Coey) tender drawing or diagram.

Richard has been working through the IRRS archive and may be able to assist, Jeremy Clements & Michael McMahon published a collection of GSR & GSWR loco diagrams through new Irish lines, but have not published diagrams of GSWR tenders.

The 3345 gal tender used with 186 appears to have been the GSWR standard type for larger locos and were built between 1899 & 1922. The GSWR & Armstrong Whitworth built larger tenders for 500s & the 400s in 1922, the Armstrong Whithworth built 400s were designed with saturated boilers and would have been heavier on coal and water than the Inchacore built members of the class.

The relatively early scrapping of the 500s (potentially the Irish equivalent of a Southern S15 or LMS Black 5) seems odd especially when a number of members of the 400 class remained in service almost to the end of steam. The 500s had a lot of parts in common with 402 apparently the best of the 400s and were true mixed traffic locos capable of heavy passenger and main line goods work.