Taff Vale 0-2-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 16 (Locobase 10590)

Data from "Steam Rail Motor Coaches", The Locomotive Magazine, Vol XII (15 November 1906), p. 186; and T Hurry Riches and Mr Sidney B Haslam "Railway-Motor-Car Traffic", Proceedings - Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Parts 3-4 (October 1906), pp 687-688.. See also "Taff Vale Railway" in G A Sekon (pseud), "Cardiff City, its Railways and Commerce", Railway Magazine (March 1907), esp. pp. 187-189.

Unlike many of the other steam rail motor coaches entering service at that time, this design didn't look like either like a stubby locomotive or a front end of the coach. The carriage was supplied by Brush Electrical Engineering Company, Ltd. It carried twelve first-class and 57 third-class passengers.

The boiler was mounted sideways. Its firebox center was near the centerline of the motor and had firetubes extending toward smokeboxes on both sides. (Those on the left were slightly shorter than those on the right.)

Class Steam motor (Locobase 10407)

Data from "Motor Cars on the Taff Vale Ry"- Railway Notes, The Locomotive Magazine, Volumel IX [9] (21 November 1903), p. 297; and Rankin Kennedy, Modern engines and power generators; a practical work, Volume 5 (New York: Van Nostrand,, 1905), pp. 176-178. See also "Steam Passenger Coach, Taff Vale Railway," Railway Engineering, Vol X, No 4 (April 1904), p. 337-340; Charles S Lake, "Notes on Locomotive and Railway Engineering", same issue, p. 394; and May 1904, pp. 493-496; and T Hurry Riches and Mr Sidney B Haslam "Railway-Motor-Car Traffic", Proceedings - Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Parts 3-4 (October 1906), pp 687-688. (Thanks to Alexander Blessing for his 19 November 2023 email supplying the road number, total motor length, and cylinder diameter.)

Explaining that passenger traffic over the Cowbridge and Aberthaw Railway had fallen so much that service between Llantrissant and Aberthaw had been discontinued, the report described the motor car that had been substituted. It was a two-bogie coach holding 12 first-class and 40 third-class passengers as well as some luggage. The front bogie held the locomotive, whose cylinders drove the rear axle.

Seen from behind, the boiler presented a cruciform. The boiler's axis lay transversely with the smokebox on the centreline and at the front. Bundles of fire tubes (152 each) extended to either side and ending in separate smokeboxes. Gases from each smokebox were drawn to the base of the stack, which stood ahead of the dome.

Trials showed it to be capable of reaching 30 mph (48 kph) within 30 seconds of starting. But as originally delivered, the axles used 7" (179 mm) long journals, which was found to be insufficient to operate at 30 mph without overheating. So, the railway installed 10" (254 mm) journals and, said Riches and Haslam in 1906, " the car now attains a speed of 35 miles per hour (56 kph) with ease."

The LM report stated that the car had run on all the steeper sections, some of which amounted to a 2 1/2% (1 in 40) grade.

In their 1906 IME presentation, Riches and Haslam laid out what they believed to be the advantages of a steam rail motor: "The advantages of the rail motor system of carrying passengers may be placed as follows: Owing to the small unit, a much more frequent service is given with a better percentage of freight to dead weight hauled, while the mileage cost of working is only about one-third the cost of .an ordinary passenger train mile. The facility of picking up and setting down passengers at line crossings, small villages, etc., makes the service more popular, and enables many passengers to travel who would not otherwise be able to. The rapid rate of acceleration makes the through speed higher."

Riches and Haslam claimed that operational experience showed the concept "...equally advantageous for heavy and sparse traffic. In the first case, the motors sandwiched in between the regular trains find a traffic without taking it away from the trains, while in the second the traffic has been developed by the more frequent service."

The authors proclaimed that in the rail motors system, railways "...have the best, and in fact only, effective answer to street-car competition."

In the very near term, however, the steam rail motors lost their positions to both tramways (or, in the US, a very extensive electric interurban network) and to internal-combustion engined omnibuses on roads or in some cases gas- or diesel-powered rail motors.