Talk:GWR 1361 Class

Designer

Attributing the design to Holcroft seems dubious. Designs are conventionally attributed to the CME. We know, in this particular case, from his books, that the draughtsman who did most of the work was Holcroft, as indeed we know that Holcroft was the draughtsman who worked on the 4300. However we don't have this information for any other classes, so it seems inconsistent to list Holcroft as the designer. The 1366 Class, for instance, is listed as designer Collett, and we can be sure that Collett did no more work on the 1366 than Churchhward did on the 1361. 212.159.44.170 (talk) 11:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Boiler Type

Its easy to get confused with GWR boiler nomenclature. The names used for the pre standard boilers seem to have referred to the class the type of boiler was first fitted to. Subsequent boilers of different subclasses, or prefixes as the GWR called the two letter code, might never have been fitted to the original class, and indeed the class could be long gone and new boilers referred to with that name. The GWR still referred to Q class boilers as "Sir Daniel" long after the last boiler that had ever been fitted to a Sir Daniel was gone. So class V boilers were referred to as 1392 even when they were the type VB with belpaire fireboxes only fitted to the 1366s. In the case of the V series, the original boilers fitted to the 1392s don't ever seem to have received a prefix. This seem to have been normal for absorbed classes. In 1895 a revised boiler design was issued for the 1392s. This became classed as VA. In 1910 a slightly revised VA, with different tube layout, was designed for the 1361s. So when the 1361s were introduced with a slightly revised boiler design it was still known as 1392/VA. By this stage the ex CMR locomotive class, incidentally, was called 1393, because 1392 had been cut up after an accident in 1906. In all the GWR built 10 of the second type of 1392 (VA - 1910) boiler, so they were pooled with the seven 1393s as well as the five 1361s, so presumably at least two of the 1895 design 1392 boilers must have been in service with the 1393 class until they were withdrawn in the 1930s. On the whole its probably better to use the first letter of prefix rather than the name in the cases where it can be confused with a class name, because of the confusion shown here, but even that can get problematic. After the last 'Sir Daniel'/Q class boiler was scrapped the Q code was reused for the Standard 16 on the 16xx class. 212.159.44.170 (talk) 12:02, 18 March 2022 (UTC)