Recently I've been reading through the big green book, and have been considering what might have been. The GSR built few locomotives in its time, and aside from 850 and the 800s, these designs were quite conservative and of questionable use. The GSR was of course, quite a cash strapped company, but nonetheless when pushed could produce powerful, modern, even innovative engines, similar to the GSWR and their 500s.
The idea for this is what could have been built or done better with the resources available.
The GSR built 5 J15A's and 10 J15B's, the former of extremely conservative design and pretty crap, the latter comparing poorly to the rebuilt J15s they were built to replace. The tank engine version of the 710s were the five 670 tanks, which were considered too slow and outdated.
Also built were five 342 class 4-4-0s. Pretty good locos with a light axle load, but again a strangely conservative design with their outside axle frames on the bogie.
850 was a good, powerful locomotive that I think could make a good template for a standard GSR tank locomotive. One of the main issues with it is that she apparently rolled side to side at speed. Presumably this is a topweight issue? Perhaps having the tanks with a section deepened after the motion (akin to LMS practice) could go some way to addressing this? Interestingly, the 820 pacific tank design has deepened tanks, indicating a lesson learned from 850?
The 800s, fast, powerful engines, though with quite limited range.
I'm thinking the 670s, 700s, 710s and 342s all get thrown out. Whats needed then is a mid-sized, decently powerful tender loco with a light enough axle load (16/17 tons), along with a tank engine for suburban and general working also.
If we sort out 850's rolling issue and drop the lightweight motion, we have a template for both the tank locomotives, along with a 2-6-0 mogul version of them. Replacing on a like for like basis, we could end up with 10 moguls and 10 tank locomotives of a modern, useful design for the GSR that can go almost anywhere on the network. My one concern regarding the use of moguls on services is that the Woolwich were apparently overloaded and thus needed to be thrashed on the heavy expresses. A mix of utilising Milne's proposals of shorter trains, and putting some of the 400s out on the heavier Midland trains, at least before they are split at Mullingar/Athlone could go some way to alleviating this, and thus gives more room for the 800s on the Cork line.
Clements and McMahon consider the ideal standard loco for Irish railways to have been something along the lines of an Ivatt class 2, designed to exploit the more generous Irish loading gauge. 850 has a very similar tractive effort, adhesion weight, etc, but with bigger cylinders and driving wheels.
Thoughts and criticism appreciated.