On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:52:54 +0100, Graeme Wall wrote:

On 26/07/2011 13:29, Andy Breen wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:35:10 +0100, Graeme Wall wrote:

On 26/07/2011 12:29, Andy Breen wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:23:14 +0100, Graeme Wall wrote:

When did mandatory boiler inspections come in?

Not sure. Boiler insurance and inspection was very common, even of
stationary ancillery colliery plant (which always lagged on
investment) by the 1860s - 'Agenoria', now at York, was inspected by
such a company in her last working years, and it was the same
inspector who rediscovered her remains and persuaded the owners to
put her back together and donate he to the Patent Office Museum. That
implies inspections were routine (and, if they were checking
something like Agenoria, probably mandatory) by the 1860s.


That probably gives a latest date for the introduction of gauge
glasses.

Agenoria, as far as I can seen, has never had, since restoration in the
1880s), a gauge glass:
http://www.stourbridge.co.uk/agenoria.htm so inspections may not have
originally required such things (possibly an "are there any obvious
holes?"[1], "is there a safety valve that works" kind of regime at the
start - still probably regarded as unwarrented interference by
many...).
Wylam Dilly, which worked into the 1860s, still didn't have a gauge
glass when photographed at Craghead in the 1880s (though she was an
exhibition piece by then):

http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/r...reenwidth=1004

Stephenson's Billy, now at North Shields museum, got a new boiler in
the 1870s (after 1862?). The photograph in ER2 taken of the machine at
Killingworth post-rebuild (certainly the same machine as is now at
Shields) shows what looks like a single gauge glass on the LH side of
the backhead. This suggests that when the new boiler went on such
things were required, at least on new boilers...

We may be looking at the very late 1860s/early 1870s for such things
becoming mandatory. Annoyingly, my copy of Ahrons' 1825-1925, which
would have given the answer quite quickly, has turned coy and hidden
itself.


A photo of the GW broad gauge single Sultan seems to show a gauge glass
on the boiler backplate. The photo isn't dated but the loco was built
in 1847 and withdrawn in 1874. Sultan is the loco depicted in Frith's
painting of Paddington Station. The painting itself is at the Royal
Holloway College in Egham.

However what appears to be an offical broadside picture of Lord of the
Isles, built 1851, doesn't have one.

Supplementary question, when did the railways start taking 'builders'
photos' of new engines?

Bulkeley, built 1871 definitely has one.

I suspect they may have been common on main lines before they became universal.
I'd expect locomotives in industrial use to be among the last the get such
things - and only retrofit them when absolutely required to (I think Colin
Mountford produced some figures to the effect that investment in colliery
railway locomotives and stationary engines lagged that in "primary production"
equipment by several decades - thus the long lives of many locomotives,
including some of the earliest)

--
From the Model M of Andy Breen, speaking only for himself