Talk:BR Standard Class 8

message: Once again, congratulations on producing such an informative and well researched article. I'm not a particular train buff, but your series of articles did intrigue me to find out more about the post-war history of steam. I've got no hesitation now in listing this article as a GA. --Malleus Fatuarum 03:49, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Conclusion

message: One thing that this article lacks is the date the Duke returned to work - sometime between 2002 and 2004 from what I found out. Can someone confirm what happened and when?
Soarhead77 (talk) 10:41, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates of return 

message: Regarding  - I'm suspicious of this, because generally speaking, the pony truck pivot would be part of the sub-frame, and thus a problem solved during the designing of that sub-frame, whereas the presence of the ashpan is an obstacle found in the design of many loco classes, often causing a problem requiring a compromise solution. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:44, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Having studied the frame GA and other drawings further I've improved the description of the rear spring bracket arrangements. Sorry if it previously caused some confusion. 7severn7 (talk) 07:16, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, but do you have a reference? Otherwise it looks like unconfirmed speculation, or, worse, WP:OR. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

text: May I refer you to WP:V - each article needs its own set of references, and cannot direct the reader to another article to look up the sources. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put the newly-added information inside  tags because really it belongs as a footnote, not part of the text. I still think it's borderline WP:OR though, so shall open it up to the floor. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sub-frames 

message: "resulting in one of the most efficient and powerful locomotives ever to run in Britain"
This statement seems highly misleading. There is no limit to "steam locomotives", and no implication of such. Practically every newer train in the UK has more power and higher tractive effort. For instance, the Class 90's have a tractive effort of 58,000 lbf, considerably greater than the Class 8. Even the old Deltics outperformed it, pulling 50,000 lbf from a park.
My concern here is that one can always contrive some set of requirements that makes anything a "record". Perhaps the Class 8 was the most powerful prototype stream locomotive to run within 25 km of London on a Tuesday when it was raining? Unless the record compares to some sort of wider group, it's not worthy of recording it as a record. That is especially true of the first or last of anything - the Wright Flier flew the longest distance of any airplane, but that's not something one would consider a "record" when their were no other aircraft. In this case we're discussing the last of something, and that is equally unsurprising, the linked reference states that for most of steam's history "the rest had merely been increases in size". That applies here.
The claim links to a reference page, but the page in question does not make any direct statements to this effect. If such information is located on a sub-page, I can't find it. 
Unless these statements can be backed up with real comparisons, and those appear noteworthy, they should be removed. 
Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The crucial word "steam" was missing from the sentence, which I have now inserted. That aside, it is a fallacy to measure a locomotive's power in terms of tractive effort. TE represents a calculated theoretical maximum force which may be applied at the wheel rims, under ideal conditions. For a steam locomotive it is determined by the boiler pressure, number of cylinders, cylinder diameter, piston stroke and driving wheel diameter - and nothing else. It does not take into account such factors as the degree of superheat, constrictions in the steam circuit (in the dome, at the regulator, in steam chests and at the blastpipe), valve events (travel, lap, lead, port area), number of coupled axles, adhesion weight or friction between wheel and rail. Above all, it does not take into account H.A. Ivatt's dictum "The measure of a locomotive's success is its capacity to boil water". All of these can significantly affect performance, power output and efficiency. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The concern isn't the measure, its that any measure represents some sort of record that's worth mentioning. As I said, the last of anything is likely to be the biggest, fastest, slowest, or somethingest, by default. The record here is not that it had some sort of power measurement that was in excess of some other, the only record here is that it was the last. That was already mentioned. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:27, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro statement is misleading... 

message: "The opportunity to create an entire batch of locomotives within the 8P category was declined by the Railway Executive. This was because the design process had been highly expensive and complex, so that when the locomotive emerged from Crewe Works in 1954 such thoughts had to be precluded, especially with the advent of the 1955 Modernisation Plan." This does not make sense, but I don't have sources to put it right. If a the design was expensive then it would be better if it were spread over a large class, so that is not a plausible reason. Globbet (talk) 10:11, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The RCTS histories of the standard classes, particularly that on the Pacifics, is relevant. The big problem was that the 8s over-ran so badly they were over-taken by the diesel plans of '55. Past over-runs had also reduced confidence that further work wouldn't be even worse. Rather than amortising the over-runs over a large class (and thus reducing their cost per-loco) the obvious concern was that the over-runs in building and in-service would be just as bad as they had been in design. Given the poor performance of DoG until the draughting was fixed, 30(?) years later, they might have had a point too.  In hindsight of course, the big diesels failed to materialise too, until the Deltics. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:37, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Construction history 

message: < a reluctant reversion to the three-cylinder layout ensued.[2] This reluctance was born from experience with the Gresley Pacifics, whose conjugated valve gear was difficult to maintain due to the location of the middle cylinder between the frames.[1] >
This text is bizarre. Why would a design team familiar with LMS three-cylinder locomotives be hesitant to build yet another because of an Gresley feature that they would not have used?! (Furthermore, the position of the conjugation in front of the cylinders (except on the D49s) meant that it was comparatively easy to maintain, I would have thought). 
Besides, the Gresley conjugation was, in effect, obsolete by the time that the BR Class 8 was being thought about: the Peppercorn A1s were in service in numbers by this time, and they had three sets of valve gear.
According to Cox in 'British Standard Steam Locomotives', the original plan for the Class 8 was that it should have four cylinders!  86.184.154.98 (talk) 21:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three cylinders