Dimensions of British locomotives

[ChrisGreaves]

I have read with great interest the thread How much realism? and would like to position myself firmly in the school of "It's MY railway". Given that I am at least 2,000Km from a model shop, I have spent hours this week following the carpenter/plumber around and collecting the sweepings into pails which I will sort through looking for anything I can glue or paint. Standards, I ain't got!

That said, I took out my eight Dapol kits this afternoon for a few minutes - I haven't got around to opening them. I am not allowed to do that until all my door knobs are screwed back in place - but it got me to thinking about display cases.

I would like to make twelve wall-mounted display cases identical in size. How big should they be? As big as my largest locomotive plus 20%, say. So which model will end up being bigger, the Deltic or the Battle of Britain Class 'Fighter Pilot'? And what about the coach blueprints I printed off yesterday?

I have been scouring the web for what must be out there, with no success.

Where, please and thank you, can one find a web page, or better still, a database that gives the length, width, and height of all (well, I can dream, can't I?) the locomotives that have ever run on railway lines in Britain?

Someone else will want to include weight, someone else will want to include corridor coaches etc.
Someone will want to map length-over-buffers to radius of curves on a layout, and so on. There must be many uses for data of the physical dimensions of the real thing, and not only for a quick test of "how close to scale is my model?"

Thanks
Chris

[flying scotsman123]

The side panel on the Wikipedia article for each class of rolling stock is usually good for that sort of thing, it contains most of the principal dimensions, that's usually the quickest way I've found. Then just scale the dimensions down. Virtually all UK locomotives from 1920ish onward have their own page. Coaches there's usually a page for each railway company rather than each design, but chances are that lengths of each design will be listed there too.

[Bigmet]

Now, on maximum dimensions, two are really simple. Maxima: Width 9 feet , Height 13' 3". There is the exception of extra height for electric locos with overhead collection, but nobody's interested in those.

Now, length. 90 feet will accomodate the largest loco that ever ran in the UK. So just in case you ever want the Gresley Garratt that's the length to use, and will be comfortably over the more usual 70' of the largest locos.

[ChrisGreaves]

The side panel on the Wikipedia article for each class of rolling stock is usually good for that sort of thing, ...

Thank you flying scotsman123; so far, no single table or database for this then; I have to google search (which is OK for any specific locomotive).

For me the advantage of a single table or page is that one can sort it and then answer the question "What locomotives (etc.) have wheel bases under twenty feet?" or "wheelbases under twenty feet AND buffers less than thirty feet" and so on.
I suspect that curves on layouts can be categorized by overhang, and this overhang should be a simple calculation of wheelbase and buffer length, which gives a searchable value.

Certainly for my small carton of eight kits it is no big deal; just my mind running ahead a little bit.
Cheers
Chris

[flying scotsman123]

The side panel on the Wikipedia article for each class of rolling stock is usually good for that sort of thing, ...

For me the advantage of a single table or page is that one can sort it and then answer the question "What locomotives (etc.) have wheel bases under twenty feet?" or "wheelbases under twenty feet AND buffers less than thirty feet" and so on.

I'm pretty confident there's nothing of that sort around, it would take a lot of work to answer questions that not many people are really asking in that particular way. Generally people don't tend to buy models based on the exact dimensions of a particular class. Usually the only reason is if you want to convert one model loco into another class that isn't produced. Otherwise, you might have an idea of the general size of loco you want (small/large tank engine, small/large tender engine) and go from there and see what's available and appealing to you.

[ChrisGreaves]

... Width 9 feet , Height 13' 3". ... the more usual 70' of the largest locos.

Thanks BigMet.
This answers my immediate question of a dozen display cases. I can hand a simple specification to David and he can churn out a dozen cases.

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Your supplied dimensions are in the left column, the "interior of display case" on the right-hand side.
Of course, the same dimensions will probably apply were I to start cutting holes in my walls.
Cheers and Thanks
Chris