R A Riddles - your thoughts.

[Urthra]

Is it also the case that the railay has to pay for infrasructure that interacts with it - such as bridges, underpasses, sound mitigation and fencing?

[30851]

Does that only apply to non-operational land?  If it applies to everything I'm surprised we've got any railways at all!

 

I did read in a 60's magazine that the rates were based on the infrastructure - the more buildings there were (and the more facilities they had) the more the rates that had to be paid. This was mentioned as one of the reasons for the rapid disappearance of station buildings to be replaced by bus shelters - the rates went down. If I remember correctly even signal boxes were included.

 

This is a topic that you see mentioned more in US railroad history - some states would set the property rates very high to get the maximum revenue. As they also set the rates the railroad could charge (should be low to keep the voters happy) and specified what service needed to be run (maximum to keep the voter happy) it just eventually forced a number of East Coast railroads  into bankruptcy.

 

Rob

[The Johnster]

If we are saying that is was unwise to build new designs of steam locos in the period immediately after nationalisation, it is reasonable to ask what sort of locomotives are to be built?  In 1948, the companies had ordered materials for something like 1,500 new steam locomotives, the last of which was not built until 1954; the new railway had had no choice but to take on these orders which presumably could not be cancelled without stiff penalties being incurred.  So no change was going to happen quickly.  Moreover, in all of the cases, the ordered new locos were part of entirely laudable programmes by the big 4 to eradicate pre-grouping stock which was hopelessly inefficient and outdated, incapable of managing modern traffic, increasingly difficult to maintain and operate, and highly unsuited to post-war conditions, so you can argue that these orders were justified and not unreasonable.

 

All the big 4 were doing their best to get away from steam in the knowledge that the writing was on the wall for it.  The Southern had invested heavily in electrification, the LNER was moving towards it, the LMS had actually built a main line diesel electric, and the GW had experience with railcars and were looking at gas turbines; nobody knew in 1948 if any of these were going to lead anywhere but the clever money was on electrification, and events have proved the clever money right.  More significantly, and this is often overlooked from the modern perspective, nobody had built a diesel locomotive powerful enough to pull a useful British load without double-heading within a reasonable axle load or anything approaching a sensible all-up weight because the electrical industry had so far been unable to provide a generator of sufficient power to fit into the British loading gauge.  Even 15 years later we were still struggling with this, and building the last orders of class 40 and the Peaks, 150 tons all up and pathetically underpowered in the case of the 40s, and the WR's ultimately failed hydraulics were a brave attempt to circumvent it. A successful all-round diesel electric of the class 47 mould was beyond realisation in 1948!  If you could have built a 47 in 1948, the argument against the standards if proven, but you couldn't.

 

The WR continued building Castles for another 2 years, and were most upset when they were refused permission to build more, and then had to be practically beaten into accepting Brits as a substitute.  But the Brits made a lot of sense as class 7 locos equivalent to Castles that would replace antiquated and withdrawn Stars; easier, quicker, and cheaper to build and maintain, much easier to prepare for service, and capable of exactly the same work, and it was only company prejudice that made them unwelcome everywhere but Canton.  There are plenty of other examples. If there was a failure of policy, by Riddles or anyone else at the top end of BR in those early years, it was that nobody foresaw the drastic drop in both passenger and freight traffic that began in the late 50s and continued unabated for 30 years, and it would be a braver man than I to say that they should have!  The increase in car ownership, the development of the motorway network, the collapse of traditional industries, the fundamental shift in the nation's economic need for a transport network, were all unthinkable in 1948, and almost as unthinkable in 1955, and I mention that date because it marks the infamous Modernisation Plan that effectively finished any further thoughts of steam engines and also did for railways in the traditional sense; it was the end of Riddles's world. 

 

So, in the light of the railway needing to replace pregrouping stock with modern designs built around the idea of cheap coal and simple preparation to increase availability, then the standards make good sense in 1951 when they began to appear; but the railway  world had changed beyond recognition by '55.  Of course, building new locos that would only have a service life of 5 years was indefensible in hindsight, but this was not a phenomenon restricted to steam locos; many of the Modernisation Plan diesels, which like for like cost 3x as much, had equally short and uneconomic lives, but they all seemed like a good idea at the time (except the D95xx, that just seems daft in any terms).  It takes around 2 years to produce a locomotive from initial drawing to first released to traffic, and 2 years was a very long time indeed in the late 50s and throughout the 60s, against a backdrop of falling traffic and revenue, Beeching cuts, and exponential road expansion.  It was not until 1962 that the first reasonably reliable powerful lightweight diesels were produced; any loco built during the 14 years before that could be argued to be wastefully unnecessary, but one could hardly argue that the railway was to manage without new locos for 14 years, so built they had to be!  In the meantime, 25kv electrification proceeded at a fine pace on the Continent, in countries benefitting from Marshall Plan dollars while Britain was crippled with Lease Lend debt; our railways were not the only things to have suffered in consequence.

[MarkC]

In fairness, and as you say, from drawing board to leaving the workshops is/was about 2 years, the traffic intended for the D95xx class had been decimated by the time they emerged. However, various industries were pleased to get their hands on them as they were discarded by British Railways.

 

Hindsight, as ever, is a wonderful thing...

[Zomboid]

It's not true to say that reliable diesel power was impossible in the late 40s, EMD had been producing their successful E-unit line since 1937, and F-units from 1939.

The reasons why we couldn't buy them are discussed somewhere in this thread 6 months ago, but the technology was there by the end of the war.

[jjb1970]

In the meantime, 25kv electrification proceeded at a fine pace on the Continent, in countries benefitting from Marshall Plan dollars while Britain was crippled with Lease Lend debt; our railways were not the only things to have suffered in consequence.

The biggest recipient of post war US economic aid was the UK. And by a large amount. Whereas other governments used this aid for reconstruction and investing in preparing their countries for economic recovery our government decided to use the money for other purposes. That was the choice of our government but over the last 50 or so years a myth has taken root that the UK lost the peace because other countries were rebuilt by the USA and we were left on our own when the reality is it was our own government that failed to use the aid we received to good effect.

[JeffP]

Sure?

 

Because the way I heard it, Marshall Aid GAVE help, Lease - Lend, which we got, needed paying back...and we only made our last payment during THIS CENTURY.

[Dunsignalling]

The choice to be made in the early days of BR was a straight one between steam and electric. Diesel was off the menu as the UK didn't have the foreign currency to pay for the oil.

 

The logical way forward would have been to instigate a rolling electrification programme so that when modern steam locos, the standards included, were displaced, they could be moved to other areas, permitting the disposal of older types. Lightweight diesels would eventually be built, but only to service the needs of routes where electrification was impractical or uneconomic.

 

That's pretty much what happened in a number of countries, notably Germany. UK politicians, as usual, kept turning the investment on and off, forcing BR to waste millions by scrapping or mothballing part-completed modernisation projects where the funding required for the final stages had been cancelled. Consequently, electrification of our railways was, and remains, a painfully slow process. 

 

John  

[The Stationmaster]

Sure?

 

Because the way I heard it, Marshall Aid GAVE help, Lease - Lend, which we got, needed paying back...and we only made our last payment during THIS CENTURY.

 

The UK was the largest single European recipient of Marshall Aid money receiving $2.7 billion compared with, say, the £1.7 billion given to Germany.  What differed was the way it was spent by the British Govt, which basically chose not to spend it on industrial and infrastructure modernisation.

 

And Marshall Aid was of course completely different from Lease-Lend as the latter was a wartime method of getting weapons and material to the UK basically on the never-never thereby creating a long term US $ debt; it was cleared in 2006  However what are still outstanding are the loans and debts from WWI but that shouldn't come as a surprise as Britain is the major creditor for those debts being owed far more than we owe to other countries - no repayments have been made since the depression of the 1930s.

[coachmann]

Seemples.......We came out of the war broke.  Plus the UK had to hold open men's job's who had been called up to fight, so these men returned from demob to jobs they had been trained for before the war. None were trained for mainline diesels! Besides, we had no dollars to pay for oil, and priority went to the bus industry along with materials, not the railways. The latter had to make do with what it had and keep it rolling to meet postwar demands of travellers (car ownership was almost zilch). The (Labour) Government of the day then nationalized everything it could lay its hands on and the Yanks assumed we'd gone commie and called in its debts. Result, we were even more broke and so rationing was further extended (into the 1950's as it turned out).

 

If people think things looked bad on BR in 1965-8, they should have seen this country in the 1940's and earlier 1950's. Time had virtually stood still since 1939 and everything was worn out or in need of maintenance, a repaint and so-forth. We all lived in a virtual museum and while it was a great time for transport enthusiasts, public transport simply had to continue working as best it could to timetables. The bus industry had been well fed with brand new buses since 1946 and bus building was tailing off by 1951/2. Operators could now be choosy about which chassis and bodies they purchased! In contrast, BR was not only just beginning to roll out its initial Standard design locos and Mk.I coaches, it was still having to use much of its very old equipment. I believe the 1955 strike altered Government opinion ("these beggars don't want work"), and so plans were drawn up to bring in foreign labour as a stop-gap as well as eliminate jobs and wages on the longer term. The dollar/oil situation was changing and the diesel option suddenly looked very attractive.

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

The UK was the largest single European recipient of Marshall Aid money receiving $2.7 billion compared with, say, the £1.7 billion given to Germany.  What differed was the way it was spent by the British Govt, which basically chose not to spend it on industrial and infrastructure modernisation.

 

 

A true fact, utterly scandalous.  Shameful.  

 

The Wasting of Britain's Marshall Aid by Correlli Barnett

[PenrithBeacon]

Most of it was spent on defence of the empire which cost colossal sums in the late forties/early fifties.

[bike2steam]

Yes, keeping up the pretence of Britain still being a world power which some poor misguided people still believe in today, most of that money went up in smoke ( or radiation ?) at Maralinga.

[Nearholmer]

This Marshall Aid stuff is really interesting; thanks for bringing it to the surface.

 

Regarding the viability of diesel locomotion c1950: what Zomboid said above. We thrashed the topic in this thread, and the one about modernisation plan diesels.

 

Electrification was at a strange place in the late 40s and early 50s, even in countries that weren't busily trying to sustain the illusion of Empire. "Everyone" knew that the way forward for main line electrification had to be industrial-frequency, high-voltage, single-phase AC, but they also knew that, in those dawn-of-power-electronics-days, that really depended upon making mercury-arc rectifiers that would would operate effectively while being sloshed-around on board a train, and they weren't quite sure that could be achieved, until the French gave a convincing demonstration that it could.

 

If you read the report on electrification produced for BTC c1949 by Cock, late of SR, it is really overt about the rectifier issue, and, as a result, rather mealy-mouthed and half-hearted in its recommendation to persist with 1500v dc, which was pretty unselfish of the author, who had made a good career out of 1500V dc, before coming to England. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/RELTE_Electrification1951.pdf

 

Kevin

 

Edit: only just found this, and it is the best explanation of the various traction control schemes tried by SNCF c1950 that I have seen. Electrophiles will enjoy it!http://www.j3ea.org/articles/j3ea/pdf/2008/01/j3ea08040.pdf

[jjb1970]

The UK was a financial mess in the immediate post war years and at least initially I don't think there was much alternative to building steam regardless of the fact that at a strictly technical level the diesel locomotive was a perfectly viable technology in 1945 (before 1945). However, it is too easy to just accept that the country was bankrupt and that there was nothing that the government could have done to improve the economic state of the country more quickly. As has been pointed out, the UK received a huge amount of US financial assistance which if it had been used to good effect could have funded major infrastructure improvement and economic modernisation in the same way as in other countries.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, but we seem prone to forget what else was happening between 1945 and 1951 ....... The Attlee Government wasn't exactly a pit of sloth ........ officially blessed summary here https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/clement-attlee

[The Johnster]

Yes, I got a bit carried away into a rant about Marshall and Lease Lend, and a modelling forum isn't the place for it.  Sorry.

 

I agree that EMD's E series were established and successful in the late 40s, but they were wholly unsuitable for British use.  A concept of a basic power unit of 12 or 15k horses meant to be used in multiple as A or B units to pull the very long and heavy trains that the Western railroads wanted because of their long single track sections were, in multiple, a bit long for our 60-wagon loops and sidings, and they weighed not far off 150 tons per unit (so did the Southern d/e units and the resulting 40s, but at half the axle load). no problem to the Merkans who were used to 40 ton axle loads.  A 4-unit  ABBA set weighed 600 tons, more than most British trains!  In that light, Ivatt's twins were a very creditable effort, but took some time into the early 50s to be made to work reliably; in 1948 they were very much a work in progress.  The Merkan diesel electrics were typical of US thinking at the time; basic, bombproof reliable and easily maintained, heavy, inefficent even by European standards of the day, and iconically stylish.  Also, prodigious consumers of fuel with thermal efficiency not that much better than current steam, but they had plenty of oil that was practically free because they didn't have to import it, so fuel and thermal efficiency didn't matter much to them.

 

Could EMD have been persuaded to supply E series clones for the British loading gauge?  They'd have jumped at the chance of the sales if they could, but I doubt it. In 1948, I don't think the Merkans could make generator sets (small enough to fit into the British loading gauge, light enough for the axle load limitations, and powerful enough to develop useful power in a single unit to keep overall train length in check) any more than we could.  A version of their 800hp 'road switcher' might have been possible, but a bit pointless; we had plenty a few years later and only the class 20 was any good, because if could hunt in pairs with good driver visibility.  In any case the newly nationalised British, dammit Carruthers, railway going abroad for locos would have been politically sensitive and aroused comments about dependence on imports so shortly after a war in which the extent of the country's such dependence had been demonstrated so brutally.  Don't forget rationing was still in force and would be for a few years yet.  And we had plenty of coal, nationalised and publicly owned to boot, not that we were  efficiently mining it in sufficient quantities to avoid shortages...

 

And we couldn't afford electrification, except the LNER schemes already getting under way and the steady growth of Southern's third rail.  With hindsight, everybody agrees that we should have electrified at 25kv much sooner and more compressively; after all. that is what those sensible Europeans who now have such better railways did.  But, again, 25kv was not yet a standard, and IIRC the French speed record breakers of the early 50s were 1,500v DC machines, weren't they?  We might, given the chance to spend on electrification in 1948, have invested in the 'wrong' system, only to have to rip it all out and pay for new stuff in about 15 years time.

 

To get back to the original debate, what else was Riddles supposed to do?  Even without the ongoing programmes to eradicate pre-grouping museum pieces, BR would be needing to supply new locos to replace old ones as a normal matter of course, rolling stock likewise.  None of the Big 4 designs were ideal for nationwide use in the prevailing conditions having been designed to suit the requirements of their own railways, mostly pre-war, with the possible exception of the Ivatt moguls which effectively were adopted as standard designs with a little cosmetic alteration.  It made sense to adopt big engines with 2 outside cylinders and outside valve gear  in a range of sizes, and that could burn poor quality coal, designed for ease of maintenance and preparation; on a railway still with an overall speed restriction of 75mph the top end performance of multicylinder designs was a luxury that could ill be afforded; in fact, I am struggling to see that he had much alternative.  He had to tread carefully, as there were plenty of people around among the Great and Good who were opposed ideologically to nationalised industries and were looking for any opportunity to stick their boots in if there were any mistakes to pounce on, so one might understand a cautious approach.

 

Hardly surprising that Riddles 'borrowed' from previous designs where it was practical, and it is not unreasonable to regard the 5MT as a Black 5 built of standard parts, or the 3MT tank as a GW large prairie built of standard parts, and so on.  Only the Brits, Clans. and 9Fs were really new designs; 71000 was a one-off, not part of the standard program, and doesn't really affect the debate much. You could hardly say that this 'borrowing' is unique to Riddles, for example, the GWR 56xx is little more than a Rhymney Railway 'R' made of Swindon standard parts and fitted with vacuum brakes, yet nobody seems to criticise Collett for it.  Riddles is criticised for adopting Ivatt's 2MT small prairie rather than designing his own, but the Ivatt engine was perfect for the job, and was incidentally considerably influenced by Churchward's 45xx.  Even the mighty Churchward based his 1361 saddle tanks on the practice of that well known example of ultra-modernity at it's white hot cutting edge, the Cornwall Minerals Railway Sharpies.  Poor old Riddles had a thankless task at an awkward time, and was duly unthanked, being effectively sacked after a few years when his face didn't fit with the modernisers.  I'd say he did his best, and didn't do too badly, but then I'm from Cardiff and Canton loved it's Brits.  Said they were nearly as good as a Castle, they did, and there can be no higher praise than that from WR men...

 

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit and say that Riddles' engines were pretty good, even on a bad day way ahead of Thompson's or Hawksworth's on a good day.  By and large they were, as intended, simple to prepare and dispose, good steamers on bad coal, and powerful enough for their duties. Their boilers, especially the big ones, were as good as anything ever produced in the UK.  They were rougher riding than some of their multicylinder predecessors, especially the pacifics, and some raised eyebrows.  In the case of the Brits and Clans, there was little to directly compare them with except class 6 or 7 4-6-0s, different beasts for arguably different work, and the Bullied light pacifics, which were at that time so 'experimental' as to put them outside rational comparison.  The aforementioned 3MT tanks were not liked when they were sent new to South Wales valleys depots as replacements for GW 5101s, because they were expected to perform 4MT work with cylinders that were smaller than the 5101s', which is hardly a fair assessment of them.  Perhaps 4MT 2-6-4s would have been better, but they weren't built at Swindon and were proving highly popular elsewhere; the WR would have had a job getting hold of them.  In fact designs for which Swindon was responsible were among the most contentious; the 4MT 4-6-0 was effectively a Manor made of standard parts and was not originally a good steamer; neither was the Manor!  The 3MT mogul was such a small class that it aroused criticism for not really being in the spirit of standard locos, but it was highly successful on the difficult routes it was allocated to.  It is in effect another GW design, this time an unbuilt one for a 'baby 43xx' with a number 2 boiler, made of standard parts, for weight restricted Welsh routes that eventually got Ivatt small moguls.  The GW engine has, of course, materialised in preservation and seems to be ok, but I have never seen a BR power rating for it.

 

Riddles' engines had unplanned shortened working lives because the economic situation the railway found itself in had changed drastically by 1960, and Beeching changed it even more.  My view is that the coming changes were not easy and perhaps not possible to predict in 1948, or even 1951, and anyway Riddles' job was CME, not planning.   But his engines were not. like too many of the modernisation plan diesels that inadequately replaced them, short lived because they were ill-conceived, badly designed, and shoddily built as a result of BR's, post 1955 rush to modernise and their British suppliers', some of whom were already going under, desperation to undercut themselves onto the gravy train.  Coaches and wagons of his design lasted for many years in service, the Mk1 main line stock was as good as anything in Britain when it came out, and until 1966 and the advent of production mk2s, better than the Hawksworths and much better than the pre-war Stanier design still being turned out in large numbers.  

 

 

I said the D95xx were daft because, even a year before they were authorised, the traffic they were intended for was clearly withering on the vine.  They were in some ways the last expression of the GW's long term plan to replace the smaller pregrouping 0-6-2s in South Wales with modern motive power, the same thing that had been partly responsible for the 94xx class.  They were to have useful careers in industry, but that didn't benefit BR and Western Region should never have ordered the materials, never mind built them, especially since the case for the 94xx had proved so insubstantial and most had already been scrapped before the Teddy Bears were even off the drawing board.  I am less certain of my case in the North Eastern Region, and it may be that there was still work up there for them in 1965, but there was next to nothing for them on the WR that could not be done with an 08 or 22.  Drivers I knew who had to work with them reckoned they were difficult to start, and then difficult to stop because of poor brakes, so it has always surprised me that they proved successful in industrial use, where I would have thought those particular faults would have been particularly problematic.  

[Zomboid]

I suppose, had we decided to dieselise at the end of the war, our experiences wouldn't have been far from CIE's, since that's exactly what they did. Looks like they bought some decent things and some absolute duffers...

(And oddly enough, they made the discovery that the merkins are by and large much better at diesels than we are a couple of decades before Foster Yeoman showed BR what they were missing).

Though the Irish didn't really get anything over 1000hp initially.

Anyway, I'm in danger of rehashing stuff that's been done to death already.

[Nearholmer]

The present thread seems to be the mirror-image of this thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106997-modernisation-plan-diesels/ , with very similar points being drawn out:

 

- diesel was, looked at on a global scale, technically feasible by 1950, but British industry needed a little more time to really get into its stride with the technology;

 

- electrification was very definitely technically feasible at 1500V DC, but not quite a certainty yet at 25kV AC;

 

- neither of the above was readily affordable, given other priorities (housing, education, NHS, trying to maintain the illusion of being a Superpower etc) and there were all sorts of fuel-supply, industrial plant, and competence issues that worked in favour of continuing with steam;

 

- there was probably no real choice but to build steamers to deal with the immediate problems, and the "real questions" are probably around:

 

1) whether too much effort was put into pursuing steam, and extending the Standard loco programme beyond the point of sensibleness, and at the expense of effort in the diesel programme; and,

 

2) the pell-mell, and hugely wasteful, dash-for-diesel that took place in the late-fifties and early-sixties, once the decision to phase out steam had been reached.

 

IMHO (and who on earth am I to judge?), the Standards look like reasonably competent late-steam designs when viewed globally ........ nothing radical, but good, plain, simple (until things got too carried away) animals, in a c1940 kind of way. The basic tenets had been set in the USA probably as early as 1910, and it is notable that, aside from exotica like Garratt locos, all other late-steam designs were rather similar in general form. I've just got hold of a copy of Wardle's "Red Devil" book, so I'm beginning to learn about where very-late-steam went.

 

(The SNCF speed record locos were 1500V DC, but SNCF developed and deployed, very successfully, 25kV 50Hz locos, for heavy coal haulage, over the same timespan ........ rather ugly beasts, but technically mega-important.)

 

Kevin

[rockershovel]

It's a great pity that the Suez Crisis took until 1956 to develop, because it conclusively demonstrated that the Empire was OVER and no further such ventures took place until the anachronistic Falklands conflict. Like the futile attempts to protect sterling as a reserve currency - fatally wounded by the 1948 devaluation but not actually nailed in its box until Harold Wilson devalued again.

 

My late father considered the postwar administrations to be individually and collectively, completely bonkers. He made several attempts to emigrate but his injuries meant that America was out of the question, and neither Canada nor Australia would accept him.

[rockershovel]

The French and Germans both made a very important step at an early stage; set up ministries, staff them with people who know what they are about and MOST IMPORTANT, make sure the government can't stick their fingers into the plans..

[Mark Saunders]

Hindsight is wonderful and one wonders what the Historians of tomorrow will make of recent events!

 

Mark Saunders

[Fat Controller]

 

(The SNCF speed record locos were 1500V DC, but SNCF developed and deployed, very successfully, 25kV 50Hz locos, for heavy coal haulage, over the same timespan ........ rather ugly beasts, but technically mega-important.)

 

Kevin

Whilst some of the SNCF 25KV locos (the CC14xxx) were designed for heavy and slow mineral trains- 60 kph top speed, IIRC- the smaller BB12xxx and 13xxx were faster, mixed traffic engines, capable of 120 kph, and there soon came, once the Paris route was electrified, the BB16xxx. What was peculiar about the ''flat-irons" was they had 4 driving positions, allowing for use on both the former Nord (left-hand drive) and Alsace-Lorraine (RHD) networks; the drivers were meant to drive standing-up, as in a steam engine.

[Dunsignalling]

It's also highly debateable whether 1940s US main line diesel technology could have been shrunk sufficiently to produce anything better than what the LMS and SR achieved.

 

Their 1500hp units were much bigger and heavier than either, with getting on for double the axle loading. The price of reducing the width and height to UK dimensions would have been a huge increase in length, too and matching the output of 8P passenger locos would have required double heading just as it did with 10000/1.  

 

It's academic anyway. The UK didn't have the foreign exchange to pay for oil at the time, let alone the cash to buy imported locos. In any case, US loco builders were busily employed replacing American steam traction.

 

John   

[Dunsignalling]

Hindsight is wonderful and one wonders what the Historians of tomorrow will make of recent events!

 

Mark Saunders

I imagine the interpretation of recent political developments on either side of the pond and what ensues will spawn entire new university departments in the fullness of time.

 

John