The Railways that Built Britain with Chris Tarrant

[Ramblin Rich]

I'm reading Simon Bradley's book "The Railways : Nation, network & People" and it's depth of coverage (and accuracy) makes me feel that Mr Tarrant's program really isn't worth the time to watch it. i know it's got to be mainstream, but there's a definite lack of information which niggles me (not referring to the Stockton & Darlington; the canal origins of the word 'navvies') and the stock footage during voiceovers (including foreign trains) really grates. I'll stick with my book!

[Pacific231G]

Having finally watched all the first program, I've decided that yes, its not for me.

 

I've not got a gripe with Chris Tarrant.  He's there as a presenter, reading a script provided by the production company and chosen because the general viewing public know his name and can recognise it in connection with programmes about railway topics.

 

What irritates me is the lazy sloppy way the programme was put together by the production company.  The script is poor and incoherent with curious facts and disconnected timelines, with the (expensive) fragments of pieces to camera by Tarrant interspersed with voice-over to largely irrelevant stock footage.  I particularly like the factoid that Henry Booth "headhunted" the "young George Stephenson" to produce a locomotive, and that the Liverpool and Manchester sometimes became the Manchester and Liverpool!  The other thing that struck me was the retrospective class hysteria that permeated a fair proportion of the script.

 

Pacific231G suggests that the script could have been cobbled together by most of us from memory and I tend to agree - it reminded me of "1066 and All That", a book that is full of examples of half-remembered and mixed-up facts for comic effect!  (I refer my esteemed colleagues to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That for more details) 

 

Sadly, it also reminds me of various Hollywood films that take a real event and move it in time, space and nationality but still present the event as almost historical.  Thats the main problem with the series.  Facts and situations are similarly displaced and the general viewer, one with only a passing interest in railways and who had ther attention grabbed by the title "The Railways that Built Britain with Chris Tarrant", will end up taking away a mess of misinformation.

I couldn't agree more . There were one or two potentially interesting insights, such as the one about being a navvy building railways being more likely to get you killed than being a soldier at Waterloo, but over what time period, the building of a a particular tunnel or a Navvy's working life? I wouldn't expect a programme like this to go into deep historical analysis, that would not be appropriate to a general audience, nor to be aimed at railway enthusiasts; I would expect the producers and writers to be better grounded in their subjet.  Was Rocket really the first reliable locomotive? I rather doubt if all those hard nosed mine owners would have bought machinery that didn't work properly.

 

for a light hearted, tongue in cheek canter through railway history, but one based on very solid knowledge, I'd recommend C. Hamilton Ellis's 1960 bok "Rapidly Round the Bend". It's rather in the style of 1066 and All That but that like the moden Horrible History  books is also based on a deep understanding of history.

[melmerby]

; the canal origins of the word 'navvies'

Ah, the canals that without which many of the mills in Manchester et al would not have been sited alongside to get their raw materials!

Even most of the stuff in the "Anfield Plain Industrial Co-operative Society" (Beamish) was already being moved around the country in vast quantities by canal.

 

The railways did speed up goods to such an extent that perishables could be shipped far further before spoilng.

They also increased several fold the amount of goods that could be transported on one trip, which led to lower prices for many products.

 

Keith

[meil]

He reverses the signal lever and the signal is shown on. He then puts the lever normal and the signal is shown off.

 

A word with the S&T me thinks!

[Hroth]

@ Pacific 231G:  I'll have a look out for the Hamilton Ellis book, it sounds moderately amusing!

 

As for Rocket, there's reliability and reliability.  Technically speaking, I think Rocket benefited from two major design features, one being the water tube boler, which allowed it to produce steam in greater volume than even a double flue (as fitted to Hackworths Sans Pareil) could generate. The other was that by having inclined cylinders, Rocket could have effective springs that allowed it to move at speed without jarring the locomotive  and also reduced the pounding motion induced by vertical cylinders.

 

The coal engines for the colliery lines (Puffing Billy and her ilk) were perfectly reliable for the task they had to do, drawing longer trains of wagons a little bit faster than the horses previously used were capable of.

 

@meil: Did you also notice that the prop watch had lost its second hand?  Methinks that it would only dispatch trains on the time interval system accurately twice a day....

[Pacific231G]

@ Pacific 231G:  I'll have a look out for the Hamilton Ellis book, it sounds moderately amusing!

 

As for Rocket, there's reliability and reliability.  Technically speaking, I think Rocket benefited from two major design features, one being the water tube boler, which allowed it to produce steam in greater volume than even a double flue (as fitted to Hackworths Sans Pareil) could generate. The other was that by having inclined cylinders, Rocket could have effective springs that allowed it to move at speed without jarring the locomotive  and also reduced the pounding motion induced by vertical cylinders.

 

The coal engines for the colliery lines (Puffing Billy and her ilk) were perfectly reliable for the task they had to do, drawing longer trains of wagons a little bit faster than the horses previously used were capable of.

 

@meil: Did you also notice that the prop watch had lost its second hand?  Methinks that it would only dispatch trains on the time interval system accurately twice a day....

Did you mean the multi fire tube boiler? The water tube boiler was a different advance that was never very successful on railway locomotives but fairly universal for larger steam plant such as for ships and power stations*. It can handle far higher pressures and therefore temperatures and that makes for far greater efficiency especially when associated with multi stage compounding such as in triple expansion turbines. I've always wondered whether its non-adoption for locomotives (apart from a few examples) was due to engineering conservatism by locomotive designers or to problem with gas and water flows in ta locomotive's very restricted space, plus of course the need for a blastpipe to achieve efficient combustion.

 

I don't think there's much question that Rocket was indeed the first "modern" steam loco from which all others up to Tornado or Big Boy can trace their descent; the programme though seemed to imply that George Stephenson somehow "invented the railway" which is nonsense. No doubt someone else would have combined the multi fire tube boiler and the blast pipe. It's interesting that in service Rocket was fairly soon rebuilt with horiizontal cylinders like almost every subsequent steam loco. It makes the real Rocket that is in the London Science Museum look quite different from the replicas based on its Rainhill configuration.

 

*Curiously, the majority of steam driven cars have used water tube boilers though that may be more to do with their ability to raise steam far more quickly and the far lower danger of catastrophic boiler explosions than any greater efficiency at more modest temperatures and pressures. 

[Hroth]

"Multi fire tube". Thats what I meant when I wrote it, but my brain had other ideas.....  What a "boler" is I've no idea either!  I didn't mention the blast pipe as I think that had been used on some colliery locomotives prior to Rocket.  Rocket was modernised through the rest of its working life.  By the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester in 1830, the Northumbrian had virtually horizontal cylinders and a more conventional smokebox/firebox and Rocket was subsequently modified to the condition that can be seen today. 

 

btw did you also notice the whistle on the replica of Puffing Billy?  Leicester and Swannington 1833, anyone?

[Coppercap]

btw did you also notice the whistle on the replica of Puffing Billy?  Leicester and Swannington 1833, anyone?

Yes, I didn't mention it, but I did go on to say that the steam whistle had yet to be invented at the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester.

[Ramblin Rich]

...  I didn't mention the blast pipe as I think that had been used on some colliery locomotives prior to Rocket.  ....

 

Definitely existed before; Trevithick had noted the effect and Timothy Hackworth employed it on the Wylam colliery locos. There's some reference to Sans Pareil (Hackworth's entry at Rainhill) having a blast which was too strong, causing it to draw coke through the fire tube & out of the chimney and leading to excessive coal consumption (which is the one reason it lost to Rocket). I'm sure there was a reconstructed trial on TV several years ago where the Sans Pareil  blastpipe was tweaked / optimised and the coal consumption was then much better & closer to Rocket's.

[Pacific231G]

Definitely existed before; Trevithick had noted the effect and Timothy Hackworth employed it on the Wylam colliery locos. There's some reference to Sans Pareil (Hackworth's entry at Rainhill) having a blast which was too strong, causing it to draw coke through the fire tube & out of the chimney and leading to excessive coal consumption (which is the one reason it lost to Rocket). I'm sure there was a reconstructed trial on TV several years ago where the Sans Pareil  blastpipe was tweaked / optimised and the coal consumption was then much better & closer to Rocket's.

From what I've been able to read up on this the multi-tube boiler was first developed by Marc Seguin (who also developed the modern wire supported suspension bridge) He tested it with a stationary engine in 1828 then used it in two locos he built in 1829 for the Lyons-St. Etienne railway so was slightly ahead of Robert Stephenson's use of it in Rocket   Seguin's family company buillt the railway and he  was its chief engineer. He had bought two locomotives of the Locomotion pattern from George Stephenson after visiting him and the Stockton and Darlington Railway soon after it opened in 1825. However, these proved unreliable for the conditions of tight curves and steep grades. Seguin's design was similar to the later Scotch boilers used for ships with a large flue running from the furnace through the boiler and then multiple tubes returning through the boiler to the chimney which was above the firebox. A replica has been built and I've seen it working a couple of times at the CF du Baie de Somme's triennial steam festival. .

 

 

Apparently, Seguin's design was quite succesful but it's clear from the replica that Rocket was a much neater design and the Seguin loco shows definite signs of Locomotion's layout in its design. Seguin's boiler also used an external fan rather than a blastpipe to draw air through the furnace. On a locomotive this was quite awkward though normal on ships and steam plant where the water is condensed and re-circulated so isn't available for sending up the chimney.

[Hroth]

From what I've been able to read up on this the multi-tube boiler was first developed by Marc Seguin (who also developed the modern wire supported suspension bridge) He tested it with a stationary engine in 1828 then used it in two locos he built in 1829 for the Lyons-St. Etienne railway so was slightly ahead of Robert Stephenson's use of it in Rocket   Seguin's family company buillt the railway and he  was its chief engineer. He had bought two locomotives of the Locomotion pattern from George Stephenson after visiting him and the Stockton and Darlington Railway soon after it opened in 1825. However, these proved unreliable for the conditions of tight curves and steep grades. Seguin's design was similar to the later Scotch boilers used for ships with a large flue running from the furnace through the boiler and then multiple tubes returning through the boiler to the chimney which was above the firebox. A replica has been built and I've seen it working a couple of times at the CF du Baie de Somme's triennial steam festival. .

 

Marc Sequin 1825 loco at CFBS_Fete_2006.jpg

Marc Seguin at CFBS_Fete_06_2.jpg

 

Apparently, Seguin's design was quite succesful but it's clear from the replica that Rocket was a much neater design and the Seguin loco shows definite signs of Locomotion's layout in its design. Seguin's boiler also used an external fan rather than a blastpipe to draw air through the furnace. On a locomotive this was quite awkward though normal on ships and steam plant where the water is condensed and re-circulated so isn't available for sending up the chimney.

I like the amount of forethought that the French seem to have put into the event, even going to the trouble of laying co-axial HO and P4 track for those wishing to bring RTR locos......

[Pacific231G]

I like the amount of forethought that the French seem to have put into the event, even going to the trouble of laying co-axial HO and P4 track for those wishing to bring RTR locos......

Most of the RTR locos people brought that weekend were even narrower to gauge than 00.  That's only about 7 inches too narrow but most of these were out by about 17 inches. 

 

I don't know about P4 but the French Club Proto 87 have a real problem with gauge (or think they do!!)  This is because French standard gauge used to be 1440mm (4ft 8.69 ins) until about the time SNCF was formed in 1938 when the UIC standard of 1435mm (4ft 8.50 ins) was adopted.

 

In 1/87 scale* Club Proto do actually specify a minimum gauge of 16.60mm for the "ancien reseaux" but 16.50mm for later standard gauge railways (though the maximum gauge widening is the same for both at 16.70)  This is actually slightly odd because although  1435mm comes out to 16.494mm, 1440mm is only 16.552mm so if they're being that exact why are they only specifying the gauge to the nearest 0.1mm. 

 

I don't know whether the extra 5mm made any real difference to the prototype but if enormous gangs of PW staff went around the entire French network one weekend doig a GWR and narrowing the gauge by a fifth of an inch I think we'd have heard about it and I'm sure the French equivalent of the Public Accounts Committee would have.

 

*(H0 scale in Europe is defined as 1/87 and not the 1/87.1 based more exactly  on 3.5mm/ft used for HO in North America)

[melmerby]

 

I don't know whether the extra 5mm made any real difference to the prototype but if enormous gangs of PW staff went around the entire French network one weekend doig a GWR and narrowing the gauge by a fifth of an inch I think we'd have heard about it and I'm sure the French equivalent of the Public Accounts Committee would have.

The Spanish & Portuguese versions of "Iberian Gauge" weren't the same.

Portugal had 1664mm which was 5 Portuguese feet and Spain had 1672mm which was 6 Castillian Feet!

 

The Portuguese trains could run in Spain, they are now both nominally 1668mm

Old Iberian gauge rolling stock is also used on South American 5' 6"/1676mm (Indian) gauge track

 

Seems like a few mm doesn't bother some railways.

 

Keith

[Pacific231G]

The Spanish & Portuguese versions of "Iberian Gauge" weren't the same.

Portugal had 1664mm which was 5 Portuguese feet and Spain had 1672mm which was 6 Castillian Feet!

 

The Portuguese trains could run in Spain, they are now both nominally 1668mm

Old Iberian gauge rolling stock is also used on South American 5' 6"/1676mm (Indian) gauge track

 

Seems like a few mm doesn't bother some railways.

 

Keith

The two foot (610mm) gauge Leighton Buzzard NGR is twinned with the 600mm (1ft 11.6 ins) Haute Somme railway and one of their loco engineers did tell me that though they can and do exchange stock for galas etc. it works better one way than the other.  Presumably the same thing is true for exchanges between two foot gauge railways and the Spooner narrow gauge railways like the Ffestiniog. Though Spooner describes these as 2 ft gauge in his book the actual gauge is 1ft 11 1/2inches which at 597mm is so close to being 600mm that I can't believe he wasn't really working to the metric gauge, perhaps with a view to sales in Europe and elsewhere, even if he did have to declare it in imperial units.

[Hroth]

Put like that, it makes the Brunellian Broad Gauge a positively sane concept...

 

Perhaps the Powers That Be should adopt 7' 0.25" for HS2? Wide-bodied trains would be much more effective for transporting both people and freight! 

 

Hat, coat, etc pursued by a Great Bear.......

[Coppercap]

The two foot (610mm) gauge Leighton Buzzard NGR is twinned with the 600mm (1ft 11.6 ins) Haute Somme railway and one of their loco engineers did tell me that though they can and do exchange stock for galas etc. it works better one way than the other.  Presumably the same thing is true for exchanged between two foot gauge railways and the Spooner narrow gauge railways like the Ffestiniog. Though Spooner describes these as 2 ft gauge in his book the actual gauge is 1ft 11 1/2inches which at 597mm is so close to being 600mm that I can't believe he wasn't really working to the metric gauge, perhaps with a view to sales in Europe and elsewhere, even if he did have to declare it in imperial units.

I suppose when you get down to that gauge, half an inch difference would naturally cause more problems there than it does at something like standard gauge.

[melmerby]

Put like that, it makes the Brunellian Broad Gauge a positively sane concept...

 

Perhaps the Powers That Be should adopt 7' 0.25" for HS2? Wide-bodied trains would be much more effective for transporting both people and freight! 

 

Hat, coat, etc pursued by a Great Bear.......

The Portuguese originally also had some Brunel gauge track, including the extra ¼".

 

Keith

[coachmann]

If you are so keen on trains that you will watch anything, then fine. If you detest TV so much that you know it is just another job for one of the 'celebs', in this case Chris Tarrant, then you ignore. Selling railways to what I perceive to be sofa sitting biscuit chewers will mean it will follow the same brain-softening formula as Soaps, X-Factor, Get me out of here etc etc., and the presentation of a railway program will follow the lines of "Look at me, I'm shoveling coal". 

[Pacific231G]

I suppose when you get down to that gauge, half an inch difference would naturally cause more problems there than it does at something like standard gauge.

Not necessarily. Tyre and flange widths and crossing/checkrail clearances tend to be much the same for NG as for SG or at least don't go down in direct proportion to the gauge.  That's one of the things that makes narrow gauge track look narrow gauge even when there are no other visual references. Also speeds tend to be much lower.

 

I don't have any photos of SG/ 60cm  or SG/2ft gauge mixed track but I've dug up a few SG/Metre gauge examples

These were all taken around St. Valery on the Baie de Somme railway which is mixed gauge from the junction at Noyelles to St. Valery quay and I'm pretty convinced that crossings and checkrails are set at the same width for both gauges. In a few placed they've cunningly slewed the metre gauge track to act as the SG check rail and in the middle photo it's pretty clear that the check clearances are identical. Tramways do tend to use finer clearances but that applies to any gauge and it was "interesting" last year to cross the pointwork in the second photo in a Belgian metre gauge petrol tramcar which lurched alarmingly over the two frogs (one of them just out of shot)  even at a very cautious speed.  

 

Martin Wynne covered the requirements for mixed gauge trackwork in some depth here

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/86495-dual-gauge-track/&do=findComment&comment=1470525

 

With three rail mixed gauge the clearances and wheel profiles would have to be compatible but I'm not sure with four rail mixed track whether you could have assymetrical crossing frogs with different clearances for the two gauges. That might be possible though I suspect it would limit the types of pointwork that could be used and might also be necessary when tram lines cross heavy rail tracks. 

[Ohmisterporter]

It amuses me that we watch tv programmes about Britain's railways and are quick to find faults with the dialogue, film footage, historical "facts", and even mannerisms of the presenter. Yet when the same team present similar programmes from foreign railways we know little about we think "Ooh, that's interesting".

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...The water tube boiler was a different advance that was never very successful on railway locomotives but fairly universal for larger steam plant such as for ships and power stations... I've always wondered whether its non-adoption for locomotives (apart from a few examples) was due to engineering conservatism by locomotive designers or to problem with gas and water flows in a locomotive's very restricted space,. 

 Water tube boiler designs to suit locomotives worked well when used statically (the one removed from Gresley's Hush-hush, served in a railway works as steam plant for near thirty years) but were in trouble on the flexing and vibrating frame of a running locomotive. The casing - which has to be readily removeable - would quickly develop air leaks, and the water tube unions were apt to fail. Advances in both materials science and fabrication technique would probably overcome these today, but it would always be a more expensive construction than a regular firetube boiler.

[Pacific231G]

 Water tube boiler designs to suit locomotives worked well when used statically (the one removed from Gresley's Hush-hush, served in a railway works as steam plant for near thirty years) but were in trouble on the flexing and vibrating frame of a running locomotive. The casing - which has to be readily removeable - would quickly develop air leaks, and the water tube unions were apt to fail. Advances in both materials science and fabrication technique would probably overcome these today, but it would always be a more expensive construction than a regular firetube boiler.

I don't think even most engineers realise just what a harsh working environment for machinery a railway really is. Wasn't one of the problems with the APT and the Washington D.C. Metro that they brought in aeronautical engineers who they thought would be open to new ideas. Aerospace is also a harsh engineering environment  (as is the sea) but a different flavour of harsh. 

 

Nostalgic though I am for the sheer drama of traditional steam locos (Miles Kington described them as ham actors!)  I can't help thinking that if they'd been developed much further they'd have ended up looking very much like diesels. I'm sure that if you asked a hundred random visitors what the articulated railcar at Quainton road is most would tell you that it's a DMU. I doubt if more than a few would know that it's a Sentinel-Camell steam railcars. Once all the working parts have been tidied away inside even steam locos become just another box on wheels.

[Metr0Land]

I found the programme ok and not too irritating in respect of the inaccuracies/continuity errors etc with which we're all too familiar in this kind of prog. I too generally like Chris Tarrant and I think by and large it helps to have a 'name' making railways cool, but my over-riding impression whilst watching this was that I was watching Full Steam Ahead again with nothing new to add, and with one presenter rather than three.

[Wonderbolt]

I quite liked it, its was an easy watch and I like Chris Tarrants upbeat presentation style, It moved the show along quickly and didn't get bogged down in to much detail on early railways  (I find UK Georgian and Victorian Railways as dull as dish water). I really liked the music used in the show. I enjoyed it more than the Full Steam ahead show.

   I didn't expect any sort of in-depth detail with it being a general easy watching show on regular TV so enjoyed it for what it was.

[Hroth]

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm a great believer in the Rethian maxim that broadcasting should aspire to "educate, inform and entertain".  Anyone producing a "factual" program has a responsibility to get things in the right order and get the facts right, and thats what didn't happen in "The Railways that Built Britain".  I might also add that my disappointment with the first programme had nothing to do with Chris Tarrant who was just presenting what he was given in his usual style. My irritation was purely due to the mangling of timelines, facts and social history perpetrated by the producers.

 

Given the amount of stock footage used as paddiing, it wouldn't have been too difficult to put early railways in context. Seeing as they fitted in Puffing Billy, they could also have discussed the replicas of the Elephant and Locomotion No1, which are on site at Beamish and said WHY the Rainhill Trials were important (ie cable haulage vs locomotives). Rainhill wasn't just a drag race between Hackworth and Stephenson! 

 

An "easy viewing" programme doesn't have to be crammed with detail, but what it tells the viewer should be correct and give a flavour of its subject for the non-specialist. If you have 1. a decent presenter, 2. a good script and 3. decent visuals, then it can be entertaining.  One out of three isn't good enough.