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If The Pilot Scheme Hadn't Been Botched..........


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At the risk of sounding cynical, when people vote for the "right" people it is political engagement and a triumph of democracy, when people vote for the "wrong" people it is populism and an existential threat to democracy. 

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Some say that we're reaching and age of mediocrity (Jeremy Clarkson being one of them) and the comment in posts 295 & 296 are an indicator of the reactionary, short attn span world in which we live.  We (the world) have gone from pinnacles to averages (Concord to 777, Veyron to Accord, HST to 800) we probably cannot recover (there is not enough money in the world to repair the roads and railways in UK).

 

 

 

That's because people of that sort of outlook are only looking at glitzy bits and speed. The B787 is more efficient than older designs, has a nicer cabin environment and service thin long haul point to point routes. Concorde was beautiful and fast but a technical cul-de-sac and a very expensive way to fly a small number of people across the Atlantic. Making something more efficient tends to be more difficult than making it more powerful or faster. In the context of large diesel engines it's not difficult to make an engine more powerful, you get more fuel and air into the combustion space and adjust the big bits to take higher stresses. Making that engine efficient is a lot harder, companies like Wartsila, MAN, Rolls Royce etc put far more effort into making efficient engines than powerful engines. The great challenge for our age is decarbonising (actually its not just about CO2, gases like methane and N2O are far worse) which will result in a technological revolution (which has already started) and which will be far more challenging than making a supersonic airliner or fast sports car.

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Yes, I think we might gradually see “cool” being redefined away from raw power towards “techieness”, elegance, efficiency etc, leaving the MrToad approach looking rather outdated (in fact, doesn’t it look outdated already?). Tesla cars are a clever ‘object of desire’ product that presses buttons in both camps, but are clearly, in their present iteration, too expensive and not very practical as a ‘family bus’.

 

Whoever emerges as Young Clarkson will be worshipping different icons.

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Yes, I think we might gradually see “cool” being redefined away from raw power towards “techieness”, elegance, efficiency etc, leaving the MrToad approach looking rather outdated (in fact, doesn’t it look outdated already?). Tesla cars are a clever ‘object of desire’ product that presses buttons in both camps, but are clearly, in their present iteration, too expensive and not very practical as a ‘family bus’.

 

Whoever emerges as Young Clarkson will be worshipping different icons.

 

I think that is true. Maybe it's a sign of getting older but I look at certain high profile products that get the oohs and aahs and really can't see much to get excited about in technical terms, however I do get quite excited about some of the processes used to optimise combustions and squeeze a bit more efficiency out of the process. I work in an industry that faces a monumental challenge to decarbonise and from an engineers perspective it's probably the most challenging but exciting time to be working in maritime since sail gave way to steam. To put it into perspective, if you asked a naval architect to design a container ship to cross the Atlantic at 40 knots and marine engineers to provide the propulsion package it wouldn't be that difficult (although it might be expensive), now ask the same people to produce a viable zero emission transatlantic ship.

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I've no problem with experts. Proper ones, with decent credentials in their field.

 

I am, however, of the view that many modern day professional politicians are not actually very bright but do tend to be very good at knowing the "right" people to ensure that their career advances. They're also very good at circling the wagons when anything looks to threaten the cosy little club

 

There was a particularly good example of this in Australia recently. Nobody had been particularly bothered about how our upper house voting system worked until significant numbers of the "wrong" people worked out how to get themselves elected. Many turned out to be not bad Senators - certainly no worse than some of the existing seatwarmers - but they weren't part of the established political clique and didn't know the funny handshake and so suddenly we had a crisis demanding urgent reform of the voting system.

They're also good at hitting the right notes with the right people, to make them feel strongly enough about something, to manipulate them to get out to vote for them.

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At the risk of sounding cynical, when people vote for the "right" people it is political engagement and a triumph of democracy, when people vote for the "wrong" people it is populism and an existential threat to democracy.

 

well the failings of democracy are entirely evident after a 5 minute conversation with the average voter !
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I think this point was well covered in Yes Prime Minister

 

Sir Humpreys response was, that is why all such negotiations are conducted by Civil Servants such as himself in advance of the meetings.

Some say that we're reaching and age of mediocrity (Jeremy Clarkson being one of them) and the comment in posts 295 & 296 are an indicator of the reactionary, short attn span world in which we live. We (the world) have gone from pinnacles to averages (Concord to 777, Veyron to Accord, HST to 800) we probably cannot recover (there is not enough money in the world to repair the roads and railways in UK).

 

To quote a phase " utter tosh "

 

Concord was a cul-de-sac and a rather obvious one , put a military design together and squeeze a few passengers in. It never made business sense.

 

Veyron to Accord , yet the fastest production saloon is an all electric vehicle , a far greater engineering achievement then dropping a high output inefficient 19th century bag of bolts engine into a monocoque chassis , that is the Veyron .

 

You need to look closer

Edited by Junctionmad
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I was really engaged in this thread until a couple of pages ago - when it was talking about locomotives, locomotive design, network needs, BR policies, societal drivers for change etc etc.

 

Now it's just utter politicised, opinion based tosh. So I'm dropping off following.

 

Wish it could have been kept on track.

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Back to the Pilot scheme.

 

The original idea was to operate in service  small   fleets of  diesels, "the pilot scheme" ,  by a variety of manufacturers for a few years and then pick the best of the crop for volume purchase.  This rational approach was sullied by the balance sheets of the railway dropping deep into the red at a frightening rate.  Rapid modernisation and replacement of the steam fleet was seen as the answer to cut costs and win  traffic  back to the railway.  Not all of the orders placed were for fully developed  proven diesel locomotives. 

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Back to the Pilot scheme.

 

The original idea was to operate in service  small   fleets of  diesels, "the pilot scheme" ,  by a variety of manufacturers for a few years and then pick the best of the crop for volume purchase.  This rational approach was sullied by the balance sheets of the railway dropping deep into the red at a frightening rate.  Rapid modernisation and replacement of the steam fleet was seen as the answer to cut costs and win  traffic  back to the railway.  Not all of the orders placed were for fully developed  proven diesel locomotives. 

 

Exactly so.  Going back to the OP question the Pilot Scheme as such doesn't appear to have been botched - it brought in a wide variety of loco and equipment builders and their wares and gave a chance to test them in real working conditions.  The only criticism that could really be levied against it is that there was very limited direct comparison because different types of locos were dumped on different parts of the network.

 

what really went wrong and remained wrong for a very long time in some respects was the subsequent mass ordering of various designs before the Pilot Scheme was far enough advanced to make sensible decisions and the continuing BR practice of ordering series production (and in some cases mass production) of various types of diesel loco without first seriously testing a small order of prototypes. Very few reliable designs emerged from that process and tellingly they seemed to mostly originate in English Electric's drawing office with minimal BR meddling.

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It might have been better if the UK had an equivalent of EMD to say "that's our design, it's a standard design, it works and we're not changing it" and if BR had swallowed pride and accepted it. One of the reasons EMD thrived was that they believed in their designs and understood modern manufacturing as rivals such as Baldwin and Alco were still willing to change designs to meet customer requirements and seeing diesel electrics as a continuation of small batch steam engine type production. Alco did change and improved their designs but by that time it was all too little too late. The UK builders seemed to bend over to accommodate BR as they were the only customer in this country.

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It might have been better if the UK had an equivalent of EMD to say "that's our design, it's a standard design, it works and we're not changing it" and if BR had swallowed pride and accepted it. One of the reasons EMD thrived was that they believed in their designs and understood modern manufacturing as rivals such as Baldwin and Alco were still willing to change designs to meet customer requirements and seeing diesel electrics as a continuation of small batch steam engine type production. Alco did change and improved their designs but by that time it was all too little too late. The UK builders seemed to bend over to accommodate BR as they were the only customer in this country.

Technically English electric did, as the engine they had was first developed in 10000-1 and 10201-3 (in the UK at least) before being used in numerous other things world wide.

 

I'm certain sulzer had similar at the time, man certainly did, but weren't obviously part of the pilot scheme technically and likely would never have been allowed to directly supply engines for an entire fleet at the time.

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  Going back to the OP question the Pilot Scheme as such doesn't appear to have been botched - 

 

what really went wrong and remained wrong for a very long time in some respects was the subsequent mass ordering of various designs before the Pilot Scheme was far enough advanced to make sensible decisions 

 That was what I originally meant by botched.......

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It might have been better if the UK had an equivalent of EMD to say "that's our design, it's a standard design, it works and we're not changing it" and if BR had swallowed pride and accepted it. One of the reasons EMD thrived was that they believed in their designs and understood modern manufacturing as rivals such as Baldwin and Alco were still willing to change designs to meet customer requirements and seeing diesel electrics as a continuation of small batch steam engine type production. Alco did change and improved their designs but by that time it was all too little too late. The UK builders seemed to bend over to accommodate BR as they were the only customer in this country.

Well within reason. There are loads of road specific details on EMD locos, and several E unit types were specific to the road which ordered them (good job they didn't tell the CB&Q that actually they weren't getting a stainless steel finish on the E5...). Though maybe that's splitting hairs; BR did kind of need some help with deciding what to order - even the 50s were packed full of features that weren't really needed/ helpful, such as the slow speed control.

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It might have been better if the UK had an equivalent of EMD to say "that's our design, it's a standard design, it works and we're not changing it" and if BR had swallowed pride and accepted it. One of the reasons EMD thrived was that they believed in their designs and understood modern manufacturing as rivals such as Baldwin and Alco were still willing to change designs to meet customer requirements and seeing diesel electrics as a continuation of small batch steam engine type production. Alco did change and improved their designs but by that time it was all too little too late. The UK builders seemed to bend over to accommodate BR as they were the only customer in this country.

Here is an extract from "History of Paxman"

 Paxman did not stand up to BR and installed alloy block engines in the Claytons over the preferred cast steel block engines , the alloy blocks failed in service and were exchanged at considerable cost  for the  durable cast steel ones favoured by Paxman.

  ZHengine.jpgIntroduced in 1954, this was a horizontal or 'flat' 6 in-line cylinder engine. Evolved from the YH, it was essentially half (i.e. one bank) of a Vee 12 YH. The ZH was designed for British Railways primarily as an under-floor mounted power unit for railcars. Paxman was unsuccessful in persuading BR to adopt the engine for this application but large numbers of the pressure-charged version were supplied for the Class 17 'Clayton' Type 1 diesel-electric locomotive used mainly in the Scottish Region.

 

The engines initially supplied to British Railways were of aluminium alloy construction. Cracking of the castings became a major problem and the engines were rebuilt by Paxman with cast-iron crankcases at great cost to the Company. John Cove, who worked for Paxman at the time, has told me that British Railways had previously tested the first pair of engines with aluminium crankcases before placing an order for a quantity. By that time Paxman had had some experiences with aluminium castings on the YHA and possibly also the YGA aircooled engine. Both types had experienced troubles with threads and failures in cast aluminium. John went on to say: "Consequently we suggested to BR that we supply the engines with cast iron crankcases from the start but BR were quite adamant that they wanted the engines to be exactly the same as the ones they had tested and which had given no trouble. We were so keen to get the order that we failed to stand up for what we believed was necessary and so supplied them in aluminium. But before long these engines in service had run longer hours than the test engines and troubles began to become apparent and we had to change all the crankcases to iron. The troubles then ceased but this would have been unnecessary if we had taken a stronger line before the order was placed."

Edited by Pandora
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To quote a phase " utter tosh "

 

Concord was a cul-de-sac and a rather obvious one , put a military design together and squeeze a few passengers in. It never made business sense.

 

Veyron to Accord , yet the fastest production saloon is an all electric vehicle , a far greater engineering achievement then dropping a high output inefficient 19th century bag of bolts engine into a monocoque chassis , that is the Veyron .

 

You need to look closer

I need to look closer at what? What I want or what I'm being given, whether I want it or not.

 

De-carbon all you like... I'll not be here before a viable alternative arrives.

 

No doubt it'll be celebrated with a delicious, adequate but dull glass of water (desalinated, of course...).

 

One of the reasons we're all here on this forum is an appreciation of innovation, excellence and variations, not the sterility of development.

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I need to look closer at what? What I want or what I'm being given, whether I want it or not.

 

De-carbon all you like... I'll not be here before a viable alternative arrives.

 

No doubt it'll be celebrated with a delicious, adequate but dull glass of water (desalinated, of course...).

 

One of the reasons we're all here on this forum is an appreciation of innovation, excellence and variations, not the sterility of development.

Depends when you intend on dying really, the low carbon alternatives to many traditional GHG emitting processes are not as far off as some think. Most engineers and scientists I know find the challenges and opportunities of de-carbonising to be far more interesting than dropping an over sized IC engine into a car and then claiming bragging rights over how fast it goes. There's way more innovation in decarbonising tech than just making what we already have bigger, faster etc.

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I feel it's correct to say that the pilot scheme, in and of itself, wasn't botched. What was botched was the bulk ordering of still unproved designs. The Western Region's ordering of the Warship design, based on the DB V200 IRC, should have worked, but, possibly due to the more restricted British loading gauge, had issues from the start too.

 

Had a more measured approach allowed the pilot designs time to be developed and improved/discarded, then perhaps we would have seen a more limited number of types reach service, each in much larger numbers than we saw.

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Going back to the OP, I think the assumption of Diesel/Electric across the board is a highly unlikely scenario. There were sufficient Works around the country for each to specialize in different types of traction if necessary, and in the 60s (and early 70s?) there were still loco changes en route that would address drivers' different traction knowledge. So I certainly don't think it's a given that Diesel/Electric would have been standardised upon if, for example, certain hydraulics were considered better than the D/E equivalents.

 

As to specific locos, although as others have said not really a Pilot Scheme loco, the Class 35 Hymeks were very successful in their power range and it was only the decision to abandon hydraulics entirely that resulted in larger Class 37 orders. Yes, the 37s have been very successful, but if different decisions had been taken at the time, they may not have been built in anything like numbers they were.

 

DP2 was also very successful and I suspect that would have been the Type 5 loco of choice if BR had left the design alone and not insisted on the changes incorporated into the Class 50s.

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, the Class 35 Hymeks were very successful in their power range and it was only the decision to abandon hydraulics entirely that resulted in larger Class 37 orders. 

 

The decision to abandon hydraulics was not taken until much later.  The reason for the larger class 37 orders was that Beyer-Peacock was going under and could not complete the contracted number of Hymeks, so more class 37's were ordered to make up the shortfall.

 

It would have been interesting to see how well the Hymeks would have performed on the south wales coal trains!

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The decision to abandon hydraulics was not taken until much later.  The reason for the larger class 37 orders was that Beyer-Peacock was going under and could not complete the contracted number of Hymeks, so more class 37's were ordered to make up the shortfall.

 

It would have been interesting to see how well the Hymeks would have performed on the south wales coal trains!

ISTR that when the Hymeks were proposed for the South Wales coal trains it was assumed that all freight would be continuously braked as that was part of the modernisation plan. Production of vacuum braked 16 ton minerals started around 1958. When that didn't pan out (in part due to the reluctance of the NCB) the order was changed to 37s. The ability of Beyer-Peacock to deliver may also have had a bearing.

Edited by giz
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