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

[jjb1970]

If the Internet had been around in the 50s, the BRB Facebook page would have been awash with thousand of posts / "likes" et al and bugger all would have been built whilst disputes over the thermal efficiency of Steam Vs Diesel would have gone viral.   Given the same choices and the same circumstances (including the current state of the network in 1947), a Government who were already tightening the purse strings futher, I doubt very much anyone on here could or would have done any better.   Sitting on your backside prevaricating over the relative merits of otherwise of USA Vs Home built diesel engines is so much easier than having to actually do the job.  Looking back over those near 70 years is one hell of a lot of hindsight.

 

There is no dispute over the relative thermal efficiencies of diesel engines and steam locomotives, nor the maintenance requirements and through life costs (nor even that initial capex to buy diesels could be a lot higher). You can only have a dispute where there is a tenable argument for both positions of an argument. Given that the USA had virtually completed dieselisation by the time of the 1955 modernisation plan and the fact that by the mid 1950's the diesel engine and electrical systems were established technologies it's hard to pretend that dieselisation was some sort of step into the dark, with no precedent.

[cheesysmith]

A thing that is forgotten is the pilot scheme locos were only part of the plan. Other parts of the plan were the DMUs (mostly right, but they did have extensive trials before series production, the exception would be the ride/bogies), fitting vac brakes to the wagon fleet (the wagon fleet had too many like for like replacment of Victorian wagons with a steel version, so most were unsuitable for vac braking and higher speeds anyway, added to which the cost of fitting vac exhausters to diesels means there was no benift over air brakes, when you take the maintenance costs into account), the building of large marshalling yards to handle wagonload freight traffic (which was disappearing faster than the yards could be built). And then their was the problem between BR and the coal board. The coal board considered the wagons as a cheap storage for coal, to even out the peaks and ebbs of coal mined, and this was ok when it was their wagons it was sat in. BR job was to haul freight, not store it, and trying to get the coal board to change its ways led to disputes all the way to the govement. It too the introduction of MGR and the base load power stations to get changes, and even then BR had to pay the coal board to get it introduced.

 

Some of the modernisation plan was right, like reducing duplicate facilities and area centralisation. And it took beaching to get rid of a lot of the small station and the like that contributed very little, but in doing so allowed proper express intercity network. If the modernisation monies had been better spent, and BR had from the start played hard ball with the coal board, BR would have been in a better position in the 70s than occurred.

 

For example, instead of all the monies spent on big marshalling yards, what if it had been better spent on extending electrification? Woodhead extended to march down the joint line and across to Liverpool anyone? Some marshalling yards would still have been needed, like march (it was intended along with the joint line to allow freight to avoid London going north, just look at the present day problems we have with container trains and the NLL/TFL). Other that were needed include tinsley (to centralise all the freight in Sheffield and cut down on wasteful trip working) and maybe mossend. Centralising a areas freight traffic on a single yard was a good idea, but all of the yards BR built were too big, never worked to capacity, and we're designed for a traffic that was disappearing faster than the yards could be built. What BR should have been investing it monies in was bigger high capacity wagons, smaller centralised yards, and infrastructure improvements, instead of trying to improve the legacy Victorian freight system that was dying anyway.

[The Johnster]

Good points Cheesy; dmus were very popular and successful when they were first introduced, often as replacement for pre-grouping stock and steam locos that would have been withdrawn 20 years before but for the effects of late 30s/early 40s German foreign policy.  They seemed modern, comfortable, warm, and light and airy inside, and no doubt saved many services from closure, especially in some of the rural fastnesses of the Eastern and North Eastern Regions.  

 

Wagon load freight was disappearing fast, as road transport became more efficient, reliable, and cheap, but lasted until the 80s despite the closure of many local goods yards, a vindication of centralising it on large urban centres where good facilities existed to deal with it.  The coal wagon storage problem was correctly highlighted by Beeching, and was a long standing issue not solved until the days of circuit working to power stations, initially in 24½ ton wagons and then MGRs.  The collieries were happy to stockpile in wagons and at the same time complain to the railway about the lack of supply of empties, and, as always, were reluctant to accept wagons more than 9' wheelbase, or vacuum braked ones; their shunters liked to keep things as simple as possible and axle loads were an issue on poor quality NCB track.  They objected to things like instanter couplings and pneumatic buffers.

 

The 'free storage' issue was apparent in wagon load freight as well, especially where private sidings were concerned; a van would disappear into a premises and not be seen for months, not earning any revenue and providing a free warehouse space for the customer.  Attempts to charge for this, not unreasonable in the circumstances, led to the customers changing to road, as rail was no longer cheaper for them if they could not cheat the railway in this way.

 

Everyone concentrates on the locomotive issue, but an opportunity was lost to convert 20 years earlier to longer wheelbase or bogie air braked wagons, and air braked passenger stock, and some consideration could have been given to automatic couplers, anathema to the customers.  Replacement of track with CWR and the expansion of MAS were the correct things to do at the time, especially in the case of track which had to be replaced anyway after 2 decades of neglect; German foreign policy again.  Mass withdrawals of older stock and replacement with modern types was happening anyway, assisted by traffic decline; it would have been better to introduce air braked stock then than scrap the stock they were replacing it with a very few years down the line.

 

The marshalling yards were sort of forgivable; the traffic patterns were changing very rapidly, and modernisation on the American pattern called for these large hump yards with retarders; they looked like the right thing in 1955!  They were never fully utilised, but gave several decades of good service, so were not a complete waste of time.  The retarder operation at Margam with punch hole computers and radar shows a willingness to adopt new technology in an innovative way.  To take Margam as an example, inefficient flat sorting yards and some loco sheds at Dyffryn, Tondu, Taibach, Margam Abbey, and Court Sart (Neath) were allowed to close as Margam replaced their functions more quickly and easily; perhaps one needs to ask why Briton Ferry and Jersey Marine remained, but both had a role still to play.

 

The 10 foot wheelbase BR wagons had already been introduced, and it is possible to argue that further orders should have been cancelled.  Stephenson would have recognised all of them as similar to stock on the L & M or even the S & D; they continued to provide work for Ashford, Swindon, Shildon &c for another 10 years and some had lives as short as the Standard steam fleet.  Perhaps end to end body conversions on something like a CCT chassis, about 20ton capacity and fully fitted, would have brought matters up to European standards sooner.

 

British railway modernisation was, IMHO, too heavily influenced by American practice.  British senior railwaymen had been going on fact finding jollies, sorry, I mean missions, there for years, and early diesel progress here was very much along American lines; multiple working with connected power units.  The American rail network was very different to ours, with long single line sections demanding very long trains to achieve efficient pathing, and lower diesel fuel costs; we should have been looking at what the French and Germans were doing (WR did to some extent!) as it was much more applicable to the way we ran trains in Britain!

 

If it's any consolation, the Irish did much worse, and a decade before Beeching at that.  Unsuitable diesels, prematurely scrapped steam, mass closures on cost grounds, and very little stock or infrastructure replacement because the insufficient funds had been spent on pathetic diesels.  In the end, they rescued what was left by a more American approach more suitable to their conditions.

 

The story of the Americans' railroads over the last half century is evidence that capitalism does not by definiton do it better, and that mergers do not neccessarily bring efficiency; BR did not cover themselves in glory post 1955 but actually did not do as badly as they could have and were, in some ways, very innovative and adaptive.  The HST, by a long way the fastest and best train in the world that one could use without a supplementary fare in 1976, is proof of an excellent level of fruitful research, efficient investment, and forward thinking in the 20 years following the Modernisation Plan; it was the train that saved BR and provided the foundation of modern passenger operations, and it wasn't even electric!  

 

The APT shows a different story...

Edited February 16, 2018 by The Johnster

[The Stationmaster]

I think more to do with trying to keep Swindon works busy. Theres a reason Evening Star was built at Swindon.

 

And there was an equally good reason that the batch numbered from 92221 - 92250 were not built at Swindon because the order was switched to Crewe; put simply swindon couldn't build them fast enough and at a comparable cost per engine to Crewe.

[The Stationmaster]

In that respect, both steam and electric are similar, in that both can produce a short term power output far in excess of the continuous rating. For an electric I believe it's usually expressed as a continuous rating for 1 hr, and a maximum for 15min.

The maximum rating is limited essentially by the maximum allowable temperature rise in the traction motors, transformer & rectifier (if present). Class 87's were rated at 3.7MW continuous, 5.8MW maximum.

A diesel, or petrol for that matter, engine has a fixed maximum power output that can't be exceeded, and that is usually at a given point on the torque-speed curve.

 

So why were all BR mainline diesel locos given both a continuous and maximum power output rating?  Surely that suggests that they too could could achieve a higher output for short periods (which was of course exactly the case).

[The Johnster]

Most of the Amp Meter of class 47s was coloured yellow, and I have seen them worked with the needle well into the upper end of it for several minutes at a time, until a slight burning smell puts a stop to the fun...

[MarkC]

Most of the Amp Meter of class 47s was coloured yellow, and I have seen them worked with the needle well into the upper end of it for several minutes at a time, until a slight burning smell puts a stop to the fun...

A bit like the old way of tuning up radio transmitter antennas before solid state auto tuners came in was described then - "Tune for maximum smoke!"

[Nearholmer]

Stationmaster,

 

Almost any piece of machinery will have the ability to operate at different power levels for different durations, even one of those old-fashioned “wind the handle” egg whisks, because of limitations on its ability to dissipate the heat from losses (frictional, resistive, etc).

 

If operated at its ‘continuous’ rating, the losses will be dissipated sufficiently quickly that bearings, and other vital bits, dont overheat and damage themselves. You can hand wind an egg whisk all day and night, without it getting too hot, but if you stuck a power drill on the input shat and whizzed it round faster (higher power throughout), you would melt the bearings (heat dissipation insufficient), and have egg on your face (It might self-destruct under centrifugal forces too, but that isn’t our concern here).

 

Usually, things like bearings, motor insulation etc, can be operated at higher than normal temperatures for short periods, which will reduce their life, but not critically. Hence “short term rating”. A lot of engineering science goes into this, because things like cycling have to be considered, because that defines ‘cool down time’, the rate at which heat moves through the machine, which affects ‘hot spot’ temperature, what forced or natural cooling is available etc etc.

 

Sorting this out for electrical kit is fairly tricky, but not too tricky (and something I’ve done a fair bit of), ditto or for mechanical devices that merely transmit motion.

 

The rating of anything that burns fuel it gets trickier, because one of the several limits is now around the ability to combust the fuel ...... you can’t get any more energy out than the fuel contains (in practice you can’t get a lot of that out) so to develop more power, you need to combust more fuel, which means ingest more air, clear more exhaust gasses etc.

 

Come to a steam loco and things get even trickier, in that you have to transfer the energy from the fuel to gasses, then into water/steam to create a working fluid, and the boiler can and does act as a useful energy store (think of it as a flywheel in a mechanical system, or a capacitor in an electrical system).

 

Even having tried to chew my way through Mr Wardale’s hefty book, I still don’t quite “get” how steam loco designers rated their creations ........... it would be helpful if they used SI units consistently, and were more overt about using the boiler as a temporary energy store!

 

Probably, with a steam loco, we should really talk about the continuous rating of the firebox and boiler (boiler horsepower), in terms of their ability to take energy from fuel and turn it to energy in high-pressure superheated steam, but then we also have to consider how well or badly the engines (cylinders and valve gear) use the steam produced, and, say it again, we also need to think about how the boiler acts as an energy store.

 

All of which leads me to say that I still don’t think a Duchess was equivalent, in practical railway operating terms, to anything more than, say, a Peak. It made a lot more exciting, spectacular fuss over the job, and looked a lot flashier, and it cost about three times as much to use, but I reckon it did the same.

 

Kevin

[jjb1970]

One of the great attributes of large diesel engines is they can tolerate a tremendous amount of abuse and still work. Of course there comes a point where they kick back but its remarkable just how abused some engines are as they keep working. As long as you don't do something mad enough to break the crankshaft or crack a block they're generally pretty easy to repair even when they break. The crankshaft tends to be the killer as if you break that there is not much you can do without a new one. Since the crankshaft is probably the most worrying single point of failure on ships (most cargo ships are single engine, single screw) it gets particular attention by class and has to pass the torsional vibration acceptance criteria in a single misfire condition. That means that even if you run the thing with a cylinder misfiring it won't hurt the crankshaft. Marine engines tend to have heavier and stronger crankshafts than engines of the same model in other applications to meet class rules. I often wonder how much the external rule requirements of class have to do with durability of marine versions. When I was in class certain US engine builders were always demanding derogations from rules and whinging that they were excessive and didn't do anything. Strangely they went quiet when challenged on crankshaft failures and certain analysis for the non-marine engines they were demanding that we approve. I've been part of trials where engines have been pushed way way beyond their maximum rating on test beds. In one case the biggest problem was starting the engine. They had to design special injectors to get enough fuel into the cylinders at approaching 300% max rating and they couldn't operate at very low turndown ratios which meant starting the engine was difficult to put it mildly.

[Junctionmad]

If it's any consolation, the Irish did much worse, and a decade before Beeching at that. Unsuitable diesels, prematurely scrapped steam, mass closures on cost grounds, and very little stock or infrastructure replacement because the insufficient funds had been spent on pathetic diesels. In the end, they rescued what was left by a more American approach more suitable to their conditions.

 

 

I beg to differ here , in 1948 , the Milne report ( ex GWR) into Irish railways , essentially outlined a future that was actually followed in Britian , i.e. to build standard steam engines to replace a fleet that was incredibly unreliable

 

There was no prematurely scrapped steam in Ireland , the fleet was ancient and largely decrepit , with less then 50 % of the motive power available for work at any time.

 

The issue was compounded by the very recent issues over coal supplies during ww2 , convincing the then government that alternatives to Welsh coal had to be found

 

Bullied joined in 1950 , and between his view and the Gov , Milnes reports was largely set aside and any " intermediate " steam replacement was abandoned and a decision to rapidly dieselise was taken

 

With hindsight , Builleids desire to buy American was very prescient, but the gov of the day was prevented so by the sterling convertibility , and hence place the order with Metrovick , on the face of it the decision was exemplary , a multipurpose " A" class diesel capable of performing allmost all forms of work and a smaller " C" class to handle branch line traffic . There was no confusion like in BR nor any need for very high power diesels. What was specified was entirely suitable.

 

It was not CIEs fault that the crossley engine proved so unreliable , on the face of it , the specification was ideal. To suggest they were " pathetic " is to mis characterise them , even with the crossley issues they did valuable work. What is clear is that any extension of steam in Ireland would have caused even more damage to the network and the financies of CIE . It must also be remembered that by nationalisation Irish railways were financial basket cases and unlike in the UK , nationalisation was seen as a necessary evil rather then the " political " process it was in Britian.

 

And despite what you maintain , CIEs did receive extensive public monies , but in Ireland , with short distances and the publics distaste of wartime train experiences , there was very limited public support for the railways anyway.

 

Comparisons between CIE and BR are of course only useful to a point, the sheer difference in scale and operational activity , means that the two dieselisation processes have little in common.

 

CIE of course eventually turned to EMD , like Bulleid wanted and EMD bent over backwards to design suitable engines for what was a very small railway , but the main takeaway was the suburb reliability of the resultant EMD engine

 

Equally there was nothing in the EMD design that was particularly " suitable " for Irish railways , had the crossley engine proved reliable , it would have lasted the life cycle of the A class and potentially CIE would never have looked across the Atlantic.

 

 

Personally , I think the main issue with the BR/BTC modernisation plan , was it was too late and the decision to build standard steam was also a mistake, ( as was Riddles mis placed affection for steam ) had dieselisation begun immediately after Nationalisation , it's possible time would have been available to complete the pilot programme, implement a phased changeover to diesels , while engineering and management could build the neccesssry expertise. In the end standard steam, delayed the inevitable , and caused an unseemly rush to dieselisation. it was not a travesty that some steam engines only ran for 10 years or so , it was a travesty they were built in the first place ( doning fireproof jacket now ) .

Edited February 16, 2018 by Junctionmad

[rodent279]

So why were all BR mainline diesel locos given both a continuous and maximum power output rating? Surely that suggests that they too could could achieve a higher output for short periods (which was of course exactly the case).

 

Deleted post.

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[Junctionmad]

I once met an engineer who made a living out of modelling the temperature rise in electrical equipment, particularly motors and generators. He told me that theoretically there is no limit to how much power you can get out of an electric motor, as long as you can keep it cool, and as long as the insulation doesn't break down through over-voltage. There also comes a point when an increase in current in a winding does not lead to an increase in field strength, ie saturation, and in some cases too string a field can cause windings to buckle and shift, but it's mainly down to controlling the temperature rise.

 

Saturation is a function of the magnetic structure of the motor , at a certain point saturation occurs and increasing current is needed to gain additional flux , leading to I2R heating

 

So only in theory is an Electric motor capable of infinite power

[Nearholmer]

There are a host of other limitations on the power throughput of a given motor too, so I’m wondering whether what he actually meant was that there was no theoretical limit to the power for which a motor might be made, which is rather a different claim.

[Bob Reid]

Where's Emmett Brown when you need him and his flux capacitor - he could run a railtour back to the early 50's and with the benefit of hindsight turn the Pilot Scheme into a success....

[jjb1970]

Electric motors are limited by the torsional stress that the shaft can take before breaking, bearing loads etc as well as winding temperatures, insulation etc. You also get some pretty big electro-magnetic forces acting on the rotor and stator and more. So whilst in theory the electrical power can be very high the mechanical bits will fail.

[MarkC]

Where's Emmett Brown when you need him and his flux capacitor - he could run a railtour back to the early 50's and with the benefit of hindsight turn the Pilot Scheme into a success....

Nono, he shouldn't - it would affect the future...

[jjb1970]

If you want to see just how much mechanical force can be created by electro-magnetic fields in a motor or generator you should be in a power plant if a generator suffers pole slip or if a protection failure allows a breaker to engage with the phase sequence out of synch. The results are dramatic.

[Kelly]

The NBL hydraulics might never have been built had politics not reared its head. IIRC at the time, the original WR intention was to get the DH parts made by the german manufactuers, but it was too politically sensitive to allow a German company at the time to do so (being not too long at that time after the war). So licence building was forced on them and NBL got the licence, the rest being history.

 

In an earlier post, it was stated the 37, whilst not pilot scheme, could go anywhere. It couldn't, the Southern Region rejected them due to weight and so the 33s likely would still have been needed. Of course the better solution would have been EDs for them, but at that time only the Bullied prototypes existed (the 71s and 74s being some way off yet). Had Raworth gotten his way, the traction on the southern would have been rather different I expect.

[Fenman]

...

In an earlier post, it was stated the 37, whilst not pilot scheme, could go anywhere. It couldn't, the Southern Region rejected them due to weight and so the 33s likely would still have been needed. ...

Though the lower axle weight of a 37 does enable it to go places a 33 can’t - hence 37s have an RA of 5, while 33s are 6.

 

Paul

[cheesysmith]

Wen comparing steam to a diesel, you have to remember the boiler on a steam loco is designed with excess capacity, in that during use the power output it is capable of will degrade due to ash and clinker forming. Because of this steam loco boilers very rarely worked to their maximum output, and could provide brief burst of power way above what they could produce continuously. Also with manual firing of the boiler, you were also limited in what the human bit was capable of doing continuously, although that bit could exceed normal power outputs temporarily as well.

 

A diesel electric locos output is set, and you cannot get more power from the engine, unlike a boiler. Also, the difference between starting effort and continuous tractive effort is usually determined by the electrical systems and their unloading point where the weak field come into effect. To save weight diesel locos have electric motors of lower rating that the engine output, and more weak field diverts, which allow them to use their power over a bigger speed range. The starting tractive effort is simple how much power can be applied without slipping and is determined by adhesion , axle load, and power. The continuous tractive effort is how much power can be applied without any electrical damage. Because this usually happens after the unloading point of the electrical systems, a lower geared freight loco would have the continuous rating lower down the speed range, and so would be able to pull a heavier load up hill without damage. A good example of this is EE locos, of the deltic, class 50 & class 37. They all have identical motors and bogies, but due to the different locos electrical systems and unloading points, the 37 has better low speed pulling abilities making it a excellent freight machine, but the other 2 have more power allowing a electrical unloading point at a higher speed, making them excellent passinger locos, and the extra power they have from the engine would be wasted at lower speeds anyway.

 

This is also what the mixed traffic class 47 is better at freight haulage than a class 50/55, but has slower acceleration at higher speeds on passinger trains.

 

A example of what I mean about electrics and the benefit of a freight loco Vs a mixed traffic loco would be the EMD class 59, a loco that has a traction motor with a output of 750BHP. A big, heavy motor that if it had been used on a mixed traffic loco like the 47 would have pounded the track to bits just like the 86s did on the WCML. Plus you wouldn't have been able to fit such a heavy motor to a class 47 and keep it within the weight limit anyway. But because of its power output, you can put the maximum power of the diesel engine through it for a long time without any worries of overload. This means that as you slow down pulling a heavy train uphill, you just keep power applied and grind up that hill SLOWLY, but you would get up it, with a power output from the electrics that would melt the motor on a 47.

 

Another example would be to compair 2 100mph loco designs, a class 55 Vs a class 86. The 55 after losses in the electrical systems has about 2500BHP at rail, but it's motors are only rated at (IIRC, can somebody check for me?) aprox 350BHP each, so they have more weak field setting to allow the power to be used over a wide speed range without overloading the motors. This means more bits on the loco to maintain bit allows a motor if only 1.7 tons to be used, saving weight on the total loco. The 86 has a motor of 1000BHP, meaning you only need a single weak field over the same speed range, reducing the maintenance need, but the motor weight about 4.5 tons. Also if the field diverts burnt out, the 55 would be limited in speed and power to about 25mph (again, can someone check what speed the first stage field diverts come in?), but the 86 could still work upto about 70mph before its field diverts come into effect (again, check please) and can still put down maximum power without overloading the motor, unlike the diesel loco.

 

PS, the above explanation is a simplified idea of what goes on inside a diesel electic loco, to give people a idea how the different bit work together, and the problems faced by the designers. If you get technical, they are even more complicated that that.

Edited February 17, 2018 by cheesysmith

[Hroth]

...

 

 

Personally , I think the main issue with the BR/BTC modernisation plan , was it was too late and the decision to build standard steam was also a mistake, ( as was Riddles mis placed affection for steam ) had dieselisation begun immediately after Nationalisation , it's possible time would have been available to complete the pilot programme, implement a phased changeover to diesels , while engineering and management could build the neccesssry expertise. In the end standard steam, delayed the inevitable , and caused an unseemly rush to dieselisation. it was not a travesty that some steam engines only ran for 10 years or so , it was a travesty they were built in the first place ( doning fireproof jacket now ) .

The main problem with post-Nationalisation British Railways was that up to the mid-50s, there wasn't much money to play with and the requirement for Riddles to design and build the Standard fleet was a political one, with the aims of supporting the NCB and minimising expenditure on imported oil. It also didn't help that the steam locomotive fleet had been run into the ground over the previous 7 years.  If the UK hadn't just fought an expensive and destructive war and embarked on "punching above their weight" military schemes after WW2, the Big 4*/British Railways might have introduced something like the Modernisation Plan in the late 40's with less of the frantic "Dash for Diesel" that happened in the late 50s.

 

* Given different circumstances, Nationalisation might not have occurred post war!

[jjb1970]

If there hadn't been a WW2 (and even I don't blame the UK government for WW2) history would clearly have been completely different and I don't think the railways would have been nationalised. I think the big 4 would have modernised and dumped steam if anything more quickly and probably more efficiently. And we would probably have seen a Beeching style rationalisation earlier

[Baby Deltic]

Had the NBL MAN diesels been engined with German built, German quality units they would probably have worked fine.

[jjb1970]

MAN engines weren't always the most reliable or trouble free engines even when built by MAN.

Edited February 17, 2018 by jjb1970

[Titan]

If there hadn't been a WW2 (and even I don't blame the UK government for WW2) history would clearly have been completely different and I don't think the railways would have been nationalised. I think the big 4 would have modernised and dumped steam if anything more quickly and probably more efficiently. And we would probably have seen a Beeching style rationalisation earlier

 

Indeed. The LNER had already started to electrify before the war broke out using 1500V DC. Liverpool St - Shenfield would have been completed by the early 40's, Woodhead by the late 40's and by the time the DELTIC arrived on the scene a significant part of the ECML would probably have been already electric.  If it was not for WW2 the DELTIC might never have existed - The drawbacks of petrol powered MTB's would not have been so emphasised without them going into full scale battle, and the need for a diesel engined replacement would not have been such a high priority. The LMS looked like it was favouring Diesel, and since most of the Midland region management that rejected the Deltic in the 1950's were probably ex-LMS men, even had the prototype been built it is unlikely there would have been any takers.

 

So 'completely different' almost sounds like an understatement!