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

[Nearholmer]

I think, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, my approach to the pilot scheme would have been to attempt to focus the pilot-testing not on entire locos, but on the bit that, from the outset, was the obvious challenge: the engine.

 

IMO, there was already by c1950 enough accumulated evidence from the US and Europe that an electric transmission was the thing to go for above ‘railcar’ ratings, and electric transmissions were both highly reliable, and well-understood by British industry in many different  applications, not just rail. So, no messing about with trying to reduce weight by fancy non-electric transmissions.

 

We have five locos to play with: 10800, the two LMS main line, and three SR main line. We will also build not another loco, but a really good engine test facility, and put a stack of work into specifying realistic performance test cycles.

 

Now, we will set out to the potential engine-builders what we are trying to achieve (basically greatly increased power/weight ratio; and, the ability to withstand immense numbers of performance cycles at minimum maintenance cost), then, three or four years of really intensive engine testing, using the test house, and the locos we already have, which we will alter and fiddle with endlessly as different engines are tested in service using them as “bearers”. We will also sponsor objective monitoring of trials and service experience of export locos on overseas railways, politely not trusting the chaps at the manufacturers, and forming alliances with engineers of the purchasing railways (lots of arguments about air fares; attempts to stifle this by interested parties).

 

By about 1953/4, both we and the potential suppliers know enough for a properly informed procurement to start, not of silly little pilot orders, but decent-sized batches. The “too many cylinders and too complicated as a result” engines will have been killed-off during testing, and the builders who can’t achieve the required quality/tolerances will have embarrassed themselves in private, rather than public, and will either have upped their game or sloped away.

 

What we will get will still be parallel sets of EE and BRCW/Sulzer locos in each power band that we specify, but we will avoid a lot of over-complicated and/or unreliable stuff, the entire hydraulic waste of time, and (this may not be popular) Deltics. Our high-speed offering will be light-weight 1600hp Bo-Bo locos (no bl@@dy train heat boilers!) in pairs, initially double-heading, but later one either end of the train.

 

Thereafter: keep pushing engine power/weight ratio, and be prepared to swap-out engine, generator, and maybe traction motors to up-rate locos, and timetable performance, progressively. In short, sell-off or throw away out-classed engines, not entire failed classes of locos.

 

Mind you, to pursue this sort of course would have required BR/BTC to be very single-minded, and not get caught-up in everybody else’s problems of making a foredoomed attempt to build a diesel loco export industry using BR as its test track. 
 

Electrics? Much easier, and in fact the combination of BR and British industry actually did pretty well at keeping pace with technological possibilities on this front (maybe a very teeny bit slow on choppers, but only a teeny bit) and didn’t really produce any junk. The issue was lack of capital with which to electrify, not the motive power itself, and there might have been more to spend on electrification if less had been frittered on keeping the steam age going for ten years too many and on iffy diesel locos.

[Mark Saunders]

Still the bigger picture is missed but not by the treasury. From memory the new build cost of steam locomotives was a quarter that of a comparable diesel. Fuel was bought at home  in solid lumps in Sterling rather than in liquid form in Dollars!

 

Britain was still paying for the war and Dollars were wanted by the treasury!

[peach james]

33 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

Still the bigger picture is missed but not by the treasury. From memory the new build cost of steam locomotives was a quarter that of a comparable diesel. Fuel was bought at home  in solid lumps in Sterling rather than in liquid form in Dollars!

 

Britain was still paying for the war and Dollars were wanted by the treasury!

Never mind in the UK, there is a most interesting report on D/E's in North America, and how the reasons why steam died as quickly as it did had a lot to do with GM and GE having capital available when the railways did not...certainly, when you look at CN and N&W, you get a rather different picture as to WHY steam died as quickly as it did, and who made money hand over fist on the dealings...

 

[Nearholmer]

Coal goes very nicely indeed in power stations. Well, it did in 1955. But, if you can’t afford to string the wires ……

The steam diesel cost ratio was more like 3:1 once operating costs were factored-in, which is why there was a “one diesel to replace three steam” target at some stage, and either a 1:3 or 1:2 (I forget which) scrapping policy was enacted.

 

But, my 20/20 hindsight pilot scheme was aimed as much at having a sensible, rather than muddled, pilot scheme. If a relatively small amount of money had been spent on a structured engine testing/development programme in the late 40s to early 50s, focusing on the nub of the issue, a lot of waste and grief could have been avoided.

 

Whether engineers at the time proposed such a programme, and were then told “go away; we run steam until we electrify”, I don’t know, but I can certainly imagine that some might have. The LMS ran a very smart diesel evaluation and development strategy from c1930, right up to nationalisation, with a lot of learning transferred forward, so there were undoubtedly smart minds available.

 

The thing I need to read-up on more (Gourvish?) is whether dieselisation, other than railcars, was really a proper strand in BR motive power policy at all from 1948. I believe that the need for it was foreseen, but that the years from 1948-55 were not used to best affect, because it wasn’t given enough resources. Look how long it took to get from 10800 to first delivery of a batch of Class 15, without identifying that the engine was too complicated: ten years.

 

[peach james]

The UK government policy in 1947 was exactly that- domestically produced coal fired steam until we electrify.  The 1947 HGV report recommended revising the 1929/30 tax differences that had a severe negative impact on steam wagons on the road, for similar reasons.  The fact that oil was from "overseas", and coal was domestic had been brought to the attention of the house on more than one occasion pre ww2.  The expectation seemed to be that diesel was a great power source, but that heavy goods vehicles should be coal fired for domestic production reasons.  I would imagine the exact same thinking drove the BR Modernization Plan & the design & construction of the BR Standards.  

I view D/E as being as much a dead end technology as steam, it's just taken longer to start driving the nails into the coffin because of the capital cost of electrification.  Said capital cost has NOT been helped by "offboarding" costs of both steam and diesel, but allocating in near full to electric- think of what the real risk levels are for a lot of the 25kv re-work that has been done, and how if it worked in the past, one has examples of how much flashover risk there really is from past clearance designs vs present.  The cost overruns of starting and stopping electrification schemes instead of having had a rolling program of electrification bear witness to the election cycle management of government.  Over here, if you read about the Milwaukee Road electrification, and the missing  212 miles  in the middle, and how stupid private capital can be as well...

( https://milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Electrification/ElectrificationPage1.htm )

https://milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Electrification/GEStudy1970.pdf  for the heartbreaking read of stupid in action... GE said the cheapest answer with Diesel at 5.25 p/ Gal was to electrify...

 

James
 

[Nearholmer]

5 minutes ago, peach james said:

I view D/E as being as much a dead end technology as steam, it's

Now, very definitely. In 1948, I don’t think so. For places where electrification couldn’t be financially justified, it was diesel or steam, although battery was tried tentatively in Scotland. 
 

And actually, BR clearly didn’t think diesel was a bad idea at the time. We tend to get fixated on locos, especially big ones, but the railcar programme was pursued, and hit the timescales I suggested above could have been achieved for locos: fleet-sized deliveries from 1954.
 

At that date, the death of most branch-lines wasn’t foreseen, and nobody, even the arch-electrifiers of the Southern*, expected such lines to be able to bear the capital cost of electrification, but whereas the motive power policy for the passenger trains was diesel, for the goods trains it remained steam, until ill-prepared panic buying started post 1955. If the prep had been put into diesel locos, EE Type 1 (Class 20) could have been rolling off the production line in parallel with the Derby Lightweight DMMUs, in fact probably earlier, given what EE was exporting.

 

Which really takes us back to the point made by Mark, and a lot of other points about inertia due to the huge importance of BR main works as employers, and the struggle that they British loco building industry had in attempting to transition its capabilities.

 

*The Southern Railway policy for as of 1946/47 was to use DEMUs for passenger services on branches that would be too costly to electrify, and light diesel locos for goods, although it’s not crystal clear whether the locos would have been Bulleid’s 0-6-0DM, or a Bo-Bo Sulzer DE.

[Titan]

I do wonder what would have been the outcome if instead of having a pilot scheme at all, BR just bought diesels from the well established UK manufacturers. Besides EE, BRCW were also exporting diesels with the well proven Sulzer/Crompton Parkinson combination.  Between the two of them they had already built hundreds of main line diesel locomotives prior to the 1955 modernisation plan.  One of the reasons no doubt that the class 20 was not only a good engine, but the first to be delivered under the plan is that it was pretty much the same as the locomotives EE were exporting at the time, but adapted to BR specifications.

 

So we could have ended up with class 20, class 26/27, class 33, class 37 and class 40 which were pretty much off the peg proven designs.  The class 40 may even have been uprated to 2,400bhp as EE suggested which would have made it much more useful.  And no doubt Mr Fiennes would still have persuaded the board to purchase the Deltics for the ECML...

 

 

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Titan said:

One of the reasons no doubt that the class 20 was not only a good engine, but the first to be delivered under the plan is that it was pretty much the same as the locomotives EE were exporting at the time, but adapted to BR specifications.

Definitely. And, they’d been making and selling pretty much the same thing, with gradually increasing engine power, since c1948.

[Nearholmer]

I thought it was about time this thread had a picture, so courtesy of a freely licensed image via Wikipedia, here is a really nice one.

 

Thiz is what a country so utterly skint in 1950 that it made even the U.K. of the time look rich spent its money building, with a Sulzer 900hp engine. With an engine upgrade along the way, it was in traffic for c25 years, which is very good going for a pilot class.

 

I really do like the shape and colour.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[MarkC]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I think, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, my approach to the pilot scheme would have been to attempt to focus the pilot-testing not on entire locos, but on the bit that, from the outset, was the obvious challenge: the engine.

 

IMO, there was already by c1950 enough accumulated evidence from the US and Europe that an electric transmission was the thing to go for above ‘railcar’ ratings, and electric transmissions were both highly reliable, and well-understood by British industry in many different  applications, not just rail. So, no messing about with trying to reduce weight by fancy non-electric transmissions.

 

We have five locos to play with: 10800, the two LMS main line, and three SR main line. We will also build not another loco, but a really good engine test facility, and put a stack of work into specifying realistic performance test cycles.

 

Now, we will set out to the potential engine-builders what we are trying to achieve (basically greatly increased power/weight ratio; and, the ability to withstand immense numbers of performance cycles at minimum maintenance cost), then, three or four years of really intensive engine testing, using the test house, and the locos we already have, which we will alter and fiddle with endlessly as different engines are tested in service using them as “bearers”. We will also sponsor objective monitoring of trials and service experience of export locos on overseas railways, politely not trusting the chaps at the manufacturers, and forming alliances with engineers of the purchasing railways (lots of arguments about air fares; attempts to stifle this by interested parties).

 

By about 1953/4, both we and the potential suppliers know enough for a properly informed procurement to start, not of silly little pilot orders, but decent-sized batches. The “too many cylinders and too complicated as a result” engines will have been killed-off during testing, and the builders who can’t achieve the required quality/tolerances will have embarrassed themselves in private, rather than public, and will either have upped their game or sloped away.

 

What we will get will still be parallel sets of EE and BRCW/Sulzer locos in each power band that we specify, but we will avoid a lot of over-complicated and/or unreliable stuff, the entire hydraulic waste of time, and (this may not be popular) Deltics. Our high-speed offering will be light-weight 1600hp Bo-Bo locos (no bl@@dy train heat boilers!) in pairs, initially double-heading, but later one either end of the train.

 

Thereafter: keep pushing engine power/weight ratio, and be prepared to swap-out engine, generator, and maybe traction motors to up-rate locos, and timetable performance, progressively. In short, sell-off or throw away out-classed engines, not entire failed classes of locos.

 

Mind you, to pursue this sort of course would have required BR/BTC to be very single-minded, and not get caught-up in everybody else’s problems of making a foredoomed attempt to build a diesel loco export industry using BR as its test track. 
 

Electrics? Much easier, and in fact the combination of BR and British industry actually did pretty well at keeping pace with technological possibilities on this front (maybe a very teeny bit slow on choppers, but only a teeny bit) and didn’t really produce any junk. The issue was lack of capital with which to electrify, not the motive power itself, and there might have been more to spend on electrification if less had been frittered on keeping the steam age going for ten years too many and on iffy diesel locos.

M'yes, but IIRC the Deltics came about because of specific requirements for the ECML - power (for speed) and no double heading. Indeed, it could be argued that the production Deltics were themselves a Pilot Scheme class, seeing as only 22 of them were built...

[cheesysmith]

I think on of the biggest mistakes of the early diesels here was the idea of mixed traffic locos. Why give a 25 a top speed of 90mph? They don't have the power to be used at that kind of speeds, and the lines they were built for didn't allow the speeds either. Lower geared without a steam generator, using the mass saved for bigger motors for better pulling uphill would have made a better loco for pulling the 4 wheeled steel boxes full of coal that survived the life of the loco, and was the biggest freight traffic on BR.

 

Apart from the Freightliner train, no freight train until after BR exceeded 60mph. Why overload the motors slogging along at low speeds pulling freights with the high gearing for a useless top speed

[rodent279]

Out of interest, and slightly OT, can any drivers on here comment on the difference in performance on the road between a class 37 and a 40? Is the extra 250BHP of the class 40 offset by the extra 30 or so tonnes weight, to make them almost the same?

[Nearholmer]

There were some pretty exciting rides available behind Sulzer Type 2 in Scotland and on the Cambrian, although whether they actually topped 60mph I’m less sure. The Cambridge and Norwich services from Liverpool Street with Class 37 were genuinely fast (less said about Class 31 from Kings Cross to Cambridge the better!), and the full capability range of the Cromptons were used routinely, ditto the Hymeks I think.

 

So, although I’ve ‘agreed’, it’s a qualified ‘agree’, because I think that, particularly for Cromptons and Hymeks, it would have created gross under-utilisation not to have had the speed capability.

 

Perhaps what I’m back-wishing is that there were only two classes to cover Types 2 and 3: a light, fast-geared Sulzer for areas that genuinely needed dual-purpose machines (Class 33) ; and, a heavy, slow-geared, sure-footed EE for areas that only needed to schlep goods trains about (Class 37). 
 

Steam heating was, IMO, a huge millstone round the neck of diesel passenger services, so I will definitely wish that out of history too!

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Hesperus]

@Nearholmer

 

With talk of the Southern Region swiftly followed by talk of Irish dieselisation and money saving it makes me wonder if some of those DEMU motor coachs could have been fitted with an extra cab to haul branch line freight trains between the passenger workings (like the UTAs MPD sets).

[cheesysmith]

The 33 are a perfect example of what I am saying. If you take a 25, delete the steam generator, you could fit the 8 cylinder engine in. Alter the gearing for 60mph max. Perfect freight loco for BR. Or keep the 6 cylinder engine and put reostactic brakes in for the unfitted freight trains. The time savings from not having to pin down brakes would pay for it.

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Hesperus said:

DEMU motor coachs could have been fitted with an extra cab to haul branch line freight trains between the passenger workings (like the UTAs MPD sets).

Fascinating thought.

 

In the context of the way the Southern operated goods trains, it probably wouldn’t have worked though. The operating method was largely based around long trips from a few nodal yards, calling in at many stations along the way, so the goods trains were mostly quite hefty - a 500/600hp DEMU power car would have had the power to maintain the (slow) schedules, but probably have lacked the weight for tractive effort (the used to get terrible wheel-spin on even slightly greasy rails) and braking. 
 

As a side issue, the electric MLVs were tested by using them to haul long trains of goods wagons, and they were routinely used to haul parcels vans, so the line between passenger train MU vehicle and loco could get pretty blurry.

[cheesysmith]

If we take the idea further of not trying to make everything mixed traffic, we can refine what we need to make using what was available at the time.

 

For the freight side, what was needed is a diesel version of the EM1 electrics. They were built using 1930s technology and were already proving the savings possible . It would have been possible to make a diesel version using the technology of the 1950s. Even if it only had 1250hp from the sulzer 6 cylinder, it would have saved monies in the crew cost etc.

 

For the passenger train, you could have built a 2400hp Co-Co using the truss body from the peaks with EE power under 120 tons if you got rid of the steam heat. Basically a updated version of the LMS twins.

 

The civil engineering had input into the designs with the limits they imposed (some of which were proved either plain wrong or misinterpretation of data) and the loco engineer had input into the designs. How much input did the operating side get? 

[griffgriff]

32 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Out of interest, and slightly OT, can any drivers on here comment on the difference in performance on the road between a class 37 and a 40? Is the extra 250BHP of the class 40 offset by the extra 30 or so tonnes weight, to make them almost the same?

Well your talking about the weight of a couple of wagons but the 37 had greater tractive effort. 55,500Ib for a 37/0 agains 52,000 for a 40.

 

Griff

[Nearholmer]

Quoted TE figures cited are at starting, so don’t always say a great deal about TE ‘on the road’, and how that affects performance. The starting TE for the Class 40 is almost certainly lower simply because some of its weight is on non-motored axles.

 

As a passenger, rather than a driver, my sensation was that the weight of the Class 40 adversely affected its acceleration capability, rather than its performance once ‘road speed’ was reached, and that makes sense in terms of physics. Both 40 and 31 always seemed like ‘slugs’ to me when compared with 37, and especially 33. I never rode behind Hymeks, but I’m told they were possibly even quicker out of the blocks than 33.

[JohnR]

I think with the chat about loco classes, we're missing out where the biggest impact could have been had early on - diesel railcars.

 

Unlike with the locos, there was no technical reason why a large scale roll-out couldnt have started in say 1951. And also a need to reduce the different types. 

[Pandora]

LMS 10000/10001, BR had several years of several years of operational experience  of the Twins which I believe were reliable units although a little bit underpowered at 1600 bhp.

The 3-axle bogies were a good design,  used on the more powerful  EM2 electric  locos, showing the traction motors had  plenty in reserve to cope with a  higher output diesel engine

Why did the Pilot scheme seemingly disregard  the Twins for unproven designs?

Edited October 21, 2021 by Pandora

[cheesysmith]

Actually, the railcar/DMU came at exactly the right time, as BUT had developed standard parts and control gear. Witness the differences between the early derby lightweights/metcams and the production versions. The only things I would say the DMUs needed improving on was the bogies (they needed the B4 but it wasn`t designed till later, and the priority was stock that went faster) and the use of the gearbox. If they had used a voith box, with EP air brakes, a better train would have resulted, but they used what was available from BUT.

 

The real failing of the DMU program was they were not replaced earlier. They should have been replaced after about 20 years, in the 1970s. What would have replaced them would have been interesting. Would it have been a mk2 derived DMU with more powerful engines, EP air brakes and B4 bogies. Or would it have been a PEP derived DMU using the hydrostatic drive the RTC was investigating with sliding doors and air suspension? If it was early 70s probably the former, if late 70s, better the latter. The sprinters that came along were just using old proven technology copied from NS. How long has it taken before a break from the proven design of under floor engine and hydraulic  drive BR introduced based on the old 1970s NS design? (the 745 are the first true design change, instead of just altering what came before). Blame franchising for this, as the companies running thing don`t want risk, so basically went with what came before, and added the extra costs of old tech onto the franchise bill. 

 

I do think the missing link in the DMU program was a higher speed intercity DMU, like the blue pulman, but for general use. Just make them with a maybach v16 running at 2000hp with no passenger bays, so shorter and lighter, on either end of a fixed rake of coaches. Imagine these for the western, would beat the ER deltic +8 formations hands down. If fitted with EP disc brakes, we could have had the HST decades earlier. Might even have put the nail in the coffin of a mixed traffic heavy loco and rakes of coaches earlier than what happened..

[cheesysmith]

2 minutes ago, Pandora said:

LMS 10000/10001, BR had several years of several years of operational experience  of the Twins which I believe were reliable units although a little bit underpowered at 1600 bhp.

The 3-axle bogies were a good design,  used on the EM2 locos, and the traction motors which shows had  plenty in reserve to cope with a  higher output diesel engine

Why did the Pilot scheme seemingly disregard  the Twins for unproven designs?

 

They were not disregarded. The class 40 was what came of them. It was just the civil engineers  were worried about rail burns, and quoted a American railroad paper on the subject and insisted on a wheel/axleload ratio that the only way to meet the figures was using the 1co bogie. The fact the 1co bogie probably did more damage to the P-way because of its poor suspension design and lack of secondary suspension. Turns out the paper they were using was actually rail damaged from braking.

 

PS-The twins were quoted at 1600hp when built, but were updated with newer bearing etc as used in the SR DE (1 and 2) and uprated to 1750 by the end of their life. Number 10203 had the later mk2 engine, which was available at 2400 with intercooling. Why they didn`t use it, when the thumpers were using the high horsepower setting already, so BR did know what to expect.

[cheesysmith]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Quoted TE figures cited are at starting, so don’t always say a great deal about TE ‘on the road’, and how that affects performance. The starting TE for the Class 40 is almost certainly lower simply because some of its weight is on non-motored axles.

 

As a passenger, rather than a driver, my sensation was that the weight of the Class 40 adversely affected its acceleration capability, rather than its performance once ‘road speed’ was reached, and that makes sense in terms of physics. Both 40 and 31 always seemed like ‘slugs’ to me when compared with 37, and especially 33. I never rode behind Hymeks, but I’m told they were possibly even quicker out of the blocks than 33.

 

The bit about poor acceleration does bring up a good example of why trying to make everything mixed traffic was a poor idea. When the transpennines finally were life expired, they were replaced by peds on rakes of 4 mk2 coaches. 5 was about their max. when they got into top gear/final stage of field weaking they had less than 900hp to use to move themselves and the train. But why, when the lines they replaced the DMUs on only had a max speed of 70mph anyway.

[Nearholmer]

Back to the railcar programme for a moment: I honestly think that should be counted overall as “a success with minor flaws”, certainly not a debacle like the locos, even if my view of DMMUs from a souther perspective was that most of them were risible (very poor levels of comfort and performance when compared with even a 4-SUB).

 

My understanding is that the financial authority for the first Derby lightweights didn’t come until 1952, so to get from that to a first fleet in roundly two years implies that people had been doing serious homework in preparation, and it’s quite clear that the learning from the 1930s unit was carried forward (even to the extent of choosing a 1930s engine!).