Why were the Peaks considered redundant?

[cheesysmith]

This is getting away from the original question. Why were the peaks considered redundant? Simple answer is they were old, they had paid for themselves (in book keeping terms, so owed the railways nothing), they were at a age where they would have needed monies spending to keep them reliable enough to be useful and because of BR needing less big diesel locos could be replaced on the work remaining by younger locos that needed less cost.

[kevinlms]

56 minutes ago, cheesysmith said:

It didn't help that they sent the worse ones down first. In those days the region's would have been told to transfer X number of class XX but they made sure the least reliable or the ones needing most work got sent.

Why would anyone do anything different? The Western Region would have sent their worst DH's if they had to send them elsewhere for reuse.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, cheesysmith said:

EE actually got closer to mixed traffic, but with different locos using the same components. The 37\50\55 all used the same bogies and motors (not sure about the gearing) but the electrical systems were set up different. The weak fields and generator unloading were such that the 37 had excellent low speed pulling power, but the others had more power at rail at high speed.

That makes sense, to share bits and pieces, but with the Class 50s, they were fitted with all sorts of carp, hopefully to make the class mixed traffic. Why slow-speed control on 100mph rated express locos? It's a complete contradiction.

Just a waste of resources and asking for trouble and that came to be.

[kevinlms]

54 minutes ago, cheesysmith said:

This is getting away from the original question. Why were the peaks considered redundant? Simple answer is they were old, they had paid for themselves (in book keeping terms, so owed the railways nothing), they were at a age where they would have needed monies spending to keep them reliable enough to be useful and because of BR needing less big diesel locos could be replaced on the work remaining by younger locos that needed less cost.

Of course they were old and superseded, I thought we'd agreed on that conclusion, a couple of pages back?

[MidlandRed]

3 hours ago, Rugd1022 said:

 

There was daily communication between Bath Road and Old Oak so when Old Oak needed assistance with the 'new' 50s Bath Road was their first port of call. The LMR were glad to be shot of them anyway, and from talking to fitters when I was at Old Oak there was little if any communication with Crewe or English Electric. Trust me, nobody was happy with the appalling availability in those first few years of the 50s being on the WR!

It would be interesting to know what those availabilities were and how they compared with the LMR’s. It seems extraordinary that there was no communication or input from the LMR - ten years before the regions often appeared to operate as if they were still separate companies but it’s surprising this was still happening in the mid 70s.
 

The first locos transferred appear to have been the first few built - whilst they would have been the oldest examples the chance they were all the worst performers (on the LMR) seems an unusual coincidence. 
 

In any case, in latter part of the steam era 50s the WR consistently achieved annual passenger train punctuality of no better than 50 or 60% - as I say understanding the actual availability figures, LMR to WR of the 50s in that changeover period would be very interesting. 

Edited November 4, 2021 by MidlandRed

[woodenhead]

22 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

It would be interesting to know what those availabilities were and how they compared with the LMR’s. It seems extraordinary that there was no communication or input from the LMR - ten years before the regions often appeared to operate as if they were still separate companies but it’s surprising this was still happening in the mid 70s.
 

The first locos transferred appear to have been the first few built - whilst they would have been the oldest examples the chance they were all the worst performers (on the LMR) seems an unusual coincidence. 
 

In any case, in latter part of the steam era 50s the WR consistently achieved annual passenger train punctuality of no better than 50 or 60% - as I say understanding the actual availability figures, LMR to WR of the 50s in that changeover period would be very interesting. 

First few examples would be the oldest, highest mileage, closest to needing a general overhaul.

[MidlandRed]

16 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

First few examples would be the oldest, highest mileage, closest to needing a general overhaul.

Indeed but not necessarily all producing low availability/ problems - without seeing the comparative availabilities everything is speculation - however the transition from LMR to WR would appear, on the face of it, not to have been well managed. 

[woodenhead]

2 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

Indeed but not necessarily all producing low availability/ problems - without seeing the comparative availabilities everything is speculation - however the transition from LMR to WR would appear, on the face of it, not to have been well managed. 

Maybe, it was simply, no-one took massive care of them - BR didn't have to, it didn't own them so just needed enough to service the diagrammed trained, EE couldn't see a life for them beyond 1974 when the electrics would replace them.  BR bought them as the price was right, if not it may simply have put more ETH 47s onto the Western and added more ETH to 45s or even dual braked and added ETH to the 46s to allow withdrawal of the Westerns.   BR wasn't short of motive power especially with the HST well into development by the time the 50s were on the Western, it got them cheap and then spent 7 years trying to make them reliable.

[Zomboid]

28 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

First few examples would be the oldest, highest mileage, closest to needing a general overhaul.

Low mileage might be more of a problem, if it's been broken so much as to prevent a high mileage being achieved...

[Mark Saunders]

13 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Low mileage might be more of a problem, if it's been broken so much as to prevent a high mileage being achieved...

Engine Hours are the deciding issue not mileage!

[kevinlms]

14 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

Engine Hours are the deciding issue not mileage!

Which of course is the exact opposite to steam.

[The Johnster]

The WR's requirement in 1974 was for eth/airco locos capable of higher speed than the Westerns to deliver a 100mph eth/airco service on the West of England main line.  47s were considered acceptable on the South Wales expresses but not quite as fast as was wanted to work out of Paddington first stop Exeter.  Devon and Cornwall MPs were becoming vociferous about the mk1s on the route, so there was some top-down pressure.  And, whatever the condition of the locos or how they'd been looked after by the LMR or ScR, they were all that was avaialble, having been displaced by the 87s on the WCML north of Crewe.  The WR had no choice in the matter, which had been forced on them by the NTP's rejection of the Westerns, which couldn't have been fitted with eth/airco kit anyway, and given their low availability, resented them; the general view was that the LMR had palmed them off on us.  This may not be entirely fair, and equally may not have been entirely unfair!

 

Refurbishment got availability to a pretty good level in the 80s, and the locos did some excellent work eventually.  One gave me my fastest ever loco hauled ride, 114mph sustained from Cholesy/Mouslford to Pangbourne, and in a mk1 CK at that!

[RJS1977]

7 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Wasn't that a similar story to when the Royal Scots were sent over to the Great Central.

 

No shed was ever going to part with their best locos unless they had something even better to replace them with.

 

I've also heard that Bath Road tended not to put their best locos on inter-regional workings, as the LMR would keep them and send their worst ones back! 

 

Similarly the same source has told me that the Warships on the Waterloo-Exeter service suffered because the Western and Southern regions each thought the other was maintaining them....

[The Johnster]

16 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

  7 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Wasn't that a similar story to when the Royal Scots were sent over to the Great Central.

I think that by the time the Scots went to the GCR sheds they were pretty much all circling the drain anyway.  Like the souped up Kings on the WR, the rebuilt locos were given improvementsr that made them very fast and powerful machines (if you could hold on; the ride was famously bad) that had proven too much for their frames to cope with and were well on the way to shaking themselves to bits.  They were pretty much all bags of nails by that time.

[Northmoor]

1 minute ago, The Johnster said:

I think that by the time the Scots went to the GCR sheds they were pretty much all circling the drain anyway.  Like the souped up Kings on the WR, the rebuilt locos were given improvementsr that made them very fast and powerful machines (if you could hold on; the ride was famously bad) that had proven too much for their frames to cope with and were well on the way to shaking themselves to bits.  They were pretty much all bags of nails by that time.

It also seems to have been documented that the A3s on the GCML were the roughest of the class.

[cheesysmith]

You have to remember that until OfQ (what a stupid name that was) came along, we may have had the business sectors, but everything was organised through the regions. And when the BTC was disbanded, along with the RE, and the BR board came into being, the regions carried on as separate entities. The modernisation plan, coupled with closer control from headquarters, was a missed chance to change the way things worked. Instead we had each region the main sponsor of each loco design, and until the 47, no true nation standard diesel loco.

 

A classic example was the number of locos needed was based on a area, by taking the number of steam locos, then assume the diesels would do the work of X steam to give the numbers of diesels needed. Even before beaching, there was savings to be had that reduced the numbers needed. Exchange sidings were becoming extinct, with direct trains between main marshalling yards.

 

A better idea would have been to look at the work there, figure out what work was going to be kept long enough to justify the cost of the diesels, and order them by traffic needs, not depot needs. More standard locos would also mean more through workings, less changing locos at regional boundaries. Also, a better central control cold have resulted in a different network than what we have now. A local example, between Chesterfield and Leister, the GC should have been kept and used for the passenger services, with links to the old LMS lines, with all the slow freights kept to the ex LMS lines. Every time I travel over both halves of the preserved GC I keep thinking how much better would this straight line between the major population centres have been rather than the old, wanders it way round every little hill ex MR line we have now as the midland main line.

[Davexoc]

8 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

It would be interesting to know what those availabilities were and how they compared with the LMR’s. It seems extraordinary that there was no communication or input from the LMR - ten years before the regions often appeared to operate as if they were still separate companies but it’s surprising this was still happening in the mid 70s.

 

The regions were still seperate companies so to speak in the early 80s. Some of the LMR 47s that came through OC were in an appalling state, so it was commonplace to return them one trip to somewhere on the home region. The regions at that time were still financialy accountable for their own maintenance budgets, so WR wasn't going to splash out much on a foreign loco.

 

Same goes for the 50s which at that time were running out of Waterloo, the SR would send them back. I once had one that after charging the batteries wouldn't turn-over. Turned out two cylinders, one on each bank had developed water leaks, and the resulting hydraulic forces of trying to compress water had bent the conrods on both. The reported flat batteries from the SR was a bit of an understatment.....

[cheesysmith]

It wasn't only locos but also p-way and train crew that could be used more efficiently if it wasn't for the regional "kingdoms".  The only thing "OfQ" did right was finally allow BR to know how much it cost to run the network.

 

Must have been the accountant wet dream at HQ.

 

Then you had the odd facts like the most expensive lines to run were the ones with the biggest subsidy. If BR wasn't allowed to close a line, usually because of political opposition, they were then paid to keep running it. So instead of using the little monies they had to modernise them, any investment went to lines without PSO grants, and those lines became frozen in time. Why spend the limited investment on resignalling them when somebody else is paying?

[MidlandRed]

1 hour ago, cheesysmith said:

It wasn't only locos but also p-way and train crew that could be used more efficiently if it wasn't for the regional "kingdoms".  The only thing "OfQ" did right was finally allow BR to know how much it cost to run the network.

 

Must have been the accountant wet dream at HQ.

 

Then you had the odd facts like the most expensive lines to run were the ones with the biggest subsidy. If BR wasn't allowed to close a line, usually because of political opposition, they were then paid to keep running it. So instead of using the little monies they had to modernise them, any investment went to lines without PSO grants, and those lines became frozen in time. Why spend the limited investment on resignalling them when somebody else is paying?

Prior to the setting up of BR Workshops as a result of the Transport Act, 1962, they were also part of the regional ‘kingdoms’ as you describe them - they had far more power at that time. Goodness knows how inefficient that could be, and potentially subject to regions developing and getting authorised work to keep their particular works busy. There were certain glaring examples of this that apparently astonished the Chairman of BTC and others (RE). 

Edited November 5, 2021 by MidlandRed

[TheSignalEngineer]

22 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Why would anyone do anything different? The Western Region would have sent their worst DH's if they had to send them elsewhere for reuse.

Class 43 to Bescot?

[Mark Saunders]

9 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

Prior to the setting up of BR Workshops as a result of the Transport Act, 1962, they were also part of the regional ‘kingdoms’ as you describe them - they had far more power at that time. Goodness knows how inefficient that could be, and potentially subject to regions developing and getting authorised work to keep their particular works busy. There were certain glaring examples of this that apparently astonished the Chairman of BTC and others (RE). 

Once again judging yesterday by today’s methods!

 

Just enough for the trains that are booked to run and no scope for additional holiday traffic or additional freight services and no terminals to handle it as the land was sold off!

[MidlandRed]

2 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

Once again judging yesterday by today’s methods!

Yes times (and traffic) were different but the main issue to be dealt with was a massive loss across BR. I was merely pointing out the potential (and apparent) lack of focus on costs which a regional responsibility for works could create. There are stacks of examples, such as why did an overhaul of the same class of loco at x works cost significantly more than the same class at y and z works; why were certain modifications ever carried out when the impact was marginal if not actually indiscernible; and why were certain classes even built when the service life was sometimes measured in a couple of years or so. The potential was that as well as a steam based operation, a plethora of loss making lines with virtually no passengers, pilot scheme (in the case of some classes), the issues mentioned above and the class 50 transfer which started this discussion about regions all cost money (and a lot of it in some cases). 
 

In comparison the Peaks seem to have been a reliable and probably cost effective purchase by BR. 
 

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by MidlandRed

[MidlandRed]

2 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Class 43 to Bescot?

Some of the 43s (and 14s) had been identified by WR in the first NTP as surplus and put up for inter-regional transfer - ER took the surplus 14s for Hull - there were no takers for the 43s. They were allocated to 81A for the revised (post WCML electrification) Paddington to Bham New Street service - some appear to have been allocated for a very short time to D02 (Birmingham Division) and were common sights at Bescot and Tyseley during that short period that 43s were used in that way - they seemed to be used occasionally on other trains in the West Midlands and further afield - 1968 I think. 

 

This arrangement didn’t last very long (maybe one timetable) - the couple of locos allocated at D02 quickly reverted to 81A but until the services went back to class 47, class 43s appeared, generally in ones and twos at Bescot/Tyseley (refuel and minor exams?). IIRC it was generally the lower numbered of the class (eg D833 etc) which were involved usually. I once saw three running light engine together (all under power) at Perry Barr North Junction, presumably running to Bescot (one each maroon, green and BFYE) - oh for a camera!!!! The green one was D845 - didn’t this one gave an unusual small yellow panel at one time? 

Edited November 5, 2021 by MidlandRed

[Phil Bullock]

8 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

Some of the 43s (and 14s) had been identified by WR in the first NTP as surplus and put up for inter-regional transfer - ER took the surplus 14s for Hull - there were no takers for the 43s. They were allocated to 81A for the revised (post WCML electrification) Paddington to Bham New Street service - some appear to have been allocated for a very short time to D02 (Birmingham Division) and were common sights at Bescot and Tyseley during that short period that 43s were used in that way - they seemed to be used occasionally on other trains in the West Midlands and further afield - 1968 I think. 

 

This arrangement didn’t last very long (maybe one timetable) - the couple of locos allocated at D02 quickly reverted to 81A but until the services went back to class 47, class 43s appeared, generally in ones and twos at Bescot/Tyseley (refuel and minor exams?). IIRC it was generally the lower numbered of the class (eg D833 etc) which were involved usually. I once saw three running light engine together (all under power) at Perry Barr North Junction, presumably running to Bescot (one each maroon, green and BFYE) - oh for a camera!!!! The green one was D845 - didn’t this one gave an unusual small yellow panel at one time? 

Yes D845 had SYP just around headcode boxes with white cab roof front as an early experiment. The NBL Warships (Class 43) were on the Padd -Worcester - Herefords from April 68 and there were still two workings … evening van trains from Worcester …. That brought them up to the West Midlands…. Plus a 3 coach SuO passenger from Hereford. Saw them all at Worcester except D840 which I copped on my first visit to Bescot. 

[Rugd1022]

31 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

Some of the 43s (and 14s) had been identified by WR in the first NTP as surplus and put up for inter-regional transfer - ER took the surplus 14s for Hull - there were no takers for the 43s. They were allocated to 81A for the revised (post WCML electrification) Paddington to Bham New Street service - some appear to have been allocated for a very short time to D02 (Birmingham Division) and were common sights at Bescot and Tyseley during that short period that 43s were used in that way - they seemed to be used occasionally on other trains in the West Midlands and further afield - 1968 I think. 

 

This arrangement didn’t last very long (maybe one timetable) - the couple of locos allocated at D02 quickly reverted to 81A but until the services went back to class 47, class 43s appeared, generally in ones and twos at Bescot/Tyseley (refuel and minor exams?). IIRC it was generally the lower numbered of the class (eg D833 etc) which were involved usually. I once saw three running light engine together (all under power) at Perry Barr North Junction, presumably running to Bescot (one each maroon, green and BFYE) - oh for a camera!!!! The green one was D845 - didn’t this one gave an unusual small yellow panel at one time? 

 

That triple sighting at Perry Barr would have been the holy grail of Warship shots had you had a camera to hand that day! As well as floating around the West Mids they also had a daylight turn to Shrewsbury and Crewe, yet so far not a single photo of this has emerged.