Why is this so rarely modelled?

[Pacific231G]

I was a teenager in the 1960s and using most of my pocket money to buy day returns to see and experience as much as possible while I still could- we also had a very active railway club at my school- and then when I went to college and starting work before I had a car using the railways a lot to get around the country. Although there probably was more variety than at almost any time with many branches still open, still some pick up goods to places like Witney and new things like diesels and fast electrics starting to appear, I remember it as a very depressing period with far more being lost than gained. In Britain railways really did seem to be regarded as an obsolete Victorian technology that apart from a few specialist services had no real future. The impression, rightly or wrongly, was that the job of senior railway management was to manage their orderly decline rather than to work really hard to find new opportunities and the morale of railway workers was incredibly low. The railways were rapidly losing their role as a universal transport system but hadn't yet found a new role and one of my strongest memories from that period was travelling to Woodford Halse on a Wednesday afternoon on a steam hauled train full of country people going home from Banbury market day. A few months later the line closed and that was the sort of thing with the railways part of people's everyday lives that seemed to be fast disappearing. On the Western Region, which was mostly what I was seeing, new hope didn't really kick in until the first HSTs appeared and you could then see some optimism starting to reappear. Even then the idea that by the turn of the century passenger numbers would be over a billion a year would have seemed unbelievable.

 

I think Britain was unusual in that the transition from steam coincided with a massive decline in the role of railways (though that was probably also true for passenger services in the US during their 1950s transition) so the two came to be associated with an overall sense of loss. In the rest of Europe the end of steam came some time before the "rationalisation" of services so didn't have the same bad associations and in any case the transition was far more measured.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Pacific231G

[Guest Max Stafford]

In a sense, what happened to the railways was a foretaste of what was to come for so much of the fabric of Britain outside the south east in the next 20-30 years. Perhaps many of those of you who were old enough and with the right savvy saw it as a warning, which is why so many of you are conversing with us here from other parts of the world.

 

Dave.

[coachmann]

Even bombed out Manchester and surrounding towns I remember seeing of the late 1940s and early 1950s looked better with busy stations and thriving goods yards than the desolation that overtook BR in the final days before the last fires were dropped.

 

However, I suppose an 8 to 10 years old lad on getting his first sight of BR in 1967-8 must have been equally fascinated by the rusting hulks leaking steam from every gland and catching sight of the diesels freshly out of shiops in blue and yellow.

Edited February 26, 2012 by coachmann

[The Stationmaster]

Latterday folk say the end of steam looked fascinating. Once proud ex.GWR engines with nameplates missing and white scrawled numbers on patches where the cabside number plate used to be? Hardly fascinating.

Quite true Coach - it really was a dismally horrible time once name and number plates vanished - seemed to emphasise the by then common all-over filth even more and such a drastic change over no more than about 3 years. I simply stopped taking any notice of engines and concentrated on signals.

[Steven B]

Latterday folk say the end of steam looked fascinating. Once proud ex.GWR engines with nameplates missing and white scrawled numbers on patches where the cabside number plate used to be? Hardly fascinating.

 

I disagree. Seeing locos looking long past their best is far more fascinating than seeing one train after another being haulled by very similar looking locos all painted in the same colours.

 

Many people grumble about the lack of variety with todays railways but to a certain extent the GWR were for-runners of it. Due to using common parts many of the locos looked very similar to each other and they were all painted in the same basic colour - green with copper bits fitted to the top.

 

Towards the end of the 60s you had the last days of steam - all looking sad I agree but much more interesting and challenging to model as a result. There's still a few of the early diesels hanging on whilst the more successful designs were running along side the newer class 47 and 50s. Much of the steam era way of operating was still going strong. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me!

 

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.

[Bob Reid]

However, I suppose an 8 to 10 years old lad on getting his first sight of BR in 1967-8 must have been equally fascinated by the rusting hulks leaking steam from every gland and catching sight of the diesels freshly out of shiops in blue and yellow.

 

I was Larry (9-10 year old).... However I still don't remember much in blue & yellow or blue & grey then! It was another couple years for that - and (for all my love of post WWII ScR steam, and couldn't escape the pull of the "new order" (I'd call it Modern Image but PennineMC might get a bit upset) despite the predominant green/black/marron that was still around. Would I mix those era's Jim? No I'm afraid not, my brain says blue & grey coaches with steam, are just plain wrong - though clearly it was quite right! In 1974, I went to work in a place where everything got painted Rail Blue - including furniture & fittings (down to Trap3) and even the labourers barrow - so I'd suggest it's all my brains fault!

[coachmann]

 

I disagree. Seeing locos looking long past their best is far more fascinating than seeing one train after another being haulled by very similar looking locos all painted in the same colours.

 

Many people grumble about the lack of variety with todays railways but to a certain extent the GWR were for-runners of it. Due to using common parts many of the locos looked very similar to each other and they were all painted in the same basic colour - green with copper bits fitted to the top.

 

Towards the end of the 60s you had the last days of steam - all looking sad I agree but much more interesting and challenging to model as a result. There's still a few of the early diesels hanging on whilst the more successful designs were running along side the newer class 47 and 50s. Much of the steam era way of operating was still going strong. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me!

 

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.

Were you there or did all this appear in a nightmare...?

[jonny777]

 

I disagree. Seeing locos looking long past their best is far more fascinating than seeing one train after another being haulled by very similar looking locos all painted in the same colours.

 

<snip>

 

 

 

But you have hit the point here, although unintentionally I fear. The locos may have looked long past their best, but many were in their prime. 9Fs looking unkempt and uncared for was not fascinating in 1966/7 as most had worked for less than 10 years (and there are many other classes which fared little better) but had cost quite a lot of money to build in the late 1950s.

 

Imagine Virgin withdrawing the Pendolinos this year because some new replacement was being built. That is what it amounts to, and in fact many Pendos have probably worked for longer (in years) than certain standard class steam locos did.

['CHARD]

The locos may have looked long past their best, but many were in their prime. 9Fs looking unkempt and uncared for was not fascinating in 1966/7 as most had worked for less than 10 years (and there are many other classes which fared little better) but had cost quite a lot of money to build in the late 1950s.

 

 

If I may, I think what makes it particularly fascinating is precisely this. It's sad, but inevitable, when things are withdrawn at their expected lifespan. It's fascinating when something interrupts this to cause a huge, jarring change. Dare I say, an Ending.

 

James Dean, Richey Edwards, Marilyn Monroe, Dylan Thomas, Kurt Cobain, Diana Spencer, John Lennon, Sid Vicious, Amy Winehouse - fascinating? Probably.

 

Status Quo, Rolling Stones, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Elton John, Manic Street Preachers, Frank Carson, HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother...? Hmmm...

Edited February 26, 2012 by 'CHARD

[The Stationmaster]

Were you there or did all this appear in a nightmare...?

This is of course an acid test - seeing it was a lot different from hearing about it later and seeing pics of it. A steam engine in good working order was a very much more exciting thing to see in action that one in poor condition with steam leaking from numerous places where it shouldn't have been leaking. I don't go on the high-polished appearance of much of today's mainline steam because workaday locos were rarely in that condition (with possible exception of Top Shed's finest and the Liverpool St pilots?) but the railway was a different place when locos were at least properly maintained and had even occasional cleaning attention.

 

All that gradually faded away with what struck me as sudden change as the final rundown moved around the country. We lost the railway where there was a mixture of 'well cleaned' and 'distinctly grubby', plus all shades in between, and finished up with almost everything that was left running covered in filth. But that again varied around the country and it changed over a short period with immense variety at the beginning to a far less interesting mix as the end neared.

 

I never particularly liked BR's 'blue period' although it was that bit better when steam was around. But it wasn't half as good as travelling behind an outside framed 4-4-0 on a service train and to then find yourself looking at brand shiny new a.c. electric locos (in a very nice shade of blue) barely a couple of hours later only to be disappointed by not travelling behind one but getting instead a very clean Black 5 - that went like the wind. That was, for me, BR's most magical period of change.

[PLD]

Two thoughts come to mind:

 

Firstly in life in general there is an aversion to change, particularly when it is seen as change for the worse, so perhaps that leads to reluctance to model those times despite them actually offering the widest variety of types and livery combiniations and a legitimate reason for some odd-ball combinations. It's not just 1968/9 that is rarely modelled; you don't often see 1923/4 modelled or 1948/9 - its either pre-WW1, the 1930s or the 1950s/early 60s you see most of...

 

Secondly there is a tendency to think of neat cut-off dates. Despite the impression the average model railway show gives, not all locos and coaches were painted blue/grey overnight on 1st January 1970 nor were all LNWR coaches painted LMS crimson overnight on 1 January 1923. A viewer once got quite upset by us running a rake of ex-LNWR coaches in a mix of LNWR and LMS livery on a layout set c1925-28!

[Captain Kernow]

I would gladly model the 'end of steam' era in the North West, if I had the time to do so, once I had got the S&D, Midland and Forest of Dean projects that I want to do first, out of the way!

 

If I had any concrete evidence that blue/grey coaches ran over the S&D at the very end, I would happily include one or two in my consists....however...

 

The late 1960s/early 1970s is what I do remember most clearly from childhood 'spotting' days. I do remember the end of steam on the W.R. (living in Bath), but at the time and in my youth I didn't realise it was ending (nor did I understand how special the S&D was until it had been closed a year)...

 

It was only when steam had gone from my home area, without my really noticing it, that I really began to miss it. However, there were plenty of diesels to spot at the time.

 

I do have a very strong childhood memory from the mid-1960s, of family outings that took us through Midford and under the viaduct. Being very young, I didn't realise at the time what line it was, but I do remember that every time we went that way, I would look up, hoping to see the Blue Pullman passing overhead!....

 

When corporate blue had become firmly established, and the last of the green and maroon hydraulics had mostly been painted blue themselves, my schoolfriends and I would long for something a bit different. We day-dreamed about Brush Type 4s (to use the proper term at the time) in maroon, for example. Yet, once different and diverse liveries began to become established, I found myself looking back at the corporate blue era with increasing nostalgia - how peverse that seems!

 

I agree with those that remind us that the post-steam railway retained much of the Victorian-era infrastructure. This actually remained the case in many areas for even longer than that. I remember when I started my career with BR in 1981, that there was still a lot left, especially in terms of mechanical signalling and sheer amount of 'trackage', for example on the B&H line, Westbury area, Taunton to Totnes and Cornwall, all places I had begun to visit for training purposes.

 

I now maintain that many of the current revival schemes simply wouldn't have happened under the old B.R., certainly not in the same way as they have done under privatisation. Whatever else you think about privatisation, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that one key development in bringing about revival/reopening schemes is the ability to put a value to train delays. It was on this basis alone that the middle platform at Taunton was reopened in the late 1990s, for example.

[Oldddudders]

I agree with those that remind us that the post-steam railway retained much of the Victorian-era infrastructure.

 

SNIP

 

I now maintain that many of the current revival schemes simply wouldn't have happened under the old B.R., certainly not in the same way as they have done under privatisation. Whatever else you think about privatisation, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that one key development in bringing about revival/reopening schemes is the ability to put a value to train delays.

Agree 100% on both counts. Euston, which had received a complete station rebuild in the late '60s, still had a basically steam-era layout until the Millenium - there was still an office on the end of one high-numbered platform called the "Engine Arranger's Office". Since the DVTs arrived in 1986(?) there had been little need to run round or arrange engines!

 

I am forever being cheered by news that this line is being re-opened, or that station rebuilt. I always quote Trent Valley 4-tracking as a scheme that BR might never have got to. Would we have had Pendolinos? 66s? And the passengers are there, too, so this is not folly. All very pleasing.

[jonny777]

I take the point about the aversion to change, but it was happening throughout the 20th century on the railways. Old locos and other stock were cut up and new ones built. Highly un-renumerative stations and lines were closed well before the Modernisation Plan and Beeching.

 

However, it was the pace of the change between 1958 and 1968 that disturbed many people.

 

Most went along with it because we were told that the space age was almost upon us, when colonies would be set up on the moon, everyone would fly around in jet cars and robots would do all the boring stuff like cooking and cleaning.

 

It was not helped by the fact that certain diesel classes (that less than 10 years earlier had been described as the future) quickly went the same way as the almost new steam locomotives they had replaced.

 

All this, and the ever increasing BR loss despite all the rationalisation, tended to make the railways a laughing stock in the late 60s. I think for these reasons, the people who do model that era are unlikely to be those who were adults when it happened.

[coachmann]

Firstly in life in general there is an aversion to change, particularly when it is seen as change for the worse,

It's only human......Ive yet to meet the person who says he is looking forward to a deterioration of circumstances. The folk around in the 1960's weren't numpties.

Secondly there is a tendency to think of neat cut-off dates.

This is not suprising once you start studying railway history. The LMS in 1923 wasn't the LMS of 1927 wasn't the LMS of 1930 wasn't the LMS of 1933 and so it goes. Get it wrong and you've got anomolies. I reckon that at no time in steam history can one model a timespan of more than a 2 - 3 years and remain historically accurate.

[beast66606]

We were happy to model the run down

 

['CHARD]

All this, and the ever increasing BR loss despite all the rationalisation, tended to make the railways a laughing stock in the late 60s. I think for these reasons, the people who do model that era are unlikely to be those who were adults when it happened.

 

There may be something in this, although laughing stock may be a bit harsh - poor relation, Cinderella, albatross perhaps, in the perception of some, not all...

 

I think the sugar on Beeching's medicine (for all his faults), the Modern 'Corporate' Image, was an intention to nail the colours of progress firmly to the mast. Don't forget that in parallel on the WCML, while steam was evaporating, a polished new train set was linking bold new stations such as Piccadilly, New Street and Euston as a real statement of intent (we can park the brutalist architecture debate for now), under the 25kV knitting.

 

Had I been an adult then, working on the LMR (or at Laira, Tinsley, any bespoke TMD, Freightliner terminal, or connected to one of the huge New Yards) I would have had no hesitation in modelling that era. We tend to deny that there was a brave new world being spliced-in. I am NO apologist for the Doctor, but possibly the outlook as '68 dawned was rather brighter than when '63 had. After all, post-'68 there would be only a couple of significant closures...

 

 

EDIT: (because I forgot this bit) a railway fragmented into a hundred component parts, costing way more (after indexing) than its integrated predecessor, that is vilified for 'leaves on the line,' fat-cat bonuses and cartoon colour schemes that change every couple of years to no discernible user benefit would, in my view, lend itself to laughing stock accusations. Not the sixties.

Edited February 27, 2012 by 'CHARD

[coachmann]

Interesting picture there Beast. That neatly painted bus in the background would, in a few years time, be taken over by a Passenger Transport Executive or the National Bus Company and it was goodbye tradition colour schemes, hello garrish greens, orange, poppy red, blue, or all over whitewash. This was the bus enthusiasts equivalent of 1968, which led to much preservation. It wasnt just the railways that were affected by oblique changes of direction.

 

Chard :

I am NO apologist for the Doctor, but possibly the outlook as '68 dawned was rather brighter than when '63 had.

1963 dawned well in many areas of the country with "life as normal" on what was still virtually a steam railway in most areas, but the dawn of 1968 would not bring back the Gresley and Peppercord Pacifics to Kings Cross, the Castles to Paddington, the Manors to the Cambrian Coast route, the Duchesses, Scots and Jubilees to Euston, and so-on. Edited February 27, 2012 by coachmann

[Michael Delamar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iolkD64NxeM

['CHARD]

1963 dawned well in many areas of the country with "life as normal" on what was still virtually a steam railway in most areas, but the dawn of 1968 would not bring back the Gresley and Peppercord Pacifics to Kings Cross, the Castles to Paddington, the Manors to the Cambrian Coast route, the Duchesses, Scots and Jubilees to Euston, and so-on.

 

I recognise that Coach, but what I'm suggesting is that if 1963 - 68 was the duration of a touch-and-go lifesaving operation, then the patient was very unwell at the start of it (admittedly they were a far more interesting person); whilst the infamous Report hadn't been issued by then, the signs must have been ominous.

 

By '68 the surgery was pretty much complete, and the patient's survival was - as history tells us - assured (except for a handful of lines and the tail end of steam - hence the poignancy of the original OP).

[coachmann]

By '68 the surgery was pretty much complete, and the patient's survival was - as history tells us - assured

I think he is an imposter. Many of us had walked away and left the patient to die..........

[The Stationmaster]

 

If I had any concrete evidence that blue/grey coaches ran over the S&D at the very end, I would happily include one or two in my consists....however...

Have a look at the 'Letters' page in the March issue of 'Brill' - it doesn't give that information but there is a quite long letter from someone whose name you might possibly recognise (and who might still be working at Swindon?) who would seem to be very genned up on the latter days of the S&DJtR.

[Ravenser]

Two thoughts come to mind:

 

Firstly in life in general there is an aversion to change, particularly when it is seen as change for the worse, so perhaps that leads to reluctance to model those times despite them actually offering the widest variety of types and livery combiniations and a legitimate reason for some odd-ball combinations. It's not just 1968/9 that is rarely modelled; you don't often see 1923/4 modelled or 1948/9 - its either pre-WW1, the 1930s or the 1950s/early 60s you see most of...

 

Secondly there is a tendency to think of neat cut-off dates. Despite the impression the average model railway show gives, not all locos and coaches were painted blue/grey overnight on 1st January 1970 nor were all LNWR coaches painted LMS crimson overnight on 1 January 1923. A viewer once got quite upset by us running a rake of ex-LNWR coaches in a mix of LNWR and LMS livery on a layout set c1925-28!

 

Photographic evidence suggests that there were still quite a few wagons carrying pre grouping lettering as late as 1929-30. Locos presumably were repainted quite quickly, but coaches are an interesting question . Identifying coaches on the LMS still in Midland livery or on the LNER still in GN teak in photos o be nearly impossible . The NBR , NER and GE were using red on coaching stock just before the grouping - but decent shots of secondary services in the 1920s are almost certainly very rare, so we might not see this in photos, and it may not be obvious that the coach is all over red not dark teak . Two tone coaches on the LMS and SR and monotone coaches on the GW would be an indicator of unrepainted pregrouping stock

[The Stationmaster]

Film '1967'

Be not misled by the date in the title some of the locos appearing in that film had been turned into razor blades long before 1967 dawned.

[Steven B]

But you have hit the point here, although unintentionally I fear. The locos may have looked long past their best, but many were in their prime. 9Fs looking unkempt and uncared for was not fascinating in 1966/7 as most had worked for less than 10 years (and there are many other classes which fared little better) but had cost quite a lot of money to build in the late 1950s.

 

 

But that's the whole point. Seeing locos less than ten years old looking uncared for and as though they're about to fall appart is sad, but to me at least it makes them much more interesting as a result.

 

It's an interesting period of railway history if you can get over the trauma of loosing well loved locomotives. The two need separating. Just because something might be thought of as being bad doesn't make it any less interesting - just look at history where death and destruction are studied much more than the nicer time.

 

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.