Bulleid's Leader: could it have even been successful?

[Kelly]

The GE Cooper-Bessemer based engines from the 50's through to the late 80's are all four stoke as were ALCo engines.  GMD/EMD power units (Classes 59. 66 and 67) are two stoke.

 

Julian Sprott

 

I knew it was one or the other, I just misremembered from recently reading the Diesel Hydraulic vs Diesel Electric book.

 

If Leaders had come into use, with just a driver in the cab and a fireman elsewhere, it might have set an interesting precedent when it came to double manning diesel engines (or not).

 

The Southern Railway already had problems with the unions on their hands as early as 1941/2 with CC1/20001. The union disputes over single/double manning didn't end until BR had taken over, and even then still weren't fully resolved for a time.

[runs as required]

The Southern Railway already had problems with the unions on their hands as early as 1941/2 with CC1/20001...

Reading his son's book 'Master Builders of Steam OVSB is portrayed as a natural at winning over the loyalty of his shed staff in the manner of Fiennes or RH Hardy.

 

But I have to say that sadly OVSB gave me (admittedly a brash young twit in flares) a grumpy brush off when trying to approach him at Balzan, Malta in his retirement.in about 1966-57 hoping to learn more about that turf burner.

dh

 

PS

This is an interesting link It shews the range of the man's erudition

Edited July 1, 2017 by runs as required

[The Johnster]

We are wandering into the admittedly related territory of 'could steam have lasted longer than it did?  Probably, yes,  Even in my time on the railway in the 70s, there was a climate of 'modernisation at all and any cost, or at least appear to modernise' and 'cut, prune, rationalise, save money at all and any cost (!)'.  This was the product of over a decade in which, following the ousting of Riddles along with the rest of the 'old guard' in what was effectively an internal coup in the mid 50s, after which they were very much yesterday's men, anybody who wanted to make any sort of career for themselves in railway management had to toe the party line or pay the price; if you weren't a committed worshipper at the altar of diesel and electric power, and a slash and burner, you were sidelined.  Beeching is often blamed for this, and he indubitably made life easier for those with pruning shears, but he was a symptom and not the disease.

 

Something, apparently, had to be done.  The railway was, apparently, pumping out money to losses, and could not be allowed to continue in the way it was, which was why the government parachuted Beeching in.  It now appears that, according to some methods of accounting, the situation was not as bad as it seemed, but nobody knew that at the time.   The party line was that the last Great White Hopes of the steam era, Bullied and Riddles, had failed publicly and were moved on to where they could no longer embarrass anyone, Bullied after the Leader debacle and Riddles after the failure of Diuke of Gloucester, a loco now exonerated by preservationists;.   In the early 60s, even before Beeching was called in, the Western and Eastern regions were in a race to eliminate steam first which almost left the Western without enough engines that worked to run it's timetable; sheds allocated a new diesel were required to send 3 steam locos of comparable use in for withdrawal, because a diesel could work for 24 hours at a time and a steam engine could only do an 8 hour shift before it ran out of coal.  

 

Anyone who doubts this need only remember the extreme hostility from BR faced by early preservationists who wanted to save steam locos and run them on preserved railways; it was almost a matter of sneaking the locos away before management were aware of what was going on in some cases, and in other cases one could dispense with the 'almost'.  BR were a bit more circumspect when dealing with the likes of Alan Pegler or Bill McAlpine, who dealt with them at board level and were treated differently, but many of those involved in preservation in the mid or late 60s have a different story to tell, and they're not making it up!  Or consider the many cases of closed lines ripped up and the land sold off as quickly as possible so that there was no chance of restoration of services in the future, a policy we are now paying dearly for,  There was a public perception that the future was about cars and motorways; it seems odd that the railway shared this to a large extent!  

 

The men I worked with in the early 70s were demoralised and uncertain of their futures; the railway that they had been proud to be a part of 2 decades before had been decimated and most of their mates were redundant.  Pride in the job was at a low ebb, what was the point?  Most had had enough, and were looking for the right voluntary redundancy deal as soon as possible.  Profitable traffic was dwindling in real time, either lost to the roads because BR didn't want to be bothered with it (livestock, milk, wagonload freight, pigeons, anything that couldn't run as a bulk point to point service), or due to colliery and factory closures..  They'd seen branch lines deliberately run down, timetables devised to make connections just miss, fare and rates structures deliberately devised to discourage traffic.  Some traffic was diminishing anyway as 'traditional' mineral and manufacturing 'downsized' (amazing how many euphemisms for shutting down there were), so it was difficult to pin down exactly what was happening, but it was happening in front of their eyes.

 

This attitude lasted until the introduction of the HST, a magnificent achievement sneaked in under the radar of the slash and burners who'd been distracted by the APT (not a complete failure, by the way, the body-suspended traction motors driving axles through UV joints used by all such trains worldwide was pioneered on it).  This did what a new train was not supposed to do in those days; it generated traffic!  It dawned on people, gradually and arguably not quickly enough, that the road transport model wasn't sustainable or affordable when the long game was played, and that railways had room for expansion.  The rest, as they say, is geography, or some such...

 

Steam was doomed in 1948, and no amount of success by Leader could have changed that in anything but the smallest way.  Riddles' idea was to keep steam until 1980, and his locos were designed with that in mind, by which time the trunk and busy suburban routes were to be electrified and the rest could run on diesel.  The 1955 modernisation plan seemed to recognise that, in Britain where everyone wants a Pullman service for a 3rd class off-peak fare and nobody was willing to stomach the cost of the sort of electrification investment that was normal in continental Europe, diesels were going to have to be a post 1980 stop gap, but the climate was to bring that date forward as far and fast as could be done; 8th August 1968, in the event.  It is of course, true, that we were broke and in hock to the Americans in 1948 and many years to come as a result of saving the free world from Hitler; no good deed ever goes unpunished and we had to give up the Empire and accept that we were now a third rate nation.  But decades after that, there was still no appetite for electrification and even now it is a shaky progress.  The shadow of George Hudson's demolition of middle class savings is long and cold in the UK.

 

Most people agree nowadays, with 20/20 hindsight, that the introduction of diesel to replace steam after 1955 was badly managed, prone to government interference, and hobbled by treasury purse-string manipulation.  An example is the order of 50 otherwise superfluous DP2 type English Electric type 4s to run double headed in order speed up the WCML after the Weaver Jc-Glasgow electrification was postponed, because the Brush type 4s were incapable of running in multiple, but that does not mean that we would have had Duchesses on the WCML until 1974.  A better managed steam withdrawal might have had some services still using steam in the 70s, as Riddles had envisaged, but not on trunk routes; the best way to do it was to select secondary routes and concentrate the locos on them, retaining the infrastructure.   Even the diesel-happy WR did this with the Worcester and Hereford service in the 60s.  Steam could have had a continued role where there were unfitted freight trains, especially South Wales and the North East, and maybe some freight routes with 9Fs, but it is unlikely that much would have lasted beyond, oh, let's say the 8th of August 1978.  Less money would have been wasted on unsuccessful diesel types, but that does not mean more would have been available for electrification schemes, not as long as the treasury had a say in matters...

 

In 1964, all the bridges on the Gwent levels between Cardiff and Newport were raised by 4 courses of bricks in anticipation of electrification in a few year's time; you can still, just, see where the bricks and rendering are newer.  Fortunately for those employed by NR to handle public relations as those bridges are closed for months on end in connection with the current electrification, this has been largely forgotten.

Edited July 1, 2017 by The Johnster

[Poggy1165]

It is often forgotten that in the 1950s (and even the 1960s to a lesser extent) the maintenance of full employment was a key government objective, with cross-party support. (There was not the modern attitude of "if it doesn't pay, shut it down and let the redundant workers sink or swim.")

 

The old railway workshops employed literally thousands of men, and many of them were located in areas where industry was in decline, and had been since the 1930s, despite various efforts to encourage development. These workshops (generally speaking) had neither the skills nor the equipment to do anything but build and maintain steam. (OK, Gorton, for example, assembled the Woodhead electrics, but you've only got to compare one of these babies to even the earliest of the 25kv locos to see that elements of steam engine technology were still in place. They were built like tanks and weighed God knows how many tons.)

 

The "way forward", which was eventually followed, was to close most of these places and establish far fewer workshops with up-to-date equipment and staff trained to work on electrics and diesels. Actually implementing this was (in Sir Humphrey language) a brave decision, and I believe the politicians chose to delay it as long as they possibly could.

[The Johnster]

It is often forgotten that in the 1950s (and even the 1960s to a lesser extent) the maintenance of full employment was a key government objective, with cross-party support. (There was not the modern attitude of "if it doesn't pay, shut it down and let the redundant workers sink or swim.")

 

The old railway workshops employed literally thousands of men, and many of them were located in areas where industry was in decline, and had been since the 1930s, despite various efforts to encourage development. These workshops (generally speaking) had neither the skills nor the equipment to do anything but build and maintain steam. (OK, Gorton, for example, assembled the Woodhead electrics, but you've only got to compare one of these babies to even the earliest of the 25kv locos to see that elements of steam engine technology were still in place. They were built like tanks and weighed God knows how many tons.)

 

The "way forward", which was eventually followed, was to close most of these places and establish far fewer workshops with up-to-date equipment and staff trained to work on electrics and diesels. Actually implementing this was (in Sir Humphrey language) a brave decision, and I believe the politicians chose to delay it as long as they possibly could.

 

The political desirability of full employment was indeed the perceived wisdom until the monetarist revolution of the Thatcher government, and monetarism has been the only game in town ever since.

[kevinlms]

We are wandering into the admittedly related territory of 'could steam have lasted longer than it did?  Probably, yes,  Even in my time on the railway in the 70s, there was a climate of 'modernisation at all and any cost, or at least appear to modernise' and 'cut, prune, rationalise, save money at all and any cost (!)'.  This was the product of over a decade in which, following the ousting of Riddles along with the rest of the 'old guard' in what was effectively an internal coup in the mid 50s, after which they were very much yesterday's men, anybody who wanted to make any sort of career for themselves in railway management had to toe the party line or pay the price; if you weren't a committed worshipper at the altar of diesel and electric power, and a slash and burner, you were sidelined.  Beeching is often blamed for this, and he indubitably made life easier for those with pruning shears, but he was a symptom and not the disease.

 

Something, apparently, had to be done.  The railway was, apparently, pumping out money to losses, and could not be allowed to continue in the way it was, which was why the government parachuted Beeching in.  It now appears that, according to some methods of accounting, the situation was not as bad as it seemed, but nobody knew that at the time.   The party line was that the last Great White Hopes of the steam era, Bullied and Riddles, had failed publicly and were moved on to where they could no longer embarrass anyone, Bullied after the Leader debacle and Riddles after the failure of Diuke of Gloucester, a loco now exonerated by preservationists;.   In the early 60s, even before Beeching was called in, the Western and Eastern regions were in a race to eliminate steam first which almost left the Western without enough engines that worked to run it's timetable; sheds allocated a new diesel were required to send 3 steam locos of comparable use in for withdrawal, because a diesel could work for 24 hours at a time and a steam engine could only do an 8 hour shift before it ran out of coal.  

 

Anyone who doubts this need only remember the extreme hostility from BR faced by early preservationists who wanted to save steam locos and run them on preserved railways; it was almost a matter of sneaking the locos away before management were aware of what was going on in some cases, and in other cases one could dispense with the 'almost'.  BR were a bit more circumspect when dealing with the likes of Alan Pegler or Bill McAlpine, who dealt with them at board level and were treated differently, but many of those involved in preservation in the mid or late 60s have a different story to tell, and they're not making it up!  Or consider the many cases of closed lines ripped up and the land sold off as quickly as possible so that there was no chance of restoration of services in the future, a policy we are now paying dearly for,  There was a public perception that the future was about cars and motorways; it seems odd that the railway shared this to a large extent!  

 

The men I worked with in the early 70s were demoralised and uncertain of their futures; the railway that they had been proud to be a part of 2 decades before had been decimated and most of their mates were redundant.  Pride in the job was at a low ebb, what was the point?  Most had had enough, and were looking for the right voluntary redundancy deal as soon as possible.  Profitable traffic was dwindling in real time, either lost to the roads because BR didn't want to be bothered with it (livestock, milk, wagonload freight, pigeons, anything that couldn't run as a bulk point to point service), or due to colliery and factory closures..  They'd seen branch lines deliberately run down, timetables devised to make connections just miss, fare and rates structures deliberately devised to discourage traffic.  Some traffic was diminishing anyway as 'traditional' mineral and manufacturing 'downsized' (amazing how many euphemisms for shutting down there were), so it was difficult to pin down exactly what was happening, but it was happening in front of their eyes.

 

This attitude lasted until the introduction of the HST, a magnificent achievement sneaked in under the radar of the slash and burners who'd been distracted by the APT (not a complete failure, by the way, the body-suspended traction motors driving axles through UV joints used by all such trains worldwide was pioneered on it).  This did what a new train was not supposed to do in those days; it generated traffic!  It dawned on people, gradually and arguably not quickly enough, that the road transport model wasn't sustainable or affordable when the long game was played, and that railways had room for expansion.  The rest, as they say, is geography, or some such...

 

Steam was doomed in 1948, and no amount of success by Leader could have changed that in anything but the smallest way.  Riddles' idea was to keep steam until 1980, and his locos were designed with that in mind, by which time the trunk and busy suburban routes were to be electrified and the rest could run on diesel.  The 1955 modernisation plan seemed to recognise that, in Britain where everyone wants a Pullman service for a 3rd class off-peak fare and nobody was willing to stomach the cost of the sort of electrification investment that was normal in continental Europe, diesels were going to have to be a post 1980 stop gap, but the climate was to bring that date forward as far and fast as could be done; 8th August 1968, in the event.  It is of course, true, that we were broke and in hock to the Americans in 1948 and many years to come as a result of saving the free world from Hitler; no good deed ever goes unpunished and we had to give up the Empire and accept that we were now a third rate nation.  But decades after that, there was still no appetite for electrification and even now it is a shaky progress.  The shadow of George Hudson's demolition of middle class savings is long and cold in the UK.

 

Most people agree nowadays, with 20/20 hindsight, that the introduction of diesel to replace steam after 1955 was badly managed, prone to government interference, and hobbled by treasury purse-string manipulation.  An example is the order of 50 otherwise superfluous DP2 type English Electric type 4s to run double headed in order speed up the WCML after the Weaver Jc-Glasgow electrification was postponed, because the Brush type 4s were incapable of running in multiple, but that does not mean that we would have had Duchesses on the WCML until 1974.  A better managed steam withdrawal might have had some services still using steam in the 70s, as Riddles had envisaged, but not on trunk routes; the best way to do it was to select secondary routes and concentrate the locos on them, retaining the infrastructure.   Even the diesel-happy WR did this with the Worcester and Hereford service in the 60s.  Steam could have had a continued role where there were unfitted freight trains, especially South Wales and the North East, and maybe some freight routes with 9Fs, but it is unlikely that much would have lasted beyond, oh, let's say the 8th of August 1978.  Less money would have been wasted on unsuccessful diesel types, but that does not mean more would have been available for electrification schemes, not as long as the treasury had a say in matters...

 

In 1964, all the bridges on the Gwent levels between Cardiff and Newport were raised by 4 courses of bricks in anticipation of electrification in a few year's time; you can still, just, see where the bricks and rendering are newer.  Fortunately for those employed by NR to handle public relations as those bridges are closed for months on end in connection with the current electrification, this has been largely forgotten.

A good overall summary, without the usual cry of 'its all the fault of the unions'. Fact is management & government/bureaucracy were way out their depth and come up with all sorts of white elephants. Examples include the likes of the Leader locos, the Fell diesel, mixed messages as to whether fitted vehicles were to be built or larger capacity wagons, huge marshalling yards - most of the latter used only a fraction of their capacity, before being closed.

 

Other major mistakes were that most mainline diesel locos were built as mixed traffic locos and so were not particularly good at hauling slow/heavy freight or express passenger trains. It took until the mid 1970s before diesel locos were built specifically for dedicated traffic, namely the HST's (for passengers, obviously) & Class 56 for freight. Since the coal industry was so significant (until recent times), why did it take so long before the MGR trains for baseload power stations, received properly designed locos, instead of nominally 95 mph machines (Class 47)?

 

I can remember reading in Rail magazine, about the debacle with the Bed-Pan electrification, where it took years of belated negotiation to get those trains operational. Apparently, management had overlooked the fact that OMO trains, would need mirrors and cameras, for the driver to check that the doors were clear, before they could leave, especially on curved platforms. Meanwhile the old 127 Class DMU's had been allowed to deteriorate, to the point that the service came close to failing.

 

As you suggested, lots of things had to change post 1948, however all parties, made a complete hash of it. The worst problem, was the sheer amount of money wasted, by being in such a hurry. In other words no organised plan, once the 1955 Modernisation Plan was bypassed. Large fleets of locos ordered, based not on performance/reliability, but by which salesmen claimed they could build the fleets, the fastest.

 

There was also the old chestnut, of stations being painted on a railway line. That being code for, the line was due for closure!

[slilley]

I knew it was one or the other, I just misremembered from recently reading the Diesel Hydraulic vs Diesel Electric book.

 

 

The Southern Railway already had problems with the unions on their hands as early as 1941/2 with CC1/20001. The union disputes over single/double manning didn't end until BR had taken over, and even then still weren't fully resolved for a time.

 

Very true. The negotiations between the SR and the two rail unions I covered in detail in my book on CC1 CC2 and 20003. It is quite amusing when WP Allen the Gen Sec of ASLEF took the Government shilling and went over to the newly nationalised railway and started negotiating from the other side of the fence.

[Kelly]

Very true. The negotiations between the SR and the two rail unions I covered in detail in my book on CC1 CC2 and 20003. It is quite amusing when WP Allen the Gen Sec of ASLEF took the Government shilling and went over to the newly nationalised railway and started negotiating from the other side of the fence.

 

Would that be the Southern Way special? that was where I was referring from having recently read it.

[Horsetan]

....There is a new Museum of Failure in Sweden.....

I heard about this on Radio 4. By all accounts, it's been a runaway success.

[The Johnster]

A good overall summary, without the usual cry of 'its all the fault of the unions'. Fact is management & government/bureaucracy were way out their depth and come up with all sorts of white elephants. Examples include the likes of the Leader locos, the Fell diesel, mixed messages as to whether fitted vehicles were to be built or larger capacity wagons, huge marshalling yards - most of the latter used only a fraction of their capacity, before being closed.

 

Other major mistakes were that most mainline diesel locos were built as mixed traffic locos and so were not particularly good at hauling slow/heavy freight or express passenger trains. It took until the mid 1970s before diesel locos were built specifically for dedicated traffic, namely the HST's (for passengers, obviously) & Class 56 for freight. Since the coal industry was so significant (until recent times), why did it take so long before the MGR trains for baseload power stations, received properly designed locos, instead of nominally 95 mph machines (Class 47)?

 

I can remember reading in Rail magazine, about the debacle with the Bed-Pan electrification, where it took years of belated negotiation to get those trains operational. Apparently, management had overlooked the fact that OMO trains, would need mirrors and cameras, for the driver to check that the doors were clear, before they could leave, especially on curved platforms. Meanwhile the old 127 Class DMU's had been allowed to deteriorate, to the point that the service came close to failing.

 

As you suggested, lots of things had to change post 1948, however all parties, made a complete hash of it. The worst problem, was the sheer amount of money wasted, by being in such a hurry. In other words no organised plan, once the 1955 Modernisation Plan was bypassed. Large fleets of locos ordered, based not on performance/reliability, but by which salesmen claimed they could build the fleets, the fastest.

 

There was also the old chestnut, of stations being painted on a railway line. That being code for, the line was due for closure!

 

On the Riverside Branch in Cardiff, the station was completely rebuilt and then closed a year later, presumably so that the bean counters could point to excessive expenditure on the line for which there was no possibility of return.  In the general slash and burn climate, this was easy to get away with.

Edited July 2, 2017 by The Johnster

[uax6]

I wonder what would have happened if the government of the day had spent the Marshall plan money on re-building the infrastructure of the country, rather than the government playing Empire.....

 

Andy G

[jjb1970]

You're not meant to mention the fact that we were the biggest recipient of Marshall Plan money but rather than using it to rebuild the country we squandered it, it calls into question that most cherished of all national myths - we won the war but lost the peace because everybody else's countries were rebuilt with American aid.

[Coryton]

Other major mistakes were that most mainline diesel locos were built as mixed traffic locos and so were not particularly good at hauling slow/heavy freight or express passenger trains. It took until the mid 1970s before diesel locos were built specifically for dedicated traffic, namely the HST's (for passengers, obviously) & Class 56 for freight. Since the coal industry was so significant (until recent times), why did it take so long before the MGR trains for baseload power stations, received properly designed locos, instead of nominally 95 mph machines (Class 47)?

 

Surely Deltics weren't intended as mixed traffic locomotives?

[The Johnster]

You're not meant to mention the fact that we were the biggest recipient of Marshall Plan money but rather than using it to rebuild the country we squandered it, it calls into question that most cherished of all national myths - we won the war but lost the peace because everybody else's countries were rebuilt with American aid.

 

We did win the war and lose the peace, but were probably going to anyway however much Marshall we'd got; the Empire was unsustainable with any sort of human rights regime in place.  We chose not to invest in 25kv railways like the French, Germans, and Italians did with their Marshall, and the Eastern Block did with their Russian equivalent.  We do not like spending money on railways!

[The Johnster]

I wonder what would have happened if the government of the day had spent the Marshall plan money on re-building the infrastructure of the country, rather than the government playing Empire.....

 

Andy G

We'd have had steam until at least the mid 70s and a largely electrified 25kv railway comparable to the Germans' and the French, possibly having built HS! and 2 20 years ago.  We didn't even start with proper high speed until after the Channel Tunnel was opened, and our progress is wobbly to say the least.

[rockershovel]

You're not meant to mention the fact that we were the biggest recipient of Marshall Plan money but rather than using it to rebuild the country we squandered it, it calls into question that most cherished of all national myths - we won the war but lost the peace because everybody else's countries were rebuilt with American aid.

It isn't that simple. Germany, for example, had not contracted huge debts for the delivery of war supplies of various kinds. The Americans never expected the USSR to repay them, and this was a well-founded expectation.

 

So I don't dispute that the British government of the day expended very large sums which it didn't have, in political projects (particularly East of Suez) which could never produce any worthwhile return, but it really isn't that simple.

[jjb1970]

It's also not as simple as saying the money was squandered on dreams of empire, the post war government also embarked on a fundamental reshaping of British industry and society.

[rockershovel]

It's also not as simple as saying the money was squandered on dreams of empire, the post war government also embarked on a fundamental reshaping of British industry and society.

So it did - the problem being, that unlike the similar project undertaken in Germany, it didn't work. The British never solved the problem of raising the overall level of education, particularly vocational education. They never solved the problem of a political elite which regarded the creators of wealth, as subordinates.

 

There was no "fundamental reshaping of industry and society" post 1945. The electorate voted for a pre-War concept of "much the same, but better"; of employment, social housing, and above all health care, famously described as "the nearest thing the English have, to a religion".

[runs as required]

I'm not quite sure which post-war governments we are talking of: Labour from 1945 to 1951, then Tory (with the return of an ailing Churchill) till 1964 - despite the 1956 Suez calamity.

 

There were far greater fiascos in terms of state encouraged industrial projects:

Who now remembers the Bristol Brabazon? Or the Princess flying boats, Blue Streak up at Spadeadam, BRM, even the Comet jet liner (as compared to the Boeing 707).

 

Someone above mentioned the Fell locomotive. I have posted on RMweb before that Col. Fell with his multi-engined geared locomotive was sponsored by Shell Mex and BP Ltd.

I know because my salesman dad was assigned the project within the company to pitch with Fell to BR engineers. I don't know who paid for it eventually, I recall it made a very unhealthy noise on New Mills viaduct on its trials north from Derby.

 

dh

[rockershovel]

I'm not quite sure which post-war governments we are talking of: Labour from 1945 to 1951, then Tory (with the return of an ailing Churchill) till 1964 - despite the 1956 Suez calamity.

 

There were far greater fiascos in terms of state encouraged industrial projects:

Who now remembers the Bristol Brabazon? Or the Princess flying boats, Blue Streak up at Spadeadam, BRM, even the Comet jet liner (as compared to the Boeing 707).

 

Someone above mentioned the Fell locomotive. I have posted on RMweb before that Col. Fell with his multi-engined geared locomotive was sponsored by Shell Mex and BP Ltd.

I know because my salesman dad was assigned the project within the company to pitch with Fell to BR engineers. I don't know who paid for it eventually, I recall it made a very unhealthy noise on New Mills viaduct on its trials north from Derby.

 

dh

There you go... it's much more productive to step aside from the Labour/Conservative POV and consider it as an ongoing process of government. The electorate voted for a "New Jerusalem" which was, in most respects, an extrapolation of the pre-War world. They embraced full employment and health care, but rejected the more ideological aspects of the Labour programme and voted in a Conservative administration (although there is every reason to believe that the 1950 Labour administration could have continued, in the light of experience)

 

The Comet was actually a pretty good aircraft, its later versions had long lives (especially the Nimrod) but it never recovered commercially from early problems resulting from pioneering new technology. There were various commercial deficiencies in the design, too; the luggage hatches were directly below, resulting in slow baggage handling, but most of all Boeing realised that "bigger was better" and if you offered a better aircraft, customers would rebuild their airfields to accommodate it.

[Nearholmer]

"The electorate voted for a "New Jerusalem" which was, in most respects, an extrapolation of the pre-War world."

 

You may be right that is was, in some respects, an extrapolation, but certainly none of the relevant generation in my family, and I suspect barely anyone else, saw it that way. They were crystal clear that they had voted Labour in 1945 because "we must never, ever, go back to the 'thirties".

 

Mine is a south of England family, but even there the memory of scratching around to find paying work, barely managing, having no realistic chance of schooling beyond fourteen, even if you were a clever stick, and, above all, not being able to afford medical care, was very raw indeed.

 

And, the Attlee Government delivered, in the sense that it crashed through a quite amazing amount of very fundamental legislation; education and housing were almost as important as health, and then there was nationalisation. Their record of Empire was a tad confused, though.

 

Which, in a way, emphasises that Government had their eyes on so many balls, that it is no wonder they left the detail of the railways to the BTC, along with ever-more-desperate pleas to "cut the losses, because we haven't got enough money to go round".

 

The industrial unrest that brewed-up on the railways by the mid-1950s was, in large part, because the BTC tried to cut costs by allowing wages to stagnate, because, without rapid capital investment, they didn't have a handle on how to reduce the wage bill any other way. In many ways, the whole b****y carry-on was repeated in the late-1970s and early-1980s, when railway wages were suppressed, building-up resentment, which burst out in a series of strikes. And, I venture to suggest, is currently being repeated yet-again in the NHS, where a whopper storm is brewing.

 

It's a long way from the OP, but my personal reading of all this is that it is all part of the drawn-out process of descending from "top dog" country in terms of access to relevant raw materials c1840-50, to ..... er, not really sure ...... we currently seem to lack both raw materials and capital. And, if I was to pin our biggest national error in the past 200 years, I would say it was to squander the proceeds of the first wave of industrialisation on stately-homes and the like, while operating an education system that equipped precisely nobody for the second wave (well very few people indeed), and then continuing that tradition of poor education to the present.

 

Oh, dear ..... sorry!

[RJD]

Before nationalization, railway boards of directors were composed of people with a knowledge of the railway industry and a share in its profits and losses.  Who were the people who decided the direction of British Railways after nationalization?  Hurcombe was a civil servant but was he a transport expert?  

[kevinlms]

Surely Deltics weren't intended as mixed traffic locomotives?

I did say most. So 22 Deltics amongst well over 1000 type 4 locomotives is hardly significant.

Edited July 3, 2017 by kevinlms

[Poggy1165]

Germany wrote off its national debt, post war, we didn't. Also for many years Germany was forbidden by the Allies to spend any resources on defence, and instead invested in industry. It was of course "defended" by the Allies, albeit in two competing parts.

 

Meanwhile we spent huge sums "defending" half the world and posing as a first-class power. This is why we had to have conscription, which removed many of the youngest and fittest potential employees from the workforce for several years. Of course we spent on loads of other stuff too, and railways were well down the pecking order.

 

Part of our problem as a nation is that we are very bad at investment in industry and infrastructure. I remember this being flagged up by Mr Heath's government while I was still at school. It's still a problem several decades later.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Poggy1165

[The Stationmaster]

One thing about the steam run railway which seems to be consistently overlooked is the fact that it was increasingly seen as a 'dirty' job with (comparatively speaking) poor basic pay and some very unsocial working hours.  Somehow the attractions of shovelling char out of a smokebox or cleaning an engine fire (without the advantage of a hopper ashpan on many engines) seem not to have been recognised when compared with the dreary boredom of keeping up with the pace of the production line in a factory and being able to go home at five o'clock with a decent wage packet every Thursday.

 

In simple terms steam was not only labour intensive but even with BR Standards it was still a mucky job (or rather could be a very mucky job) that compared poorly in the labour market.  Without radical changes steam would never have remained because the people needed to service it simply wouldn't have been there and the only way some depots managed to keep going was because shed labourers were being recruited in the West Indies as opposed to more local 'working class' areas.  In the post-war labour market mainline railway steam traction was not much more than a dead duck long before decisions to buy diesels were made.