Is there a link between the Clean Air Act and the decision to bring forward the end of steam

[jonny777]

I have read articles on the 1952 London smog. The main culprit was meteorological (assisted by natural human reactions). 

 

Apparently, a large high pressure had already produced thick fog overnight, which barely cleared during the days prior to the "pea-souper". However, during this time the high slowly changed its central position; allowing what little wind there was to become East or Northeasterly and bring much colder air across the south of the UK during one afternoon. 

 

This slow but marked drop in temperature late in the day, had one major effect on the population - they all went home from work and lit their fires, and many with a fire in the kitchen lit another in the front room as well.  The net effect was smoke from a million or more home chimneys entering the lowest layer of the atmosphere, which at the same time was forming an extremely shallow temperature inversion due to the cold air at ground level undercutting the less cold air aloft. 

 

The surface inversion may only have been a few hundred feet deep, but the coal smoke and traffic fumes from the whole of London was trapped within that layer and being added to every second. 

 

I can't believe just how dense the smog was, but, talking to older people who remembered is an education. Many became lost in their own street because they couldn't see front doors which were set back a few yards from the pavement, and so had no idea where they were unless they walked up a few garden paths to look at the numbers every so often. 

 

Not only that, but the smog was yellow and irritated the throats of those who breathed it in. On opening the front door of the house, this yellow menace would drift into the home - and so doors/windows were kept closed as much as possible. 

[coachmann]

One afternoon in late 1958, I left work early (about 3.30pm) becasue of the distance I traveled back to my home in Oldham. It was a nightmare. The buses had already stopped running and becasue I could barely see a yard in front of me, I actually walked past Victoria station and didnt realise this unitl I recognised the road bridge over the station. Crossing the road was frightening becasue some people were struggling to get their cars home. The station forecourt was packed awaiting information on their particular trains. After an eternity, a gate was opened and those of us going to Oldham were herded through onto the usual non-corridor stock of about five coaches. I got a seat by the windwo but within minuted the compartment was also full of standing passengers. A bump told us that a loco was hitching on.  We set off at a crawl on the climb up Miles Platting Bank. This was punctuated by detonators. I could just make out men beside braziers.

 

I gave up working out roughly where we were after a time as were were going so slowly, however, I did recognize Middleton Junction station as we passed through the curving platforms. For some reason, we had been diverted at Nowton Heath onto the Rochdale line and were about to climb the 1-in-24 Werneth Incline.  I don't know how far we got before the train stalled.  We were sat there ages before another bump told me a second loco had been hitched on to haul us forward. Faced with a 3 mile walk home, I alighted at Mumps Bridge and groped my way outside into the smog. When I reached the top of Glodwick, I walked out of the smog into a clear sky. I could stir the smog around my waste as if it was water.  Needless to say, I walked straight back into it as I descended Abbeyhills road and on to Holts Estate. It was around 8pm when I walked through the door. My face above my hankie was greyish black.

 

I suspect steam finished because of strike activities when men returned from the war and demanded more say in the workplace. The 1955 strike seemed to be the turning point for Government, as it wasnt long before modernization plans were announced, basically to eliminate manpower. If I remember rightly, steam was to finish in 1979. The clean air act came in around 1963-4 in Oldham and we had to use special coal, so it preceeded the elimination of steam on our railways by several years. The last smog I remember in Oldham was either 1962 or 1963. I was working the 10 bus route from Manchester and we had to work back empty. My driver eventually refused to let me walk beside the front wing for fear of me being killed, so we parked up and went for fish & chips.  I think we were one of the last buses to arrive back at the garage. Then we had to walk home through the stuff.

Edited December 21, 2017 by coachmann

[Reorte]

I suspect steam finished because of strike activities when men returned from the war and demanded more say in the workplace. The 1955 strike seemed to be the turning point for Government, as it wasnt long before modernization plans were announced, basically to eliminate manpower. If I remember rightly, steam was to finish in 1979. The clean air act came in around 1963-4 in Oldham and we had to use special coal, so it preceeded the elimination of steam on our railways by several years.

Even without any such pressures I suspect it would've finished at roughly the same time. By then both diesel and electric were pretty much fully mature technologies, it would've been uneconomic regardless.

[Forester]

I have read articles on the 1952 London smog. The main culprit was meteorological (assisted by natural human reactions). 

 

Apparently, a large high pressure had already produced thick fog overnight, which barely cleared during the days prior to the "pea-souper". However, during this time the high slowly changed its central position; allowing what little wind there was to become East or Northeasterly and bring much colder air across the south of the UK during one afternoon. 

 

This slow but marked drop in temperature late in the day, had one major effect on the population - they all went home from work and lit their fires, and many with a fire in the kitchen lit another in the front room as well.  The net effect was smoke from a million or more home chimneys entering the lowest layer of the atmosphere, which at the same time was forming an extremely shallow temperature inversion due to the cold air at ground level undercutting the less cold air aloft. 

 

The surface inversion may only have been a few hundred feet deep, but the coal smoke and traffic fumes from the whole of London was trapped within that layer and being added to every second. 

 

I can't believe just how dense the smog was, but, talking to older people who remembered is an education. Many became lost in their own street because they couldn't see front doors which were set back a few yards from the pavement, and so had no idea where they were unless they walked up a few garden paths to look at the numbers every so often. 

 

Not only that, but the smog was yellow and irritated the throats of those who breathed it in. On opening the front door of the house, this yellow menace would drift into the home - and so doors/windows were kept closed as much as possible. 

 

A good post highlighting domestic coal fires as the main cause of the (frequent) smogs.

Hard to imagine unless you experienced it and slightly counter-intuitive in that it was not industry and certainly not steam railways that was the prime cause.

 

I lived on the edge of town between a gas-works and a brick-works next to a railway station and sidings. (Very posh...)

The contribution of the railway to the local pollution was absolutely negligible.

Smoke from both works was noticeable only if the wind was in the wrong direction but the very tall brick chimneys worked well in getting the smoke away and dispersed.

It was the houses lighting up, in a winter high-pressure weather system when the heavy coal-fire smoke just fell to the ground, that caused the problem.

 

Compared to that, a working steam loco with a hot coal fire produced relatively little smoke in normal use.

[rodent279]

A good post highlighting domestic coal fires as the main cause of the (frequent) smogs.

Hard to imagine unless you experienced it and slightly counter-intuitive in that it was not industry and certainly not steam railways that was the prime cause.

 

I lived on the edge of town between a gas-works and a brick-works next to a railway station and sidings. (Very posh...)

The contribution of the railway to the local pollution was absolutely negligible.

Smoke from both works was noticeable only if the wind was in the wrong direction but the very tall brick chimneys worked well in getting the smoke away and dispersed.

It was the houses lighting up, in a winter high-pressure weather system when the heavy coal-fire smoke just fell to the ground, that caused the problem.

 

Compared to that, a working steam loco with a hot coal fire produced relatively little smoke in normal use.

And I suspect therein lies the difference, that a steam loco burns it's coal much more efficiently & thoroughly (if it's well fired) than a domestic fire.

Edited December 23, 2017 by rodent279

[TheSignalEngineer]

I remember walking about four miles home from school on a couple of occasions when Birmingham buses stopped because of the fog, I was about 12 at the time. On another occasion c1962 I walked home from the city centre as there were no buses. I has seen my Grandfather at New Street and he had decided to get the Redditch train to Selly Oak and walk from there. It had the usual Ivatt 4 running tender first with 4 coaches. It stalled near Bath Row Tunnel on the climb to Five Ways with the tender on a set of catch points. Trying to restart the train rolled backwards and the tender became wedged against the wall, The Guard walked back to New Street and came back with the station pilot which took the train back and round the Camp Hill line to Kings Norton. My Grandfather ended up walking the extra miles from there and got home about 10.30pm

[Reorte]

A couple of posts about trains running in really dense smog on here - by some of the descriptions I've heard how could the drivers even see the signals?

[APOLLO]

 

Wigan Gas Works 1973. Newly electrified WCML & Wigan NW station top left, Library Street & Town Centre top right. The high level square boxes are the "Oxide Boxes"  which cleaned the town gas made here, passed through iron oxide they had to be regularily emptied & oxide changed - a very smelly & polluting job, just a couple of hundred yards from the town centre !!

 

Back then as an apprentice there we were fitting gas fires to replace coal fires domestically in huge numbers - I think a subsidy was available due to the newly amended clean air act. Wigan Gas Works was demolished soon after this photo was taken as we now had "Clean" North Sea Gas.

 

Yes we had pea soup fog back in the 50's & 60's - but they had mostly gone by the early 70's. I suppose getting rid of steam on the railways helped, but as the coal burning mills & factories closed / converted to burn gas, oil or electricity, most homes went over to gas, the towns air quality improved vastly.

 

Brit15

[Fat Controller]

A couple of posts about trains running in really dense smog on here - by some of the descriptions I've heard how could the drivers even see the signals?

Sometimes they didn't. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=113

[The Stationmaster]

A couple of posts about trains running in really dense smog on here - by some of the descriptions I've heard how could the drivers even see the signals?

 

With considerable difficulty.  hence the reason for 'black' or 'fog' services which involved greatly reducing the timetable in a bid to ensure that trains got a clear run. Mind you even that relied on Drivers finding out that a distant was 'off' which wasn't too bad on teh Western with ATC or where distants were fully fogged.  But the late '50s saw a decline in the number of staff prepared or willing to go out fogging so things probably got worse rather than better until AWS became more widely available.

[coachmann]

I think I mentioned detonators on the rails in my post. The trains ran very slowly from fog man to fog man rather than driving by signals, which of course they hadn't a chance of seeing. Trains always running was probably taken for granted in steam days and people headed for railway stations when the chips were down. Smog, snow or flood, the locos just kept going unless there was a physical reason why they couldn't. Right up until the 1980's I photographed diesel-hauled trains ploughing through sea water between Abergele and Rhyl, but these days the replacement bus service is the norm.

[Ian Smeeton]

Stilkl going, but how fast?

 

https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW020885

 

Regards

 

Ian

[Broadway Clive]

BR did draft the early diesel locos into london because of the local authorities and the clean air act.

An old school friend had a job in the early sixties with the local council in which Kings Cross shed was located which led to him issuing several prohibition notices on BR about the amount of smoke produced during the morning light up. I've also read somewhere of a similar situation occurring at Camden shed where there are residential properties nearby. In 'Railway Memories No.26, The trials and the triumph' Tom Greaves gives a wonderful account of his experiences as a motive power engineer coping with the diesel revolution on the Eastern Region out of Kings Cross and he writes 'it was a courageous move by the Eastern Railway Board to dieselise such a high profile operation involving the mass transportation of the city bowler hat brigade. The Clean Air Act following the deadly London smogs may have influenced the urgency.'  

[rodent279]

Stilkl going, but how fast?

 

https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW020885

 

Regards

 

Ian

Awesome photo.

[coachmann]

Locos passing through towns and cities barely had any affect on normal fogless days because footplate crews had been taught and urged to keep smoke down for years before smokeless zones were introduced. The art of firing included keeping smoke to a minimum to save expensive wastage.  What we saw was steam exhausted from the cylinders, which soon evaporated and was pretty harmless.  The amount of smoke leaving the chimney with the steam should be quite negligible unless the fireman is throwing on coal. Compare this with millions of chimneys on every home plus mills and factories which were static and not passing through every now and again like a loco. The clag we see today on photo charters is all rollocks, but clag on todays mainline steam runs might be down to poor firing (not surprising when it is only an occasional job), or extremely poor coal.

 

When I worked on Trans-Pennine bus services, we would leave Greenfield or Uppermill in fresh air, then as we topped the moor, the purple 'fog' down below that the people of Oldham lived in was clearly visible. It wasn't long before we could smell it, and it was like that all the way into Manchester. Manchester city centre had a smell all of its own in those days, which I can best describe as a mix of diesel fumes, hops and pea soup.

Edited December 24, 2017 by coachmann

[Nearholmer]

I was surprised to see the same effect in Spain, pollution trapped under an inversion, but in baking hot weather.

 

It was in Granada, and in the city it seemed hazy, surprisingly sticky, with a slightly metallic taste in the air, but not seriously horrible. From the Alhambra palace, which is on a hill, it was possible to get some idea that the air below was 'thick', but it wasn't until we went up into the mountains and could see back down onto the city that it became obvious that it had its own atmosphere, about ten shades darker than everything for miles around. A combination of dust and petrol/diesel fumes ....... I certainly wouldn't want to live in it 24/7/365.

[PatB]

I live in the hills above Perth and it's quite normal, when heading down into the city, to be able to see a yellowish-brown layer of air, into which one descends. Climbing out of it is probably more noticeable, particularly when I was commuting by motorcycle and so was directly in contact with the atmosphere. There is always a fairly well defined point on the climb up the hill where the air ceases to smell "burnt".

[MarkC]

Taking off from Shanghai in early December 2015, we were at an altitude of some 2000 feet before we popped out of the smog and into clean air. Horrendous, really, and makes me angry that we are being heavily taxed to 'go green', yet the worst polluter going isn't being forced to do something.

[Vistisen]

Taking off from Shanghai in early December 2015, we were at an altitude of some 2000 feet before we popped out of the smog and into clean air. Horrendous, really, and makes me angry that we are being heavily taxed to 'go green', yet the worst polluter going isn't being forced to do something.

 

That is not actually true, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/world/asia/china-renewable-energy-investment.html They are spending an awful lot of money on solving their serious problems, which is has to be said is a side effect of us demanding cheaply produces goods 20 years ago.

[Andy Hayter]

As suggested by PatB above, still very much an issue today.   not heavy coal fumes but now replaced by NOx and particulate emissions  mainly from cars and lorries.

When I was in Germany, descending into the Rhine valley was a descent into a brown/grey atmosphere.  The same applies here when I drop down into the Rhone valley - brown/grey thin smog.  This is brought home most clearly on those few days a year when we get a clear view of Mont Blanc - some 350km away - but cannot see the towns in the Rhone valley only 50km away due to the atmospheric conditions in the valley.  

[jjb1970]

JJB - I was under the impression that the early (pre-WW1) bans on steam locos in urban areas in the US weren't a product of general concern about pollution, but of accidents where trains overran signals that their drivers simply didn't see, due to railway-specific pea soup in tunnels and cuttings. Some of the early 'rural' electrification in the US were designed to avoid asphyxiation of train crews in long, uphill, narrow-bore, tunnels.

 

Some interesting reading here https://archive.org/stream/smokeabatementel00chicuoft#page/n5/mode/2up

 

It's a good reference, because, as well as talking a lot about smoke, it gives a very good summary of the progress of railway electrification worldwide up to c1910.

 

I think safety and concerns over pollution went hand in hand and acts like the Kaufman act in New York were hugely important in promoting non-steam trains. Despite a generally poor reputation on environmental matters the US has frequently led the world on emissions matters, most of the pioneering work that led to modern emissions controls was done in the US and the US EPA still have a depth of technical expertise and capability which I don't think any other environmental regulator in the world gets close to. 

[MarkC]

That is not actually true, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/world/asia/china-renewable-energy-investment.html They are spending an awful lot of money on solving their serious problems, which is has to be said is a side effect of us demanding cheaply produces goods 20 years ago.

Having been trading regularly some 300 miles up the Yangtze for 2 years, and seen it for myself, you'll excuse my cynicism regarding efforts to reduce emissions. If anything, it's getting worse.

[TheSignalEngineer]

As suggested by PatB above, still very much an issue today. not heavy coal fumes but now replaced by NOx and particulate emissions mainly from cars and lorries.

When I was in Germany, descending into the Rhine valley was a descent into a brown/grey atmosphere. The same applies here when I drop down into the Rhone valley - brown/grey thin smog. This is brought home most clearly on those few days a year when we get a clear view of Mont Blanc - some 350km away - but cannot see the towns in the Rhone valley only 50km away due to the atmospheric conditions in the valley.

You get the same effect coming down the Holme Moss road towards Woodhead when the sun shines on the fumes above the A628.

[TheSignalEngineer]

BR did draft the early diesel locos into london because of the local authorities and the clean air act.

The council at Camden, St Pancras I think it was at the time, were certainly looking at prosecuting BR over smoke from Camden shed in the 1950s. Probably not surprising as the area around Primrose Hill was reputed to have the highest density of Barristers per acre in the whole of England.

[rodent279]

Taking off from Shanghai in early December 2015, we were at an altitude of some 2000 feet before we popped out of the smog and into clean air. Horrendous, really, and makes me angry that we are being heavily taxed to 'go green', yet the worst polluter going isn't being forced to do something.

They're big, so we can't hit 'em.