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

[Pacific231G]

It is striking how rapidly most steam loco manufacturers disappeared.

 

If we’re into alternative histories, I wonder who would have done well if we’d skipped dieselisation and gone straight to rapid electrification? Woodhead seemed (technologically-speaking) to work fairly well - though I guess with the benefit of its own mini-pilot scheme for the 76.

That was certainly the plan in many countries but the rapid development of diesel locomotives and the advantage that gave them simply overtook the steam locos that were supposed to supply motive power pending full electrification.

 

In 1944 SNCF's studies of post-war motive power requirements were based entirely on steam locomotives and electrification*.Wartime losses, which were enormous, were made up by over 1300 mixed traffic Mikados (class 141R)  built in North America while powerful new "standard" steam locos were being delivered by French builders until 1952.   The following year though everything began to change as the first large class of diesels was introduced.. The 250 strong class of 040DE (later BB 63000s) mentioned in a previous post became known as Les Tueurs de Vapeur, the killers of steam. Other classes of diesel followed and replaced steam so rapidly that for some years many of them, built without steam heating boilers because new coaches for the electrified railway were to be electrically heated, had to haul around special steam heating vans for the existing coaches.

 

* I have a copy of SNCF's  rules on train composition from 1947 and this divides all the many types of train into steam trains and electric trains. Diesel locomotives are only mentioned in a footnote saying that "trains hauled by Diesel locomotives (including light engines) are treated as electric trains." 

[Talltim]

A couple of people have touched on it, especially Kevin, but I would have thought if BR had done it properly, we wouldn’t have had more than a few prototypes of the classes that we know and love. Instead we would have locos that combined the best bits and only a few classes, maybe contracted out to different manufacturers and BR workshops, but to the BR design.

On the subject of single cabbed locos, various mainland European railways used them on local passenger trains, AFAIK that wasn’t done here? I supposed the more generous loading gauge allows better visibility over a mid-low hood

[TheSignalEngineer]

On the subject of single cabbed locos, various mainland European railways used them on local passenger trains, AFAIK that wasn’t done here? I supposed the more generous loading gauge allows better visibility over a mid-low hood

There's at least one picture on an express here https://flic.kr/p/dvfPYF

[jjb1970]

I know I've plugged this before, but the following book is excellent:

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steam-Diesel-Organizational-Capabilities-Twentieth-century-ebook/dp/B001TH8XLG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1518598150&sr=1-1

 

Although it is about the US locomotive builders, many of the difficulties that plagued steam locomotive builders trying to make a transition to more modern technology was equally applicable to British builders.

[rodent279]

EWD,

 

Aha, you are picking-up on the general sensibleness of my ATP (Alternative Traction Plan)!

 

Yes, I did think of having a 4-TB, or a 4-TR, set, for exactly the reason that you suggest, but, strangely, I couldn’t find a photo of one.

 

I’ve bored with this before, but I do remember going deep into Cornwall on an excursion train as per my ATP, in 1976. The “Thames Tamar Express”. Even with 85mph limited real Class 33 locos it got a serious move on, much better than the locos used by WR at the time, and the experience of looking out of the window to see a Crompton shoving from behind as it crossed Brunel’s Bridge was quite something.

 

Kevin

Yeah. Crompton's could shift. Not spectacularly, but once they got up to 80+ they stayed there.

[rodent279]

Indeed.

 

The first time I travelled on the LM region, in about 1970, I was utterly amazed by the fact that the London to Birmingham service was operated by locos and hauled coaches. I could not, for the life of me, understand why it wasn’t an intercity EMU, a 25kV REP, with a TC for continuation to Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth (which was where I was headed).

 

Even now, the whole bi-mode thing seems to me faintly like over-complicating the solution to a problem that could be dealt with in the same way.

 

The Scots got close, of course, but I always thought the 27 was a bit underpowered for the PP services.

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Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[jjb1970]

I remember all the safety scare stories about push-pull in the 80's following the incident with one of the Scotrail services and how it was presented as an existential threat to the safety of human kind by some.

[Titan]

The first air-conditioned train in the UK I am aware of was the Blue Pullman, introduced only four years after the start of the Plan.  So I think the need for a reliable ETH supply, suitable for driving aircon rather than just heating elements, was foreseeable at least for the later orders under that Plan.  Instead of that not only the hydraulics but also most of the 47s were built with steam heat only, when the Blue Pullman was already in service. 

 

The first air conditioned train in the UK I am aware of  was the LNER's Silver Jubilee, which started running in 1935. Don't think the A4's had ETH, so I am not sure how it was powered!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The 30 was a failure though, and as such would probably not have been selected as the standard type 2...

It wasn't at the time the decision was taken to build more of them. They had actually provided relatively good service, and experiments were in hand showing the potential to uprate them to 1,600bhp and even 2,000bhp...

 If discussing the pilot scheme, it has to be done without benefit of a crystal ball, as Titan points out.

 

The evidence suggests that what was learned from the pilot scheme at the time, was that it had not produced a design with better than type 2 capability worth perpetuating. What then actually happened was that two successful designs were thrashed out for type 3 and 4 and built in good numbers, and whatever their shortcomings these actually achieved long term service. As the need for type 2 and smaller power rating diminished, for some reason the re-engined class 30 as a 31 outlived all the other type 2s.

[Nearholmer]

“I get the feeling that there wasn't a lot of joined-up thinking going on in BR in the 1960's.”

 

I’ve got a feeling it had something to do with what the Americans like to call ‘paradigm shift’, or rather lack of it.

 

The modern, efficient, slightly boring for railway enthusiasts, way to operate a busy railway is to use fixed-interval timetabling, multiple-units or push-pulls etc, and the SR made the ‘paradigm shift’ to those things a very long time ago, as suburban railway thinking spread out into its main line operations.

 

The GWR, LMS, and LNER for the most part weren’t as ‘passenger dominated’, and, for the most part, they remained in a much earlier paradigm, around bespoking the service to meet the detailed needs as the day/week rolled round, and when diesels, and even AC electric locos became available, they simply treated them as higher-availability steam locos. The joy of Kings Cross in the early 1970s was that it operated like a steam-age Terminus, ditto Paddington, and even Euston.

 

BR(S) was looked down upon as a ‘funny little tramway’ (I actually heard that very phrase) by parts of BR that should have been studying it very thoughtfully, because it showed what the future looked like.

 

It has taken decades for the paradigm shift to occur universally, and now that it has we have an efficient, but exceedingly boring railway to look at!

 

310? Horrible draughty, things! They might have been pretty good from a technical perspective, highly reliable etc, but, having commuted on them, they were no joy to travel in ...... every door and window let a knife of draught in on cold mornings, and the only way to get a comfy ride was to look for two stout middle-aged female passengers, and wedge oneself between them for warmth and stability.

 

Maybe a 310 with vestibules and decent chairs for the Brum Services?

Edited February 14, 2018 by Nearholmer

[rodent279]

Post deleted

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[The Johnster]

You want draughts, try a Class 25 at 90mph on the 00.35 4E10 Cardiff-Peterborough parcels with the stupid sliding cab windows shaking open on a freezing night as the loco bottomed it's suspension and compressed your spine with each hit, longing for the return of the warm, comfortable, quiet Hymek you used to have for this job until some idiot decided that hydraulics were not standard.  This situation encapsulates much that was wrong with the modernisation plan for me; the 25s were too underpowered as a result of flawed investigations into the capabilities of the 5MT types they replaced, and were unsuitable for higher speeds due to draughts and poor riding, and the Hymeks, lovely little pocket rockets though they were, should arguably have never been built at all along with the other hydraulics.  

[Junctionmad]

Don't CIE only use generator vans because the HEP (they're American engines, after all...) on the 201s is highly unreliable?

 

 

 

When CIE purchased Diesels  in the late 50s it largely discounted after some trails., The idea of loco  generated  steam heating and subsequently train lighting and ultimately ETH. Hence the use of 201s in HEP mode was the anomaly not the other way around.  CIE basically found the HEP mode generated excess wear and caused  loco failures and returned to their normal mode of providing generator cars for  loco hauled trains.  AT one time CIE operated a plethora of steam heat and electrical generator  " vans " either locally built or converted from older stock.  

[Junctionmad]

“I get the feeling that there wasn't a lot of joined-up thinking going on in BR in the 1960's.”

 

I’ve got a feeling it had something to do with what the Americans like to call ‘paradigm shift’, or rather lack of it.

 

The modern, efficient, slightly boring for railway enthusiasts, way to operate a busy railway is to use fixed-interval timetabling, multiple-units or push-pulls etc, and the SR made the ‘paradigm shift’ to those things a very long time ago, as suburban railway thinking spread out into its main line operations.

 

The GWR, LMS, and LNER for the most part weren’t as ‘passenger dominated’, and, for the most part, they remained in a much earlier paradigm, around bespoking the service to meet the detailed needs as the day/week rolled round, and when diesels, and even AC electric locos became available, they simply treated them as higher-availability steam locos. The joy of Kings Cross in the early 1970s was that it operated like a steam-age Terminus, ditto Paddington, and even Euston.

 

BR(S) was looked down upon as a ‘funny little tramway’ (I actually heard that very phrase) by parts of BR that should have been studying it very thoughtfully, because it showed what the future looked like.

 

It has taken decades for the paradigm shift to occur universally, and now that it has we have an efficient, but exceedingly boring railway to look at!

 

310? Horrible draughty, things! They might have been pretty good from a technical perspective, highly reliable etc, but, having commuted on them, they were no joy to travel in ...... every door and window let a knife of draught in on cold mornings, and the only way to get a comfy ride was to look for two stout middle-aged female passengers, and wedge oneself between them for warmth and stability.

 

Maybe a 310 with vestibules and decent chairs for the Brum Services?

 

I think in fairness to BR and the BTC , the ground under the railways was shifting so rapidly throughout the 60s and with it the public perception of the railways place in society, that any attempt to predict the future based on assumptions in the past /present ( which is how most planing was done) was likely to be a spectacular failure 

 

Society became enamoured by the motor car and truck and railways  were seen as outdated , over regulated , unionised  dinosaurs.  

 

Add into that mix , a general lack off knowledge and expertise in the UK on early diesels as compared to say the US, and its clear the modernisation plan was ( in hindsight ) destined to hit the buffer stocks 

 

IN reality BR  executed the changeover in a very fast time scale, probably much faster the the big four would have done so ( with the corresponding decline in revenues as a result ) and its not surprising a degree of chaos ensued 

[TheSignalEngineer]

You want draughts, try a Class 25 at 90mph on the 00.35 4E10 Cardiff-Peterborough parcels with the stupid sliding cab windows shaking open on a freezing night as the loco bottomed it's suspension and compressed your spine with each hit, longing for the return of the warm, comfortable, quiet Hymek you used to have for this job until some idiot decided that hydraulics were not standard. This situation encapsulates much that was wrong with the modernisation plan for me; the 25s were too underpowered as a result of flawed investigations into the capabilities of the 5MT types they replaced, and were unsuitable for higher speeds due to draughts and poor riding, and the Hymeks, lovely little pocket rockets though they were, should arguably have never been built at all along with the other hydraulics.

From how I saw them work on the Midland division I always thought the 25 was more a replacement for the Ivatt 4 or Fowler 4F. A resurrection of the Derby small engine policy with plenty of double heading.

[Nearholmer]

Junctionmad,

 

True up to a point, but I would still contend that large swathes of BR had its head stuck in an outdated ‘locomotive and hauled stock’ paradigm, when a different one was on their doorstep to be seen.

 

They did manage to do a very great deal in the 1960s, to sweep away a lot of irrelevant Victorian leftovers (much to the distress of sentimental railway enthusiasts and John Betjeman), but the idea that a mainline train had to have an engine at the front, and carriages behind, took until the HST in the mid-70s to really shift.

 

Kevin

Edited February 14, 2018 by Nearholmer

[rodent279]

Even now, the whole bi-mode thing seems to me faintly like over-complicating the solution to a problem that could be dealt with in the same way.

 

Post deleted

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[rodent279]

Junctionmad,

 

True up to a point, but I would still contend that large swathes of BR had its head stuck in an outdated ‘locomotive and hauled stock’ paradigm, when a different one was on their doorstep to be seen.

 

They did manage to do a very great deal in the 1960s, to sweep away a lot of irrelevant Victorian leftovers (much to the distress of sentimental railway enthusiasts and John Betjeman), but the idea that a mainline train had to have an engine at the front, and carriages behind, took until the HST in the mid-70s to really shift.

 

Kevin

Post deleted

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[Zomboid]

Push pull with locos of course is what the SR were up to in the 1960s. And I'm not really sure it was state of the art then...

[Nearholmer]

There were a lot of concerns about the dynamics, and a lot of tests and trials went into the decision to implement the REPs, which were pretty radical, so it’s probably fair to say that ‘shoving’ a train of significant length at high speed wasn’t a realistic prospect much before that. I think that some of the continental high speed diesel units were effectively ‘pushers’ when running in one direction as far back as the 1930s, but they were short formations, and EMUs were different because they spread traction down the train.

 

As JJB pointed out, there were plenty of naysayers about the proposition well into the 1970s.

 

What they could have done sooner in a big way was ‘one at each end’, which was firmly established practice no later than c1960.

[rodent279]

Post deleted

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[jonny777]

There were a lot of concerns about the dynamics, and a lot of tests and trials went into the decision to implement the REPs, which were pretty radical, so it’s probably fair to say that ‘shoving’ a train of significant length at high speed wasn’t a realistic prospect much before that. I think that some of the continental high speed diesel units were effectively ‘pushers’ when running in one direction as far back as the 1930s, but they were short formations, and EMUs were different because they spread traction down the train.

 

As JJB pointed out, there were plenty of naysayers about the proposition well into the 1970s.

 

What they could have done sooner in a big way was ‘one at each end’, which was firmly established practice no later than c1960.

 

 

 

I seem to remember BR doing high speed push-pull trials on the ECML in the 1960s, or was that for another reason?

[Nearholmer]

I can’t recall all the details, but I think the trials started on the RCMP’s because it had high-quality, fairly straight, track, which the SR didn’t.

 

Way back in the late 1920s the River tanks, which had a propensity to derail on SR track, some of which was truly awful back then, were tested on the evil and found to ride very well.

[Talltim]

I can’t recall all the details, but I think the trials started on the RCMP’s

Horses for courses

 

were tested on the evil and found to ride very well.

Autocorrect at its finest Edited February 14, 2018 by Talltim

[Nearholmer]

Er ...... how did that happen?

 

A Mountie always gets his A4.

Edited February 14, 2018 by Nearholmer