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

[BernardTPM]

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!

The Silver Jubilee had pressure ventilation, not air conditioning, there being no provision for cooling the air. The first air conditioned coaches in Britian were actually a GWR restaurant car set (9640/9642), also in 1935. But not a whole train.

[cheesysmith]

Thinking about this thread, a better question would have been if the pilot orders had been allowed to tried out first, would the errors have been avoided. Looking back with hindsight, the pilot orders actually were not what was required for a modern BR as little as 15 years after they were ordered, and with a loco having a booked life of 20 years, would we have had a railway suitable to survive with what was provided then?

 

Error in the pilot scheme to be avoided?

NBL diesel locos.

Fragile high speed diesel engines, basically because of the inability to make a effective cooling system that worked.

More higher BHP locos, less of the little low powered one.

Locos needing a better power to weight ratio.

 

And some lessons were not learnt till a long time after, such as.

Low unsprung weight per axle.

Fatigue life with constant cyclicic power used.

The need to get rid of the low capacity unbraked wagons to improve productivity.

Effective maintanece to maximise use of your expensive assets (how can it be effective to have to send them away every so often to main works for heavy overhaul? The WR had the right idea in component maintenance at depot level, to keep the locos in service for maximum hour possible ).

[rodent279]

Post deleted

Edited February 16, 2018 by rodent279

[Nearholmer]

There seems to be a fair bit of circumstantial evidence that the build-quality, fit, finish, and tolerances, were “out” on the British-built engines and ancillaries. Someone said in a previous version of this thread that it was partly down to iffy conversion from metric to imperial units, which could easily be true, but it might also have been a simple matter of machine tools being sloppy, especially if they were old, worn and not upgraded between steam and diesel builds. Then there is the question of whether guys used to steam tolerances might have fallen into an ‘its only five thou’ trap.

 

Kevin

[jim.snowdon]

I think not moving to air braking was a big fail, as was not committing to more electrification.

You touch on an interesting point regarding maintenance, which has been referred to earlier. BR did seem to treat diesels as simply steam locos with higher availability. They were still shopped at regular intervals, like steam locos, when really, better provision for engine lifts at depots would have allowed major engine & generator work to be dealt with in works, with everything else other than major body repairs dealt with by depots.

I'd take issue with "fragile high speed engines" though. Many of the problems with the NBL type 2's were more to do with engine ancillaries and auxiliary equipment, rather than the engines themselves. There were problems with cracks, but I believe these were resolved. Certainly the Germans used high speed engines very successfully for many years. Maybe it was more the way the engines were used and maintained in Britain than an inherent design flaw.

There were very few "high speed" diesel engines used on BR in the pre-HST era, and although the Maybach and Napier engines had their foibles, it was with the lighter low speed engines that the mechanical problems were manifest, usually with crankcase failures rather than in the electrics. An early lesson was that you can't take a marine engine, stick it in the highly variable and rough world of a railway locomotive and expect to be just as reliable. English Electric knew differently, through experience, and built heavy and solid, and developed what they knew already worked.

 

As far as maintenance is concerned, railways like the LMS had already adopted a policy of overhaul based on condition rather than mileage, but, there is a lot more of a steam locomotive that can be inspected for condition than there is on a diesel or electric, so shopping by mileage does have some virtues. The other side of the equation is that the Works like a nice steady flow of work, and the operators like a predictable availability. Both militate against condition based overhaul, with the only driver being an incentive to minimise the number of locomotives out of traffic. If that ceases to be as important, for example due to the railway being awash with locomotives purchased with state money for a government desperate to spend money modernising the railway, common sense can go out of the window.

 

Jim

[jonny777]

I believe the timing played an important part in the failure of the original pilot scheme concept. 

 

NBL locos were a political decision, in order to prevent even more unemployment in Glasgow; and it was interesting that once the orders with other contractors, EE, Brush, BRC&W, etc., came in decent numbers the improvement in engine development was quite rapid. In fact we went from the class 40/44 concepts to Kestrel in about 10 years, which is nothing short of a revolution.

 

Had the diesel programme started earlier, BR may have been saddled with hundreds more of classes 40 and 44, and possibly D600 Warships (because there was an original plan to build 35 of them, before the D800 version appeared). The sudden withdrawal programme of heavyweight locos may have been even more embarrassing than the scrapping of classes 14.15.16 and 17 proved to be. 

 

Had the diesel programme been further delayed, we may have had competition from other companies to construct 3000 to 4000hp locos which came within the axle loading limits. After all, I believe Kestrel was trialled on a Deltic diagram between Kings Cross and Newcastle, and took 15 minutes less than the timings for a class 55, and that was as far back as 1970/1.

[cheesysmith]

A diesel engine operating at RPM above 1000 is considered a high speed engine, so the Deltic, MAN, Maybach, the Paxman ventura and the engines used in the 23/29/blue pulman were high speed engines. There is a tale of when the WR engineers went to inspect how the German V200 (which the warships were a UK sized copy of) they were shown the nice shiny locos, but didn`t see the pile of heads round the back of the shed that had been replaced due to overheating. The MAN engine was a very basic engine design, without even a oil spray onto the underside of the piston. The Maybach was a very elegant design, but probably too complicated for what BR required. The Deltic engine was a good design, just the metallurgic was not upto what was required, and they needed frequent overhauls. Probably the best engine was the Paxman ventura, as fitted to a warship for trials. This did have a problem, in that it broke cranks, but this was discovered to be due to incorrect assembly of the main bearing (the same fault happened with the Sulzer V engines in the 48s). This Paxman engine was later developed into the engine that powered the HSTs for over 20 years, putting in hours and miles between overhauls the German engines never have matched. 

 

For the heavier medium speed engines, the best have proved to be the EE CSVT range, with the inline versions of the Sulzer LDA range a close second (the Sulzer LDA should have had the 4 valve per cylinder heads earlier, but Sulzer were always conservative over main bearing loadings/speeds, and as a result the engine RPM). The Sulzer twin bank engine was basically too heavy for what BR required.

[Junctionmad]

I think the reasons to deploy locomotive orientated traction strategies was entirely logical, given the lead in to the modernisation plan. railways like all big institutions , are going to base change in the future grounded in operating practices of today. To do otherwise is to engage in wholesale risk. Taken in the context of the day , where steam loco hauled trains dominated , it's entirely understandable that a loco based strategy was followed.

 

One must remember , that wagon load freight was still being accomadated and multi purpose locos , especially after the success of the BR standard classes was seen as the correct strategy. It not at all surprising that what happened happened.

 

Equally , because the ground shifted under them so rapidly , it's entirely understandable why so many classes were considered , especially relatively low power units. CIE , which changed to diesels earlier , found itself in exactly the same position, where the rapid closure of branch lines , the almost overnight disappearance of wagon loads business and the arrival of larger block trains , resulted in an excess of small diesels with no role to play. ( leading to frequent multi unit working on in many cases )

 

I can easily see the reluctance to go to all encompassing push pull operation , firstly you have massive institutional inertia , the " it's not broke , so don't fix it " , you had virtually generations of " on-demand " train reconfigurations, as opposed to implementing higher frequency passagner services and overall you had a railway where " freight first " thinking still predominated. ( passagner traffic for many years was not the profit centre for most companies outside the SR )

 

What is clear , is that British manufacturers , both in house workshops and external manufacturers , by and large , did not have enough experience to build diesels at the time. In essence we had something of a 10-15 year experimentation phase , where both purchaser and supplier learnt " on the job " , of course with the added advantage of the tax payer picking up the tab

 

This is not unusual , it happens in many industries going through change , the airline business is a case in point. in the case where the tax payer isn't picking up the tab , the usual result is some fail in the process of change and go out of business

Edited February 15, 2018 by Junctionmad

[Junctionmad]

A diesel engine operating at RPM above 1000 is considered a high speed engine, so the Deltic, MAN, Maybach, the Paxman ventura and the engines used in the 23/29/blue pulman were high speed engines. There is a tale of when the WR engineers went to inspect how the German V200 (which the warships were a UK sized copy of) they were shown the nice shiny locos, but didn`t see the pile of heads round the back of the shed that had been replaced due to overheating. The MAN engine was a very basic engine design, without even a oil spray onto the underside of the piston. The Maybach was a very elegant design, but probably too complicated for what BR required. The Deltic engine was a good design, just the metallurgic was not upto what was required, and they needed frequent overhauls. Probably the best engine was the Paxman ventura, as fitted to a warship for trials. This did have a problem, in that it broke cranks, but this was discovered to be due to incorrect assembly of the main bearing (the same fault happened with the Sulzer V engines in the 48s). This Paxman engine was later developed into the engine that powered the HSTs for over 20 years, putting in hours and miles between overhauls the German engines never have matched. 

 

For the heavier medium speed engines, the best have proved to be the EE CSVT range, with the inline versions of the Sulzer LDA range a close second (the Sulzer LDA should have had the 4 valve per cylinder heads earlier, but Sulzer were always conservative over main bearing loadings/speeds, and as a result the engine RPM). The Sulzer twin bank engine was basically too heavy for what BR required.

The engines with the required durability and haulage power existed , namely the American 2-strokes specifically designed for loco use. but NIH ( not invented here ) was very strong in BR , and British builders for various reasons had no access to that technology

 

It wasn't until recently that finally the penny dropped !

[JohnR]

And lots of coal in The Valleys.

I think more to do with trying to keep Swindon works busy. Theres a reason Evening Star was built at Swindon.

[PenrithBeacon]

The engines with the required durability and haulage power existed , namely the American 2-strokes specifically designed for loco use. but NIH ( not invented here ) was very strong in BR , and British builders for various reasons had no access to that technology

 

It wasn't until recently that finally the penny dropped !

IIRC EMD wouldn't permit their engines to be built under license and the UK Government excluded EMD imports on the grounds that it wouldn't be possible to build up a UK diesel industry with them competing. By the 1980s attitudes had changed

[rodent279]

IIRC EMD wouldn't permit their engines to be built under license and the UK Government excluded EMD imports on the grounds that it wouldn't be possible to build up a UK diesel industry with them competing. By the 1980s attitudes had changed

By the 1980's, having built one up, we decided we didn't need it after all, and let it go to waste....

[cheesysmith]

Actually, the problem with EMD was the power output of the engines didn`t match european engines until the 70s. If there was a UK manufactured EMD engine, you still would have been stuck with underpowered locos, but with excellent reliability.

[Zomboid]

By the 1980's, having built one up, we decided we didn't need it after all, and let it go to waste....

We found that what we'd built was not anything like as good as what Foster Yeoman imported from EMD.

If British loco builders had been able to produce a machine anything like as reliable as a 59, EWS may have purchased from them. But by the 80s, building locos for BR (and pretty much no one else) was too small a market to support the R&D necessary to keep the products up to the standard of foreign competition.

[rodent279]

I always thought that our train building industry was something of a cottage industry, compared to the likes of the European manufacturers, let alone the Yanks.

[The Johnster]

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...

 

Paris suburban double deck trains with 2-8-2 tanks certainly preceded it by a good bit!

[The Johnster]

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.

 

This was certainly the way it turned out; our first experience with them on the WR was double heading the Newport Docks-Llanwern iron ore trains, where single 37s had been struggling to replace 7F rated 2-8-0 tanks, 42xx/5205s.  It seems to me, though I am not claiming it to be fact and it is only my general opinion, that Ivatt got it not far off right with 10000/10001, 1,600hp to replace a Black 5 and 3,200 in a pair to replace a Duchess.  The research into steam power at Rugby Testing Station seems to have produced horse power figures that influenced the production of the Modernisation Plan diesels, which then turned out not to be able to match the steam performances on a regular, daily, basis because they had to be thrashed to run the timetables.  The result, during the 60s and 70s, was a period of increasing the power above 2.000 while reducing loads, which were further reduced to take account of air conditioning and ETH.  

 

Cardiff-London 1959; 7MT Britannia with 14 or more with assistance at Severn Tunnel, over 3 hours.  Cardiff-London 1969; Type 4 Brush or Western with 10 mk2, 2 hours 50 minutes.  Cardiff-London 1974, Brush Type 4 (class 47/4) with 9 airconditioned ETH mk2, 2 hours 10 minutes (some speed restriction changes).  Cardiff-London 1979, HST 8 car set, 1 hour 42 minutes (the time that nice Mr Grayling, who never disseminates or seeks to mislead, claims will be re-instated when the electrification is complete; he infers or imputes that this is a new time).  About the same ball park number of seats per hour as the Britannias, but better stock utilisation and higher speeds reduce the amount of stock needed, and enables a better frequency of service.

 

Type 4 diesels of around 2,000hp were introduced to replace 8P power, unsuccessfully, and the above suggests that diesels several hundred hp better, and lighter weight to boot, could not improve on 7MT performance even with lighter, shorter trains.  Someone got the sums wrong, and this seems to be true of class 5/Type 2 work as well; Type 3s were needed in South Wales to replace 5MT 56xx 0-6-2Ts.

[Nearholmer]

I think you’d need to look at train timings to check whether or not your theory is correct, Johnster. A lot of the steam timings were very slow, by later standards, and more, lighter, faster, trains was a commercial decision, t9 keep pace with motorway driving.

 

What is for sure is that the performance characteristics of steam and diesel are radically different, with steam able to knock out prodigious levels of power for short periods, but struggling to maintain high, let alone peak, power, for all sorts of reasons like firing rates (even with mechanical stokers), choking of the fire-bed, exhaustion of the reserve of energy that exists in a highly pressurised boiler etc.

 

Diesels should have a readily calculable ‘happy place’, where the engine yields high efficiency, but probably not peak power output, and if run at that speed, they will keep up a constant power output, day in, day out, as per a marine diesel. Even my car, which has a fancy DSG gearbox that keeps engine speed within a very close tolerance of 2000rpm, will do the same.

 

One of the ‘learning points’ from the earlier years of diesel rail traction in this country was how “in-ideal” the load characteristic can be, with oodles of cycles of engine speed, which challenged all sorts of design points, notably how to prevent it causing excessive thermal cycling and resultant damage, which was partly about the cooling system, rather than the engine itself.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Titan]

This was certainly the way it turned out; our first experience with them on the WR was double heading the Newport Docks-Llanwern iron ore trains, where single 37s had been struggling to replace 7F rated 2-8-0 tanks, 42xx/5205s.  It seems to me, though I am not claiming it to be fact and it is only my general opinion, that Ivatt got it not far off right with 10000/10001, 1,600hp to replace a Black 5 and 3,200 in a pair to replace a Duchess.  The research into steam power at Rugby Testing Station seems to have produced horse power figures that influenced the production of the Modernisation Plan diesels, which then turned out not to be able to match the steam performances on a regular, daily, basis because they had to be thrashed to run the timetables.  The result, during the 60s and 70s, was a period of increasing the power above 2.000 while reducing loads, which were further reduced to take account of air conditioning and ETH.  

 

Cardiff-London 1959; 7MT Britannia with 14 or more with assistance at Severn Tunnel, over 3 hours.  Cardiff-London 1969; Type 4 Brush or Western with 10 mk2, 2 hours 50 minutes.  Cardiff-London 1974, Brush Type 4 (class 47/4) with 9 airconditioned ETH mk2, 2 hours 10 minutes (some speed restriction changes).  Cardiff-London 1979, HST 8 car set, 1 hour 42 minutes (the time that nice Mr Grayling, who never disseminates or seeks to mislead, claims will be re-instated when the electrification is complete; he infers or imputes that this is a new time).  About the same ball park number of seats per hour as the Britannias, but better stock utilisation and higher speeds reduce the amount of stock needed, and enables a better frequency of service.

 

Type 4 diesels of around 2,000hp were introduced to replace 8P power, unsuccessfully, and the above suggests that diesels several hundred hp better, and lighter weight to boot, could not improve on 7MT performance even with lighter, shorter trains.  Someone got the sums wrong, and this seems to be true of class 5/Type 2 work as well; Type 3s were needed in South Wales to replace 5MT 56xx 0-6-2Ts.

 

 

I do wonder, had there been internet in the '50s, whether there would be the same froth and moaning over the Class 40 performance compared to the Duchesses they were replacing, as there is about the HST/800. History repeating itself?

[The Johnster]

I do wonder, had there been internet in the '50s, whether there would be the same froth and moaning over the Class 40 performance compared to the Duchesses they were replacing, as there is about the HST/800. History repeating itself?

 

It usually does, as those who forget it are condemned to repeat it.

[Arun Sharma]

The Silver Jubilee had pressure ventilation, not air conditioning, there being no provision for cooling the air. The first air conditioned coaches in Britian were actually a GWR restaurant car set (9640/9642), also in 1935. But not a whole train.

In the dim distant past when I was doing my Sinbad act on behalf of HMG, our ships' engineers were adamant that air conditioning equalled de-humidification. That refrigeration might have been included [almost invariably] within the equipment additionally was irrelevant. Thus pressure ventilation is not air conditioning whether or not refrigeration is present. It would be though, if de-humidification was also present.

Edited February 15, 2018 by ted675

[Titan]

The Silver Jubilee had pressure ventilation, not air conditioning, there being no provision for cooling the air. The first air conditioned coaches in Britian were actually a GWR restaurant car set (9640/9642), also in 1935. But not a whole train.

 

Not according to this article:

 

http://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/jubilee.html

 

 Another use for electricity in the train is in the ir-conditioning plant, which forces fresh filtered air, cold or warm according to season, into the compartment at a predetermined temperature.

[Titan]

In the dim distant past when I was doing my Sinbad act on behalf of HMG, our ships' engineers were adamant that air conditioning equalled de-humidification. That refrigeration might have been included [almost invariably] within the equipment additionally was irrelevant. Thus pressure ventilation is not air conditioning whether or not refrigeration is present. It would be though, if de-humidification was also present.

 

You can't have air conditioning without dehumidifying the air - if you cool the air it will usually take it below the dew point temperature, and the water will condense out of it, leaving you with dry cold dehumidified air even if the only intention is to cool it.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Titan

[jonny777]

I do wonder, had there been internet in the '50s, whether there would be the same froth and moaning over the Class 40 performance compared to the Duchesses they were replacing, as there is about the HST/800. History repeating itself?

 

 

Yes probably, but hopefully this time the HSTs will not be withdrawn en-masse in order to save any further embarrassment. 

 

If as Johnster says, Ivatt thought 2x1600 diesels would be equivalent to the Duchess'  maximum power output over short uphill stretches, there seems to be a modicum of truth in the fact that the initial BR diesel power calculations overlooked the hp lost between the crankshaft and the drawbar. 

[Nearholmer]

But, you seem to be assuming that “they” thought 2000hp was enough, and they didn’t, they were working on roughly 200hp in a diesel loco per coach, to equal steam performance “over the route”, so were always trying to get to 2400hp, for a 12 car train. They simply hadn’t got as far as series production of 2400hp in a single unit in the mid-1950s, although the prototype Deltic was on trial by 1955 [edited after well made point from Titan.]

 

Talking of a Duchess as 3200hp is hugely misleading, I think, unless it is coupled with words like “for about 15 minutes”. It’s “over the route” performance was probably 2000ho, probably less.

 

You can, I think, about get about 40hp [Edit: some sources seem to give numbers as high as 50hp] out of a square foot of locomotive grate area, and I think a Duchess has 50sq.ft, or 2000hp. Any more for peak performance will come from depleting the pressure of the boiler, built up to maximum in readiness for a burst of high power, and once the loco is “puffed out”, it’s puffed out.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Nearholmer