Imaginary Locomotives

[PenrithBeacon]

54 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

That would have pushed the axle load up to 22t compared to 16-17t for a class 37 or 40 as built. The LMS of course fitted an EE 16SVT and generator into a Co-Co locomotive, also giving an axle load of about 22t, though the engine could only give 1600hp at that time. 

 

It's likely that  a 22t axle load would have severely restricted route availability until c1980.

[Flying Pig]

15 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I've often wondered if the 10000/10001 design uprated to 2000hp in the same body (or would the electrics not have coped?) whether they could have made a much more effective locomotive than the 40s developed from them.

 

14 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I've always thought the Ivatt twins were proto-37s so in that case, 2000hp versions of 37s should also be possible.

 

To expand on my comments about weights, the LMS twins used the Mk1 version of the 16SVT engine and the 40s used the Mk2 version of the same engine. The overall weight of the two designs was very similar but the 40s spread it over more axles for better route availability.

 

While the 37s slightly exceeded the power of the LMS locos, they did that with only 12 cylinders which led to a considerable weight saving, so that a Co-Co chassis was feasible with a much lower axle load than the LMS engines.

 

In tems of power per cylinder, the 12SVT in a 37 is equivalent to a 16SVT at about 2300hp, which is close to what EE actually offered for the production run of Type 4s.  Running a 12SVT at 2000hp is equivalent to nearly 2700hp from a 16-cylinder engine.  As that was achieved with DP2 using a charge cooled development of the engine at the time 37s were still being built and at a weight only five tons more than a 37, it does look like a 2000hp EE Co-Co would have been quite feasible.

 

If the timings had been slightly different, perhaps we could have seen dieselisation based on 2000hp EE Co-Cos and 2700hp DP2-oids.  

 

[Ramblin Rich]

Out of interest, does anyone know the relative weights of comparable Sulzer and EE power units? Nothing comes up from a search, only full loco weights.

[The Johnster]

19 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Class 33 was the best thing BRCW produced

 

No argument there, Rich.  Along with the Hymek, well ahead of the game in terms of power/weight ratio and astonishing for a loco with electric transmission, and with electric train heating to boot.  And it looked rather nice IMHO.

 

Another advantage in this case was the ability to work in mulitple.  I am incogniscent of the issues, but there seems to have been an upper limit to how powerful a loco could be and still operate in multiple in those days; Ivatt managed it, as did Bulleid with the 1.8khp pair, but not the 2khp 10103.   The 1.75khp 37s had it, as did the 50s (at a cost in reliabiity for some time) and the Warships, at the cost of two incompatible systems, but Hymeks, Westerns, 47s, 40s, 44/5/6, and 55, which might have benefitted from it, were not despite the stipulations of the MP.

 

 

17 hours ago, rodent279 said:

So a 47, with a shade under 2000hp at the rail, is little better than a King or Castle in good nick.

 

This is pretty much how I thought of them in the 70s, and equatable to a 28xx/Stanier 8F/01/WD for freight.  One might equate a Hymek, 33, or 37  to a Hall or Black 5/B1/S15, a 31 to various moguls, and the rest of the Type 2s to 0-6-0s.

 

17 hours ago, rodent279 said:

What a diesel can't do that steam, and electric for that matter, can, is exceed it's continuous rating for a short while.

 

It can't exceed the continuous rating, but what it can do, at the risk of burning out traction motors, is exceed the amperage to them.  You could get away with running the needle well into the yellow part of the dial if you didn't mind the smell of cooking.  EE's overload protection circuit breakers were far mor effective than Brushs'.

 

9 hours ago, rodent279 said:

 

I think that early experience with the 40s should have inspired a project to produce some single cab 40s that would be used in pairs where more than 2000 HP was required

 

What happened in the event was the continuation of the Bullied/Class 40 underframe, built like a battleship, under the various varieties of Peaks, with the cabs moved outwards to accommodate a Sulzer engine and associated equipment, stylistically a bit of a throwback to the Ivatts.  The power/weight ratio was still not good, but they were a good 2 coaches better than a 40.  What I consider the finest run I had in my railway career was with a recently outshopped 46 in 1975, Gloucester Tramway to Cardiff Pengam Reception with a Freightliner in 56 minutes for about 54 miles start to stop, no adverse signals, all speed restrictions fully observerd, and what was stated on the load slip to be 1200tons behind the drawhook.  A 47 should have been able to do better, so should a 52, but never did in my experience (though the 52s were very good pullers on Freightliner work).

 

Double heading of the more powerful locos was not really encouraged until the 50s were employed on the WCML and pairs of Warships on the WR's West of England via Savernake route.  On freight work, the power could not often be used to full advantage due to the limitations of train length; back in my day we were using triple headed 37s on Port Talbot-Llanwern workings, 28 x 100ton bogie tipplers, which had to be signalled under special regulations and given clear routeing through Bridgend, Cardiff, and Newport; they could only be recessed into Pencoed Up, Miskin, or Tremains Down loops.  The up workings were impressive to watch but painfully slow ascending Stormy Bank from their standing starts at Margam; you would clear the top at 8mph with combined 5.25k bhp, an effective blocking of the up SWML for a half an hour or so.  They were, in short, a bit of a PITA to the panel boxes, and the 37s were replaced in due time by double headed 56s, which of course allowed another 10 tipplers and the repliation of the same issues; the 56s were a little faster but the longer trains took more time to clear signal sections or loops.

 

There is another point to be made on the subject of multiple working.  There were reasons for the failure, but the MP failed very significantly to establishe standardisation of compatible control systems, and this extended to dmus as well.  Perhaps it was too much to expect cross compatibility between electric and hydraulic transmission, but there was a failure to establish compatibility within transmission types and even within classes.  An opportunity was lost here, a result of the policy (IMHO flawed and this should have been picked up at the time) of trialling large numbers of different classes from different manufacturers.  I would contend that the following classes should never have been built in more than minimal trail quantities; 14, 15, 16, 17 except the RR engined versions, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 40, 45, 46, 50, and 55.  Hydraulics should probably never have been built at al, certainly not in the way that they were with minimal space for future improvment to air brakes or eth, but there was a case to be made for  them on the South Devon banks.  If we had to have them, they should have all had a standardised mulitple unit working system, ideally compatible with diesel electrics and dmus; in other words, all forms of traction should have been as compatible with all other forms to the greates extent possible. 

 

If a standardised control system had been established, it might have been possible to impose a standard cab layout, and traction knowledge could have been less of an issue.  The system could have been extended to 25kv electric stock as well.

Edited March 6, 2021 by The Johnster

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

No argument there, Rich.  Along with the Hymek, well ahead of the game in terms of power/weight ratio and astonishing for a loco with electric transmission, and with electric train heating to boot.  And it looked rather nice IMHO.

 

Another advantage in this case was the ability to work in mulitple.  I am incogniscent of the issues, but there seems to have been an upper limit to how powerful a loco could be and still operate in multiple in those days; Ivatt managed it, as did Bulleid with the 1.8khp pair, but not the 2khp 10103.   The 1.75khp 37s had it, as did the 50s (at a cost in reliabiity for some time) and the Warships, at the cost of two incompatible systems, but Hymeks, Westerns, 47s, 40s, 44/5/6, and 55, which might have benefitted from it, were not despite the stipulations of the MP.

 

 

 

This is pretty much how I thought of them in the 70s, and equatable to a 28xx/Stanier 8F/01/WD for freight.  One might equate a Hymek, 33, or 37  to a Hall or Black 5/B1/S15, a 31 to various moguls, and the rest of the Type 2s to 0-6-0s.

 

 

It can't exceed the continuous rating, but what it can do, at the risk of burning out traction motors, is exceed the amperage to them.  You could get away with running the needle well into the yellow part of the dial if you didn't mind the smell of cooking.  EE's overload protection circuit breakers were far mor effective than Brushs'.

 

 

What happened in the event was the continuation of the Bullied/Class 40 underframe, built like a battleship, under the various varieties of Peaks, with the cabs moved outwards to accommodate a Sulzer engine and associated equipment, stylistically a bit of a throwback to the Ivatts.  The power/weight ratio was still not good, but they were a good 2 coaches better than a 40.  What I consider the finest run I had in my railway career was with a recently outshopped 46 in 1975, Gloucester Tramway to Cardiff Pengam Reception with a Freightliner in 56 minutes for about 54 miles start to stop, no adverse signals, all speed restrictions fully observerd, and what was stated on the load slip to be 1200tons behind the drawhook.  A 47 should have been able to do better, so should a 52, but never did in my experience (though the 52s were very good pullers on Freightliner work).

 

Double heading of the more powerful locos was not really encouraged until the 50s were employed on the WCML and pairs of Warships on the WR's West of England via Savernake route.  On freight work, the power could not often be used to full advantage due to the limitations of train length; back in my day we were using triple headed 37s on Port Talbot-Llanwern workings, 28 x 100ton bogie tipplers, which had to be signalled under special regulations and given clear routeing through Bridgend, Cardiff, and Newport; they could only be recessed into Pencoed Up, Miskin, or Tremains Down loops.  The up workings were impressive to watch but painfully slow ascending Stormy Bank from their standing starts at Margam; you would clear the top at 8mph with combined 5.25k bhp, an effective blocking of the up SWML for a half an hour or so.  They were, in short, a bit of a PITA to the panel boxes, and the 37s were replaced in due time by double headed 56s, which of course allowed another 10 tipplers and the repliation of the same issues; the 56s were a little faster but the longer trains took more time to clear signal sections or loops.

 

There is another point to be made on the subject of multiple working.  There were reasons for the failure, but the MP failed very significantly to establishe standardisation of compatible control systems, and this extended to dmus as well.  Perhaps it was too much to expect cross compatibility between electric and hydraulic transmission, but there was a failure to establish compatibility within transmission types and even within classes.  An opportunity was lost here, a result of the policy (IMHO flawed and this should have been picked up at the time) of trialling large numbers of different classes from different manufacturers.  I would contend that the following classes should never have been built in more than minimal trail quantities; 14, 15, 16, 17 except the RR engined versions, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 40, 45, 46, 50, and 55.  Hydraulics should probably never have been built at al, certainly not in the way that they were with minimal space for future improvment to air brakes or eth, but there was a case to be made for  them on the South Devon banks.  If we had to have them, they should have all had a standardised mulitple unit working system, ideally compatible with diesel electrics and dmus; in other words, all forms of traction should have been as compatible with all other forms to the greates extent possible. 

 

If a standardised control system had been established, it might have been possible to impose a standard cab layout, and traction knowledge could have been less of an issue.  The system could have been extended to 25kv electric stock as well.

40's were blue star MU fitted. Admittedly I've not seen many photos of them double headed, but I'm sure it happened. I've seen plenty of photos of 40's d/h with class 25-7, 31 & 37.

 

I can't honestly see any reason why it shouldn't be possible for DH & DE locos to have MU gear that is compatible. It's the engine that is being controlled, rather than the traction motors or hydraulic transmission directly. Where you might have problems is replicating things like fault and overload warnings. I'm sure it's nothing that couldn't be overcome, but it would require a large degree of agreement on common standards between different manufacturers.

As for DMU'S-I thought there was a fair degree of standardisation on control gear, most were blue square?

[Northroader]

Double heading type 4s wasn’t allowed because of drawgear strength.

There was a lot of money swilling around with the modernisation plan, and politicians wanted to see their constituents had a smell of it in places that were struggling like Glasgow and Barrow, so contracts went out to places who thought they had the capability to build diesels under licence, which were just as good as those from Switzerland and Germany, designed by firms with very limited diesel knowhow. IMHO, English Electric should have been given the lot.

[rodent279]

8 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Out of interest, does anyone know the relative weights of comparable Sulzer and EE power units? Nothing comes up from a search, only full loco weights.

Pretty sure that I've read somewhere that a class 47 engine weighs a little short of 20 tons, though not sure whether this is dry, and with or without generator. Can't remember which book it was in though, I've got so many!

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Pretty sure that I've read somewhere that a class 47 engine weighs a little short of 20 tons, though not sure whether this is dry, and with or without generator. Can't remember which book it was in though, I've got so many!

It wouldn't be without a generator, that is as important as the boiler on a steam loco.

[simon b]

11 hours ago, Northroader said:

Double heading type 4s wasn’t allowed because of drawgear strength.

 

Was this because of older wagon design strength? It seems to have been dropped by the late 70's.

[rodent279]

7 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

It wouldn't be without a generator, that is as important as the boiler on a steam loco.

Found it, but it wasn't the class 47 engine. Sulzer types 2&3 by ATH Tayler quotes the dry weight of the 6LDA28 engine as used in class 24 & 26 as 9.55 tons, and the 8LDA28-A engine used in class 33 as 12.25 tons. I think 20t would be a reasonable ball park figure for a class 47 engine, dry and without generator.

A 16 cylinder engine, such as the EE 16CVST, is likely to be north of 25t.

Edited March 7, 2021 by rodent279

[simon b]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Found it, but it wasn't the class 47 engine. Sulzer types 2&3 by ATH Tayler quotes the dry weight of the 6LDA28 engine as used in class 24 & 26 as 9.55 tons, and the 8LDA28-A engine used in class 33 as 12.25 tons. I think 20t would be a reasonable ball park figure for a class 47 engine, dry and without generator.

A 16 cylinder engine, such as the EE 16CVST, is likely to be north of 25t.

 

The engine in a 56 which is an evolution of the 16cvst, can be seen lifted out at around the 10 min mark in this vid complete with the alternator.  I'll bet that combo is past 30t.

 

 

[rodent279]

On 05/03/2021 at 23:55, rodent279 said:

So a 47, with a shade under 2000hp at the rail, is little better than a King or Castle in good nick.

What a diesel can't do that steam, and electric for that matter, can, is exceed it's continuous rating for a short while. A diesel's power output is fixed, and can't be exceeded for a short time, steam can produce high short term power outputs, but at the expense of boiler pressure. Electric can do the same, the limiting factor being the temperature rise in the equipment.

I suspect that someone in the BTC got their bhp & rail hp mixed up, and also overlooked the fixed power output of a diesel. 

Though to be fair, a diesel can do that day in, day out, with minimal effort from driver & "fireman", but keeping a steam locomotive in top nick, and performing at that level, demands a lot of skill and effort on the part of both maintenance staff and traincrew.

In that respect, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that one of the main drivers behind dieselisation was to reduce the overheads associated with steam operation, rather than to bring massive improvements in journey times or freight train tonnages.

Edited March 7, 2021 by rodent279

[Grizz]

59 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Though to be fair, a diesel can do that day in, day out, with minimal effort from driver & "fireman", but keeping a steam locomotive in top nick, and performing at that level, demands a lot of skill and effort on the part of both maintenance staff and traincrew.

In that respect, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that one of the main drivers behind dieselisation was to reduce the overheads associated with steam operation, rather than to bring massive improvements in journey times or freight train tonnages.

Totally agree. As far as I can see with a diesel it is the minimal amount of preparation when compared to a steam loco. Obviously it depends on the types involved but If you have to be there 2.5 hours before you actually need it, against as long as the batteries are charged and it has fuel and you’ve done the required checks...then off you go. I know what I would choose. Then of course there is the time it takes for disposal, as most importantly there is the dirt and muck. 

[Grizz]

1 hour ago, simon b said:

 

The engine in a 56 which is an evolution of the 16cvst, can be seen lifted out at around the 10 min mark in this vid complete with the alternator.  I'll bet that combo is past 30t.

 

 

I remember this quite well. It always surprised me that the loco body had fairly minimal damage, especially considering it is a monocoque construction. I suppose the fact that the loco wasn’t that old was in its favour. 

[The Johnster]

7 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Though to be fair, a diesel can do that day in, day out, with minimal effort from driver & "fireman", but keeping a steam locomotive in top nick, and performing at that level, demands a lot of skill and effort on the part of both maintenance staff and traincrew.

In that respect, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that one of the main drivers behind dieselisation was to reduce the overheads associated with steam operation, rather than to bring massive improvements in journey times or freight train tonnages.

 

I'm old enough to remember the arguments put forward in the early 60s in favour of dieselisation as rapidly as possible as a necessary replacement of steam.  It was reckoned, though I cannot confirm it to be a fact, that the cost of building a diesel loco was 3 times that of a steam loco of similar general capacity (our 47/Castle comparison is valid here), but that the increased availability of diesel traction enabled 3 steam locos to be replaced by each roughly equivalent diesel.  A statement often heard was that a steam locomotive takes about 8 hours to raise steam from cold, while the diesel only needs a 20 minute walk around and checkover by the driver and once brake pressure has been created you're good to go.

 

This ignores that most steam locos are kept in light steam most of the time and can be brought up to working pressure in less than 2 hours, still not anything like as fast as the diesel, but the diesel needs to be fuelled, coolant topped up, and checked over by the running shed fitters, which evens the playing field a bit.  Steam locos are kept in steam because it is  advantageous not only for availability but also reduces wear on components subject to expansion and contraction, particularly where hot water and steam comes into contact with steel plates and tubes.  Steam locos have to be completely cooled down and the boiler emptied at regular intervals, about every 10 working days for big tender locos, called a boiler washout.  YouTube has a BTC film called 'Wash And Brush Up' which illustrates the procedure on a standard 5MT at Patricroft; it takes two days, and as well as the boiler tube cleaning a going over by the boilersmith and any other jobs that need doing are done at the same time.  It is the laying of a new fire and bringing to pressure, which must be done slowly in order to mimimise damage from expansion, that takes 8 hours.

 

The exchange rate, 3 withdrawn steam for each new diesel at each shed, proved nearly to be the undoing of the WR timetable in 1962.  Because the Warships had been specified with insufficient power to replace Castles in good order, and were doing King work on the Bristolian and West of England routes, they were thrashed by the drivers to keep time.  This was easy enough; you just put her into forward and opened her up all the way.  The result was mechanical unreliablity and down time, and Warships blocking bays in the erecting shop at Swindon which impacted on the building of new Westerns.  A similar thing happened on the South Wales route with the Hymeks, pocket rockets but not up to 14 bogies from Severn Tunnel Bottom to Badminton at King timings.  The Kings were concentrated on the Wolverhamptons to proved a 2 hour service from Birmingham while the wires were being put up on the Euston route, and were dropping like flies with cracked frames; it wasn't just the Warships that were being thrashed.

 

The driving force behind this was the region's desire to beat the ER and be the first region to eliminate steam, which they managed in 1965, but by then the hydraulic program was in ruins.  It was the ER that effectively bailed us out, partly with the arrival of Gerard Fiennes as GM.  He had seen the advantages of the 37s and 47s and, with EE and Brush being in a position to accept the orders, the next batch of Hymeks, D7101-99, lower geared for South Wales mineral work to replace the 56xx and 42xx, were cancelled in favour of 37s, and Westerns and the proposed 'Super Western' were cancelled in favour of 47s.  The 47s suffered a bit with thrashing on the South Wales route and had to be derated, but that gave the region breathing space for 1963; the Warships were brought into line, trouble with the hydraulics on them and the Westerns was overcome, and from then the hydraulics began to give reliable service, but only for the next decade or so, as the lack of space for train air brake equipment in the case of the 22s, Warships, and Hymeks, and ETH in the case of the Westerns condemned them as incapable of being brought into line with the required standards.  Should they have been built in the first place, since air brakes and ETH had been on the 1955 shopping list?  Possibly, but not in that minimal space form, a result of a desire for good power/weight ratios.  This has been discussed to death many times.

 

But in '62 and early '63 the WR timetable came very close to collapse because there were simply not enough serviceable locos to run the trains.  This parlous state of affairs should have been avoided by the exchange rate being reduced to 2 steam for each diesl, or even 2 and a half, but politics prevented this.  Timetable improvents which were designed to re-inforce the perception that diesel was better than steam in operation (it wasn't, not until the HSTs were introduced) were actually brought about by a combination of junction relayings (Severn Tunnel, Patchway, Stoke Gifford, Wootton Bassett) and reducing loads; the South Wales trains went down from 14 without assistance to 12, then 10 with airco and 47s. 

 

Looked at purely and only as a matter of bums on seats, a Traffic Dept. perspective, you can carry the same number of people pre hour between Cardiff General and Paddington in 1956 with a Brit or a Castle and up to 16 coaches assisted STJ-Badminton as you can with a HST service in 1976; the HST service is better 'only' because it has more frequent departures and a shorter journey time.  The higher speed enables more trains to occupy the same route, an advantage to the Operating Dept, and Marketing like them as well, but in terms of bums on seats there's not much difference.  Even now, when the electrics have restored the 1970s HST timings, there's not that much difference in bums on seats.

 

Of course, diesels are better than steam from anything except an aesthetic enthusiast viewpoint, but the first and second generations of them were not much faster or more powerful, and they were not as superior as was claimed in other respects as well.  In those days, the railway was greatly  concerned with 'modernisation'; fair enough, but a more holistic approach, while delaying the elimination of steam by maybe 3 or 4 years, would have given it a much smoother ride and caused fewer operating and maintenance problems. 

 

My view was (still is but now it's an academic irrelevance) that Riddles' original approach, approved by the BTC, was correct; electrification of trunk routes and dieselisation of secondary routes by the early 70s leading to the elimination of steam by around that time.  This happened on mainland Europe, both sides of the Iron Curtain, but when the Treasury realised how much it would cost a re-organisation from BTC to BRB instigated what was effectively a coup which ousted Riddles and his team.  What followed, so quickly that it might be suspected of being pre-arranged, was the 1955 MP, which had some very good ideas; air brakes, airco, bogie freight stock, electric heating, CWR, MAS, but whose locomotive policy, based on faulty information from Rugby, was hopelessly flawed.

 

Then. less than a decade later, Beeching.  He was not the monster some of us think he was, a lot of the railway was unsustainable in it's pre-Beeching form and a tree needs to be pruned for it's own good sometimes, but Beeching did things from a beancounter pov (inevitable given that his task was to control losses on the railway) and if you cut the branches without holistically looking at what will happen to the trunk, the trunk starts to die, not to benefit from the pruning.  How much money was saved by the wholesale and indiscriminate closure of small main line stations and goods yards?  The line had to be maintained and the overheads paid for anyway.  Sure, they were overstaffed, but that could have been rectified; dmu locals with on board ticket sales, and the odd mileage siding retained, would have been of huge and reasonably cost effective value to many rural communities which had intercity and block freight trains blasting through them at high speeds but gained no benefit from them.

 

And that's my Sunday afternoon in the middle of lockdown ramblngs for this week...

Edited March 7, 2021 by The Johnster

[PenrithBeacon]

Personally I think Beeching got it right. I also think that Ivatt got his diesel policy right too. Riddles was a dinosaur by the 1940s, electrification is all very well but its enthusiasts tend to forget the huge investment in fixed structures that leads to excessive cost overruns. Every electrification scheme there has ever been has cost a lot more than what was expected. 

I think the future should be locos &/or multiple units powered by hydrogen created by electricity from renewable sources. 

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

I'm old enough to remember the arguments put forward in the early 60s in favour of dieselisation as rapidly as possible as a necessary replacement of steam.  It was reckoned, though I cannot confirm it to be a fact, that the cost of building a diesel loco was 3 times that of a steam loco of similar general capacity (our 47/Castle comparison is valid here), but that the increased availability of diesel traction enabled 3 steam locos to be replaced by each roughly equivalent diesel.  A statement often heard was that a steam locomotive takes about 8 hours to raise steam from cold, while the diesel only needs a 20 minute walk around and checkover by the driver and once brake pressure has been created you're good to go.

 

This ignores that most steam locos are kept in light steam most of the time and can be brought up to working pressure in less than 2 hours, still not anything like as fast as the diesel, but the diesel needs to be fuelled, coolant topped up, and checked over by the running shed fitters, which evens the playing field a bit.  Steam locos are kept in steam because it is  advantageous not only for availability but also reduces wear on components subject to expansion and contraction, particularly where hot water and steam comes into contact with steel plates and tubes.  Steam locos have to be completely cooled down and the boiler emptied at regular intervals, about every 10 working days for big tender locos, called a boiler washout.  YouTube has a BTC film called 'Wash And Brush Up' which illustrates the procedure on a standard 5MT at Patricroft; it takes two days, and as well as the boiler tube cleaning a going over by the boilersmith and any other jobs that need doing are done at the same time.  It is the laying of a new fire and bringing to pressure, which must be done slowly in order to mimimise damage from expansion, that takes 8 hours.

 

The exchange rate, 3 withdrawn steam for each new diesel at each shed, proved nearly to be the undoing of the WR timetable in 1962.  Because the Warships had been specified with insufficient power to replace Castles in good order, and were doing King work on the Bristolian and West of England routes, they were thrashed by the drivers to keep time.  This was easy enough; you just put her into forward and opened her up all the way.  The result was mechanical unreliablity and down time, and Warships blocking bays in the erecting shop at Swindon which impacted on the building of new Westerns.  A similar thing happened on the South Wales route with the Hymeks, pocket rockets but not up to 14 bogies from Severn Tunnel Bottom to Badminton at King timings.  The Kings were concentrated on the Wolverhamptons to proved a 2 hour service from Birmingham while the wires were being put up on the Euston route, and were dropping like flies with cracked frames; it wasn't just the Warships that were being thrashed.

 

The driving force behind this was the region's desire to beat the ER and be the first region to eliminate steam, which they managed in 1965, but by then the hydraulic program was in ruins.  It was the ER that effectively bailed us out, partly with the arrival of Gerard Fiennes as GM.  He had seen the advantages of the 37s and 47s and, with EE and Brush being in a position to accept the orders, the next batch of Hymeks, D7101-99, lower geared for South Wales mineral work to replace the 56xx and 42xx, were cancelled in favour of 37s, and Westerns and the proposed 'Super Western' were cancelled in favour of 47s.  The 47s suffered a bit with thrashing on the South Wales route and had to be derated, but that gave the region breathing space for 1963; the Warships were brought into line, trouble with the hydraulics on them and the Westerns was overcome, and from then the hydraulics began to give reliable service, but only for the next decade or so, as the lack of space for train air brake equipment in the case of the 22s, Warships, and Hymeks, and ETH in the case of the Westerns condemned them as incapable of being brought into line with the required standards.  Should they have been built in the first place, since air brakes and ETH had been on the 1955 shopping list?  Possibly, but not in that minimal space form, a result of a desire for good power/weight ratios.  This has been discussed to death many times.

 

But in '62 and early '63 the WR timetable came very close to collapse because there were simply not enough serviceable locos to run the trains.  This parlous state of affairs should have been avoided by the exchange rate being reduced to 2 steam for each diesl, or even 2 and a half, but politics prevented this.  Timetable improvents which were designed to re-inforce the perception that diesel was better than steam in operation (it wasn't, not until the HSTs were introduced) were actually brought about by a combination of junction relayings (Severn Tunnel, Patchway, Stoke Gifford, Wootton Bassett) and reducing loads; the South Wales trains went down from 14 without assistance to 12, then 10 with airco and 47s. 

 

Looked at purely and only as a matter of bums on seats, a Traffic Dept. perspective, you can carry the same number of people pre hour between Cardiff General and Paddington in 1956 with a Brit or a Castle and up to 16 coaches assisted STJ-Badminton as you can with a HST service in 1976; the HST service is better 'only' because it has more frequent departures and a shorter journey time.  The higher speed enables more trains to occupy the same route, an advantage to the Operating Dept, and Marketing like them as well, but in terms of bums on seats there's not much difference.  Even now, when the electrics have restored the 1970s HST timings, there's not that much difference in bums on seats.

 

Of course, diesels are better than steam from anything except an aesthetic enthusiast viewpoint, but the first and second generations of them were not much faster or more powerful, and they were not as superior as was claimed in other respects as well.  In those days, the railway was greatly  concerned with 'modernisation'; fair enough, but a more holistic approach, while delaying the elimination of steam by maybe 3 or 4 years, would have given it a much smoother ride and caused fewer operating and maintenance problems. 

 

My view was (still is but now it's an academic irrelevance) that Riddles' original approach, approved by the BTC, was correct; electrification of trunk routes and dieselisation of secondary routes by the early 70s leading to the elimination of steam by around that time.  This happened on mainland Europe, both sides of the Iron Curtain, but when the Treasury realised how much it would cost a re-organisation from BTC to BRB instigated what was effectively a coup which ousted Riddles and his team.  What followed, so quickly that it might be suspected of being pre-arranged, was the 1955 MP, which had some very good ideas; air brakes, airco, bogie freight stock, electric heating, CWR, MAS, but whose locomotive policy, based on faulty information from Rugby, was hopelessly flawed.

 

Then. less than a decade later, Beeching.  He was not the monster some of us think he was, a lot of the railway was unsustainable in it's pre-Beeching form and a tree needs to be pruned for it's own good sometimes, but Beeching did things from a beancounter pov (inevitable given that his task was to control losses on the railway) and if you cut the branches without holistically looking at what will happen to the trunk, the trunk starts to die, not to benefit from the pruning.  How much money was saved by the wholesale and indiscriminate closure of small main line stations and goods yards?  The line had to be maintained and the overheads paid for anyway.  Sure, they were overstaffed, but that could have been rectified; dmu locals with on board ticket sales, and the odd mileage siding retained, would have been of huge and reasonably cost effective value to many rural communities which had intercity and block freight trains blasting through them at high speeds but gained no benefit from them.

 

And that's my Sunday afternoon in the middle of lockdown ramblngs for this week...

Looked at with hindsight, Beeching was a victim of a masterful piece of political manoeuvring and manipulation. He was an advocate of trunk route electrification, championed the introduction of what became Freightliner, and instigated many other things that laid the foundation for the modern railway, yet always gets the blame. "Beeching killed the railways", they say.

No, he used a blunt axe where he should have used pruning shears. Many, possibly the majority, of railways that closed, should either never have been built, or should have closed a decade or two earlier.

Marples was, in my opinion, the real villain of the piece, with his interests in road construction companies allegedly divested to his wife, yet somehow, by accident or design, the blame is shifted to Beeching.

Edited March 7, 2021 by rodent279

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Personally I think Beeching got it right. I also think that Ivatt got his diesel policy right too. Riddles was a dinosaur by the 1940s, electrification is all very well but its enthusiasts tend to forget the huge investment in fixed structures that leads to excessive cost overruns. Every electrification scheme there has ever been has cost a lot more than what was expected. 

I think the future should be locos &/or multiple units powered by hydrogen created by electricity from renewable sources. 

 

A major issue with dieselisation was balance of payments (also known as the country being broke) - hence building under licence rather than buying directly from the US manufacturers. Would electrification have been less dependent on US technology? Or have involved greater investment in home industry?

[Northmoor]

54 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Every electrification scheme there has ever been has cost a lot more than what was expected. 

I think the future should be locos &/or multiple units powered by hydrogen created by electricity from renewable sources. 

The ECML scheme in the 80s came in 10% under budget.  I think the East Anglian schemes came in at or under budget as well.

Generating hydrogen by electrolysis is pretty inefficient (and no amount of research is really going to change that), certainly compared to reforming it from diesel.

 

26 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Looked at with hindsight, Beeching was a victim of a masterful piece of political manoeuvring and manipulation. He was an advocate of trunk route electrification, championed the introduction of what became Freightliner, and instigated many other things that laid the foundation for the modern railway, yet always gets the blame. "Beeching killed the railways", they say.

No, he used a blunt axe where he should have used pruning shears. Many, possibly the majority, of railways that closed, should either never have been built, or should have closed a decade or two earlier.

Marples was the real villain of the piece, with his interests on road construction companies divested to his wife, yet somehow, by accident or design, the blame is shifted to Beeching.

The current "Rolling Back Beeching" schemes continue to paint him as the villain for any number of closures he had nothing to do with, instead of the politicians who actually signed off on the closures he did and didn't recommend.

By the way the Marples conspiracy re: his wife, would be libellous if he or she were still alive.  There has never been any firm evidence put forward that the alleged share transfer ever happened.

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

The ECML scheme in the 80s came in 10% under budget.  I think the East Anglian schemes came in at or under budget as well.

Generating hydrogen by electrolysis is pretty inefficient (and no amount of research is really going to change that), certainly compared to reforming it from diesel.

 

The current "Rolling Back Beeching" schemes continue to paint him as the villain for any number of closures he had nothing to do with, instead of the politicians who actually signed off on the closures he did and didn't recommend.

By the way the Marples conspiracy re: his wife, would be libellous if he or she were still alive.  There has never been any firm evidence put forward that the alleged share transfer ever happened.

Duly noted and edited. Hopefully I'll stay out of jail!

[Ramblin Rich]

On 06/03/2021 at 13:43, Ramblin Rich said:

Out of interest, does anyone know the relative weights of comparable Sulzer and EE power units? Nothing comes up from a search, only full loco weights.

 

20 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Pretty sure that I've read somewhere that a class 47 engine weighs a little short of 20 tons, though not sure whether this is dry, and with or without generator. Can't remember which book it was in though, I've got so many!

I've partly answered my question, in the 'Hayes Class 50 owners manual' it states the engine + generator is 30 tons. I've seen that the class 56 engine produces 3520hp at 14.9hp/ton which implies a weight of around 23.4 tons.

So if the class 47 engine is 20 tons that's quite a lot less, but that might not include the generator.

Somehow it seems difficult to believe that the twin bank Sulzer with 2x crankshaft and extra  gearing is lighter, but there are 4 fewer cylinders.

 

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

 

I've partly answered my question, in the 'Hayes Class 50 owners manual' it states the engine + generator is 30 tons. I've seen that the class 56 engine produces 3520hp at 14.9hp/ton which implies a weight of around 23.4 tons.

So if the class 47 engine is 20 tons that's quite a lot less, but that might not include the generator.

Somehow it seems difficult to believe that the twin bank Sulzer with 2x crankshaft and extra  gearing is lighter, but there are 4 fewer cylinders.

 

Maybe the EE product was somewhat over-engineered compared to the Sulzer - built like a tank, and weighed about the same!

[The Johnster]

There was, and still is, a fundmamental misunderstanding of what the bulk of the Beeching closures were, probably because at the time the main oppostition to them, that attracted media attention, was centred on the branch lines, presented by their supporters as essential rural lifelines, that were closed.  Many of these, as has been said, had never made a penny for their owners in the 70, 80, or more years they had been in existence for, but were kept despite the losses because they fed traffic, freight and passenger, to the main lines, and those were profitable.  One often hears of the route mileage of uneconomic railway that Beeching closed, usually at the same time as maps are shown from which the bulk of railway dissappear from Wales, Scotland, and the West Country, as well as swathes of rural Northern England;

 

This obscures the main thrust, and the location, of the main effect of Beeching's closures, the large number of smaller stations on main lines that were closed and the even larger number of small goods yards in such places.  It may be difficult for those who live in the South Eastern corner of England, where the stations remained open but the goods yards were ripped out to be converted into commuter car parks, to realise how massive and devastating this was to the rest of the country.  Beeching probably assumed, as many did in the early 60s, that car ownership would take up the slack, and there was much talk of bus services replacing these stations, but few buses ever materialised for long.  The result was that the migration of the less well off from rural and small town communities, which had been going on for a century and a half already, was encouraged and largely completed; rural communities were destroyed and replaced by dormitory settlements if they were within a couple of hours of big cities and holiday homes if they were further out.  Farming became more mechanised and there is no place for anyone but the well-to-do in the countryside now.  One can probably not blame Dr Beeching for all of this, but he certainly didn't help matters.  Our society had become more divided, certainly compared to mainland Europe where the local stations largely survived, and survive.

 

The economic situation was changing at a tremenduous speed after 1955, with road building making road transport more competitive with rail and profitable for it's owners at the same time as private car ownership was increasing at an exponential rate, which it continued to do until the late 80s.  By that time it was realised that road improvements didn't work; the extra space on the roads was always equated by the increase in car ownership, and the current return to rail began in earnest.  Marples was a tool of the road lobby, which had things pretty much their own way for most of that 30+ years. Beeching, while an honest enough cove, was a tool of Marples, and the railway was hobbled by the Treasury from fighting back.  One might almost think it was a deliberate conspiracy...  Our railway is now not fit for purpose and even when some of it is relieved by HS2 will still struggle.  The lack of investment goes back to the 30s and is often cited, but the irreversible damage done between 1955 and 1985, the removal of stations, the selling of surplus land once needed for carriage sidings or hump yards, the wholesale disposal of assets, was short sighted, preventable, and unforgiveable; the nation will be on the economic and social back foot for the next century, at least partly and I believe largely, because of it.  We're a lame duck that Europe is glad to be rid of, and this is one of the reasons why.

[Northmoor]

43 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The economic situation was changing at a tremenduous speed after 1955, with road building making road transport more competitive with rail and profitable for it's owners at the same time as private car ownership was increasing at an exponential rate, which it continued to do until the late 80s.  By that time it was realised that road improvements didn't work; the extra space on the roads was always equated by the increase in car ownership, and the current return to rail began in earnest.  Marples was a tool of the road lobby, which had things pretty much their own way for most of that 30+ years. Beeching, while an honest enough cove, was a tool of Marples, and the railway was hobbled by the Treasury from fighting back.  One might almost think it was a deliberate conspiracy...  Our railway is now not fit for purpose and even when some of it is relieved by HS2 will still struggle.  The lack of investment goes back to the 30s and is often cited, but the irreversible damage done between 1955 and 1985, the removal of stations, the selling of surplus land once needed for carriage sidings or hump yards, the wholesale disposal of assets, was short sighted, preventable, and unforgiveable; the nation will be on the economic and social back foot for the next century, at least partly and I believe largely, because of it.  We're a lame duck that Europe is glad to be rid of, and this is one of the reasons why.

A very interesting analysis, Johnster.

 

I agree with most of Beeching's analysis - most flaws resulted from being expected to produce an instant solution to BR's rising losses, and quickly - but one of the errors was the "duplicated routes" principle.  Closing one of two routes between A and B is too simplistic if one serves C and the other D, both actually important places (this is not justification for re-opening the Dartmoor route BTW, a line vital for a few days every ten years isn't a priority).

 

In terms of conspiracies, well it wasn't just the government view that the future was the car.  Following the war when so many had learned to drive, the freedom that a car offered was irresistible once you could afford one. The idea of serious traffic congestion across the country wasn't something anyone predicted, people (not even civil servants) are very poor at predicting what the world will be like in a decade, let alone five decades into the future.  Nobody seriously predicted that two car households would become the norm and four or five car households would be common.  However, the idea that some things were planned isn't without evidence.  It is now known that the coal pit closures announced in 1984 (which led to the year-long strike) were, if not planned, actually predicted 20 years earlier by government departments, along with when other major infrastructure such as steelworks and ports might need to be closed, upgraded or even built new.

 

Also worth considering is population growth.  Since WW2 the fertility rate has actually been below that required to maintain equilibrium, it is only the falling death rate (one of our great successes and much can be attributed to the NHS) that kept population rising, until growth tailed off around the turn of the Century.  Immigration and increased birth rates since have led to a continued increase in population, such that the country now has about 40% more people than 70 years ago.  This would never have been predicted in 1960.

[RLBH]

On 05/03/2021 at 17:27, The Johnster said:

The information that the tenders to British industry were based on was the power ratings obtained from testing steam locomotives at the new Rugby Testing Plant, and these were, apparently, not a reflection of the actual power that those locos could put out.  It had been determined that 8P steam power equated to about 2k bhp, and 7MT to about 1.8k bhp. 

What I suspect happened was a two-pronged failure. I think they did accurately determine the power that could be sustained by steam locomotives, without fully appreciating the benefits that being able to mortgage the boiler brought in terms of temporarily exceeding what would be called a 'continuous rating' on a diesel locomotive.

 

Perhaps more significantly, I don't think they accounted for drivetrain losses. A steam engine rated at 2,000hp delivers that straight to the wheels. A diesel-electric locomotive loses about one-quarter of its' rated power between the engine and the wheels, and a diesel-hydraulic tends to lose about one-third. So, equalling an 8P rated at 2,000hp needs a 2,650hp diesel-electric, or a 3,000hp diesel-hydraulic.