Proposed GWR electrification in the 1930s/1940s?

[rodent279]

36 minutes ago, bécasse said:

While that is true of the relatively small fleets of small diesel shunters, many of which were more or less standard industrial designs which probably weren't intended for that long a life anyway, I would argue that it certainly wasn't true of the 350hp fleet which, as this diagram shows, didn't drop away all that quickly at all - and, although the chart stops at 2011, some remain in service today, six decades after the last examples were built.

 

Interested to see that the 08/09 fleet remained fairly stable through the 1970's, which is when (I thought) the bulk of wagon load and trip/short distance freight workings disappeared?

Edited January 21, 2023 by rodent279

[30851]

2 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Similarly, no allowance was probably made for the fact that the network would have shrunk so much just ten years later.  It reminds us how even in the days of the joined-up nationalised railway, the operating and planning departments clearly didn't really talk to each other (which is why so many of BR's diesel shunters were redundant at less than a decade old).

It is certainly true that the different parts of the Modernisation Plan were not coordinated. Seems the different teams were setup, given some brief guidance (* -see below) and sent on their way. There wasn't enough time before the report was published to look at all the bits together to see if it all made sense - the Indvidual team's suggestions were just combined and published. One example of this uncoordinated approach was the new Carlise yard - made sense for the LM point of view from how things worked before but was far too big when you looked at what ScR were doing with their new yards.

 

 

(*) Not sure where I read this all now but the one bit of guidance that was given out was that electrification was to take place on all the main lines. So, the team looking at diesels were to think of what to do for minor lines, hence the focus on Type 1 and Type 2 loco's in the Pilot Scheme. With the guidance given they, at first, didn't think there would be a need for a Type 4 etc. It was only when the electrification team worked out how little they could get done by 1970 that the need for Type 4's was considered. The lack of time before the report publication for developing the Type 4 lead to the heavy 40, 44 because they just copied the prototypes instead of more thinking.

 

Rob

 

[D7666]

56 minutes ago, 30851 said:

One example of this uncoordinated approach was the new Carlise yard - made sense for the LM point of view from how things worked before but was far too big when you looked at what ScR were doing with their new yards.

 

 

w.r.t. both to the yards that were built (Carlisle, Tee, Tyne, Perth, Margam, Tinsley etc) and those proposed that were not (Swansbourne or wherever twixt Bletchley and Oxford; and that one proposed between Wellington and Shrewsbury,  and others, there was a somewhat lucid item written in the 1960s suggesting that some of these 1950s ideas were based on experiences (and prejudices) from railwaymen  that were in junior/middle ranks in the 1930s deal with traffic issues and then WW2 pressures, who by 1950s had risen to positions of power and used that power to put in outdated solutions of grandiose yards that were too big in most [not all]  cases, and in the wrong places, to address problems that no longer existed. And all that was before rationalisation and traffic losses set in. I can't remember now where it was written or who wrote it - although i have half a suspicion it might have been Fiennes; it was very much the sort of thing he wrote.

 

True ScR yards were on a lesser scale, but even Perth for example was completely wrong. It never fully operated as set out to be, and largely closed after just 10 years or so.

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2023 by D7666

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Interested to see that the 08/09 fleet remained fairly stable through the 1970's, which is when (I thought) the bulk of wagon load and trip/short distance freight workings disappeared?

Paradoxically, the fall-off in trip and short haul transfer workings during the 60s meant that the type 1 locos orignally intended to work them had also largely gone by the early 70s, having proved unreliable and not worth fixing, except for the class 20s which had taken to hunting in pairs on mineral work where 60mph was more than enough and 2khp with 8 braked wheelsets was useful, which meant that those of such trip/transfer workings as were left tended to be in the hands of 08/09 shunting engines which were by the end of the 60s the only ones available despite being less than ideal for the work. 

 

The problem was the low speed that the 08s were allowed to run at, 15mph, which meant that they got in the way if the trip was over any but the very shortest distance.  Traditional 0-6-0T steam engines that had previously done this work were capable of running up to about 40mph easily enough and could certainly manage a local trip at 25mph, and be suitable for shunting it as well.  In American terms, the 08s and 09s were 'yard switchers', when what was needed for trip work on running lines, especially busy ones, were 'road switchers', and the failed 60mph NB and BTH type 1s were fairly clearly inspired by American road switchers.  Had they been more reliable and successful in service, they might have done another 20 years' work. 

 

The other contender is the WR class 14 'Teddy Bear'.  These could manage 40mph, but were hopelessly unreliable and suffered from poor brakes, a serious issue on an engine intended for that sort of work.  That they were universally praised by their later industrial owners has always surprised me a little, but of course by and large even big industrial systems do not have running lines as such, speeds are very low, and there is usually somebody on hand to pin brakes down if needed.  The view at Canton in the 70s among drivers I spoke to about them was that if was difficult enough to get them to go, but if you did it was even more difficult to get them to stop...

[The Johnster]

The big hump marshalling yards, which proved a waste of money except perhaps for Tinsley, looked very much like the answer to the wagonload freight remarshalling problem (pickup goods, junction yard marshalling, main yard marshalling, another main yard or maybe two, to another junction yard, to another pickup)  which was, in the 50s, still the bulk of the railway's general carrier general merchandise work.  It was what had been done in America 20 years earlier and it had worked there, and US practice had a very major influence on BR's modernising planners.  In 1955, the year of the Great Modernisation Plan (which by the way was pretty far-sighted and sensible except in it's locomotive policy), it would have been difficult to foresee the increase in private car ownership, the development of the articulated lorry, or the expansion of the motorway network that those things provoked. 

 

As an example, the WR's attempt to handle August Bank Holiday traffic to the West Country in 1958 was a heroic but doomed struggle against pathing and slow freight locos pressed into passenger service.  A year later the headlines were of huge traffic jams on the A38 Exeter Bypass.  Before the M1 and M6/A72 were opened, it took two days to drive a lorry from London to Glasgow, and three if you wanted to go further north, so there was a need for an overnight express service when the ill-fated 'Condor' was put into service.  A very few years afterwards, a 40' artic could do the run in about 8 hours with an economic door to door load. 

 

In short, the dissappearance of traditional traffic on the railway to be replaced with road transport was unforseeable in it's size or scope and happened far too quickly, the ten years between 1955 and 1965 but particularly between 1959 and 62, for the railway to respond to it, the Beeching cuts of branch lines and (much more significantly, but largely forgotten) most minor stations and goods yards on main lines were simply the death-blow in many cases.  The only places where smaller stations survived were in commuter belts, where their goods yards were converted to car parks.  The Morris Minor, Austin A35, Ford Prefect, Hillman Minx, Vauxhall Victor, et al enabled the mass working population to afford their own cars, and then came the loss-leading Mini, never turned a penny profit...  I'd say '59 was the sea change for private car ownership and '64 for HGVs.

 

The future, Beeching said in 1963, was intercity, commuter, block mineral, and freightliner, and he was right.  The way it was done was savage, wasteful, expensive, demoralising, and pretty much unique to the UK and US, the European countries handled it far better.  This seems to be the British Way, we did it again in the 70s with aircraft and shipbuilding and yet again in the 80s with coal and cars.  The Irish did it first with railways, though...

[30851]

35 minutes ago, D7666 said:

w.r.t. both to the yards that were built (Carlisle, Tee, Tyne, Perth, Margam, Tinsley etc) and those proposed that were not (Swansbourne or wherever twixt Bletchley and Oxford; and that one proposed between Wellington and Shrewsbury,  and others, there was a somewhat lucid item written in the 1960s suggesting that some of these 1950s ideas were based on experiences (and prejudices) from railwaymen  that were in junior/middle ranks in the 1930s deal with traffic issues and then WW2 pressures, who by 1950s had risen to positions of power and used that power to put in outdated solutions of grandiose yards that were too big in most [not all]  cases, and in the wrong places, to address problems that no longer existed. And all that was before rationalisation and traffic losses set in. I can't remember now where it was written or who wrote it - although i have half a suspicion it might have been Fiennes; it was very much the sort of thing he wrote.

 

True ScR yards were on a lesser scale, but even Perth for example was completely wrong. It never fully operated as set out to be, and largely closed after just 10 years or so.

 

 

 

It could well be Fiennes - and he should know all about should know all about that being the person behind the plan to completely rebuild the Colwick yards with a grandiose yard that would have been dead within 10 years. Don't think he mentions that in his book!

 

The plan I would like to learn more about is the Southern Region plan to build a yard at Yeovil. The idea didn't last long - under question by 1957 it seems. and soon gone. If built it could have taken the title of shortest life. 

 

Rob

 

[D7666]

33 minutes ago, 30851 said:

It could well be Fiennes - and he should know all about should know all about that being the person behind the plan to completely rebuild the Colwick yards with a grandiose yard that would have been dead within 10 years. Don't think he mentions that in his book!

 

The plan I would like to learn more about is the Southern Region plan to build a yard at Yeovil. The idea didn't last long - under question by 1957 it seems. and soon gone. If built it could have taken the title of shortest life. 

 

Rob

 

Ahhh yes Colwick, I knew there was one significant one somewhere I was missing.

 

I think it was Fiennes as he was /mainly/ an ER man at the time of these yards ideas his WR days were later.

 

Maybe Fiennes learnt the lesson from aborting Colwick ?

 

Yeovil I know nothing of other than it was mentioned. But anyway a yard at Yeovil would only serve the classic past problem that no longer existed - which was exchange traffic from one railway to another i.e. SR < > GWR; a classic 1930s issue trying to be fixed in 1950s after a lot of these issues went away with BR Regions. Not all issues of course, but many of them.  Likewose the prposed yard between Wellington and Shrewsbuty was aimed at fixing a GWR <-> LMSR exchange problem that had largely gone with WR <-> LMR.

 

This was a large element of this issue at Kingmoor.  A driver behind Kingmoor was a lot to do with LMSR <-> LNER exchange traffic. It was a WW2 bottleneck. Contemporary mags like TI/MR and RM can repeat the BR press release froth about how many local yards closed all they like, and yes the yards closed, but, the fact was those local yards primarily existed for inter-regional exchange traffic and moving it all to KIngmoor was not the answer - running made up trains between the two Regions that did not need remarshalling en route was the real solution. Carlisle is not a significant traffic originator and never has been it deals with through traffic - and any yard NOT in a traffic generating area was in the wrong place by the 1960s likewise Perth.

Edited January 22, 2023 by D7666

[Tom Burnham]

And Fiennes had pre-WW2 and during the early war years been at March White moor yard (Assistant Yard Master) and in Cambridge control, so was very familiar with running goods trains between March and Temple Mills as fast as possible (especially when March Town were playing at home).  In later years he'd probably have thought that Whitemoor was in the wrong place, but it was technically one of the most advanced in Europe in its day.

[rodent279]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The future, Beeching said in 1963, was intercity, commuter, block mineral, and freightliner, and he was right.

A point often overlooked by railway enthusiasts, the good Doctor is too often demonised and made to take the blame, when the reality is that he did what his political masters brought him in to do.

The proliferation of types 1 & 2 diesels because of the plan for most main lines to be electrified by the early 70's is plausible, and explains the lack of modern type 4 & 5 motive power in quantity until the mid-60's.

 

Regarding the "unforeseeability" (is that a word?) in 1955 of the rise of motor traffic, was it really unforeseeable, or did no one want to think it? At the same time in the 1950's, car ownership in the USA had been on the rise steadily since the war, and other branches of UK government were busy planning motorways & relief roads, so was it really unforeseen,  or was it the usual British JFDI* and lack of joined up thinking?

 

Edit:- the Morris Minor had been on sale for 7 years by 1955, and was probably at or near its zenith in popularity.  Other small cars like the Austin 7 & 10 and Ford Anglia had been around a while as well, so it should have been pretty obvious that affordable car ownership was rapidly becoming a thing.

 

*Just F*****g Do It

Edited January 22, 2023 by rodent279

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

According to my esteemed Swindon Panel colleague Peter Woodbridge in his magnum opus A Chronology of UK Railway Signalling 1825-2018 the WR introduced the 4 character train ID in 1958 which was indeed first used in panel displays at Birmingham Snow Hill which was commissioned in 1959 - the first WR E10k interlocking and push-turn entrance-exit panel albeit with some differences from the "production" panels such as Swindon that followed.  The system was updated in 1961 to the form we are familiar with.  It should be noted that ahead of this, the first use of panel train describers occurred in the Crewe - Manchester area of the LMR in 1958.

 

The original system used only 10 letters out of 26 in any given area as the WR displays were Sodeco mechanical rotating drums which could only display 10 characters per drum.  These were somewhat unreliable and once LEDs became available the dot matrix displays were installed in the same apertures.  Miniature cathode ray tubes were used elsewhere.

 

Is Peter sure of that?  Snow Hill panel had 4 character TD displays for 'internal' use only while they carried on using the previous describers (which were transferred from Snow Hill South and North 'boxes) to adjacent boxes.  

 

But, answering Peter's question 4 character headcodes weren't introduced until the re-classification of trains, and initially only on the WR, in  October 1960 at which time the Region also introduced an alpha designation for destination areas and special trains.  This was the time at which the alpha became the second digit as it has been ever since.  Some ac electrics had been delivered with the alpha as the leading in their 4 character panels and

 

All that happened on the WR prior to then, and definitely not universally , is that some trains were given  4 digit timetable numbers in the WTT instead of previous 2 or 3 digit numbers (which also didn't apply to all trains).   In some cases the leading digit of the four corresponded with the numerical position of the contemporaneous alpha based classification of trains but this was not consistent judging by examples in various WTTs from the very late 1950s.

 

I'm not sure if Plymouth panel was commissioned in 1960 with operational TDs but Twyford, commissioned  in October 1961, definitely didn't have 4 character TDs and actually had secondhand magazine type describers of unknown (possibly SR?) origin; the TD panel was added some years later.   I was told a long while back that part of the reason for not having fully operation TDs to fringe boxes was because the necessary equipment had not been developed for the fringe boxes - hence the situation at Snow Hill (although Twyford was more likely down to avoiding abortive expenditure on equipping what would be fairly short lived fringes.  Incidentally the10 letters used in the TDs varied from panel to panel as some were far more predominantly used in certain areas

 

The mechanical describers used on the WR panels were mever reliable.  Old Oak Common (commissioned 1962) was very bad from the off.  This was subsequently put down to dry soldered joints on the PO type relays although in my experience the counters themselves tended to slip a digit or two every now and then.

 

17 hours ago, 30851 said:

There were various estimates in 1954/55 of how many loco's needed to replace steam (1,200 of them) on the WCML.

 

• One plan said it would take 930 diesels.
• Another for DC electrification said 570.
• For AC the suggestion said 150 passenger and 510 mixed traffic.

 

Note - no mention of how many DMU/EMU required.

 

An example of another scheme - the SR thought they would need 100 of the heaviest diesels to replace 129 steam engines on the Waterloo - Bournemouth/Exeter routes.

 

The real scary numbers are from the excellent Johnson/Long book British Railways Engineering. In the section on workshops they talk of the following 1954 planned totals for 1990 (after the end of steam)

 

• 3,900 Electric Loco's
• 5,300 Diesel Loco's
• 2,100 Shunters
• 13,000 EMU/DMU vehicles.

So some weren't thinking much improvement in utilization! Note - these numbers are after the completion of fitting of all wagons with fitted brakes which was planned to reduce the total number of engines by around 2,000. I wonder when they started to think of higher productivity?

 

Rob

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't forget too that the. number of electric locos was based on far more extensive electrification than actually happened as it would also have included the ECML (on which some work actually started) and probably a few 'what its' on top of that.

[The Johnster]

But the mass take up of private car ownership by the working class came about when those Morris Minors, A35s, and Ford Pops hit the secondhand market when their middle class junior ranks original owners replaced them with mid-range models after two or three years because they’d been promoted.  Like Mac said, we’d never had it so good; the country was emerging from austerity, rock’n’roll, jobs for the boys, some of ‘em anyway…  Hidebound convention and the class system was a little taken aback by this development, and there is little doubt that, in spite of their best intentions when they had them, the planners (road, rail, urban and economic) were subject to such conventional thinking.  
 

Motorways were very much conceived from the idea that big lorries would be able to manage the gentle hills and business/salesmen, important people who needed to travel, (don’t forget there was still a bit of an ‘is your journey really neccessary mindset’ about) would be able to easily pass them in their cars; the Great Unwashed, Sunday drivers, daytrippers, and White Van Man were never supposed to clog them up in the way that they very rapidly did!  Early motorways featured many a broken down overheated secondhand early 1950s ‘people’s car’ on the hard shoulder, sometimes with mum and the kids having a  picnic on the embankment, and my dad was enough of a snob in his Riley 2.6 to be uncomfortably sneering about them.  Those sorts of people were supposed to go on the bus in his mind!

[Mike_Walker]

39 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Is Peter sure of that?  Snow Hill panel had 4 character TD displays for 'internal' use only while they carried on using the previous describers (which were transferred from Snow Hill South and North 'boxes) to adjacent boxes.  

 

But, answering Peter's question 4 character headcodes weren't introduced until the re-classification of trains, and initially only on the WR, in  October 1960 at which time the Region also introduced an alpha designation for destination areas and special trains.  This was the time at which the alpha became the second digit as it has been ever since.  Some ac electrics had been delivered with the alpha as the leading in their 4 character panels and

 

All that happened on the WR prior to then, and definitely not universally , is that some trains were given  4 digit timetable numbers in the WTT instead of previous 2 or 3 digit numbers (which also didn't apply to all trains).   In some cases the leading digit of the four corresponded with the numerical position of the contemporaneous alpha based classification of trains but this was not consistent judging by examples in various WTTs from the very late 1950s.

 

I'm not sure if Plymouth panel was commissioned in 1960 with operational TDs but Twyford, commissioned  in October 1961, definitely didn't have 4 character TDs and actually had secondhand magazine type describers of unknown (possibly SR?) origin; the TD panel was added some years later.   I was told a long while back that part of the reason for not having fully operation TDs to fringe boxes was because the necessary equipment had not been developed for the fringe boxes - hence the situation at Snow Hill (although Twyford was more likely down to avoiding abortive expenditure on equipping what would be fairly short lived fringes.  Incidentally the10 letters used in the TDs varied from panel to panel as some were far more predominantly used in certain areas

 

The mechanical describers used on the WR panels were mever reliable.  Old Oak Common (commissioned 1962) was very bad from the off.  This was subsequently put down to dry soldered joints on the PO type relays although in my experience the counters themselves tended to slip a digit or two every now and then.

Yes, the 4 character displays at Birmingham Snow Hill were restricted to 'internal' use only with the previous external describers retained as you rightly say and as shown in this photo of the panel.  Peter K's original question referred to the panel so we are both right!

 

An interesting detail is that this was situated in a former waiting room at the London end of the down island platform.  The large brick building seen in some photos taken during the resignalling alongside the distinctive old Snow Hill North SB often incorrectly described in photo captions as the 'panel' was merely the relay room for the whole scheme.  The subsequent panels were located on the first floor of purpose built buildings with the local relays on the ground floor supported by remote interlockings in windowless buildings at outlying junctions.  The Snow Hill control area was too small to require remote interlockings.

 

The WR mechanical train describers were indeed notorious for 'slipping' as a train moved across the panel - you might start with 1A23 at one end but it could be very different by the time it got to the other.  Fortunately the Bobbies were able to amend as required.  One of the reasons for this that I've heard from some of the old timers associated with the Swindon project is that back in the day most of their brethren smoked like chimneys resulting in a tar laden atmosphere that gummed up the works - to say nothing of what it did for them!

 

Unfortunately, Peter W is off grid at the moment with family issues so I can't get a clarification from him.  He certainly knows his stuff and researched his book meticulously but everyone makes the odd mistake.

 

Anyway, this has to be the mother of all thread drifts - we started out on the subject of the GWR pre-war electrification scheme and have ended up here discussing WR 1960s signalling by way of the WCML electric loco fleet!  🤔

[The Stationmaster]

Mike I've known Peter for quite a few years - over 20 in fact - so he can happily talk to me.  in fact  I did suggest to him some years ago that when he next revised his magnum opus I'd be more than happy to help him draw various links between technical and operational (and operational developments leading to technical developments, and vice versa) as there are some interesting links between various aspects of colour light signalling and the operational need s which drove them.

 

Which almost takes us even further from GWR electrification ideas although, slightly tenously, I could mention Plymouth as a place which has a minor relevance to both.

[eldomtom2]

On 22/01/2023 at 01:06, The Johnster said:

The future, Beeching said in 1963, was intercity, commuter, block mineral, and freightliner, and he was right.

Well - right for the mindset he was working from - i.e. the all-too-common at the time one of "the railway must make a profit". Once the country actually saw what a network built to be profitable would look like in the form of The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes they baulked, and by the time the 70s dawned the idea that the railway would always require some subsidy had become much more common. We don't have the railway Beeching wanted, and thank God for that! But the problem was not Beeching the man, but the failure to answer the question of "what is the point of the railways, and what was the point of nationalising them?".

[The Johnster]

Yes, it was the brief he was given ‘stop the railway from making losses’, and to be fair they were and something had to be done.  Traffic was haemorrhaging, and the common carrier services the railway was obliged to accept at set rates were no longer needed, which is as well because they were money pits. 
 

Something needed to be done, but not what he did.  He was a bean counter, and a bl**dy good one at that, so he saw it as balancing the books, which he failed spectacularly to do.  A decade after his report, with his recommendations in force or well in hand, the losses were £90million a year.  Staff had been halved, traffic ‘rationalised’, goods and loco depots closed, entire main lines disposed of, along with many branches and the bulk of main line small stations. 
 

A more holistic and better funded approach (who am I kidding, this is UK plc, Buffalo Bill Enterprises, we’re skint but bullsh*t baffles brains) would have retained local stations where they generated traffic that would feed into intercity, and goods traffic for the big centralised hubs, even if it was picked up by road vehicles.  The intercity stuff made money, and the local stuff lost money, but would have paid it’s way by feeding into long distance via the maim stations, and kept railways at the core of the awareness of rail travel and carriage as an option, which much of the population lost. 

[roythebus1]

White van man was a product of the 1980s, maybe a bit before. "Decent" vans with "quality" driver comfort and braking more in keeping with modern cars of the era came into fashion into the mid 1960s with the introduction of the Ford Transit. They even had cab heaters an sometimes a wireless for the driver to listen to!

 

The problem of overheated cars on motorways disappeared to a great degree once cars were built with pressurised water systems. the earlier models were't designed to cope with constant 60mph running non-stop for long distances that were afforded by the motorways.

[Nearholmer]

I used to have Series 1, then Series 3 Land-rovers, and had to be very careful about overheating those if cruising (rattling along!) for long periods at their respective sensible maximum speeds*, because the cooling systems just didn’t seem to be designed to match sustained maximum output of the engines.
 

*These were not “motorway speeds” I hasten to add. Even with overdrive the sensible maxima we’re way below that, the feeble braking capacity being sn important limit.

[tomparryharry]

On 21/01/2023 at 23:30, The Johnster said:

Paradoxically, the fall-off in trip and short haul transfer workings during the 60s meant that the type 1 locos orignally intended to work them had also largely gone by the early 70s, having proved unreliable and not worth fixing, except for the class 20s which had taken to hunting in pairs on mineral work where 60mph was more than enough and 2khp with 8 braked wheelsets was useful, which meant that those of such trip/transfer workings as were left tended to be in the hands of 08/09 shunting engines which were by the end of the 60s the only ones available despite being less than ideal for the work. 

 

The problem was the low speed that the 08s were allowed to run at, 15mph, which meant that they got in the way if the trip was over any but the very shortest distance.  Traditional 0-6-0T steam engines that had previously done this work were capable of running up to about 40mph easily enough and could certainly manage a local trip at 25mph, and be suitable for shunting it as well.  In American terms, the 08s and 09s were 'yard switchers', when what was needed for trip work on running lines, especially busy ones, were 'road switchers', and the failed 60mph NB and BTH type 1s were fairly clearly inspired by American road switchers.  Had they been more reliable and successful in service, they might have done another 20 years' work. 

 

The other contender is the WR class 14 'Teddy Bear'.  These could manage 40mph, but were hopelessly unreliable and suffered from poor brakes, a serious issue on an engine intended for that sort of work.  That they were universally praised by their later industrial owners has always surprised me a little, but of course by and large even big industrial systems do not have running lines as such, speeds are very low, and there is usually somebody on hand to pin brakes down if needed.  The view at Canton in the 70s among drivers I spoke to about them was that if was difficult enough to get them to go, but if you did it was even more difficult to get them to stop...

 A lot of improvements have come about since the demise of the class 14. Although working (after a fashion) it was early days for hydraulic systems as a common industrial user. The industrial owners & preserved Westerns have access to much-improved standards & implementation. Faults which were 'normal' wouldn't be tolerated nowadays, especially with the numbers of JCB & other plant vehicles on the roads. 

 

I'm dyed in the wool Western, but traffic past Exeter should have been 3rd rail, IMHO.  

[OnTheBranchline]

On 21/01/2023 at 20:06, The Johnster said:

The big hump marshalling yards, which proved a waste of money except perhaps for Tinsley, looked very much like the answer to the wagonload freight remarshalling problem (pickup goods, junction yard marshalling, main yard marshalling, another main yard or maybe two, to another junction yard, to another pickup)  which was, in the 50s, still the bulk of the railway's general carrier general merchandise work.  It was what had been done in America 20 years earlier and it had worked there, and US practice had a very major influence on BR's modernising planners.  In 1955, the year of the Great Modernisation Plan (which by the way was pretty far-sighted and sensible except in it's locomotive policy), it would have been difficult to foresee the increase in private car ownership, the development of the articulated lorry, or the expansion of the motorway network that those things provoked. 

 

As an example, the WR's attempt to handle August Bank Holiday traffic to the West Country in 1958 was a heroic but doomed struggle against pathing and slow freight locos pressed into passenger service.  A year later the headlines were of huge traffic jams on the A38 Exeter Bypass.  Before the M1 and M6/A72 were opened, it took two days to drive a lorry from London to Glasgow, and three if you wanted to go further north, so there was a need for an overnight express service when the ill-fated 'Condor' was put into service.  A very few years afterwards, a 40' artic could do the run in about 8 hours with an economic door to door load. 

 

In short, the dissappearance of traditional traffic on the railway to be replaced with road transport was unforseeable in it's size or scope and happened far too quickly, the ten years between 1955 and 1965 but particularly between 1959 and 62, for the railway to respond to it, the Beeching cuts of branch lines and (much more significantly, but largely forgotten) most minor stations and goods yards on main lines were simply the death-blow in many cases.  The only places where smaller stations survived were in commuter belts, where their goods yards were converted to car parks.  The Morris Minor, Austin A35, Ford Prefect, Hillman Minx, Vauxhall Victor, et al enabled the mass working population to afford their own cars, and then came the loss-leading Mini, never turned a penny profit...  I'd say '59 was the sea change for private car ownership and '64 for HGVs.

 

The future, Beeching said in 1963, was intercity, commuter, block mineral, and freightliner, and he was right.  The way it was done was savage, wasteful, expensive, demoralising, and pretty much unique to the UK and US, the European countries handled it far better.  This seems to be the British Way, we did it again in the 70s with aircraft and shipbuilding and yet again in the 80s with coal and cars.  The Irish did it first with railways, though...

To be fair, the quality control issues at BL didn’t help their cause.

[rodent279]

Given that the GW came up with this:-

 

 

Albeit a few years later, and after nationalisation, its possible that contemporary GW electric locos could have been similar to this:-