Proposed GWR electrification in the 1930s/1940s?

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, BachelorBoy said:

...  the Dawlish diversion line was still looking likely it would be built, ...

The Dawlish Avoiding Line was still open at that time 'til the Great Western Region got hold of it and closed it. 🙄

[KeithMacdonald]

14 hours ago, woodenhead said:

If they followed in the musings of Brunel and his atmospheric railway then likely it was be achieved by 100 cats on treadmills chasing 1000 mice also on treadmills who 10,000 elephants believed they were running away from on treadmills attached to a dynamo to create a DC charge to get 1 electric locomotive banker up the Devon banks at 5 miles per hour.

 

However, the boat carrying all the elephants sank and so thanks to the GWR we now have a decidedly small number of elephants left in the world.

 

Until the ship sank, the GWR were deadly serious about electrifying the Devon banks but realised that it would never work without the elephants and there wasn't enough cheese to attract the mice and when it came to the cats, without the elephants and the mice, well they just laid down for a nap.

 

I'm unreliably informed it came to nought because the cats had looked at the weather forecasts and refused to work when the Dawlish Sea Wall was being washed by winter storms. The seawater wouldn't have done the dynamos much good either, and Elf'n'Safty complained about running on slippery wet treadmills.

[woodenhead]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

I've now found another source (Midland Carriages - Essery & Jenkinson) which states the original electrification (6kV 25Hz) system was closed by BR when the vehicles became life expired and the line was later electrified at 25kV 50Hz as part of the experiments in high voltage electrification.

Mmm. I wonder where they got that info from?

 

I did find a glaring error about a former Midland Steam Railmotor which was later converted to a non powered vehicle. It says it is particularly historic as being the only vehicle that was formerly a SRM that survives in the UK, so who knows?

I did read that they did set up some of the cantenary proposed for the WCML with 25Kv insulation as a test - so maybe not actually testing trains but testing how they would set up the overhead wires.

 

@Nearholmer It would surprise me if the LMS were not ever looking at mainline electrification given their closest rival was actively pursuing it and everyone was busy electrifying out of London either with overhead or third rails with the GWR thinking of it too.  Whilst conditions up Shap would be nothing like Worsborough the LMS would have seen locomotive and crew savings getting trains into Scotland.  Maybe though the LMS were the real luddites when it came to evolution, maybe their influence at the beginning of BR saw to it that we ended up with Standard steam locos and then diesels rather than straight to electric.

[009 micro modeller]

15 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

How detailed/serious were the predicted calculations of the GWR electrifying the Taunton to Penzance route or was it just a bunch of basic estimates/high level stuff (aka halfhearted)? 

Was this more about working over steep gradients and eliminating coal (and the associated infrastructure) from lines in the west? As based on the traffic it would surely have made more sense to electrify east of Taunton?

[woodenhead]

29 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Duffy, Electric Railways 1880-1990, which is the “go to” book for the outline of the history of railway electrification, says that the M&M report for the GWR recommended 3000V dc, which is entirely consistent with best practice for long distance schemes in British influenced places at the time. He also says that the report may have been primarily an exercise in talking down coal prices, and seems possibly to have worked.

It makes you wonder what would have happened to the Welsh coal mines had the GWR gone electric - whilst all that electricity had to be generated it might not necessarily been with Welsh coal.  Then the was Woodhead, had that happened at the end of the 1930s what impact on the Yorkshire coal fields if the LNER's appetite for coal altered. Whilst coal was still king when it came to big industry and domestic heating, the railways were massive users.

 

Back to the GWR, had the mainlines become more and more electrified then would railmotors have become the norm on branchlines replacing steam hauled passenger trains, what about freight away from the main, steam still or diesel?

[Compound2632]

14 hours ago, melmerby said:

6.6kV at 25Hz in 1908 (Midland Railway.) Converted to 50Hz by BR in 1953 (still 6.6kV)

 

Yes, the statement of 25 kV in Jenkinson & Essery is incorrect; however, the 6.6 kV 50 Hz conversion was an experiment that led towards the adoption of 25 kV 50 Hz. But that has next to nothing with Jenkinson & Essery's actual subject matter. There is a fuller discussion of the Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham electrification in R.E. Lacy & G. Dow, Midland Railway Carriages (Wild Swan, 1986), which is a generally more complete and authoritative work on the subject. There is also a Facebook group, where the main interest is in the 50 Hz period, as that is just within the living memory of some of the contributors:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2513168135663356

@jamie92208 occasionally posts there, when their enthusiasm overtakes their knowledge of the facts; he is the world's leading authority on the original Midland Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham electrification.

 

That scheme was a technology testbed for proposed electrification of the busy and steeply-graded Derby-Manchester route through the Peak Forest. Around the same period, the NER's York-Newcastle scheme at 1.5 kV DC was under developments; there was also a LNWR proposal for Lancaster-Carlisle but I don't think I've ever come across any technical details. So that's three of the four principal pre-Grouping companies contemplating main-line electrification early in the 20th century; these schemes would almost certainly have gone ahead if it were not for the Great War. 

[KeithMacdonald]

15 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Dawlish Avoiding Line was still open at that time 'til the Great Western Region got hold of it and closed it. 🙄

 

Err, which one?

If you mean the Teign Valley Line, it was GWR from 1876 and they closed chunks of it to passenger traffic in 1958, years before Beeching.

 

The proposed Dawlish Avoiding Line (Kenton to Bishopsteignto) never got built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawlish_Avoiding_Line

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Err, which one?

If you mean the Teign Valley Line, it was GWR from 1876 and they closed chunks of it to passenger traffic in 1958, years before Beeching.

 

The proposed Dawlish Avoiding Line (Kenton to Bishopsteignto) never got built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawlish_Avoiding_Line

 

I assume the London & South Western line is intended.

 

As a total wander off topic, I watched the 1988 Granada TV adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles at the weekend. In the concluding explanation, Stapleton is said to have brought the hound down from London to the moor by way of the North Devon line, which would mean that not only was it unobserved by the locals at Grimpen (which has to be somewhere on the Teign Valley / Moretonhampstead lines, unless on the Launceston line?) but also in London, as they would have boarded their train at Waterloo rather than Paddington.

[KeithMacdonald]

7 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

As a total wander off topic, I watched the 1988 Granada TV adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles at the weekend. In the concluding explanation, Stapleton is said to have brought the hound down from London to the moor by way of the North Devon line, which would mean that not only was it unobserved by the locals at Grimpen (which has to be somewhere on the Teign Valley / Moretonhampstead lines, unless on the Launceston line?) but also in London, as they would have boarded their train at Waterloo rather than Paddington

 

Fred Drift says :

 

He came a long way round the Withered Arm to hide the hound's trail, traveling at night on the mail and milk trains.

 

Quote

Lustleigh station was used in the 1930 film of Sherlock Holmes – The Hound of The Baskervilles, produced by Gainsborough Pictures. The film starred Robert Rendell as Holmes (third from left in the trilby hat) and Frederick Lloyd as Dr. Watson. Co-incidentally, Rendell was a past resident of the village. The station was temporarily renamed “Baskerville”.

 

 

https://www.lustleigh-society.org.uk/lustleigh-and-the-railway/

 

Quote

Grimpen was a parish and hamlet located on the Dartmoor in Devon, England. It was located near the parishes of Thorsley and High Barrow and the town of Coombe Tracey, and lay fourteen miles from Dartmoor Prison.

 

https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Grimpen

 

Coombe Tracey was on the Dawlish Avoiding Line.

[Nearholmer]

Duffy, Electric Railways 1880-1990, which is the “go to” book for the outline of the history of railway electrification, says that the M&M report for the GWR recommended 3000V dc, which is entirely consistent with best practice for long distance schemes in British influenced places at the time. He also says that the report may have been primarily an exercise in talking down coal prices, and seems possibly to have worked.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

would surprise me if the LMS were not ever looking at mainline electrification given their closest rival was actively pursuing it and everyone was busy electrifying out of London

The LMS was famously sceptical/anti mainline electrification in the 30s, although doubtless they’d done their sums, because their scepticism was based on sums.

 

If you delve into the controversy surrounding The Weir Report, which was the national attempt to settle the question and select best candidate systems, you will find that there was a huge amount of argument around assumptions on the impact of electrification, let alone potential costs, and Stamp for the LMS is always on the wary/conservative/sceptical side. The other big factor, as is being discussed in another thread, is that they were short of capital, and forever fighting a rearguard action against their shareholders, who wanted dividends. The GWR shareholders opposed even seeking estimates and plans for electrification because they too wanted dividends ……. the shareholder groups tended to expect the railways to make profits by economising, rather than investing, although the Southern proved that, in their circumstances at least, investment paid back handsomely.

 

The LMS had a different view of suburban electrification, of course, and their Wirral scheme was a textbook example of investing to earn, and was actually technically ahead of the southern in some respects, learning a lot from LT (including effectively copying the odd station).

[BachelorBoy]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Duffy, Electric Railways 1880-1990, which is the “go to” book for the outline of the history of railway electrification, 

You can read it online at archive.org if you have an account.

 

https://archive.org/search.php?query=external-identifier%3A"urn%3Alcp%3Aelectricrailways0000duff%3Alcpdf%3A9ef1b5e1-123f-4d78-bd17-c1245c9bc7b8"

 

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, the statement of 25 kV in Jenkinson & Essery is incorrect; however, the 6.6 kV 50 Hz conversion was an experiment that led towards the adoption of 25 kV 50 Hz. But that has next to nothing with Jenkinson & Essery's actual subject matter. There is a fuller discussion of the Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham electrification in R.E. Lacy & G. Dow, Midland Railway Carriages (Wild Swan, 1986), which is a generally more complete and authoritative work on the subject. There is also a Facebook group, where the main interest is in the 50 Hz period, as that is just within the living memory of some of the contributors:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2513168135663356

@jamie92208 occasionally posts there, when their enthusiasm overtakes their knowledge of the facts; he is the world's leading authority on the original Midland Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham electrification.

 

That scheme was a technology testbed for proposed electrification of the busy and steeply-graded Derby-Manchester route through the Peak Forest. Around the same period, the NER's York-Newcastle scheme at 1.5 kV DC was under developments; there was also a LNWR proposal for Lancaster-Carlisle but I don't think I've ever come across any technical details. So that's three of the four principal pre-Grouping companies contemplating main-line electrification early in the 20th century; these schemes would almost certainly have gone ahead if it were not for the Great War. 

Thank you for the mention @Compound2632 I am reminded that an ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure. Some very interesting things in this thread. I particularly liked the mention of Mr Spendelove. His name emerged in some research I did for an article about a death by electrocution,  of a painter at Lancaster in 1908.  

 

However back to the subject.  The key thing in this is that Merz was involved.  He had a big electrical engineering business and was a champion of DC schemes that then bought his products.  In 1910 there were many schemes around including a 3000v DC scheme for the Crewe to Carlisle line. However both the Midland and the LBSCR had seen the potential of high voltage AC. This was considerably  cheaper due to many fewer substations. Feeder stations are still one of the most expensive parts of modern schemes.  The drawback of AC was the need for rotary converters to power DC traction motors at thst time.  The use of 25Hz apparently allowed the use of AC traction motors.  I have been told the technical details but they were beyond my A level physics. The LBSCR and The MR chose AC and were intending to go to 15Kv for longer distances.  However  WW1 put an end to most of the schemes. After the war a committee of enquiry was formed to propose a standard scheme of electrification. I think that Merz was a leading member.  There wasn't a single representative from either the MR or the LBSCR.  rather unsurprisingly the report sugested 1500v DC as it's preferred option.  The question of conflict of interest was obviously not addressed.  Thus all the UK pre WW2 schemes were DC.  After WW2 the French experimented with 25Kv AC and BR did indeed decide to choose it as the new standard. Existing DC schemes on Woodhead and out of Liverpool Street were completed though.

 

The LMH system was chosen as an experiment. The main purpose was to see if using power from the National Grid at 50 Hz was feasible.  The voltage wasn't changed and most of the original OHLE was reused.  Portable Mercury Arc rectifiers were by then available and were fitted under some ex LNWR DC stock using cast iron tanks. Towardscthe end a 4th set was fitted with solid state rectification which then became the standard. A new feeder station was put in a Lancaster Green Ayre, fed from the local power station.

 

I hope that this has helped.  However  as a fan of early electrification schemes some BoBo's in Green would have looked nice with of course, riveted bodies.  Perhaps the Pantographs could have been made of copper.

 

The other point about the Sea wall is interesting.  There is a stretch of very exposed 25Kv OHLE on the Clyde estuary and that seems to work OK even though it is regularly drenched by seawater.

 

Sorry for the lengthy reply but I hope that it helps.

 

Jamie

[BachelorBoy]

41 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If you delve into the controversy surrounding The Weir Report, which was the national attempt to settle the question and select best candidate systems, you will find that there was a huge amount of argument around assumptions on the impact of electrification, let alone potential costs, and Stamp for the LMS is always on the wary/conservative/sceptical side.

I didn't know about The Weir Report. Thanks.

 

You can download it here:

 

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=22

 

[The Stationmaster]

4 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Wonder how they planned to handle the Dawlish problem?

Very carefully?

 

Incidentally the main financial saving seen in the Taunton- Penzance scheme was the saving of wages from getting rid of the need for firemen on the electric trains.  In reality I suspect it was very much seen as a way of possibly spending Govt cash under the various 1930s schemes which made such money available to the Big Four.

[kevinlms]

58 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The LMS was famously sceptical/anti mainline electrification in the 30s, although doubtless they’d done their sums, because their scepticism was based on sums.

 

The LMS had very seriously considered that the solution for mainlines, was in fact steam turbine locomotives. Turbomotive had some problems, largely due to being a one off and parts had to be especially made, thus causing delays in returning to traffic.

Certainly closer to being practical than the LNER's 'Hush-Hush' and Bulleid's 'Leaders' later. 6202 was no slouch on the Liverpool run.

[BachelorBoy]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The LMS was famously sceptical/anti mainline electrification in the 30s, although doubtless they’d done their sums, because their scepticism was based on sums.

 

 

You underestimate the ability of companies to want to remain in the comfort zone of "tried and tested". :-)

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

didn't know about The Weir Report.

When reading it, do bear in mind that even at the time not every informed expert agreed with either the technical or the economic conclusions. It was controversial for good reasons, because some of the analysis was weak, and there was a whiff of “coming up with the answer that suited key stakeholders” about it.

 

1 hour ago, BachelorBoy said:

You underestimate the ability of companies to want to remain in the comfort zone of "tried and tested". :-)

The LMS was actually pretty good at pushing itself, see mention of high pressure steam above, and witness their diesel programme, which was extremely well structured.

 

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

After WW2 the French experimented with 25Kv AC

Work on industrial frequency (50Hz or 60Hz) electrification was underway well before WW2, notably in German Alsace and in Hungary, because “everyone” knew that it was the way to go, the exact voltage being somewhat immaterial, although the higher the better, but it was the breakthroughs in small mercury-arc rectifiers in the 1940s that gave it real oomph. Even so, the French, who picked up the baton from the Germans, didn’t narrow down onto mercury arc rectifiers and dc traction motors completely, building locos with other traction packages too.

 

PS: I’d have to check, but I think that Philip Dawson was on both of the interwar electrification committees. If I’m right on that, the knowledge of low frequency AC was very much “in the room” - he literally wrote the book on it for the British audience. What I don’t know is “where he was at” with that technology by then, he may have lost his enthusiasm for it in the British context, because it necessitated either specialist generating stations or expensive frequency converter stations. Deptford was effectively two generating stations on one site for that reason, and it was something that dogged (still does I think) some European railways for decades after public networks had settled on 50Hz or 60Hz.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[The Stationmaster]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I assume the London & South Western line is intended.

 

As a total wander off topic, I watched the 1988 Granada TV adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles at the weekend. In the concluding explanation, Stapleton is said to have brought the hound down from London to the moor by way of the North Devon line, which would mean that not only was it unobserved by the locals at Grimpen (which has to be somewhere on the Teign Valley / Moretonhampstead lines, unless on the Launceston line?) but also in London, as they would have boarded their train at Waterloo rather than Paddington.

No - the usual - not very good  - diversion route was the Teign Valley line.  But the electrification proposal was still around at the time of the new GWR inland main line route avoiding Dawlish and Teignmouth which, in its final (1937 iteration) left the existing line just east of Exminster station (5 miles nearer to Exeter than the 1936 proposal, and therefore also east of the 1936 breach of the route near the mouth of the  River Kenn) and rejoined the existing line immediately east of Hackney Canal bridge  which lay at the east end of Hackney Yard at Newton Abbot.  Although some land had been purchased and various works, including marking out some of the route, were carried out due to financial reasons the GWR agreed with Govt in 1937 that the some work would be suspended and the intended opening date would be pushed back from 1941 to 1945.,  The war of course further changed things but post-war the completion date was rescheduled for 1949 before the scheme was finally cancelled.

 

The final, 1937, version had a maximum gradient of 1 in 150 and involved a number of tunnels, with no intermediate stations although it is quite likely that one might well have been added to serve Dawlish and/or Teignmouth.   The existing route would not have been closed.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, The Stationmaster said:

No - the usual - not very good  - diversion route was the Teign Valley line.  

 

What @Wickham Green too said was:

 

5 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Dawlish Avoiding Line was still open at that time 'til the Great Western Region got hold of it and closed it. 🙄

 

Clearly intended as a swipe at supposed prejudice in the decision-making process around the closure of the former L&SWR route to Plymouth.  

[OnTheBranchline]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Very carefully?

 

Incidentally the main financial saving seen in the Taunton- Penzance scheme was the saving of wages from getting rid of the need for firemen on the electric trains.  In reality I suspect it was very much seen as a way of possibly spending Govt cash under the various 1930s schemes which made such money available to the Big Four.

they spent a lot of government money on adding ATC?

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

... Clearly intended as a swipe at supposed prejudice in the decision-making process around the closure of the former L&SWR route to Plymouth.  

Indeed ! ............. don't forget that the Southern and Western had had a reciprocal arrangement so their loco crews knew each other's route in case problems arose on either.

[OnTheBranchline]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Indeed ! ............. don't forget that the Southern and Western had had a reciprocal arrangement so their loco crews knew each other's route in case problems arose on either.

And problems did arise, one time the Southern mainline was flooded and trains had to route to Taunton I believe. 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

And the GW electrification scheme included the Brixham branch...

[rodent279]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When reading it, do bear in mind that even at the time not every informed expert agreed with either the technical or the economic conclusions. It was controversial for good reasons, because some of the analysis was weak, and there was a whiff of “coming up with the answer that suited key stakeholders” about it.

 

The LMS was actually pretty good at pushing itself, see mention of high pressure steam above, and witness their diesel programme, which was extremely well structured.

 

Work on industrial frequency (50Hz or 60Hz) electrification was underway well before WW2, notably in German Alsace and in Hungary, because “everyone” knew that it was the way to go, the exact voltage being somewhat immaterial, although the higher the better, but it was the breakthroughs in small mercury-arc rectifiers in the 1940s that gave it real oomph. Even so, the French, who picked up the baton from the Germans, didn’t narrow down onto mercury arc rectifiers and dc traction motors completely, building locos with other traction packages too.

 

PS: I’d have to check, but I think that Philip Dawson was on both of the interwar electrification committees. If I’m right on that, the knowledge of low frequency AC was very much “in the room” - he literally wrote the book on it for the British audience. What I don’t know is “where he was at” with that technology by then, he may have lost his enthusiasm for it in the British context, because it necessitated either specialist generating stations or expensive frequency converter stations. Deptford was effectively two generating stations on one site for that reason, and it was something that dogged (still does I think) some European railways for decades after public networks had settled on 50Hz or 60Hz.

 

 

 

 

I think, and I may be wrong, that the low frequency of earlier German schemes, 16⅔Hz, was chosen because,  for the AC motors of the time, it was a happy compromise between an acceptable starting torque, top speed, and keeping arcing in the brushgear down to acceptable minimums. 

I think it was Hungary that pioneered industrial frequency railway electrification. I've always had a sneaking admiration for the Italian 3 phase 3.6kV scheme used through the Frejus tunnel until 1976.