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Uk Push Pull Steam Workings/Steam Multiple Units & Buckeyes/Concepts

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Luke McMahon, Jun 22, 2017.

  1. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Regarding early (in railway terms) steps to dieselisation, it's worth noting that the question of oil imports was not the sole factor. The necessary engine technology was still in it's infancy in the UK, which lagged noticably behind that of our cousins over the pond. If you need evidence, witness the demise of NBL, or the Irish Treasury insisting on the CIE, against the advise of their CME, spending sterling rather than dollar reserves on diesel engines, in consequence, ending up forking out for both! Even today, the overwhelming tendency is to import diesel plant.

    Compared with the established in-house capabilities of steam technology, decisions clearly questionable with hindsight make far more sense. When critising Robin Riddles for perceived waste on developing the BR Standards, it's essential to keep in mind, that ahead of the 1955 Modernisation Programme, the overriding consensus was that the stop-gap ahead of electrification was to be steam. Internal combustion barely featured in mainstream thinking. In terms of reliability, preparation and disposal times, the Standards were streets ahead of those inherited antiques of pre-grouping days. The associated costs to the national railway was highly significant, as was the ability to get far more work out of lower grade fuel.

    Another factor I've never seen mentioned is the railways' previous experience of the international oil market. Experiments with oil-fired steam locos over decades had clearly demonstrated to management the volatility of both price and supply. Add to this the all-pervasive experience of fuel rationing still fresh in everyone's minds (and in a few other categories, still very much in force), decisions to eschew imports in favour of domestic production seem far more sensible than anyone who'd never had to live with such conditions could imagine. I'm sorely tempted to expand on a strong feeling that a certain currently pervasive political orthodoxy is highly likely to remedy that last consideration, but have no intention of heading down that particular rabbit hole!
     
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  2. torgormaig

    torgormaig Part of the furniture Friend

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    Surely they were built to meet the need of the post war rehabilitation of the railways. Compared to other forms of developing railway traction, steam locomotives were relatively cheap to build and easy to maintain. There was the capacity, expertise and experience to construct and maintain reliable steam locos in the 1950s which cannot be said of their diesel counterparts. Imagine if dieselisation had been persued in the late 40s and the Standards had not been built. Dieselisation was a shambles when it was introduced in the late 50s so it certainly would not have been better a decade earlier. Meanwhile the services would have had to be maintained with outmoded and severely worn out locos many dating back well into the previous century.

    I cannot help but feel that the only wasteful thing about the Standard locos was the haste with which they were discarded in favor of dieselisation instead of holding on to them while a robust electrification program was persued instead. But as said above history is history and we this is what happened.

    Peter James
     
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  3. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    The economic situation at the time does tend to be underestimated. Britain had just gone through nearly six years of ruinous war with much damage at home to be made good. There was a Labour government in charge which pushed through such things as the nationalisation of the transport, coal and steel industries, amongst others, introduced the National Health and the Social Security systems. However laudable these might or might not have been, they cost vast amounts of money which the country simply didn't have. There was an urgent export drive to bring in overseas currency, especially dollars, and imports of all types were severely limited.

    The Railways were in a similar poor state. Besides enemy action, the war had cut back severely on normal routine maintenance and track, signalling, locos and stock were all in need of urgent attention. Added to reduced maintenance, the Railways had carried a hugely increased traffic throughout the war, which further added to their woes; it would be the mid-fifties before a state of normality was reached. The war had also halted much technical development and upgrade plans; the LMS in particular but not alone had developed the diesel shunter to a pretty advanced state and the main line diesel might well have followed. In practice, the first did not appear until the last two weeks of 1947. This, and the others which followed, would need time for serious testing; whether or not they performed adequately on introduction, their long term reliability could not bee assumed after six months or so of even the most arduous testing. Only time would tell, and since the first BR Standard appeared a mere three years after 10000, that time had not elapsed.

    30854's reference to Robin Riddle's plans for nationwide electrification shows that the engineers were not simply stuck in a rut of steam forever more, but he recognised that the time needed to complete this would be long - about fifty years, give or take - and steam in the form of the Standards would fill the gap. Diesels were an expensive side track; a diesel cost three times the capital cost of an equivalent steam loco, and there was no indication at that time that these extra costs would be recuperated by reduced running expenses. Was Riddles right? I don't know, but the imposition of untried and untested diesel traction cannot be considered a howling success, while today the WCML and ECML are electrified throughout, as is the Glasgow area, and the Midland and GWR main lines and Trans-Pennine routes are at least partly so, under construction or under consideration.
     
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  4. Copper-capped

    Copper-capped Part of the furniture

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    Just on this point, and I'll take it back to pre-nationalisation, I wonder if the big four with their beholdenness to share holders may have approached the dieselisation, or indeed electrification problem with a much greater eye towards cost/benefit than a government entity could ever hope to do. Having said that, the financial outlays required to achieve such a successful shift in modus operandi must have been huge - it may well have just been a bridge too far for the cash strapped big four. BR was only able to (ineptly?) limp over the line to modernisation by being heavily bankrolled by the tax payer. I think a private organisation would give better bang for buck if enough cash could be found.

    I'm not wanting to change history, but governments of all creeds do have an established record for ballsing things up!
     
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  5. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    One should not forget that over the period the BR standards were being built *something* had to replace life expired pre grouping locomotives. Keeping worn out antiques struggling on even further beyond their economical lifespan wouldn't have been a sensible option either. There's plenty to criticise about the Standards and the policy around them, but without doubt something had to be built. There's certainly a case that the GWR Railcars should have been followed up more aggressively for branch and secondary lines, but other than that the concept doesn't seem utterly wrong.

    It was the modernisation plan that was the almighty management failure, as others have stated above.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2017
  6. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    The investment needed by the private companies would indeed have been huge, but the cost / benefit analysis would have been, and probably was, made. There was much dieselisation of shunting pre-war, and they were not cheap units, and both Ivatt (LMS) and Bulleid (Southern) were pursuing diesel technology for the main line. They must have had projected figures to give to their Directors, otherwise these products would have been very expensive dead ends.

    The difference is that the private companies would not have gone for diesels without a sound financial investigation; the politicians seem to have considered it to as the future come what may and imposed it without considering the drawbacks. It is true that steam traction posed many challenges in the 'fifties and 'sixties, especially in the recruitment of labour as it was very labour intensive, but little was done to alleviate this. How many Black Fives were fitted with self-cleaning smokeboxes, rocking grates and hopper ashpans? Some, but why weren't the others? Along with the 8Fs, Jubilees ands all the other classes? Why was ash still shovelled manually from the pits at most sheds when mechanical ash-lifting plants were available? These would all have cost money, but how much compared with the cost of an entire fleet of diesels and all the maintenance infrastructure which came with them?

    To get back to the railcar issue, something which must be borne in mind is that that the Railways in the late 'forties / early 'fifties were the method of inland transport, and the engineers had no reason to anticipate the changes to come. But many of the branch lines were to close in the following years, and many, many more post Beeching. It should also be remembered that goods were invariably sent be rail; it wasn't until the disastrous ASLEF strike of 1955 that customers were forced to use roadsport temporarily, but in fact and following the end of the strike, did not return to rail. Much of the goods traffic was irretrievably lost, but up to that me me goods traffic on the branches was as important as the passenger component, and an expensive railcar which could manage only one type of traffic was rather a waste; the steam (and diesel) loco could handle both. The strike did away with the need for much of the dual purpose requirement, but that was in the future, and hardly predicable.

    I don't know the answers but one thing I do know: we've come a long way from the title of this thread!
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2017
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  7. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    The Southern was still extending its electrified lines until the war intervened. There's a stretch of uncompleted Southern electric line not far from where I live. I don't know whether they had other electrification plans in the works, its not a subject I've studied.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2017
  8. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    I can't help thinking that self cleaning smokeboxes had a lot to do with the demise of steam. Showering your customers, buildings and neighbors in filth was not a sensible move.
     
  9. Copper-capped

    Copper-capped Part of the furniture

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    Yes, I'm highly unqualified on that one too, but I get the feeling that they took the electrification plunge when there was more money flowing. I have no idea what was behind their decision making rationale as to go electric, and if this was a certain set of circumstances that made it more feasible for the Southern to go on a different path - shorter routes perhaps? Was the Southern a precursor to what the rest of the system may have looked like had nationalisation not stepped in? Differing financial parameters pre and post war may put apple and oranges into the one basket.
     
  10. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    While I concede the point, I think you're looking at this too much from a present day point of view. Such things were considered quite normal at the time and would not raise an eyebrow. Most sheds had notices up telling crews to keep the smoke down so as not to annoy the neighbours, but coal was still poured into coaling towers within easy distance of blocks of flats!

    Of course, as today objectors would jump on such things as a cause for its abolishment. When the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was in the planning stages, there were people who objected to the smoke and noise the steam locos would bring into Manchester. And then someone pointed to all the mill and factory chimneys...
     
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  11. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Some things never change!

    The highly cogent point about postwar rehabilitaion costs made by LMS2968 can't be overstated. As late as the mid sixties, hundreds of thousands of folk who lost homes to wartime bombing still dwelt in "prefabs". In central London, large plots were still boarded off around bomb craters. The demands on the national purse were massive and endured for decades. All this was before the bold decision to invest North Sea income in unemployment payments ahead of development. Recall, our Lend-Lease obligations to our wartime allies, the US, were only finally discharged during Gordon Brown's tenure as Chancellor.

    Ross's point about big four developments reminded me that diesels weren't the only path being investigated. Even in the States, particularly the on Union Pacific, gas-turbines enjoyed some success. Here, we had the odd Kitson-Still hybrid loco (In Germany, the then DR was investigating this concept). Remember the GT3? The point being, the diesel revolution wasn't the only perceived solution back then, much which now appears wierd was considered. Did anyone (beyond Stanier's comment on Bulleid's Q1) ever suggest clockwork?

    Then there were those fantastic examples of large scale project costings, such as West Coast electrification, where substantial resources were wasted due to nobody realising that steam and electric operations were different, not every crossover or platform needed to be sparked up. Wouldn't it be lovely to say "Of course, we learned from earlier cock ups and it couldn't happen today"? (If thinking you detect a note of bitter sarcasm, you'd be right.).

    The shame is, that the in-depth analysis of what our national transport requirements were, and how (and where) a modernised rail network could meet these had to wait for Richard Beeching. In the decade and a half before the "Reshaping" report, how much public money was wasted on piecemeal short termist solutions? Think how many diesel classes were developed for markets which rapidly evaporated through the post-war period. By the time of the Beeching report, with a vastly changed political landscape, it was too late for many of those lines (beyond the many already doomed "hopeless cases") which succumbed. How different things might have been! Thank goodness our nation now thinks objectively and carefully through momentous decisions before making a precipitate leap of faith.
     
  12. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    The Modernisation Plan was wasteful, it doesn't follow that an earlier dieselisation would also have been.


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  13. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    This is true: the Modernisation Plan was badly thought out, an earlier attempt at dieselisation might not have been - had the money been available to fund it.
     
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  14. Luke McMahon

    Luke McMahon Member

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    The water scoops fitted to a few locos to refill their water supplies on the move was a brilliant idea.

    Yes it meant having to lay miles of troughs between rails on trackbeds but it must have saved time!
     
  15. torgormaig

    torgormaig Part of the furniture Friend

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    Indeed it may not have been - on the other hand it could have been worse. As it did not happen we will never know. But I do not think that a late 1940s dieselisation program would have solved the more immediate problem of post war railway rehabilitation without the need to build some new steam locos as a stop gap measure. Despite all the drawbacks of steam locomotives they were relatively cheap and easy to build and there was the workshop capacity to do this. Although the Standard locos had short working lives so did many of their far more expensive diesel replacements.

    Peter James
     
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  16. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    When you look at the Southern inter war electrification, its clear that the bulk of it was done 'on the cheap' no modernisation of stations and signalling and many of the trains were rebuilt from steam stock not new. Its clear that the money for modernisation was at best limited.

    It has been pointed out that by 1939 there had been branch line closures and as early as the 1920's the GWR was aware that much of its network lost money. The post war ,business as usual' on the branch lines was, I suggest rather dubious even at the time, ditto continuing to build steam locomotives for shunting with panneirs being turned out until 1955
     
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  17. torgormaig

    torgormaig Part of the furniture Friend

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    I would hardly call the rebuilding of the Brighton line for electrification done on the cheap. My childhood station at Haywards Heath was completely rebuilt for this as were many station on the line. The 6PUL/PAN units as well as the 4LAV and 2BIL were all new for this scheme as was the color light signalling. The only questionable aspect of it was the decision the go for third rail rather than overhead electrification.

    Peter James
     
  18. Martin Perry

    Martin Perry Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator Friend

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    It wasn't a shambles in the USA in the 1940s; are you implying that the Americans were better engineers and managers than us?! :)
     
  19. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Managers, certainly. It wasn't the engineers who forced through dieselisation.
     
  20. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    I was reading one of Corelli Barnetts books, the difference between US & UK management in the late 40's/early 50's made me weep..................
     

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