Drift from the British India Line thread.

Cheers for the info Tom. Competition or no, I would love to see said photo ..... for sheer novelty value!

I love those occasional out of location workings .... one of an LNWR 4-6-0 at the east end of Lewes is a particular favourite. Apparently they forgot to take it off a through working (should that have happened at Willesden?).

'Spose it had best be on a photography thread tho'!

 

Which no doubt turned round 180 degrees to a brisk northerly in the afternoon.

On a bleak day in Leeds and having cleared 10-15cm of snow from the drive, I thought I'd quote some passages from Bert Hooker's book to entertain you while we wait for 35018's next appearance. If I've exceeded what copyright allows I'm sure the rockers will say so.

So this is his account of the Solway Ranger trip of June 1964.....

' The next thing to do was to select a MN. Whilst they were all all right, some were in better condition than others! .... I asked about the whereabouts of 35020 Bibby Line only to be told she was on the stopped list for No 6 examinations on the dates when we would be going to Leeds. Jim {Cook} the Leading Fitter suggested 35012 as she was the last MN to have had a heavy repair and was due a washout on the day prior to the first leg. The decision was made.'.......

They get to Leeds....

'We were then whisked away by car to the Great Northern Hotel where a pre-tour meeting of the West Riding branch of the RCTS was being held...... I was asked to make a short speech, the main point of which was that I hoped to prove on the morrow that Crewe and Doncaster were not the only places that could build pacifics.'....

They get to Carnforth......

'The train grapevine indicated that we were to go in front of the Birmingham --with advice not to delay him! So, when we started off, I did so with unusual vigour on my part and good progress was made up to Grayrigg. Ken {Seaby} was busy with the shovel, the injector sang its song, and the magnificent Bulleid boiler was responding well. The speed up through Tebay was nearly 80mph, ...up past Scout Green the speedometer showed 64 and I was beginning to advance the cut off a nick at a time.... The boiler pressure was just under blowing off point and the water was well up in the glass..... I was hoping to turn the summit in the high fifties but it was not to be as the pilotman called out 'Shap Wells is on mate'.

They come off at Penrith where the train runs over the CKP and Silloth with Caledonian 123 and GNSR number 49. On to Carlisle Citadel for the afternoon run....

' The water in the tender was about 6 in down and our pilotman said we could top it up at the station but the signalmen there put us anywhere except under a water column. I little knew then how close we were to come to disaster later on in the trip.'.....

' Once we were clear of Carlisle the MN began to run until we were cautioned approaching Culgaith' ...... (rumours of small scale bribery of signalman by a photographer).... For the climb up to Ais Gill, I put her on 25% cut off and opened the regulator wide, the 17.5 miles from Appleby to the summit taking about 17.5 minutes.....albeit with only 310 tons'.....

' Then, approaching Settle Jct, the injector blew off, the tender tank was empty! For the first and only time in my life I was at a stand on a main line with an empty tank and the engine blowing off with a good fire in the firebox. The boiler though had enough water in it to safely 'carry' us for 15 miles or so on level track. The junction signal cleared and we were on our way to Hellifield, three miles away and its most necessary water column. What a delightful noise that water made as it gushed into the empty tender and the relief I experienced must have been plain for all to see.'

Do I detect something of the prose style of R H N Hardy in that? He wrote the foreword to the book and of course he and Bert Hooker were the best of friends, indeed it was Hardy who told the RCTS who to ask for when they put the request in for an MN driven by a Southern crew.

 

By and large, but there were always exceptions - for example, the Cardiff Canton crews who famously mastered the Britannias, when other WR crews could not (or would not!).

By and large I agree with Tom that regional standardisation policies should have been continued after 1948, but certainly there are some exceptions that spring to mind. For example, reallocating some of the Bulleid Pacifics to the Great Eastern section (or building a new batch) would then have allowed services there to be speeded up, in the same way that actually happened when the Britainnias were built. And I remember an old magazine article years ago in which David Ward suggested that the LMR could have benefitted from more class 8 power, and if it had been his decision he would have reallocated some of the A1s there (and in fact I think a handful were transferred for short time?).

If you cut out the Standards the locomotive history of Britain could have been quite different - I don't think it would have been as simple as building an equivalent number of Big Four designs in the same power bracket.

 

Some interesting thoughts. The Great Eastern case could be equally applicable to the Stranraer line before the advent of the 'Clan' 6MT's (a few other Scottish routes come to mind too).

One possible (scrub that .... inevitable is more realistic) downside would be that the individual design practises of the 'Big Four' would doubtless have been refelcted in some 'interesting' issues cropping up in non-native workshops.

Given the swathes of life-expired small and medium sized pre-grouping locos in the aftermath of WWII, it's interesting to consider whether, with little more than tweaks to conform with a more universal loading gauge, the later 'group standard' designs from Thompson/Peppercorn, Fairburn/Ivatt, Bulleid and Hawksworth could have plugged all the gaps eventually filled by the 'Standards'.

Mmmm ..... 94XX's numbered in the 60,000's? and WC/BoB's in the 50,000's? ..... L1's with cast number plates forging up 'The Valleys' or Ilfracombe lines? Reckon the profile of those Fairburn class 4 tanks would've meant they still needed to end up looking more like the Riddles version and someone would have to have done something about those damned brakes on the Bulleid Q1 too. The IoW lines would have been introduced to the joys of Ivatt class 2's 65 years earlier than happened (though carriage stock would still have been a thorny problem). There may just also have been one or two(!) other odd issues, here and there ..... but I'd reckon the Terriers would still have managed to defy the odds on the Hayling Island branch!

 

Doesn't this whole discussion presume that British Railways, in their first decade or so, would have had to operate as one organisation rather than multiple regions, each with significant autonomy? I also note that the major regional boundary changes, so reviled by defenders of the Withered Arm or S&D, were 15 or so years into BR's existence - again, a sign that BR didn't operate as a single organisation.

 

When the railways were nationalized on a regional basis, all that happened was that everything got "British Railways" put on it, Loco and carriage works still made the same pre nationisation big four designs , Crewe still outshoped the same LMS designs, Doncaster still produced the LNER classes, and so on, the Standards and BR MK1S didnt appear until some 5 years after 1945, and some designs were still outshopped quite late the ivatt 2 mt for example in some cases were only a few years younger than their Br Standard 2mt counterparts .

 

Out of curiosity: there were 999 BR Standards. How many grouping designs were completed by BR? (Castles, Bulleid and Peppercorn Pacific’s, Ivatt and Fairburn tanks, J72s etc etc). And (harder) - how many of those were ordered by BR, rather than ordered by the grouping company but delivered by BR?

Tom

 

Of those ordered by BR, it would also be interesting to know how the order profile correlates to when the Standard designs were prepared - and how many came after.

 

E. S. Cox's book Locomotive Panorama Volume 2 has a table in it, as follows: -
LMS 640
LNER 396
SR 50
GWR 452
Total 1538.

The 5 LMS Kitson 0-4-0 saddle tanks 47005-09 were a partial redesign by BR Derby and built in 1953/54

 

Yup Wikipedia says 1538 and gives a breakdown of the above by class (eg WC/BB 40 ; MN 10). Plus 620 locos purchased from the War Department.

Wikipedia also gives dates-- on a cursory glance the great majority of the 1538 were delivered by 1951.

 

Yes yes yes, all very interesting but the topic is 35018 BIL, is there any more news out there are to the current state of play.

 

I feel your pain Victor, but you should know by now that each thread is for discussion on anything and everything!

 

Partly true ... 99% of threads on NatPres go through a long argument about whether the Bulleid Merchant Navies in original form were a brilliant response to a pressing operational need or the biggest waste of money in railway history; however, this 35018 thread is free from such thread drift ...

Tom

 

Robert Riddles wanted something with HIS name attached

 

He got a Birth Certificate, what more did he need?

 

...and the Thompson 'hero/villian' question....don't forget that!

 

In original form they were of course a brilliant response to a pressing operational need.

 

Two at Crewe, Port Line and Holland America Line, but what do you want first, Blue Peter, Britannia, Nunney Castle, Bittern?

 

I always had a soft spot for Bittern.