Heritage Line Loco Power Requirements

I find Mr H a little like a cross between the odious Katie Hopkins,
and a Pannier Tank on the Island of Sodor, its a bit look at me. If every other railway other than the Isle of Wight is getting it wrong so badly why aren't their marketing officers/ traffic managers beating a path to Hayling Island to listen to these pearls of wisdom? I've just spent a week at a railway I'd describe as 'Champions League' and that's the SVR, and the management there must be doing something right, same as the NYMR, KWVR, SDR, NNR...

 

And one other thing, I was chatting to a relative the other day who was talking about their first ride behind a diesel. It was behind a class 26 on the GN lines out of London in a pair of quad arts. Now, I am sure that if the NNR were to get a 26 and run it with their quads, most people would say ‘totally inauthentic 26s were Scottish locos’ but clearly for a while 26s were used out of Kings Cross. while Holt isn’t Hadley Wood, it is LNER metals, and about as close as you could get to recreating this relative’s first ride behind a diesel.

 

The problem with photos is the degree to which photographers used their own sense of aesthetics to judge what to photograph and what to skip - and also what to frame and what to cut out of shot. Not all photographers, it's true, but most of the prolific specialist ones. They just didn't photograph tender-first movements, or Pacifics on short trains, leading people to assume that these things just didn't happen (including Mr Hitchcock, although he has economic objections too of course). This is an additional layer of taphonomy on top of the historical record which tends to get ignored. I've heard people grumbling that the lineside is never as tidy nowadays as in old photos; that's because some photographers just wouldn't photograph a scene with lineside clutter in it - I'm sure I have read in one book that Ivo Peters never submitted for publication anything with any clutter in shot.

Incidentally - talking of Ivo Peters - one reason the S&D was so heavily photographed is precisely that its service was so awfully uncompetitive compared with road travel: you could shoot a train in one location, drive off, easily overtake it, and shoot it a few more times on the same trip.

I've often found that the interesting oddities and unexpected corners tend to be in the more amateurish snaps that people take without being entirely aware what they are taking a photo of - I recall one photo of a 1920s scene at Beddgelert which appears to show a fireman on his knees praying to the injectors of No. 590!

 

Exactly, also, with technology and film limitations, most shots tend to be sunny days and tend to be the 'money shot'. Whereas for example these days, if you go on flickr you can find that there are some people who will photograph every single wagon in a container train. With historical shots often only if it is a really rare shot of a loco or location will you see something that was shot in bad weather or is a poor shot.

Maybe this changes in the 1970s as cameras and film get cheaper? Maybe it isn’t that there was more decay in the 1970s but just that people were better able to shoot the decay (and in the rain).

I used to browse the forums of one of the big US railway photo websites and there were people there who were discussing the photos that the editors had rejected. Looking at some of the photos it was clear that what was being published was very much the narrow definition of what makes a ‘good’ railway photo. Ie clutter would get your photo rejected. There is I guess a tension between those of us who look at railway photography as a historical record and those who consider it an ‘art form’. But looking at the photos that were published it was clear that there was a very obvious ‘ideal type’ of photo that the editors wanted, which was to me a shame as lots of interesting shots were never published. So perhaps this is still true about certain shots being favoured.

But to echo your point - how representative of the S & C are Eric Treacy’s shots? Of course the paradox is that because people think that is what the S &C was always like it helped create some of the folklore about the line, which in turn helped to motivate people to prevent its closure. (And I seem to see a lot of people wanting to be Eric Treacy-lite shots of S&C steam specials)

 

There certainly were developments in film in the 70s which made it both faster, less grainy (for the same speed) and cheaper; particularly in colour film, although I am sure similar advances applied to black and white.

(I just looked up the history of Kodachrome: the first version was ISO 10; ISO 64 was released in the early 60s, but its fastest variant, ISO 200, was not released until the mid-80s. To be fair Kodachrome was always a "beautiful but slow" film.)

I'm not familiar with the good bishop Treacy's work, partly because I have never really found that "ideal 3/4" shot appealing. Equally though maybe there is something in the argument that "1970s decay" was overemphasised by the work of Ian Krause, Colin Gifford et al as part of a reaction against the "ideal shot" and an attempt to bring a more pictorial sensibility into railway photography. From what I can recall of reading one of Ian Krause's books some years ago, his ostensible aims were to go just to wherever steam was left running, with no mention of any desire to take a more artistic approach to his photographs even though that was what he appeared to be doing. I do also recall, years ago, seeing a piece on TV about Gifford (I think) trying to come up with a photo he liked of an S&C steam special in the 90s, and ending up taking a photo of a line of photographers all taking the same shot of a hardly-visible train crossing Ribblehead.

As it happens I do have an Ivo Peters book on my desk. Just flicking through it, about 90% of the shots are "clean" 3/4 front shots. The handful of others are mostly 3/4 rear "train going away" shots with a few broadsides of locos and portraits of staff (usually in front of a loco). Peters had a direct line to the Bath shedmaster so would always turn out for any unusual passenger working, but freight photos are relatively few, apart from sections of the book devoted to the 7F and 8F classes.

(Incidentally one of my favourite railway photography books is probably Jim Russell's "Great Western Miscellany" even though I'm not a Western person; it is just random photos of "interesting stuff" from the Swindon archives. Most of it would never be touched by a "railway photographer").

These notes are very vague and unfocused because it's 6.45am and I am still on my first cup of tea. This is a very big subject though - I am sure there is an art history PhD in it for someone.

 

I wonder if the turn towards realism in photography mirrors a broader turn towards realism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

One photographer I have never ‘got’ and I am sorry if this seems iconoclastic, is O Winston Link. It seems like every photo is a bingo card of cliche (and too many people on photo charters try to ape the style).

There are probably several PhDs in art history on railway art - think about all the paintings. Let us be honest a Cuneo painting is not an accurate representation.

But all of this goes to creating in the minds of people what a recreation of the past should look like rather than what it did look like. It’s just an imagined vision of the past.

I am pretty sure that if someone did try to run their service to the 1937 or 1960 timetable with accurate train lengths and formations, the railway would not make a great deal of money.

Back to the initial point about motive power requirements, a while back a friend of mine reflected on a discussion in the 1970s on the Ffestiniog to which the view was that Double Fairlies were impractical and expensive and that what the railway needed was more Hunslet type locos, move forward 40 years traffic patterns have changed and the choice of new locos are double fairlies alongside locos with comparable capabilities as the Hunslets.

Of course here is the irony, the Hunslets aren’t authentic pre 1946 locos, the Alco isn’t an authentic FR loco, the modern coaches aren’t authentic. The deviation isn’t authentic. Perhaps if the FR had been managed by the authenticity crowd it would maybe only be running to Penrhyn (I mean why go to TyB there is nothing there), certainly not to Dduallt. The costs of the deviation are too great etc etc. I think the railway scene is a hell of a lot better off because the likes of Alan Garraway saw themselves as running a railway not a museum, by not trying to run a vision of a 1920s railway they were able to do more and in turn inspired others to run railways.

 

There is a point about authenticity that "rivet counting" often ignores - a truth to the "spirit" of a railway. The FR achieves that in one way, by working round the constraints of the closure and reopening throughout. The IoWSR likewise does this in it's motive power through either it's use of Austerities (representing borrowing available resources) or Ivatts (what might have been). My problem comes either when people try to constrain "authenticity" in line with a particular set of views, and ignore wider truths about the railway or, alternatively, allow modern imperatives to dispense with elements that lend authenticity to the location.

 

Can we get back on topic please?

 

Absolutely. My impression of Alan Garraway (and I only met him once briefly) and others is that they saw themselves as serious professional railwaymen who happened to be running a narrow gauge steam line in Wales where the main thing being carried was tourists rather than commuters or slate. It wasn’t jgf it was a job and a job you do properly.

They argued when challenged by the authenticity crowd that they followed the spirit of the railway by adapting to circumstances - the double fairlie was adapted to circumstances, using the simplex and moelwyn were adaptions and so on and so forth.

Where would the FR be without the Hunslets, the Bluebell without the metropolitan carriages, Blackmoor vale, dukedog, nlr tank, Nymr without the lambton tanks, svr without Gordon. The foundations of what many of us would consider to be premier league lines are built on using non-authentic locos and stock.

Also, it would be easy to say a rebuilt West Country running on 5 mk1s running for 3 miles is a big loco obsession but I wonder where the mhr would be without Bodmin in the early days of the line.

Non authenticity can open things up. I remember visiting the East Somerset with my late grandfather, the loco that day was a Jinty, not very authentic (although they were on the S&D), anyway, turned out that he remembered them from his childhood in the 1920s and 1930s in north London. Given how taciturn he was, if the loco had been an authentic gwr loco, i’d have probably never heard about the LMS running around Harringay and Hornsey

 

For the vast majority of visitors, one steam engine is just the same as any other - it's only us enthusiasts who know and care about the differences. By running the Ivatts and Austerities, the IoWSR are going to be able to keep the 'genuine' island locos going for longer, which in my book is what's important - and they've got a nice clear loco roster on their website, so we can see which locos are in service and time our visits to coincide with an island loco running.

Of course, you can also wind up the pedants by pointing out that Invincible has been on the island for longer than most of the O2s were - similarly for mainland lines, any post-grouping steam loco has now spent longer in preservation than it did in main line service...

 

I'm not sure this is true at all- I think it might be enthusiast snobbery that only we are clever enough to tell the difference.
Yes, we've all encountered some absolute eejits , but lots of non-enthusiasts seem sufficiently aware of steam locomotive design differences to be able to liken "their" locomotive to one or other of the Rev Awdry's characters. They may not know or care that a N2 ought not to appear on the Mid-Hants, but are sufficiently knowledgeable to identify a tank loco or a tender loco- and often seem to express a preference for the latter. If the bigger locomotives pull in the punters, they may well be more economical to operate.....?

 

That's the "rockstar" element coming in to play though. Names are easier to remember than numbers. You average punter is going to know the colour and if it has a nice name. They're not going to know the history right off the bat unless it's an engine with a high media profile like Flying Scotsman and Tornado.

I personally suspect it's the fact they're named and thus feel a little more "special" as a result.

 

I've always said your general punter won't really care so long as the thing on the front goes "chuff chuff" as it trundles along. I suspect this is true in your general day-to-day family traffic that makes up the vast majority of passenger traffic and thus revenue. So, to a degree, this still holds out.

You can use the rock star ability of those named engines to boost your chances of more punters coming in, however and that's got to be a good thing, end of the day.

 

There will of course also be vocal people who will claim outrage over an unauthentic loco or a diesel instead of steam. Then there will be people who will have had a train ride, know nothing about the loco other than it was steam. A guy I work with was telling me how he'd gone on a steam trip to Weymouth. He had no idea of the loco and no interest, but he said 'I felt like the queen waving at people as we went past'. He was clearly more into the 'day out in style' aspect of the trip. I wonder how many people who go on the various dining trains around the country do so for the loco or for the fact that it is an 'evening/afternoon out in style'.

Clearly as these trips have quite the mark up, railways must be making money and they must contribute to the revenue stream to make them worth running.