So, why exactly did....................

Steam last significantly longer in a number of Western European Countries than the UK - specifically West Germany, Austria, France & Italy.

I cant imagine that the costs were significantly different to the UK, and given that none of them had the indigenous coal supplies we did I would have thought that they might be less favourable.

 

They didnt have a government hell bent on modernisation who were willing to waste invested capital by scrapping steam in undue haste. The implied plan was to use modern steam and go straight for electrification as happened on the SW main line. Scrapping some steam locos at 5 years was a criminal waste by a criminal minister of roads

 

I was surprised to find a handful of steam locomotives still pottering about when I visited Italy in the mid-late 1970s. They really were just a handful, shunting and handling PW trains and transfer freights. Also surprising were large numbers of old electric locos dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, some of which lasted almost to the end of the century. Not to mention 4 wheel carriages, wooden seats and stations with more staff than passengers. My guess is that this was all down to a lack of funds for investment, a generous attitude to subsidy and an endemic resistance to change.

West Germany and France had been modernising their railways since the early years of the 20th century, and the UK was a long way behind by the mid 1950s, and I think that the rapid elimination of steam here was as much a matter of national prestige as an economic necessity. Sadly we didn't have much of a background in modern traction, so we replaced steam with a ragbag of untried classes, many of which were inferior to the locos they were replacing.

 

One of the reasons I read was the attitude of the feminine part of the travellers. They hated to get their nice new
light-colored dresses spoiled by soot from steam engines.
Kind regards
Jos Koopmans

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London ?

 

As they still do. Some tourist railways have yet to realise this.

PH

 

The closure programmes and the reduction in demand meant that there was a surplus of locos. This continued post the end of steam with a number of diesel classes being withdrawn, some of which weren't fit for service but the fact that they weren't replaced reflects the drop in traffic.

 

Absolutely

That doesn't explain why new diesels were still being built. Those that were withdrawn were done so for several reasons, but the main one was an inability to make them reliable.

 

In reality steam didn't last significantly longer, someone had to be first, someone had to be last.

 

To paraphrase the late Kenny Everett as Cupid Stunt "and it was all done in the best possible haste"

Dave B

 

In Italy we still have many locos 'on the books' of the state railway system, FS. So you could say that steam has not officially finished as some are still used for excursions etc. Every now and again to test run these locos they may pull a few coaches short distances and I heard in one case that this was used as a substitute for a local train that had failed. Locos were not scrapped as in some cases these are 'pets' of the local sheds that hang on to them. On the other hand trying to buy a state assest is a minefield of paperwork here so maybe it's just too much bother to dispose of them?? I would say that here the standard of restoration here is functional rather than exceptional, think of Clan Line and I doubt you will find a similar condition loco here.

 

If you remember back to the 60s and Harold Wilsons brave new world it was all about ditching the old and a rapid drive into the brave new high tech world . Anything from previous generations was 'not cool', it didn't matter what you replaced it with as long as it was modern, the demolition of the Euston Arch being a case in point, it just wouldn't happen today. This was a policy that converted our cities to nightmare concrete jungles and gave us a fleet of often useless untested diesel locomotives. The WCML was flooded with EE Type 4s much inferior to the Stanier Pacifics and heavy freight could well have remained in the hands of the nearly new 9Fs for many years.
The rundown of steam in Germany was much better planned with no thought to 'image' just a staged handover from a well maintained steam fleet to tried and tested modern motive power.

 

And outlasted steam in the UK of course.

 

What was the equivalent of 11 August 1968 in France and Germany? Or was it the case that there was a blurred transition to state-sponsored museum operations, making it difficult to identify a precise date?

 

625.100 was transferred to FS Fondazione in 2012 I believe, so is now longer part of capital stock. I can't find a list of all the steam locos FS Fondazione have, but it's quite extensive, and around 15 are operational. A few months ago there were more mainline steam tours in Italy on one weekend than there were in the UK!

 

As far as I know, both France and West Germany ran steam until 1977 and possibly Italy too. A few other countries did replace steam earlier than Britain did, Holland was one and Southern Ireland was another, probably influenced by the lack of coal in Ireland. Incidentally, the Irish railways did not update their steam locos significantly and went straight from Victorian 0-6-0s and 4-4-0s to diesels

 

That's good to hear. When I lived in Italy in the 1980s there was very little interest in railway preservation. Hardly surprising since the entire system was like one big working museum.

 

I saw active steam in Italy in 1977. There were small pockets of it all over the country. As Il Vaporista says, it was never formally eliminated. It just faded away, with small numbers of engines being retained for emergency use.

 

Wilson came to power in 1964. Most of the things you blame on him predate that.