The LNER Encyclopedia

I've been reading notes by Cecil J Allen mentioning what he thought to have been the world's very first diesel-powered passenger train, which undertook a one-hundred mile round trip from Tottenham to Cambridge and back, on a quiet Sunday in 1924. The train consisted of a locomotive and four passenger coaches. It averaged 13.6 mph, allowing for shunting to let other trains pass. The run was costed at 2/1 ( two shillings and a penny ) per mile when at full load, with the diesel fuel costing 8.5d ( eightpence halfpenny ) a gallon. The locomotive was a four-wheeled diesel shunter, using hydraulic transmission, of 60 hp. The coaches weighed 92.5 tons. Does anybody have further details about this train, or know where any photographs may exist - in the 1924 Railway Magazine perhaps? I understand that the LNER had a few Simplex petrol-engined shunters at the time, obtained from the GER and industry, one of which appears to have been re-engined with a diesel at some point? ( One such early machine survives at Beamish museum ). If this turns out to be true, a celebratory plaque or sculpture at Tottenham station would appear to be in order, don't you think?

I believe you will find that the German/Swiss expertise in diesel traction got them there roughly a decade earlier, with a purpose built railcar in service before 1924. (Distant recollection of an exhibit at the Lucerne railway museum.)

Nimbus wrote:I've been reading notes by Cecil J Allen mentioning what he thought to have been the world's very first diesel-powered passenger train, which undertook a one-hundred mile round trip from Tottenham to Cambridge and back, on a quiet Sunday in 1924.

No mention of the above run is recorded on Cambridge-The diesel era part 7 on the link below.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/ca ... ex11.shtml

Mickey

May have been the first BRITISH example, then? Fascinating all the same. It is mentioned in a 1959 tome on 'Modern Railways.' States that the US built its first diesel-electric shunter the following year.

Nimbus wrote:May have been the first BRITISH example, then? Fascinating all the same.

Tottenham to Cambridge then Cambridge to Tottenham all done at a averaged speed of around 13mph and probably visiting every 'refuge siding' along the way there and back??.

I bet you would have loved the ride Nimbus.

Mickey

There is indeed a photo, and it is reproduced as fig 61 in part 10A of the RCTS 'Locomotives of the LNER' series. The engine was a diesel-hydraulic 0-4-0, built by Simmering - Graz - Pauker of Austria. The run was noted in the September 1924 'Railway Magazine'.

D