sandwhich wrote:The dieselisation shambles was something else that Beeching inherited, it started off okay with new DMUs in the mid 50s which were sorely needed although with the best will in the world they would not have stopped all of the closures. But even here there were too many types of units. The coming of the diesel locomotives were a mess from the beginning with the smaller classes withdrawn after around 10 years, in fact steam outlived some of them. There was approx. 440 diesel hydraulic locos built for the Western Region, all were gone in 15 years, nothing less than a scandal. No wonder various governments lost faith in BR over the years.
Actually the DH Class 14 loco's only lasted something like 5 years and similar for the Clayton Class 17's (117 of them I think).
"No wonder various governments lost faith in BR over the years"
Sorry to sound cynical but I don't think ANY government has ever had any faith in the railways. They have always been a political football.
sandwhich wrote:The dieselisation shambles was something else that Beeching inherited, it started off okay with new DMUs in the mid 50s which were sorely needed although with the best will in the world they would not have stopped all of the closures. But even here there were too many types of units. The coming of the diesel locomotives were a mess from the beginning with the smaller classes withdrawn after around 10 years, in fact steam outlived some of them. There was approx. 440 diesel hydraulic locos built for the Western Region, all were gone in 15 years, nothing less than a scandal. No wonder various governments lost faith in BR over the years.
Indeed yes a shambles. The idea of the Diesel Pilot Scheme in principal though was quite a good idea, so long as the British Transport Commission had been left to finish the "Pilot Scheme" and would no doubt have produced a far and away better selection of Diesels [and Electrics if any were included] than were built/bought the National Network. After all, all 4 of the Big 4 were starting to dabble with Diesels & Electrics, after all the LNER were in the process of electrifiying the Woodhead Route, [Raven had just after the Great War even gone to the extent of building and Electric express Engine for the York to Newcastle section of the ECML which he/the North Eastern planned to electrify in the early twenties!].Pretty well every government couldn't help but sticking their oar in and screwing things up.
Last edited by 2392 on Mon Apr 01, 2013 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
To be fair there were some very successful diesel locos, the Class 20,26,27,31,33,37,45,46,47,55 and the ED Class 73 worked very well. Even some of the WR hydraulics were said to be good, but I remember the Class 14 fleet destined for the Western Region were being sold out of service before they could enter service. Yes governments have always poked their noses in even in pre 1948 days but I still feel that BR could have made a better job of dieselisation than they did.
sandwhich wrote:To be fair there were some very successful diesel locos, the Class 20,26,27,31,33,37,45,46,47,55 and the ED Class 73 worked very well. Even some of the WR hydraulics were said to be good, but I remember the Class 14 fleet destined for the Western Region were being sold out of service before they could enter service. Yes governments have always poked their noses in even in pre 1948 days but I still feel that BR could have made a better job of dieselisation than they did.
The Class 31s were certainly not a success from the start. The original Mirlees engines were a failure and it was only after being re-engined with EE power that the 31s became a success.
sandwhich wrote:To be fair there were some very successful diesel locos, the Class 20,26,27,31,33,37,45,46,47,55 and the ED Class 73 worked very well. Even some of the WR hydraulics were said to be good, but I remember the Class 14 fleet destined for the Western Region were being sold out of service before they could enter service. Yes governments have always poked their noses in even in pre 1948 days but I still feel that BR could have made a better job of dieselisation than they did.
The Class 31s were certainly not a success from the start. The original Mirlees engines were a failure and it was only after being re-engined with EE power that the 31s became a success.
And even the 47s had to be derated in order to reduce engine stress that could have become rather expensive for the whole class.
I may be seen as pedantic, but whether you believe the class 20s were a success depends on the fact that they tended to work in pairs, and if that is really a sign of failure to fulfill the duties they were designed for?
sandwhich wrote:To be fair there were some very successful diesel locos, the Class 20,26,27,31,33,37,45,46,47,55 and the ED Class 73 worked very well. Even some of the WR hydraulics were said to be good, but I remember the Class 14 fleet destined for the Western Region were being sold out of service before they could enter service. Yes governments have always poked their noses in even in pre 1948 days but I still feel that BR could have made a better job of dieselisation than they did.
The Class 31s were certainly not a success from the start. The original Mirlees engines were a failure and it was only after being re-engined with EE power that the 31s became a success.
And even the 47s had to be derated in order to reduce engine stress that could have become rather expensive for the whole class.
I may be seen as pedantic, but whether you believe the class 20s were a success depends on the fact that they tended to work in pairs, and if that is really a sign of failure to fulfill the duties they were designed for?
The 20's weren't intended to work in pairs but even when the sighting problems with the nose were known another load were built virtually doubling the class. They were/are highly reliable and are still running today. Contrast that with the 56's and 58's.
Thank you for pointing out about the replacement of the engines in the class 31 diesels, had slipped my mind. As regards the class 20s there first use was on the North London Line allocated to Devons Road where they worked as single units. they were built for local freight trip workings which in the late 1950s there was much of but of course it declined as time moved on. If memory serves me right many of them ended up in the Midlands where indeed they worked double headed for a number of years before withdrawal.
sandwhich wrote:I have also been on coach tours where we were told Beeching closed this railway and that line, but I knew that some of it was before his time. Very good info on the Marples interests. I believe that after he left parliament and became a tax exile there was talk of investigating his business interests but I don't think that anything came of it.
I was on a boat trip down Southampton Water a few years back. As we passed Hythe Pier the guide told us we were passing the oldest electrically worked railway in the world
Magnus Volk of Brighton was not on board to defend his claim to that one unfortunately
strang steel wrote:
I may be seen as pedantic, but whether you believe the class 20s were a success depends on the fact that they tended to work in pairs, and if that is really a sign of failure to fulfill the duties they were designed for?
The 20's weren't intended to work in pairs but even when the sighting problems with the nose were known another load were built virtually doubling the class. They were/are highly reliable and are still running today. Contrast that with the 56's and 58's.
But, was using a pair of class 20s on an MGR service, as fuel efficient as using a single loco designed for the purpose? Or were the class 20s just used because they were spare?
The building of the second batch of 20s was more a function of the disaster that was the class 17 Claytons (only a few years previously trumpeted by BR as the future 'standard' type 1 loco even though there had been no prototype testing). It was a case of the cl20 being the only type 1 that had actually functioned properly so far.
The classes 14 and 17 debacle shows how incompetent the BRB management were at that stage, with their rush to eliminate steam at any cost.
(The rumour that they ordered the sudden scrapping of the LMR Pacifics to save further embarrassing comparisons with the woefully underpowered and overweight class 40s, seems never to have been officially denied).
The class 14 and 17 orders showed that BR was building for the past, not the future. Partially this was down to the sheer pace of change in traffic (mainly downward) but also it showed just how long it took to get a plan into action under BR.
The class 14 locos emerged when the elimination of WR steam was getting towards its final stages and the build should never have been authorised in the first place. Unfortunately that could be said about quite a lot of other kit/works authorised as part of the modernisation scheme and the amount of spend on and the inability of BR to turn the traffic defects around led to the lasting distrust between the treasury and the industry.
The class 20 locos were so reliable that it was a no brainier to put them in pairs on the MGR traffic. They regularly had period miles per casuality figures measured as infinity (i.e. None!) and apart from the last few built that had the KV control modules that the class 50's had, they were no real bother at all.
Bad planning and poor management, or is it the other way around, was the problem. Dr Beeching must have at times wondered if he should have taken on the job in the first place with so much chaos around him. The 1955 modernisation plan envisged steam locos working into the 1980s which from the outset was just plain daft. The 1956 Clean Air Act no doubt helped to push electrification on a bit more but BR missed the boat by not pushing it even further than they did instead of wasting time with too many diesels, the talk at the time was "fuel is cheap and plentyful". The end of steam as we all know came in 1968, but I do remember an idea put forward when steam ended on the Southern Region that all remaining steam should be moved to the north of England and make the best of it for a few more years, this was soon given short shrift because they were already sending diesels to the scrap yard and steam just had to go as quickly as possible. It must have been embarrasing in 1960 when electrification and dieselisation was well underway and they were still building steam engines.
Government interference gave us the dieselisation chaos. The need to protect British mechanical engineering was one reason we went diesel rather than electric. BR engineers since 1948 had wished to electrify the main lines and keep steam until we did but the capital wasn't forthcoming. Diesels were initially seen as a stop gap or to be used on secondary or branch lines or in marshalling yards.
The amount of money that was wasted would have electrified a huge proportion of the network and steam would have slowly disappeared, much as it did in Germany. The thought that steam would last until well into the 1980's was always fanciful but in the mid 1950's the idea that anyone would chuck recently built assets into the scrap yard would not have gone down well. An early example of spin, perhaps?
I cut my railway teeth on modernisation era diesels and they were a very mixed bunch, even those classes that were still around in the mid 1970's. There were too many design faults that we were just having to live with. The more modern designs may be boring in some respects but they are a lot easier to keep running, as long as they are not cl.180 units!
Beeching was not well served by the people around him but when your nether parts have been put in the vice by the treasury (and you also had a minister called Marples) you can understand why people reacted like they did. What really upsets me is that people joined the closure party as a way of quickly furthering their career on BR.
