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[Martin (Admin)]

Recently, there have been several programs here on British television about the history of British railway system....
I was particularly interested in he changeover from steam to to electric and diesel power, one program stated that
BR (British Rail, the final, all encompassing rail company) delayed and botched the changeover and put back the
national rail system by up to 20 years, so...

1. When was it first realised that steam technology had reached it's peak?
2. What other alternatives where tried and when?
3. Did the delays have any adverse effect on the network?
4. Was Beeching right?
 .......what you you guys think?

[oldiron]

Recently, there have been several programs here on British television about the history of British railway system....
I was particularly interested in he changeover from steam to to electric and diesel power, one program stated that
BR (British Rail, the final, all encompassing rail company) delayed and botched the changeover and put back the
national rail system by up to 20 years, so...

1. When was it first realised that steam technology had reached it's peak?
2. What other alternatives where tried and when?
3. Did the delays have any adverse effect on the network?
4. Was Beeching right?
 .......what you you guys think?

Martin:

 To answer your first question, steam technology had not reached its peak under BR auspice. Much greater development work has been done in more recent years that has proven more power is available relatively easily. Initial work was done by Argentian, L.D.Porta on the Rio Turbo Rwy. (Porta recently passed away). One of his most active (still) students is David Wardale. He was author of the book "Red Devil and other tales of steam. I believe it is is still currently in print. He continued doing development work on South African Rwys and produced several notable locomotives, the most famous was "Red Devil", a 4-8-4. Cost analysis  proved it to be cheaper than e;electric or diesel.
  The latest development by BR had to be the Duke of Gloucester. However, it proved to be a poor steamer and BR never tried to find out why. It took the preservation movement to rebuild the locomotive and sort out its problems. Now it is phenomenal.
  What was botched in the changeover was the crash insertion into traffic of unproven diesel designs and removal of new and proven steam before diesel traction had been developed to satisfaction for reliable BR use.
  The various problems had already been sorted in North America and most North American rails were dieselised by the time BR decide to switch over. However, little of the established technology of General Motors, ALCO, Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton or Fairbanks Morse was brought into play in BR diesel locomotive development. BR experimented with the likes of diesel hydraulics that were unreliable in continuous service and were a high cost maintenance item. It wasn't until the nineties that ARC industries bought Canadian built GM locomotives that North American locomotive technology demonstrated its superiority. Subsequently there have been numerous orders to GM Canada for additional units and the displacement of similar use British units.
  Was Beeching right? In retrospect I have to say no, at least not in total. Some trimming was undoubtably needed, however, in hindsight, with the "greening" of the earth, I think economical use could have been made of many cut lines.
John

[Colin Bishop]

We should have been given the right to choo choos! 

Nothing smoother than a real steam train.

Nuclear submarines are propelled by steam....

Colin

[SteamboatPhil]

I'm not b****y well building one of those   

[oldiron]

I'm not b****y well building one of those   

  What......a steam locomotive or a steam powered nuke sub?   

John

[catengineman]

MAYHEM has beaten Steamboatphil !!!!

IT's in print he has admitted his defeat in a construction jobby  

could this be co;s hes scared of a little nuke (and it would have to be little),,, missing out on flogging the spent stuff off after each sail  

Mind you a "glow in the dark Steamboatphil may bring in a few punters at the next mayhem meeting"  will mention this to Martin so he can ply his persuasive side to get Steamboatphil to build the very first nuke / steam / sub./.springer

 

[SteamboatPhil]

Oh Ok then, but which category does plutonium come under on e-bay, and if I end up with a half life of a million years, and get used as a night light you're all in trouble   

[catengineman]

So do I detect that you are going to build a nuke sub / springer now  and just think in 25 000 years some one will still be able to sail it on the same power supply  no more "charging questions" 

[oldiron]

So do I detect that you are going to build a nuke sub / springer now  and just think in 25 000 years some one will still be able to sail it on the same power supply  no more "charging questions" 

  And with the bremstraulung effect as a result of the decaying reactor, it shouldn't be too hard for a future boater to find it.

John

[RickF]

Given that the decision to abandon steam engines was inevitable  (however much we might regret it), BR's mistake was to concentrate on diesel (oil-powered) locomotives - for which we had no natural resources (North Sea oil being then undiscovered) - rather than electric power, which we could easily generate. However, given that the then Transport Minister was the (allegedly!!) corrupt Ernest Marples, road building contractor and motorway addict, it's a wonder we had any railways left at all by 1970.

Rick

[Seaspray]

I love the steam engines and the smell of them. Was in an model steam engineer club at Gravesend Kent and learned a lot about them as the working model were the same as the real ones. I would  like to get to some of the model engineering exhibitions but either too far away or in the heart of London. But have been to a lot of running model tracks locally.

I think Beeching was right as they weren't paying their way, people were starting to use the car. Coal was getting expensive, and one man could run the diesels and took two to do the steam loco. But at least we have people who had the foresight to save some of them from the scrapyards.

Seaspray

[Ghost in the shell]

we need to look at the French now, re nationalize the rail networks, bring everything back under state ownership, bring the public bus service under the same umbrella as well and develop an intergrated state transport system.  The railways were safer under BR and though few will admit it, probably better as well.

[tony52]

Who says its the end of steam? when a brand new A1 Peppercorn has just been built!

http://www.a1steam.com/

Tony.

[Roger in France]

Beeching did a job which the Minister at that time wanted doing and which the Cabinet was persuaded to accept....decimate the railways in pursuit of lower costs and profit.

Beeching came from a ruthless commercial background and behaved that way in a public service. The history of his pay and honours demonstrate that. Marples may or may not have had commercial interests to advance. The fact is they both were prepared to disregard the public service interest. It can be shown that such user surveys as were carried out were specifically intended to ignore public service elements.

It is exceedingly difficult to place a book value on public service. You either respect and protect it or you do not. I am not supporting inefficiencies and silly practises which can be passed off as public service. However, I am arguing that if you want to govern on a profit and loss basis that is only one approach. It is not the only approach. Otherwise it has to be recognised that a government which provides a public service will face costs over and above the commercial costs involved in a paired down service. That is what the French are prepared to accept and why the French railways and health services (to name but 2) are so much more costly than the UK system and are bleeding the French nation dry.

It is a political choice.

Roger in France.

[Colin Bishop]

Roger is right. I have worked in the public service and seen many senior managers "parachuted in" from the private sector to "shake things up". In almost all instances they largely failed because the new "business" environment was in fact a lot more complex than they one they'd come from where the bottom line was lowest costs/maximum profits. They found it very difficult to get to grips with the additional factors that the job required to be taken into account and also that they could no longer use their usual "command and control" management techniques in a political situation.

To get back on track(!), the place I live is known as the largest "village in England. Just as it was being considerably expanded in terms of population Beeching cut the railway link with the nearby large town from where many of the new residents needed to commute to London. Consequently they all drive there now.

A few years ago there was a study to see if the old railway line, still preserved as a footpath, could be reopened as a light railway to take pressure off the roads. It was concluded that it would not make enough profit! The reality was that if it could just break even it would be a significant public benefit but it didn't fit the "investment" rules and so everyone continues to clog up the roads. 

Colin

[oldiron]

A few years ago there was a study to see if the old railway line, still preserved as a footpath, could be reopened as a light railway to take pressure off the roads. It was concluded that it would not make enough profit! The reality was that if it could just break even it would be a significant public benefit but it didn't fit the "investment" rules and so everyone continues to clog up the roads. 

Colin

 One good reason, among many others, why the "greening of the earth" will never happen. What people think they want, and probably need, is nudged to one side in favour of money and politics.

John

[Bartapuss]

The trouble was way back then in the late 40's & 50's we could build a diesel engine to save our lives, even proven German designs built here under license were full of bad workmanship and detail faults, Famous loco builder of the time could not make the change over from heavy engineering of steam to the fine tolerances of diesel engine manufacture so fell by the wayside. The Americans had the technology cracked by the late 30's but British politics precluded that it had to be made hear even if it was crap. Some designs of loco's did'nt even manage 7 in years service and were sent to the scrap man, some just had bad incendiary habits as did the North British type 1 or Class 15 or just blew up like the Clayton's class 17 did, to name but a few, also the way British Rail adopted its new charges left a lot to be desired, servicing and storing new diesels alongside steam loco's did'nt help matters, it used to be BR practice to drain the winter coolant from diesels in the spring into drums for reuse again in the autumn as it was very expensive and replace it with raw water for summer running, I bet you can guess what happened when winter arrived or the was an unexpected  spring cold snap!!!, further more some engines especially the Deltic engine in its two guises had to run on nearly 100% glycol or suffered internal corrosion problems.
 Engines that worked faultlessly in a big lorry or in naval applications (Deltic again) did not mean that they perform the same in a locomotive, the rigors of constant changes in output crucified them and none of the manufacturers deemed it cost effective to develope a purpose made engine for rail traction, only very recently with the development in metallurgy and hard work of the preservationists has most of the Deltic's problems been iron out.  Today operators cannot afford to have hundreds of loco's lying round the system wait for repair hence why they've turned to the Americans to provide the reliable loco's they need, when EWS took over they were horrified at the state of the traction they had inherited, no British manufacturer could offer the 95% availability they were seeking and after viewing a GM switcher in Foster Yeoman's quarry and Yeoman's success with the 59's how could they do anything else, the last class of British built loco's were the 60's and even then were so full of faults when delivered the whole contract was nearly going to be cancelled even now their still troublesome, the only saving virtue is their the most powerfull  and fuel efficient loco's on the system today, even more than a 66. The railways have alway been pedantic and waste full, the Standard class of steam loco's were a good idea, standardisation of parts and controls along with ease of maintenace a first for the system, but never they never lived long enough to recoupe the investment, they should have been used until the mid 70's in which time full electrification of the system could have been completed with properly developed diesels to cover those part were it would have been unpractical to electrify. The APT was another chance lost, changed the original successful systems design then to the press out on the morning after a nights "xxxxx" up was just asking for trouble, whats in the pendilinos a laptop and a sat nav!!. Some of those branch line that Beaching closed had just been relaid, stations refitted out and repainted. Just cause you paint that old rolling stock in fancy new paintwork do'nt mean you've got a new railway, we unlike the French have a old Victorian system which snakes its way round every sod's  field who would sell up to the companies at the time, we'd have been better off if we paid the Luftwaffe to keep bombing the "xxxxx" after the war till there was nowt left and start again thats how the French got their new railways. The trouble is in this country by the time your take into account the profit its gotta make and by the time every "xxxxx"'s taken they're % there's nowt left the build the thing, we seem to spend the money on "all talk and no action", what we need is the people with the forward vision to brush aside the flammer's and the scammer's and get the job done 

[justboatonic]

Beeching wasnt about switching fromsteam to diesel as some appear to have suggested. Rather beeching was about taking a knife to the railways and cutting off any bits (lines) that werent or were unlikely to make a profit.

With hindsight, that was clearly unwise given our gridlock roads today. Industry also wanted door to door quick delivery. And put simply, there's no way even the most efficient railway can compete with a load it on a track at manufacuring site & delivery to customer door step.

You only have to look at the number of artic wagons on the road and see how easily somany of them taken off the road and put on a train would free up our roads. But then you have the problem of getting them from rail depot to customer.

I dont know how much more efficient steam engines could have become, weren't some of the last BR steamers using steam through at least triple expansion cyclinders? Is there any room tomake boilers more efficient? Then ofcourse, you have the issue of fuel used to create the steam. Our coal industry is all but gone but even then, there's the green angle of co2 from burning the coal.

Steam trains are every school boys dream (aren't they?). Maybe one day when all the oil is gone they'll make a comeback. Until then, I think they'll be limited to nostalgia runs.

[oldiron]

I dont know how much more efficient steam engines could have become, weren't some of the last BR steamers using steam through at least triple expansion cyclinders? Is there any room tomake boilers more efficient? Then ofcourse, you have the issue of fuel used to create the steam. Our coal industry is all but gone but even then, there's the green angle of co2 from burning the coal.

Steam trains are every school boys dream (aren't they?). Maybe one day when all the oil is gone they'll make a comeback. Until then, I think they'll be limited to nostalgia runs.

  No, there were no triple expansion steam locomotives, at least not beyond the test point and certainly not under BR. All BR steam was single expansion in dual, or as in the case of the Britannia's and the Duke, three cylinders, all simple.
  BR had found improvements could be made in the engine by switching to a rotary cam poppet valve gear. However, this was only done in a limited test basis, but they did improve efficiency.
   As I mentioned earlier, vast improvements were made in the boiler technology until very recently (Porta and Wardale). These were designed to burn inferior quality fuels as are found in today's world and do so far more efficiently.
 During the oil crisis of the seventies American Coal Enterprises in the US did extensive design and testing for a new generation of steam locomotive. With the cost and availability of oil in the seventies the cost break even point had been achieved. However, it didn't last long enough to see a loco constructed. However, the development work has been held in the event a similar situation arises.  In this case it wasn't "school boys" harking for a fonder time, but class one railways (C&O, Burlington Northern, Norfolk and Western) that were a major part of the consortium of ACE.
 We may see it yet.

John

[d-jnana]

Beeching should be dug up, hung drawn and quatered, cut into little bits, fed to pigs and the droppings burnt.

If that b******d had not decimated our rail network we could be in a situation where we could be using public transport effectively, and been on our way to saving the planet. OK simplistic I know, but with the branch lines that existed in the past it would have been more likely we could use the trains for a to b journeys and leave the car at home, PERHAPS.

as Sister Wendy used to say after a good rant
"well thats what I think anyway"

GARY

[Bartapuss]

I see my previous reply has been censored in a couple of places, it should say b then u then double g then ers on the end.

Probably the most efficient steam railway is that powered by electricity from a power stations via the national grid. A power station is most efficient at full capacity and will use the nearly same amount of fuel on full load or just waiting in standby to go on line. In this country we suffer from the problem that demand suddenly goes up through the roof when most of the country puts on the kettle for a cuppa when the ads begin when the favourite soap opera or show finishes on TV.  Its probably better to improve the efficiency of one big unit than thousands of little ones, however there have been some funny experiments with steam loco's from using turbines instead of pistons, marine type water tube boilers, pulverized coal and oil burning, trouble is they never amounted to much and basically poorly converted conventional steam loco's with no real performance or operating benefits. The Americans only seemed to get it right with their Challenger and Big Boy locomotives, only one British steam loco broke the mould, O.V.S Bulleid's Leader design on the southern, it looked more like a diesel than a kettle, with fully welded boiler (a first), sleeve valves and chain drives and cabs on either end for the driver it looked promising especially if they could be made to work in multiple with one man at the controls. However a decision abandon oil firing and retain coal fuel meant the fireman had to work right up against the boiler backplate in a hot cramped isolated compartment, a passage between the cabs meant the boiler was off centre which lead to improper weight distribution and riding problems, the engine used sleeve valve technology as used in some aeroplane engines, however these needed superb lubrication with any deficiency leading to seizing and splitting of the setup, the fitters often left the inspection covers off and with inevitable entry of grit and dirt causing the same result. Only one was fully completed with the five others in various states of erection, with another one about to trials they were all quickly scrapped. Bullied had some very quirky ideas used on his other loco's namely the Pacific's, which might have been good in principle but failed in practice and all had to be rebuilt when BR took over, he went on to become chief engineer in Ireland and failed there too. The thing is  steam loco's at the time were'nt very friendly to the crews that had to work them, unlike some of the German designs, there's a big difference between top express driver to night shift engine cleaner. Another thing was the culture of the industry was you started out as a cleaner and worked your way up and this also applied after the war when there was a labour shortage, so instead of training up younger men on the new traction a lot of the drivers put on the new type of loco's only had a few years left until they retired and were'nt about to change they're ways  and with little or not training no wonder there was problems, it was not uncommon to see one driving a diesel with his head out the cab window all the way steam engine style, however they say that when the diesels came in there was as small sigh of nostalgia and a big sigh of relief.
Maybe a modern design of steam powered loco for off the wire work, would look more like a diesel or electric instead of the tradition steam loco but burn LPG, I know there was work done in Germany for a mountain railway, the steam loco for it size had more even torque over the rev range and was more efficient burning diesel fuel than a diesel engine. There were plans to build a modern steam loco (not the A1 peppercorn) but it never got of the drawing board.
By the way, Beeching was'nt the only one who had it in for the railways, Margret Thatcher had plans to get rid of it altogether, sell of the land to developers and there was even artist impressions of the new motorways going into London were once the tracks had been, B=$*h.

[oldiron]

 In one of my previous posts I mentioned the American Coal Enterprise steam locomotive design. For those interested, here is a web site that'll give you the best of the low down on the design and its outcome:

http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/ult.html


  Mention was made of the efficiency of the steady state power delivery of power stations. I agree, providing they are kept at base load and tow shifted as some dispatchers are want to do, particularly with coal fired plants, however, that said, the infrastructure capital costs for an all electric rail system are are large. The traffic level has to justify this level of cost. Lesser used lines are more efficiently operated with locomotive hauled trains , be that steam or diesel.
 
John

[djrobbo]

Personally i think beeching was total cow excrement....hope that explanation will keep the peace , as i cant put what i really think.
 As someone who was there at the time , the way i saw it was that ernest marples was minister for transport , a really good job for someone who owned a company that built roads , no conflict of interest there then !...  decided that the quickest way to make even more money was to kill off the competition so that you need even more roads , see where this is going ?....enter mr marples best friend quack beeching, who promptly set about destroying the railways using every slimey method he could come up with  , like for instance the somerset and dorset  a seasonally heavilly used line for holiday makers and school kids etc , where they did traffic flow readings in the middle of winter when the schools were on holiday , i.e no traffic.
             In my humble opinion marples and beeching should be listed along side guy fawkes etc , they caused far more damage and in some cases actually caused the destruction of some small villages etc , in what was never about changing steam to diesel or electric , but simply about greed and coruption.
                 So nothing new there then !

                    As i said i was there when it happened like a lot of other people were , and that is the way i see it !
                              Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.


                        regards ...bob.

[Peterm]

I am old enough to have seen it as well and I agree completely.   Pete M

[Bee]

The real problem came not with Beeching but as they implemented his cuts. By selling off the trackbed and infrastructure they prevented any recovery action when it was found to be desirable.