The fact is that the GWR was directly told in 1947 to cease oil-firing experiments due to oil shortages and the lack of US dollars. Your retroactive claims don't change the fact that at the time there was at least some pushback from the government towards the railways consuming oil.
I just knew that somebody would bring up the story of the GWR oil-fired locomotives! While it certainly happened I am not convinced that the reason given for the abandonment of the trial is the whole story.
Don’t forget that at the time the two Ivatt / English Electric designed main line locomotives for the LMS were under construction. They were not cancelled because of a shortage of oil or foreign exchange. The first Bulleid designed 1Co-Co1 diesel main line locomotive for the Southern Railway was authorised in February 1947. This project was also not abandoned because of a shortage of oil or foreign exchange.
Following the GWR initiative the Government allocated suffiicent funds to allow the British railway companies to convert some 1,200 locomotives to save 20,000 tons of coal a week. In the event, only 37 of the GWR’s locomotives were converted as well as 56 locomotives from the other ‘Big Four’ companies.
Over this period, 1945 to 1948, there was considerable volatility in the price and supply of fuels as the war came to an end. Specifically the price of imported oil rose considerably since the original GWR decision had been made in 1945. Even though the price of coal had risen by more than two and a half times since the beginning of the war by 1946 the LMS had found that oil was costing 110% more than coal, or 1/6d more per engine mile.
What is a more plausible reason for the abandonment of the oil burning trials was that it was realised that for the same power output three to four times as much oil has to be burnt in steam locomotive firebox than if it were burnt in a diesel engine cylinder.
The conversion of more steam locomotives to oil burning was no longer economic. I suspect that, as Governments cannot admit that they have made mistakes, the reason given for the abandonment, the lack of foreign exchange, was to a certain extent a smoke screen. (I’ll get my coat…!)
It is also instructive to compare the UK with other countries in Western Europe and realise that the UK actually dieselised faster than most.
Why is it instructive? The situations were very, very different.
I also consider it highly dubious to claim that the railways could have been made to pay their way in light of the great changes in transportation that happened in the 1950s, not without trying to do Serpell thirty years earlier and encountering massive public opposition.
Where did I claim that the railways could have been made to pay their way? That was not even implied in the Modernisation Plan where paragraph 135 states:
An even more important result will be that each of the major groups of services will be made reasonably self-supporting and the element of cross-subsidisation which now exists between various groups of services will be considerably reduced. This does not mean that all the traffics will be covering the direct costs involvcd in their movement and will be contributing towards the common or overhead costs on the same scale; but there will be very few traffics that will not be covering at least the direct costs of their movement.The importance of this towards setting the Commission's finances on a healthier basis can hardly be exaggerated.
"...a healthier basis..." is not the same as 'profitable'.
For the record I consider a return to profitability would have been very unlikely if the railways remained constituted as they were as a purely inland transport organisation. The collapse in the domestic coal market following the Clean Air Acts took away a large section of their freight market; heavy industry rationalised, regrouped and shrunk as a result of technical changes and international competition; the rapidly expanding leisure market did not generally use the train; the continuing expansion of a road network optimised for cars continued a trend starting in the 1920s - the Kingston By-Pass was opened nearly a hundred years ago in 1927 after first being proposed before the First World War; the significant and rapid improvements in power and reliability of the internal combustion engine as result of wartime development was here to stay.
The outside world had changed but by the late 1950s the engineering of the railways (track, signalling, motive power, operations) remained largely as developed in Victorian times with the result that maintenance and operating costs were excessive because of the large numbers of staff required. Only the Southern Railway had made a serious attempt to move with the times after the First World War. All this was clear by 1948 but no serious attempt had been made to reduce costs or increase income.
I suggest that a possible route to profitability could have been the Japanese model where railway companies are property owners and generate much of their income from sites on and near railway stations and less, or none at all, from train operations. The British railways owned vast tracts of land in and near city centres which could have earned a much better income than simply being used as stabling sidings. Another route could have been evolving as an international travel operator, for example by the GWR building on its expertise in developing and handling holiday traffic in going for the package holiday market - a chocolate and cream DC3 anyone?
My point is that if the railways had been able to grasp the nettle in 1945 or earlier, and the then Government had adapted the political and commercial framework in which the railways operated to the new situation instead of just freezing the whole thing in aspic the financial situation would not have deteriorated as fast as it did. Money was available for investment, but not at the 2% average dividend rate the railways managed between the wars.
There were hardly a lot of UK loco manufacturers going bust in the 1945-55 period...
You missed the point. @ac600cw was suggesting in post
#133 that because BR did not support the only integrated UK manufacturer it withered and so the only possible core of a domestic rolling stock industry disappeared.
Thank you, I have read this far, and a very interesting read it was too.
I suppose that you could have had the most technically astute and forward thinking BR imaginable, but would it have been enough to halt the march of the motor-car.
I suspect that Government would still have had to have grasped the nettle of subsidising socially necessary services eventually.
Thank you for your kind words. You are correct, the march of the motor car would not have been halted by the most astute railway. This is true in every country, except possibly North Korea...!
None of this means that in later days Government would not have subsidised commuter train operation if the alternative was the very expensive rebuilding of city centres to cope with the number of cars, but I can’t see any Government finding a convincing argument for subsiding any other type of journey.
