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So from what I've heard, British Railways was planning to keep steam and slowly electrify until as late as the early 90s as the Standards were designed to work till then.
Lets say that actually happened, the A4s were withdrawn in the late 70s, The coronations in the mid 80s, the 9fs lasted till the end. Would more steam locos be preserved as they would be retired over a much longer period time? would they have been sent to barry?
i, personally, think that this wouldn't have led to the rise of the preservation movement. iirc it became so popular because they had to do it now, or lose all the steam locos
Inefficient dual heating and dual braking of coaching stock would have dragged on for another 20 years and air conditioning would not have been introduced when it was in 1971 as it doesn't work with steam unless steam engines are permanently coupled to generator vehicles.
Phased introduction of electrification would have been cheaper than now, avoid the need of design and building costs of so many failed diesel types and we would have more miles of electrification to date as more money would have been spent on electrification. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Health & Safety legislation would eventually have banned deep mining for steam coal.
No coal = no steam trains
Under the circumstances the OP describes, that would have meant no railway
i, personally, think that this wouldn't have led to the rise of the preservation movement. iirc it became so popular because they had to do it now, or lose all the steam locos
Inefficient dual heating and dual braking of coaching stock would have dragged on for another 20 years and air conditioning would not have been introduced when it was in 1971 as it doesn't work with steam unless steam engines are permanently coupled to generator vehicles.
Phased introduction of electrification would have been cheaper than now, avoid the need of design and building costs of so many failed diesel types and we would have more miles of electrification to date as more money would have been spent on electrification. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I don't think that the continuation of steam would have overruled commercial considerations and the technological developments that ultimately came to pass. It wouldn't have been the case that steam locos would have continued on top link passenger duties much longer than they actually did: The WCML to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool would still have been electrified in 1966, there would still have been a desire to accelerate ECML services with Deltics in the early sixties, and HST development and introduction would still have occurred to the same mid-seventies schedule.
As you note, without a disastrously expensive headlong rush into the purchase of squadrons of unproven diesel designs, it's possible that electrification of the WCML and, perhaps, ECML may have progressed more quickly.
Perhaps Princess Coronation Pacifics would have endured on the Northern WCML until electrification to Glasgow, negating the need for the class 50s to be built (But the mark 2C stock introduced to WCML services would necessarily have to have been dual braked and heated if electrification was not accelerated), and perhaps the A4s would have eked out a couple more years on the Edinburgh - Aberdeen route than they actually did, but I think by and large the reality would have been decreasing pockets of steam employed primarily on freight work in industrialised areas. I'd expect the latter to be finally seen off by the introduction of class 56 and 58 locos between the late seventies and mid eighties. Certainly, I wouldn't expect steam to survive any longer than modernisation-plan diesel classes such as the class 40s.
Note of course that, on secondary routes, steam heating of passenger services endured until the mid-eighties, and vacuum or dual braking for a decade or so longer than that, so I don't think developments there would have been much different.
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So from what I've heard, British Railways was planning to keep steam and slowly electrify until as late as the early 90s as the Standards were designed to work till then.
Lets say that actually happened, the A4s were withdrawn in the late 70s, The coronations in the mid 80s, the 9fs lasted till the end. Would more steam locos be preserved as they would be retired over a much longer period time? would they have been sent to barry?
Without a glut of steam locos being withdrawn in a short time period that required the assistance of numerous external contractors to dispose of, presumably BR would have continued to cut up the majority of locos at their main works, as continued to be the case for most diesel locos up to the mid-late eighties. I suspect the total number of steam locos preserved would have remained about the same for the reasons I describe below (There's only a finite number of people with sufficient interest and disposable income to preserve a certain number of locos), though perhaps with the survival of at least one example of now-extinct classes that never made their way to Barry, such as the Great Western Granges if they had remained in service a little longer.
i, personally, think that this wouldn't have led to the rise of the preservation movement. iirc it became so popular because they had to do it now, or lose all the steam locos
I don't think that'd be the case: Witness, for example the number of class 37 diesels that have been preserved when the latter is still extant (and, until relatively recently, prevalent) on the main line. We owe many of the steam locos that survive today to their continued existence post-withdrawal at Barry scrapyard: Locos were purchased for preservation over an extended period of years across a couple of decades after they were withdrawn as funds were raised, and this would have been essentially the same if locos had been withdrawn on a more gradual basis over a longer time period.
The economics of steam operation, even in the 1960s, were so bad, that the failed diesel locomotive programmes were almost certainly still cheaper than continuing with steam.
If any steam locomotives make it to 1975 the railway will almost certainly be dead as a result.
The economics of steam operation, even in the 1960s, were so bad, that the failed diesel locomotive programmes were almost certainly still cheaper than continuing with steam.
If any steam locomotives make it to 1975 the railway will almost certainly be dead as a result.
Coupled with that, it would probably have become ever more difficult to find sufficient people willing to undertake the dirty, menial tasks that the day to day maintenance and operation of working steam necessarily demands.
The economics of steam operation, even in the 1960s, were so bad, that the failed diesel locomotive programmes were almost certainly still cheaper than continuing with steam.
If any steam locomotives make it to 1975 the railway will almost certainly be dead as a result.
So from what I've heard, British Railways was planning to keep steam and slowly electrify until as late as the early 90s as the Standards were designed to work till then.
The steam locomotive has a useful life in service of some forty years, and obviously careful planning will be required to ensure that, as the existing stock is gradually replaced by diesel or electric power, it is still used to the best advantage.
Many factors combine to indicate that the end of the steam era is at hand. These include the growing shortage of large coal suitable for locomotives; the insistent demand for a reduction in air pollution by locomotives and for greater cleanliness in trains and railway stations; and the need for better acceleration.
It is also a characteristic of steam operation that it involves hard manual labour for tasks such as the firing, cleaning and servicing of locomotives. Not only is much of this work unattractive by present day standards, in comparison with that offered by other industries, but it also represents an inherently wasteful use of labour resources.
Timescales are noticeably absent from the Modernisation Plan but I don't think the forty year service life figure indicates that steam was expected to last until the 1990s. The aim was to eliminate steam as soon as it was practical.
Without a glut of steam locos being withdrawn in a short time period that required the assistance of numerous external contractors to dispose of, presumably BR would have continued to cut up the majority of locos at their main works, as continued to be the case for most diesel locos up to the mid-late eighties. I suspect the total number of steam locos preserved would have remained about the same for the reasons I describe below (There's only a finite number of people with sufficient interest and disposable income to preserve a certain number of locos), though perhaps with the survival of at least one example of now-extinct classes that never made their way to Barry, such as the Great Western Granges if they had remained in service a little longer.
With a more orderly disposal of steam locomotives, cut up at BR Works, I suspect that fewer would have been preserved. Especially if BR didn't sell anything to Mr Woodham at Barry!
Coupled with that, it would probably have become ever more difficult to find sufficient people willing to undertake the dirty, menial tasks that the day to day maintenance and operation of working steam necessarily demands.
Engineers preferred steam though, there were literally crewmen that raced diesels in Royal Scots pushing them up to 100 mph
And wouldn't importing oil to the UK be more expensive since they already had a surplus of coal
Engineers preferred steam though, there were literally crewmen that raced diesels in Royal Scots pushing them up to 100 mph
And wouldn't importing oil to the UK be more expensive since they already had a surplus of coal
The efficiency of a coal-fired steam locomotive is so bad that fuel costs are likely to be greater than with a diesel locomotive.
A very large part of the energy value of the coal is wasted.
ANd until the mid 1970s oil was comparatively cheap.
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The efficiency of a coal-fired steam locomotive is so bad that fuel costs are likely to be greater than with a diesel locomotive.
A very large part of the energy value of the coal is wasted.
ANd until the mid 1970s oil was comparatively cheap.
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The obvious counterexample is the US, where railways were operating under commercial pressures, where steam was extinct almost by 1960!
I think even constraining British Rail to 1957 technology with the Class 20 would still yield substantial operational savings compared to continuing to use steam after that date!
Two Class 20s are going to be much less maintenance intensive than something like a Class 9F once you include all the shed work required for the latter.
The railways were already losing potential workforce to sectors offering less dirty, less labour-intensive conditions, than the steam age operation. Road haulage, for example.
Notwithstanding UK political stances of the time, a "steam until the 1980's" agenda may have damaged UK's global competitiveness in emerging technologies. The USA's usage of diesel propulsion for main line services, goes back to the latter 1930s.
I've always thought that, if you really pushed it, and I mean really pushed it, and considering all the things that went on in the post-war period, nationalization, a more measured dieselisation/electrification policy etc. etc., steam would have lasted only to 1973 on passenger work and 1977 on freight. (Thanks, insomnia.) You may not have seen some diesel classes built to the same sort of numbers, or even at all. So you you would have seen classes like 9Fs, 8Fs and WDs handing work straight over to 56s without all the dithering in between. Still. But I've always harboured suspicions that the class 56 came along because various departments and individuals had missed the grunt that a steamer could deliver over a class 25 with brake tender...
I think that it would have made a difference to the preservation movement, as the small, low-powered locomotives they needed would have been withdrawn earlier. But late-comers to the preservation movement would have had to put up with the big freight classes.
Engineers preferred steam though, there were literally crewmen that raced diesels in Royal Scots pushing them up to 100 mph
And wouldn't importing oil to the UK be more expensive since they already had a surplus of coal
The engineers, or loco drivers as we know them, were at the relatively glamorous end of the steam hierarchy though and I can't easily believe the majority of those at the time preferred the relatively primitive conditions of a steam locomotive cab over the enclosed comfort of a diesel.
And a steam loco wouldn't be driven far without the efforts of the men on shed shovelling ash from smokeboxes, or from ashpits after fires had been dropped (self-cleaning smokeboxes and rocking grates helped alleviate some of these issues but were too little, too late in the UK), or clambering through firehole doors into still cooling fireboxes of locos requiring more focused attention. Let alone the unfortunate fella shovelling coal into a blazing firebox mile after mile, hour after hour out on the road.
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I've always thought that, if you really pushed it, and I mean really pushed it, and considering all the things that went on in the post-war period, nationalization, a more measured dieselisation/electrification policy etc. etc., steam would have lasted only to 1973 on passenger work and 1977 on freight. (Thanks, insomnia.) You may not have seen some diesel classes built to the same sort of numbers, or even at all. So you you would have seen classes like 9Fs, 8Fs and WDs handing work straight over to 56s without all the dithering in between. Still. But I've always harboured suspicions that the class 56 came along because various departments and individuals had missed the grunt that a steamer could deliver over a class 25 with brake tender...
With a more orderly disposal of steam locomotives, cut up at BR Works, I suspect that fewer would have been preserved. Especially if BR didn't sell anything to Mr Woodham at Barry!
That's a fair point: There were never a huge number of locos, steam or diesel, that "escaped" from BR works before meeting their ultimate fate admittedly!
Nationalised railways didn't keep steam around because for sentimental reasons - they did it because they thought made financial sense to do so. So any talk of "commercial pressures" is nonsense in this case and the US' early dieselisation has very little to do with their railways being all-private (except in that it perhaps made them more leery of the large capital expense of electrification).
I think that it would have made a difference to the preservation movement, as the small, low-powered locomotives they needed would have been withdrawn earlier.
Nationalised railways didn't keep steam around because for sentimental reasons - they did it because they thought made financial sense to do so. So any talk of "commercial pressures" is nonsense in this case and the US' early dieselisation has very little to do with their railways being all-private (except in that it perhaps made them more leery of the large capital expense of electrification).
National government economic factors weigh very differently to purely commercial economic factors.
For example, arguments over the balance of payments and strategic interests (especially related to oil imports) have rather more weight with governments than they do with private industry.
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The thing is, Britain didn't test or experiment with their Diesels, they just ordered a crap ton and most were dogturd. They should have taken much more time to develop diesels. imo Steam should have not been fully withdrawn until about 1975 or so
National government economic factors weigh very differently to purely commercial economic factors.
For example, arguments over the balance of payments and strategic interests (especially related to oil imports) have rather more weight with governments than they do with private industry.
Well, a nationalised US rail system wouldn't have to worry about importing oil, so I'm not sure you can draw much conclusions there. Do you have any evidence that a key driver of electrification and keeping steam into the 1970s was political issues with importing oil?
Unfortunately, direct evidence will be hard to come by given the distance from the decision makers.
But it is telling that the last countries to withdraw steam were the ones with serious balance of payments issues (especially in the communist bloc).
Obviously essentially impossible to prove causation, but the correlation is striking.
The thing is, Britain didn't test or experiment with their Diesels, they just ordered a crap ton and most were dogturd. They should have taken much more time to develop diesels. imo Steam should have not been fully withdrawn until about 1975 or so
By 1955 there had been several years of small scale diesel trials.
In hindsight they should have just ordered 1000+ Class 20 in the late 50s, but the attempts to hedge against failure by ordering from everyone came back to bite them.
I don't think delaying the withdrawal of steam by a decade was going to sell well with the Treasury who were watching the railway haemmorhage ever increasing piles of money.
I think the biggest lesson of the whole mess is that no steam locomotive should have been built after the modernisation plan at all. Production should have been cut off in 1955, if not earlier. Which would have basically wiped out the 9Fs.
Unfortunately, direct evidence will be hard to come by given the distance from the decision makers.
But it is telling that the last countries to withdraw steam were the ones with serious balance of payments issues (especially in the communist bloc).
Obviously essentially impossible to prove causation, but the correlation is striking.
Your logic would dictate that China would have the worst balance of payments, but I'm not sure that's true. And correlation on its own doesn't prove much...
I think the biggest lesson of the whole mess is that no steam locomotive should have been built after the modernisation plan at all. Production should have been cut off in 1955, if not earlier. Which would have basically wiped out the 9Fs.
As has been pointed out elsewhere recently, in 1955 BR didn't have a diesel locomotive capable of doing the work that the 9F did, hauling heavy unfitted coal trains.
And there is a huge flaw in any policy that stopped building steam but without starting to build diesels: what do you do with all of the manufacturing capacity at the locomotive works?
As has been pointed out elsewhere recently, in 1955 BR didn't have a diesel locomotive capable of doing the work that the 9F did, hauling heavy unfitted coal trains.
Didn't it?
Whilst BR didn't have a single locomotive capable of hauling a heavy unfitted coal train alone, that is not something that a diesel locomotive actually has to be able to do.
Unlike with steam locomotives, a single crew can operate a lashup of several locomotives.
Lashing up several Class 20s is still going to be more economic than the 9Fs. This is what happened in the US, the back of steam power was broken by the delivery of a diesel locomotive with a power of only around 1350hp.
And there is a huge flaw in any policy that stopped building steam but without starting to build diesels: what do you do with all of the manufacturing capacity at the locomotive works?
Lets say that actually happened, the A4s were withdrawn in the late 70s, The coronations in the mid 80s, the 9fs lasted till the end. Would more steam locos be preserved as they would be retired over a much longer period time? would they have been sent to barry?
Maybe fewer? They would be run hard until they failed. Drivers would fail them for fairly trivial reasons and maintenance would cover the bare-bones essentials. We would have photos of stacked 9F cabs and boilers, and mountains of driving wheels at Vic Berry's yard and not much else!
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