1955 BR modernisation plan - what would you have done differently?

[PTR 444]

Hindsight can be a wonderful thing if we could actually use it. With UK railway progress generally behind our European counterparts, let’s say you could go back in time and oversee the BR modernisation plan from 1955. What would you do differently compared to what actually happened?

Some things I would have done:

• Commit to a rolling electrification programme over a 50 year period, starting with the most important mainlines (ideally WCML, ECML, GWML, MML, GAML and Chiltern within the first 20 years) while keeping full cohorts of skilled workforce and technology right up until 95% of the network is electrified. SWML west of Woking to be electrified with 25KV AC. Some smaller branch lines get away with battery operation as technology improves over time.
• Build a centrally planned Intercity rail network, with a trunk line from London to Birmingham and branches to Manchester and Leeds (sound familiar) opening in the 1980s. Passive provision provided for future lines from Manchester to Scotland, Leeds to Newcastle, London to Swansea and Birmingham to Plymouth, opening by the 2020s.
• Commit to a standard class of rolling stock for each service group (Intercity, Regional, Commuter/Metro) from each power type (25kv, 750v, diesel) with a centrally planned cascade and scrappage scheme keeping up with gradual electrification progress.
• Quad tracking of all mainlines with mixed passenger and freight traffic. Loading gauge increased to take double deck trains and wider freight containers
• Upgrade the Settle & Carlisle Line to become a key Anglo-Scottish freight route
• Close the Hope Valley Line while keeping Woodhead and Matlock - Buxton open
• Close the Island Line
• Removal of some suburban railways (Merseyrail, Valley Lines etc) from the National Rail network, transferring infrastructure and operations to local ownership

 

[Dr Hoo]

Don’t you have to start with a ‘budget’, say £1,500 million over the first 15 years or similar?

 

[PTR 444]

Don’t you have to start with a ‘budget’, say £1,500 million over the first 15 years or similar?

Well according to Wikipedia, the total cost of the plan was projected to be £1.24 billion at the time, so you could start from there I suppose.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Well according to Wikipedia, the total cost of the plan was projected to be £1.24 billion at the time, so you could start from there I suppose.

Quite! I was trying to build in a bit of headroom to do more but not ‘silly money’.

 

[HSTEd]

Ultimately the political and economic constraints of the time prevent too much from changing.

I suppose the biggest thing you might be able to get away with is proper trials for locomotives and multiple units before bulk ordering.

If you do that you could order one locomotive class per power category, and one DMU family. Much more economic than the zoo that resulted.

This is also your opportunity to make an equivalent of the AAR multiple unit spec and make everything compatible with everything.

And someone stop the Western Region being different for the sake of it.

 

[NoRoute]

An immediate ban on the purchase or construction of any new steam engines, unless specifically sanctioned by the managing director.

 

[Magdalia]

At the time of the Modernisation Plan British Railways was still primarily for freight, especially coal.

The big mistakes were on freight, especially large new marshalling yards for unfitted wagons and lots of small locomotives for trip workings. Instead modernisation should have concentrated on continuous braked trains, bulk loading/unloading at terminals. and a powerful diesel freight locomotive.

There was a rolling programme of electrification, but it was easy for the government to stop that once the financial position deteriorated.

The electrified WCML was the backbone of the Inter City network, and ECML electrification would have followed if BR hadn't needed government finance to do it.

Passenger hauled rolling stock was standard, the MarkI coach. Most "blue square" mechanical DMUs were basically the same except for the bodywork, though a few had more powerful engines to meet specific purposes.

Enthusiasts nearly always get excited about locomotives. At the time of the Modernisation Plan diesel and electric locomotive technology was in its infancy and rapidly developing. The Pilot Scheme was an experiment: BR needed to find out what worked. It was an early version of the 21st century tech industry mantra of "move fast and break things". Once BR thought that they had found out what worked, locomotive ordering was constrained to standard types: EE for Types 1 and 3, BR/Sulzer for Type 2 and Brush/Sulzer for Type 4. The biggest waste of money on locomotive traction policy was the Type 1 saga with two big projects failing to solve a problem that was disappearing anyway, and ending up back where they started with the EE loco.

 

[gg1]

1 - Include a strong element of rationalisation. There would still be closures of the complete basket case lines but the greater focus would be on cost savings rather than line closures, e.g. the de staffing of stations and large scale introduction of paytrains on relatively lightly used but still useful branches.

2a - Rolling programme of electrification
2b - No mad rush for dieselisation, prototypes to be built and tested before placing any large orders.
2c - To allow time for the above, plan to continue with steam until around 1980

 

[MattRat]

I would have stuck with steam over diesel, and focused on electrification to replace them. Without the money sink hole that was dieselisation, more electrification could have been done in the short term on the trunk routes, and their success would mean more projects got the go ahead.

 

[PTR 444]

I would have stuck with steam over diesel, and focused on electrification to replace them. Without the money sink hole that was dieselisation, more electrification could have been done in the short term on the trunk routes, and their success would mean more projects got the go ahead.

In hindsight, this would have probably been one of the best things to do that was realistically viable at the time. Even when concerns about pollution weren’t an issue at the time.

My opening post list is an ideal scenario that we should be working towards, but understandably it would take decades if not centuries to fulfill. The point is, if we had made more rapid progress from the start and finished within the past 20 years, it would have been a lot cheaper than it will be.

 

[ac6000cw]

At the time of the Modernisation Plan British Railways was still primarily for freight, especially coal.

The big mistakes were on freight, especially large new marshalling yards for unfitted wagons and lots of small locomotives for trip workings. Instead modernisation should have concentrated on continuous braked trains, bulk loading/unloading at terminals. and a powerful diesel freight locomotive.

There was a rolling programme of electrification, but it was easy for the government to stop that once the financial position deteriorated.

The electrified WCML was the backbone of the Inter City network, and ECML electrification would have followed if BR hadn't needed government finance to do it.

Passenger hauled rolling stock was standard, the MarkI coach. Most "blue square" mechanical DMUs were basically the same except for the bodywork, though a few had more powerful engines to meet specific purposes.

Enthusiasts nearly always get excited about locomotives. At the time of the Modernisation Plan diesel and electric locomotive technology was in its infancy and rapidly developing. The Pilot Scheme was an experiment: BR needed to find out what worked. It was an early version of the 21st century tech industry mantra of "move fast and break things". Once BR thought that they had found out what worked, locomotive ordering was constrained to standard types: EE for Types 1 and 3, BR/Sulzer for Type 2 and Brush/Sulzer for Type 4. The biggest waste of money on locomotive traction policy was the Type 1 saga with two big projects failing to solve a problem that was disappearing anyway, and ending up back where they started with the EE loco.

I'd agree with all of that.

But I'd have started (before spending any money) by shaking up the some of the upper management of the BTC and BR, and promoting people with vision of where the railway needed to go and how to get there to some of the top jobs. I think it needed more managers in key positions with the understanding and vision of the likes of Gerry Fiennes.

Then pull together a group of the best minds in the industry (a mixture of the long experienced and the bright young things) to look at why the railway finances were deteriorating - like which traffics were declining and why, which had growth potential if invested in, outdated regulation like the common carrier obligations and other limitations on commercial pricing freedom (including giving up traffic if it was a no-hope). Then petition the government to change the rules where necessary.

After all that was sorted out, then the Modernisation Plan money would hopefully have been spent on properly modernising and changing the way the railway operated for the future, not on stuff like mechanising steam-age methods of handling freight (e.g. major sorting yards - did the LMR really need all the yards it had, when some were not that far apart from each other).

Put it another way, I think a Beeching-style review of the railway should have been done in 1953 to feed into the Modernisation Plan decisions, not 10 years later when the financial state was much worse and drastic action had to be taken.

 

[mike57]

Commit to a standard class of rolling stock for each service group (Intercity, Regional, Commuter/Metro) from each power type (25kv, 750v, diesel) with a centrally planned cascade and scrappage scheme keeping up with gradual electrification progress.

I am going to pick one of your points. To me this makes total sense, and over the rolling stock lifetime I doubt it would be any more expensive as better utilisation would be acheived. The current situation with multple small fleets, all with different maintenance requirements, and none of them interoperable makes no sense at all, probably leads to premature scrapping and under utilisation. It also makes staff training more difficult, look at the TPE fiasco over the last few years.

What makes it even more crazy is that the Southern Railway and later the Southern region seemed to have this sorted. I grew up in the 3rd rail area in the 60s, leaving in 1980, and on occasions when things had gone wrong all sorts of odd combinations would turn up. Apart from the 4SUB all the other MU stock around in the 70s appeared to able to work together, which was the period when I did a lot of travelling, The Class 73 and some 33s could also work in multiple I believe. I have also seen it in print that the DEMU fleet could work in multiple with the EMU fleet although I never saw this myself.

Given modern electronics thing like a standard driver interface and controls, standardised warning messages, single door opening, everything that seems to complicate the modern railway should be common across every type of rolling stock.

 

[ac6000cw]

Commit to a standard class of rolling stock for each service group (Intercity, Regional, Commuter/Metro) from each power type (25kv, 750v, diesel) with a centrally planned cascade and scrappage scheme keeping up with gradual electrification progress.

But that was what largely happened anyway under BR (intentionally) - Mk1, Mk2, Mk3 IC stock with cascades downwards, same with DMUs and EMUs, and stock transfers between routes on electrification or major service pattern changes.

For example, on the GN surburban services under BR they basically went from steam loco hauled to DMU (Mk1) plus some diesel loco hauled, then cl. 312 (Mk 2 slam door) plus cl. 313 (PEP) on electrification, then cl. 317 (Mk 3) plus cl. 313, then cl. 365 (Networker) were added for the longer distance services. Basically a series of cascades as new stock was fed into the system, pushing out older stock either to other routes or to the scrapyard.

 

[eldomtom2]

The electrified WCML was the backbone of the Inter City network, and ECML electrification would have followed if BR hadn't needed government finance to do it.

Well electrification didn't quite go as the Modernisation Plan intended there - it didn't advocate for WCML electrification north of Weaver Junction, instead preferring to electrify the ECML to Leeds. In the actual event electrification of the WCML north to Scotland got priority, which at the time of its authorisation in 1970 drew speculation that it was motivated by an upcoming Ayshire byelection.

In fairness to the Modernisation Plan, it did envisage diesel locos as "a half-way house to electrification" and proposed the closure of rural lines where DMUs failed to produce an upturn in traffic. It was perhaps hamstrung by the general consensus that BR should make a profit and was under pressure to cut losses rapidly.

On the other hand, its desire to end steam traction "in selected areas" "as soon as possible" probably did lead BR to purchase too many different classes where a couple of years of testing could have produced a few standard designs, despite the Plan's hopes that "it is intended to standardise design as much as possible".

 

[yorksrob]

Obviously, (with the benefit of hindsight, I'd have ditched the marshalling yards etc).

With a limited budget scenario, one thing I'd have done would be to tack Christ's Hospital - Shoreham onto the Kent Electrification scheme, either as a test run or an add-on. That way London - Brighton would have a diversionary route today.

I'd have built the 207 thumpers with vestibule connections to enable pay train operation on some routes more easily.

I'd have developed the basic railway concept and adopted it earlier.

 

[HSTEd]

I'm not sure dieselisation was so much of a money sink to make it more expensive than trying to continue with steam.

The level of maintenance and staffing required for steam operations was absolutely astronomical.

 

[eldomtom2]

I'm not sure dieselisation was so much of a money sink to make it more expensive than trying to continue with steam.

The argument is not "they should have continued with steam", it is "they should have moved a bit slower with dieselisation and not wasted money on quickly-withdrawn classes".

 

[NoRoute]

Enthusiasts nearly always get excited about locomotives. At the time of the Modernisation Plan diesel and electric locomotive technology was in its infancy and rapidly developing. The Pilot Scheme was an experiment: BR needed to find out what worked. It was an early version of the 21st century tech industry mantra of "move fast and break things".

I'm not sure that's correct, the first diesel locomotives were being made in the 1930s or earlier. Here in the UK, Armstrong-Whitworth was trialing diesel locomotives on UK railways in the early 1930s and even exporting them in the mid 1930s, which was 20 years before the 1955 Modernisation Plan. That's a long time to trial a technology, get it reliable, scale up production and get it into routine service.

In practice, it looks like the situation was more that the UK Railways didn't move fast, they mostly stuck with what they were familiar with, steam locomotive technology, so when it became apparent that steam was a technological and economic dead-end that would bring the railways down with it, they were forced to adopt diesel. By which point they had very little time and being either unwilling or unable to import locomotives from abroad such as the US that had much more experience, were forced into trialing and breaking stuff.

More a case of "move slow, waste time then act at the last minute and break a load of stuff".

 

[ac6000cw]

I'm not sure that's correct, the first diesel locomotives were being made in the 1930s or earlier. Here in the UK, Armstrong-Whitworth was trialing diesel locomotives on UK railways in the early 1930s and even exporting them in the mid 1930s, which was 20 years before the 1955 Modernisation Plan. That's a long time to trial a technology, get it reliable, scale up production and get it into routine service.

Yes, and EE and others had been in the electric traction business for many years by 1950 and the UK had been building large-ish diesel engines for marine use since before WW2 (particularly in submarines). So we certainly had various companies with experience in the main components for diesel-electric locos. Ignoring the issue of buying locomotives for freight traffic that was steadily being lost to road transport, most of the 'early withdrawals' were of classes supplied by manufacturers with little experience of designing and building diesel or electric locos - them having problems I think could have been predicted really, and with traffic still falling withdrawing them (instead of fixing them) was the cheapest option.

 

[randyrippley]

I'm not sure that's correct, the first diesel locomotives were being made in the 1930s or earlier. Here in the UK, Armstrong-Whitworth was trialing diesel locomotives on UK railways in the early 1930s and even exporting them in the mid 1930s, which was 20 years before the 1955 Modernisation Plan. That's a long time to trial a technology, get it reliable, scale up production and get it into routine service.

In practice, it looks like the situation was more that the UK Railways didn't move fast, they mostly stuck with what they were familiar with, steam locomotive technology, so when it became apparent that steam was a technological and economic dead-end that would bring the railways down with it, they were forced to adopt diesel. By which point they had very little time and being either unwilling or unable to import locomotives from abroad such as the US that had much more experience, were forced into trialing and breaking stuff.

More a case of "move slow, waste time then act at the last minute and break a load of stuff".

Actually you misrepresent the facts there.
It was Armstrong-Whitworth's record of successfully building Sulzer rail diesels (both for their own vehicles and BRCW) that made BR decide to fixate on Sulzer as the main source for type 4 and type 2 diesels, favouring them over EE who actually had a better export record. Remember Armstrong-Whitworth became Vickers.
So Sulzer became the source of choice for type 2 & 4, while EE was the choice for type 1 with what was effectively a low risk off-the-shelf design. The Sulzer type 4s were a developmental risk due to their high power output, so the EE type 4 was also ordered as a low risk backup - which was needed when the Sulzers had problems.
The other type 2 designs were a combination of experiments, and government policy to let "everyone have a go".
The baby deltics were just an experiment to see if a high speed two stroke worked. So were the CoBos - a crazy attempt to use a maritime slow-speed two stroke. The NBL orders were both an experiment with high speed four strokes, and an attempt to stave off the collapse of the company .
The only type 2 orders that don't fit this narrative are the Brush design. Again a successful export record of diesels, I think they got the orders simply because they had a ready design, and a factory empty and waiting, while the BR workshops weren't ready to go because they were clagged up with steam orders. Only mistake Brush made was to use untested in-house diesels from Mirrlees
o

 

[NoRoute]

Actually you misrepresent the facts there.

Well how many of those locomotives you list entered service and were being trialed and refined between 1935 and 1950 ? How much steady and persistent development was being undertaken by the UK railways in those critical years? Looking back, it appears not enough because had there been a steady adoption and refinement of designs, it would have largely avoided a mad-rush into untested and unproven designs from 1955 onward.

 

[eldomtom2]

Well how many of those locomotives you list entered service and were being trialed and refined between 1935 and 1950 ? How much steady and persistent development was being undertaken by the UK railways in those critical years? Looking back, it appears not enough because had there been a steady adoption and refinement of designs, it would have largely avoided a mad-rush into untested and unproven designs from 1955 onward.

Part of the reason there was a mad rush into untested and unproven designs is because the Modernisation Plan placed a much greater emphasis on dieselisation, which the locomotive manufacturers had previously thought would primarily be a sideshow for routes uneconomic to electrify.

 

[randyrippley]

Well how many of those locomotives you list entered service and were being trialed and refined between 1935 and 1950 ? How much steady and persistent development was being undertaken by the UK railways in those critical years? Looking back, it appears not enough because had there been a steady adoption and refinement of designs, it would have largely avoided a mad-rush into untested and unproven designs from 1955 onward.

Very little development for UK use, but for overseas quite a lot. Both EE and Sulzer had mature products.
EE had well developed export trade of locomotives to the Commonwealth, to the point where their designs were pretty much off-the-parts-shelf collections. Ignoring the Deltics the only non-standard main part was the massively overengineered underframe and 1-Co-Co-1 wheelset copied at BR insistence from Bullied's design - they could have used the EE designs of the LMS twins, saving weight.
Armstrong/Vickers had a licence to build Sulzers since the 1920s, and had been busy building reliable engines for export for years, some in their own locos, others in DMUs and power cars from Brush, BRCW and Metro-Camm
Which brings an interesting point: the successful UK diesel loco builders were those that came from a history of building multiple units or trams. EE (at Preston, before the Vulcan and Stephensons takeovers) and Brush were successful tram builders while BRCW and Metro-Camm both built multiple units. It seems to me the skills needed to erect a diesel loco are much closer to those needed to build a coach than a steam engine

 

[Bevan Price]

One problem was that "the boss" - the chairman of the British Transport Commission (BTC) between 1953 and 1961 was a retired general, with no experience of operating a railway. His predecessor had been a retired senior civil servant (Lord Hurcomb). And some of the top railway management were stuck in tradition - we have always done things this way, why change ?? Those who wanted faster change probably hindered their chances of career progression. Even Fiennes was effectively "pushed out".

So instead of thinking seriously about the long term future, for example they just wanted to combine lots of obsolete small freight yards into a few mega-sized yards -- failing to recognise that the type of freight needing marshalling yards was largely inefficient and needed to be "dumped". And in consequence, they chose to replace thousands of small to medium size steam freight locos by similar power-range diesel locos. And despite the need for shunting / trip freight locos rapidly disappearing, the Western Region was allowed to built its diesel equivalent of Pannier Tanks - the Class 13s.

Whilst there was a slow but steady stream of passenger line closures after 1948, BTC failed to recognise that there were still too many "basket cases" that also needed to be closed, and they ordered far too many dmus only suitable for branch line operations, and some of these were scrapped prematurely after lives of around 10-15 years; others were put on routes for which their 3+2 seating was unsuited - and unpopular. Moreover, being restricted tp 70 mph, there was little scope to introduce quicker / faster services.

It is too easy to be wise after the event, but as others suggest above, there should have been a much more detailed examination of finances and the future after financial savings, before a headlong rush mainly relating only to steam replacement. .

 

[HSTEd]

The argument is not "they should have continued with steam", it is "they should have moved a bit slower with dieselisation and not wasted money on quickly-withdrawn classes".

The problem with "moving slower" is that the haemmorhaging of money from steam operation is so enormous that building bad diesels which are (comparatively) rapidly scrapped may well still be cheaper than the delay for trials.

By the time the modernisation plan comes around there is no time for extended trials, the financial situation is too dire for that.

 

[Magdalia]

Well how many of those locomotives you list entered service and were being trialed and refined between 1935 and 1950 ?

Between 1939 and 1945 there was a war going on, and, in the years before and after, military requirements still took priority. Diesel power unit research and development was led by Admiralty requirements not railway traction requirements.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Aug 2023 ==

The problem with "moving slower" is that the haemmorhaging of money from steam operation is so enormous that building bad diesels which are (comparatively) rapidly scrapped may well still be cheaper than the delay for trials.

The financial position changed rapidly after the Modernisation Plan was published, especially the impact of the 1955 strike.

One flaw in the diesel locomotive pilot scheme that was not addressed until afterwards was the need to keep the railway workshops occupied with new construction. That had to be either steam locomotives, possibly with a short life, or untested diesel locomotives, also possibly with a short life.

Which brings an interesting point: the successful UK diesel loco builders were those that came from a history of building multiple units or trams. EE (at Preston, before the Vulcan and Stephensons takeovers) and Brush were successful tram builders

EE and Brush were electrical engineers, expanding into locomotive building. EE did that by acquisition, Brush by sub-contracting. One thing that has amazed me, looking at the papers at Kew, is how the railway obsessed about the power units in their diesel locomotives but paid little attention to selecting the most suitable transmission in a similar way.

 

[12C]

Lightly used branch lines should have been moved to a simpler low cost method of operation with railbuses. Stations could have been unstaffed halts rather than most small shacks continuing with station masters, booking office staff, porters etc. The ‘paytrain’ concept brought in 20 years earlier, with tickets sold by the conductor on the train. It wouldn’t have saved them all but it might have saved some.

 

[randyrippley]

Lightly used branch lines should have been moved to a simpler low cost method of operation with railbuses. Stations could have been unstaffed halts rather than most small shacks continuing with station masters, booking office staff, porters etc. The ‘paytrain’ concept brought in 20 years earlier, with tickets sold by the conductor on the train. It wouldn’t have saved them all but it might have saved some.

You're making the mistake there of assuming rural railways were for passengers, when in reality many carried more goods than people. Not much maybe: animals to market, milk, incoming building materials, but all needing staff to handle and process.
The staffless station required the ending of all local goods

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Aug 2023 ==

One flaw in the diesel locomotive pilot scheme that was not addressed until afterwards was the need to keep the railway workshops occupied with new construction. That had to be either steam locomotives, possibly with a short life, or untested diesel locomotives, also possibly with a short life.

And when BR workshops were given a key piece of work to build - the Peaks - they badly underperformed with slow deliveries and price overruns. Between needing to learn new building skills, union problems, management inability to manage and slow suppliers there were many issues which delayed the BR workshops in transferring to building diesels. The situation appears to have been even worse at Swindon where it's said management lost control of work scheduling and fabrication, work being instead allocated by the shop floor chargehands, often out of sequence.
BR HAD to place external orders because at the time their own workshops couldn't cope. If they'd tried to move more rapidly to diesel then Swindon, Crewe, Derby would have been at a standstill

 

[eldomtom2]

The problem with "moving slower" is that the haemmorhaging of money from steam operation is so enormous that building bad diesels which are (comparatively) rapidly scrapped may well still be cheaper than the delay for trials.

By the time the modernisation plan comes around there is no time for extended trials, the financial situation is too dire for that.

You do appreciate that steam ended up being withdrawn faster than the Modernisation Plan envisioned?

 

[yorksrob]

You're making the mistake there of assuming rural railways were for passengers, when in reality many carried more goods than people. Not much maybe: animals to market, milk, incoming building materials, but all needing staff to handle and process.
The staffless station required the ending of all local goods

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Aug 2023 ==

Arguably a lot of lines that were closed, were primarily for passengers - certainly by the post war period. Think of all those seaside lines, or some of the secondary routes in Sussex.

Certainly in these cases it would have been better to streamline the passenger operation, rather than spending resource on propping up dead and dieing pick-up goods traffic.