A hypothetical for (perhaps older-generation) sentimentalists

[neilmc]

Back to the original premise, steam had to go. A couple of years ago, for my sixtieth birthday, I was given a footplate experience day. Although it was a great day out, I was wondering about the point of paying quite a substantial amount of money to be allowed to put coal into a fire on a hot day in July!

Now think of doing that, by yourself, day after day, week after week, in all weathers, and for quite long distances. Do your apprenticeship with the shovel, and one day you'll be driving the engine, the prince of the proletariat, a working class boy's dream.

But not in the 1960s it wasn't. Doing dirty hard work for poor pay was not at all cool, especially when you actually had to start your railway career as a cleaner! Yes the hordes would turn out to see the last steam locos at Carnforth and Lostock Hall and mourn, but if steam had been in abundance no young people would have wanted to turn up at Goole or Royston at three in the morning to work a coal train with a clapped-out WD. And, with little unemployment, there was a real problem for the railways.

So diesels and electrics had to be, and quickly.

 

[randyrippley]

Strange example of a pointless loco class, given that we're still using them on the national network, sixty years later.

In terms of large numbers of train types, they did develop standard Mk1, 2 and 3 type carriages, with various unit types being based on these.

Class 20 was pointless in that they were built for a job - local trip freight - that had pretty much become extinct by the time they came into service. Maybe an excuse can be made for the first production run as possibly the future wasn't clear then. But the second production run - which only happened because someone wanted a like-for-like replacement of the useless class 15/16/17 - was a criminal waste of money.
The fact that the class 20 was successfully pressed into service as a heavy-haul unit is irrelevant: production of the latter batches overlapped with class 37 deliveries, and BR would have been much better off with more 37s instead of the 20s.

 

[Calthrop]

Well, my OP was basically frivolous fantasising and hypothesising: up to and including genies, to make things – however improbable and impractical – happen ! It’s interesting how the thread has developed, on the whole, along factual-analysis lines: following essentially fact-based scenarios having regard to how things actually were in the 1950s / 60s and onward, though with thoughts as to how things might have been better-managed within that framework. A pointer, I suppose, to how railway enthusiasts are mostly, at bottom, commonsensical folk with their feet firmly on the ground – no matter how much ridicule the general public may direct at us and our hobby !

neilmc, the unattractiveness of steam loco work in an increasingly affluent society, with lots of more alluring alternative jobs; was indeed, of course, a big problem. By my understanding, this was a “headache” shared in the later decades of the 20th century, by the railway administrations of all First World nations which hung on to steam for any length of time.

However, there are various possible ways of tackling problems, if one is sufficiently motivated to be bold in embracing possible solutions. If BR had decided to hold on to steam in quantity, way on toward the end of the 20th century: one might ponder on ways to make that achievable. For instance – might switching British steam over mostly or entirely, to oil firing: have made footplate work, and loco cleaning, more enticing to newcomers on the job market? – less filthy and less back-breaking, than with coal-burning steam... various First World countries did use oil-fired steam on a fair scale: not, so far as I know, with the primary objective of wooing more young lads to go into steam loco work; but if one is “brainstorming”... Or (at the risk of opening political cans of worms): a well-known expedient is, and long has been, to bring in people from less favoured parts of the world, to do the nasty but necessary jobs which the citizens of one’s affluent country don’t want to do. Or, pull out all the stops to attract and recruit besotted railway enthusiasts – of which Britain certainly has and had no shortage – to “live their dream” and become steam locomen? I’m pretty much of a believer in “where there’s a will...”

 

[ilkestonian]

I'd have preferred a more measured approach, rather like the Germans adopted.

Focus on electricifation, line by line on a rolling program, to build up and retain expertise.

In the meantime, carefully develop diesel for lines which cannot justifiably be electrified, and retain the modern steam in selected areas, which would reduce as electrification increased, and as proven diesels were built. Allow steam to do what it does best, eg longer distance freight using 9Fs, and perhaps secondary passenger work. In this way, steam would probably have died a natural death in the eighties or early ninties.

Definitely use diesel multiple units though as they revolutionised branch line economics, in spite of my love of steam, some realism is desirable

But key, stick to the plan, none of the start stop and u-turn stuff which plagued the fifties and sixties.

 

[Cowley]

Please Mr Calthrop could I have a time machine set to about 1957 and a two week All line rover?
After that you can do what Mr Ilkestonian said as that's probably what I'd have done.

 

[Harbornite]

Please Mr Calthrop could I have a time machine set to about 1957 and a two week All line rover?
After that you can do what Mr Ilkestonian said as that's probably what I'd have done.

May I ask why 1957? I'd say 1954 would be better but you'd have more DMUs in 1957 if you're into that sort of thing!

 

[Cowley]

May I ask why 1957? I'd say 1954 would be better but you'd have more DMUs in 1957 if you're into that sort of thing!

Good point.
Resetting Flux Capacitor now.

Damn. What are all these dinosaurs doing here?

 

[Calthrop]

Good point.
Resetting Flux Capacitor now.

Damn. What are all these dinosaurs doing here?

A way of somehow combining railways and dinosaurs -- now that would be cool !

As with the option of "steam, or the network, to endure": given just one shot at a time-machine trip with a two-week all-line rover; with any year, and any part of the world, on offer -- I think I'd be like the donkey starving to death because of his choice between multiple bales of hay.

 

[krus_aragon]

A way of somehow combining railways and dinosaurs -- now that would be cool !

Next stop: Jurassic Parkway!

 

[Harbornite]

Next stop: Jurassic Parkway!

I assume that's in Wales or the North, where time seems to have stood still!

 

[Cowley]

Very good. Is it anywhere near T Rexeter.

Sorry.

 

[randyrippley]

Next stop: Jurassic Parkway!

For that you need the unbuilt LSWR Dorchester - Exeter coastal route, you could then follow the Jurassic coast from Bournemouth to Exeter