Britannia class failed at Ipswich

[341o2]

The original intended allocation of the first batch of 30 was 70000-13 to the GE, 70014-29 to the WR. When it was decided to assign two to the Southern they contributed one each.

I thought the GE were allocated the first 25, of which one each went to the SR & WR leaving them with 23 (Gerry Feinnes I tried to run a railway)

 

[70014IronDuke]

I thought the GE were allocated the first 25, of which one each went to the SR & WR leaving them with 23 (Gerry Feinnes I tried to run a railway)

If that was the original plan, I don't think it held for very long. The WR locos were given names from former GWR locomotives as a sop to sending them there, starting with 70015 I think. Sending 25 of the top line new locomotives (yes, even if they were mied traffic) would have been politically difficult, I'd have thought. And I doubt the GE really needed 25. that's an awful lot of motive power.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I believe, having read a Cecil J Allen book that touched on the Brits working on the GE, that the Type 4 2000hp diesels were somewhat better but not greatly so. Presumably the performance was more consistent as it didn't rely on the skill of the fireman. ...

I don't know for sure, but this is exactly what I would imagine the result to be. I am under the impression that the GE got the some of the very first Class 40s not so much to improve running performance, but rather because a) Fiennes was in charge, and he was always pushing for the best for his patch and b) because the GE was desperately short of skilled manpower, especially at Stratford, and the EE4s needed fare less maintenance than the 8-9 Brits they could displace. (I imagine the fast-growing and well-paying car industry at Dagenham and the likes was attracting skilled fitters etc).

Another factor could have been the drive to get rid of coal burning fires, anything to cut the pall of smoke that must have hung in the air east of 30A, given its massive allocation at the time.

These are all just impressions/vague memories of reading MR etc - so I stand to be corrected.

 

[70014IronDuke]

The original intended allocation of the first batch of 30 was 70000-13 to the GE, 70014-29 to the WR. When it was decided to assign two to the Southern they contributed one each.

...

I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Only, was the highly esteemed ( ) Iron Duke a name the GWR had used?
You just have to laugh that it was sent to the SR to work the boat trains - I would love to know who made that decision! I wonder if there was anything in the Trains Illustrated of the day commenting on it?

EDIT: It has just crossed my mind. I have in the past wondered if naming 70013 Oliver Cromwell was not a tad controversial/risquee - I mean, the royals were still held in almost mystical respect after the war. I wonder if, since it was the last to be allocated to the GE (at least in the first batch) if someone thought they could squeeze it in at the end and get it past the rest of the committee - Oliver himself being an Ely-Cambridge man, of course, so that argument could be used as extra leverage for a GE based loco.

 

[Taunton]

Gerry F got the GE, his patch at the time, the first diesels all round - shunters, DMUs, Type 2s, and then the pioneer 25Kv electrification as well. He picked up on government desires to Do Something about the smogs across (particularly East) London in the 1950s, of which the many hundreds of steam locos played a significant part. But the dieselisation was all-across the patch.

Fiennes seemed to like East Anglia, even in retirement he lived there. The once-daily loco hauled from Lowestoft to Liverpool Street that continued long after everything else was dmu-only was, of course, perfectly timed for commuting from Saxmundham to his London office!

 

[Taunton]

was the highly esteemed Iron Duke a name the GWR had used?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_Iron_Duke_Class

and, of course, at 1:00 here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPtrmJnzdXw

The larger GWR broad gauge locos did not have running numbers, only names.

 

[Bevan Price]

I believe, having read a Cecil J Allen book that touched on the Brits working on the GE, that the Type 4 2000hp diesels were somewhat better but not greatly so. Presumably the performance was more consistent as it didn't rely on the skill of the fireman. However for comparison, the same class on the WCML was seen as distinctly inferior to the Class 8 Duchess Pacifics and even proved unable to equal the previous fastest steam schedules without lightening the train load. This probably also indicates the power superiority of Stanier's finest compares to the less powerful and lighter-footed BR Standard 7.

In terms of short periods at high power, Class 40 were inferior to Britannias. Indeed, in those terms, Class 40 was only marginally better than a Class 5 4-6-0.

However, for long periods of sustained running at maximum power, a Class 40 would out-perform Britannias. Steam relied on both a good fireman and good quality coal - in addition to good design of the loco. By the 1950s, good quality coal was becoming increasingly hard / expensive to obtain; in the absence of electrification, dieselisation was probably inevitable.

Theoretically, if the Britannias had been oil-fired (incorporating design changes optimised for oil rather than coal firing), a Britannia might have comfortably out performed class 40 in everyday running.

Under special test conditions, a Stanier 4-6-2 once produced over 3000 hp - but that could never have been sustained with coal firing and a single fireman. An oil-fired Duchess might have out-performed a class 47 and almost matched a Deltic performance.

 

[eastdyke]

Ha! I didn't know that. Bongo probably stayed on the GE all it's life. I remember it was a March loco c 1962-3.

EDIT: It has just crossed my mind. I have in the past wondered if naming 70013 Oliver Cromwell was not a tad controversial/risquee - I mean, the royals were still held in almost mystical respect after the war. I wonder if, since it was the last to be allocated to the GE (at least in the first batch) if someone thought they could squeeze it in at the end and get it past the rest of the committee - Oliver himself being an Ely-Cambridge man, of course, so that argument could be used as extra leverage for a GE based loco.

'Bongo' was not a name that sat well in some quarters, especially if the loco was rostered for a Boat Train We didn't call them 'Bongos' we made do with 'Springboks'.
B2/B17's were 'Sandys', D16's 'Claudes', WD 8F's 'DubDees'. Poor old B12's got a bum rap, they were just B12's.

Boadicea (at no. 35 on a wiki list of 100 'Greatest Britons'), being a mere 'leader of the resistance', would not have found total favour on everybody's mind but Oliver Cromwell was at no.10.

And of course Oliver Cromwell lives on ......

 

[eastdyke]

actually the GE borrowed 2 Bulleid pacifics to show what a modern engine could do. essentially their most modern locos were the B1's. What was wanted was a regular interval service between London and Norwich/Ipswich with each loco managing two round trips a day. The b1's would need coal after each run, and a stop for water en route as well

I found this posting on another forum:

WC/BB allocated to the GE Section were as follows :
34039 Boscastle (5/51-1/52); 34057 Biggin Hill (5/51-5/52); 34059 Sir Archibald Sinclair (4/49-5/49); 34065 Hurricane (5/51-5/52); 34076 41 Squadron (10/51-4/52) and 34089 602 Squadron (10/51-12/51) (from/to dates in brackets)

Ignoring 34059's allocation in 1949, which I guess was part of the exchange trials, it would seem that 5 were loaned as replacements to enable modifications to be made to the early Brits.

I recall seeing in a number of places that the Bulleid locos did not perform too well on the GEML (which historically was regarded as a 'difficult road' on account of both gradients and interactions with many slower services) and they also needed more water stops as they had no scoops to use the troughs. Accordingly they were more used on the 'West Anglia' route.

If I find the references to the performance, I will post a link.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I found this posting on another forum:


Ignoring 34059's allocation in 1949, which I guess was part of the exchange trials, it would seem that 5 were loaned as replacements to enable modifications to be made to the early Brits.

I recall seeing in a number of places that the Bulleid locos did not perform too well on the GEML (which historically was regarded as a 'difficult road' on account of both gradients and interactions with many slower services) and they also needed more water stops as they had no scoops to use the troughs. Accordingly they were more used on the 'West Anglia' route.

If I find the references to the performance, I will post a link.

I'd be very interested to know. IT may be apocryphal, but someone (could it have been Fiennes?) is supposed to have written in glowing terms about the early tests with the Bulleids to see how a Class 7 pacific might perform - at least glowing in terms of the speeds attained topping Brentwood Bank.

Not sure how the (whimpy ) GE fireman felt, however, as coal consumption figures might have been equally, er 'glowing'. The observer is supposed to have said/written something like "The [spam] can just ate the coal!"

Intriguingly, in the locomotive exchanges of 1948, I believe the Bulleids were driven exceedingly carefully, which resulted in unexciting runs, but good coal consumption figures

 

[Taunton]

The observer is supposed to have said/written something like "The [spam] can just ate the coal!"

That was indeed Gerry Fiennes in ITTRAR. The coal was poor quality as well. Fiennes was senior GE Line management when the substitution was going on; the book gives the impression he found the Bulleid's better locos than the Britannias, and wrote sarcastically about the latters' loose axles problem (which, incidentally, has apparently been a never fully solved issue with Class 08 diesel shunters, with the cranks getting out of sync on one axle).

I don't know where the Southern got their coal from, apart from the fact that the 72 sheds had it come down the S&D from "somewhere up north". The other companies typically burned what was available within their territory, and their designs were to an extent adapted for this (the GWR and Welsh steam coal is the best known example). Possibly the Bulleids were better adapted to "poor" coal on the GE than the Crewe-designed Britannias were.

 

[eastdyke]

I came across some more references to the use of Bulleid 'light' Pacifics on the GE section.
This is within the 'Disused Stations site record' site which has a substantial piece on 'Cambridge - Its Railways and Station' and contains much historical material, along with some varied and interesting pictures.

References are in Part 5 about a quarter of the way down.
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/cambridge/index12.shtml

And of course yesterday marked the beginning of (potentially) a new chapter with the opening of Cambridge North.