Steam engine

[rdlover777]

Hi, I know most don't want to talk about it but how many steam engines were scrapped in the 1960s and how many were saved?

Also it would help if I knew the number of steam engines in Britain before the scrapping.

 

[Njal]

"The replacement of the 16,000 steam locomotives was obviously a fundamental change of direction for British Railways and was going to take some time to implement. At first progress was limited to the replacement of those older steam designs employed on shunting and light branch duties as suitable diesel shunting locomotives and the first generation of diesel multiple units were already available for traffic, while a successful fleet of large main line engines still had to be designed and built."

http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/barry1.htm
http://www.onlineweb.com/rail/locomotive_listing.htm

 

[sprinterguy]

There were 16,108 steam locomotives on the UK railway network at the beginning of 1958. This had reduced to 14,000 locos at the start of 1960, and to around half that by 1963. Prior to 1959, all scrapping of steam locomotives was carried out at the railways’ own works, but the sheer volume of locos requiring scrapping after this time meant that the work began to be outsourced to a number of private contractors. Cashmore’s was the largest organisation involved with scrapping steam locomotives, and they had several UK sites. Their Newport scrapyard, for instance, scrapped 834 steam locos on its’ own.

There are around 500 preserved standard gauge steam locomotives in the UK (Excluding the smaller industrials), 213 of which came from Dai Woodham’s scrapyard at Barry alone.

 

[Dawg]

The saddest thing is that they were still being built until 1960. The last Standard classes built in the mid - late '50's were mostly gone after less than 10 years service. Granted that we only continued building as coal was so plentiful but still - 1959/'60 9F's cut up after 5-6 years service?! All a bit too hasty, considering a good number of the Diesels which were replacing them were simply not up to the job.. Ah - the 1960's... a terrible decade!

 

[GatwickDepress]

It didn't help that even as low-cost diesel railcars and multiple-units were being considered by various boards in order to keep branchlines sustainable, some areas continued to purchase steam locomotives at great expense.

 

[sprinterguy]

It’s easy to say with fifty-odd years of hindsight, but there seems to have been a very real case of the right hand knowing not what the left was doing in the opening years of British Railways. First the standard steam programme, superseded five years later by the modernisation programme and the headlong rush to divest themselves of their brand new steam locos, and then the Beeching report a couple of years later, which considerably reduced the amount of traffic available for the lightweight, rural-type DMUs, and the vast tranches of low powered diesel locos which had been constructed, to a range of different designs of often dubious reliability, for trip freight and branch working.

If we think that the railways of today are pouring money down the drain then it seems to be nothing compared to what was going on in the late fifties and sixties.

 

[Taunton]

The saddest thing is that they were still being built until 1960. The last Standard classes built in the mid - late '50's were mostly gone after less than 10 years service.

Actually there were WR pannier tanks built in the mid-1950s which didn't even last to the end of the decade and were withdrawn with less than 5 years use (I think 1659 held the record, only running 1955-59) and before even the last 9Fs were built.

Still better than some of the Co-Bos which gave less than 3 years total service.