Steam loco survival myths

Black 5s, 8fs, 9fs, Standard 5/4 spring to mind

 

It would have to boil fresh air and use fairy dust as fuel, since there's no infrastructure to supply coal or water in the quantities required!

Sadly the correct decision if oil became unavailable would be a massive development of synthetic fuel plants producing (cleaner) oil fuels from coal.

 

Wood?

 

Same problem, but even less supply. Even if you had wood in sufficient quantity it would still make more sense to use it as a source for synthetic fuel of some kind.

 

A nuclear power station providing electricity...

Tom

 

Steam turbines all the way. None of this wholly inefficient linear motion to reciprocating motion chuff-chuff nonsense.

 

It would most likely be lorries. On roads.

 

I'm thinking in an emergency, post-apocalyptic sense (i.e. if the bomb dropped), not if there was years of planning for a post-oil world. That's what the strategic reserve was designed for, if it ever existed

 

What tracks are these locomotives going to run on? I find it hard to imagine a scenario that is sufficiently devastating to cause widespread destruction of modern motive power such that we have to revert to steam, but not so devastating as to wipe out all the infrastructure (primarily, the permanent way) that such locomotives would need to run on.

Clearing the roads to get a rudimentary road network back would be much quicker than repairing the tracks of a rail network; destroyed bridges could be much more easily bypassed by road than rail etc; and there would need to be much less infrastructure in place to get a rudimentary service running quickly.

If there ever was a strategic reserve, I suspect it was old military surplus lorries.

Tom

 

I have little doubt that a U.K. 'strategic reserve' of steam locos was planned but it was not for some post-apocalyptic event but for a short - term hiccup in the world's oil supplies. Remember this was the time of instability in the Middle East and North Sea oil wasn't yet available. Many European countries e.g. Finland, Sweden, Germany and the Soviet Union went one step further and actually created their strategic reserves of steam locos.
Ray.

 

When was this planned? The only locos I know about are the 1950s 'war reserve' batch of army Austerities which were delivered straight into storage, but did enter service eventually.

 

As I said in my post #22 this would be late 1967/early 1968 when, if you recall, Israel had a bit of a disagreement with a couple of its Arab neighbours. As has been said before the rapid removal of the neccessary steam age infrastructure would make such a reserve fairly pointless.
Cheers,
Ray.

 

I have mentioned this before but David Wardale did some work on this in (apartheid era) South Africa

Despite the obvious constraints at this period availability of coal and a very dry climate even he found it would have been quite difficult.

I also understand that the European 'Steam Reserves' were in case of disruption to the electricity supply as they had a higher percentage of electrified lines and unlike us no large fleets of first generation diesel locos

 

I just saw the video on the Swedish steam reserve, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone found three WD 2-8-0's in a shed off the disused Lincolnshire Loop Line...

 

People get obsessed with the Strategic Reserve but actually I get more interested in the one-off's like the idea there is a B17 hiding somewhere in East Anglia, or a Claud buried at Stratford (it must be pretty deep by now). I heard both these rumours in the early 70's.

 

You're right, I'm certain - but you've reminded me... years ago ('91, I think), my employer sent me on a project to Branston depot, near Burton (the pickle factory, as was); huge, brick-built sheds, couple of which stored slumbering vehicles - a few mk1 land-rovers, etc, but most memorably there were the Bedford 'Green Goddess' fire tenders, endless rows of them. And the small team who would fettle each one in turn, not forgetting the lady who spent her days cleaning windscreens and polishing brightwork on the fleet, Forth bridge-style.

Whatever strategic reserve of useful stuff there may have been, can bet your bottom dollar it's been sold off by now... in the words of Edmund Blackadder: 'Seen it, pinched it, spent it.'

 

The Green Goddesses were very common. Reading Fire Station had several in reserve in the sixties, in a separate building at the rear, and I guess that was quite common. During the fireman's strike in the 70s , they were actually used and , being very old fashioned, used to lumber off to fires with , I think, soldiers manning them.