GWR 94xx Pannier Tanks, ex-Edward Thompson Thread.

But its not so much the locomotive numbers built that surprise me, but the vast disparity in size.

 

Big clear out in 1926, why was that?

 

I think electrification causes you to run up against the limits of fairly simple graphs! SR loco stock declined, we know they built electrics - but what constitutes parity? Is a four car unit equivalent to a loco? Or an eight car? And that is before you think of the carriages (and the SR practice of converting old loco-hauled stock into electric stock on new under frames etc). I don't have the data for new electric units (and not a vast motivation to collate it, if truth be told) but even if I did have it, it's hard to think how you would structure the data to make meaningful comparison. I think you really need to look at the board papers and capital spend programmes ...

Tom

 

A load of suburban electrification. To quote Wiki:

"The route mileage of third rail electrification was to more than double in 1925 when the current was switched on on the routes to Guildford, Dorking and Effingham and the route from Victoria and Holborn Viaduct to Orpington via Herne Hill and the Catford Loop.[14] In 1926, electric trains started to run on the South Eastern Main Line route to Orpington and the three lines to Dartford using the 3rd rail system.[15]"

Entirely unrelated In 1926, they lost:

• 34 Stirling (SER) Q/Q1 0-4-4T
• 17 Kirtley (LCDR) A / A1 / A2 0-4-4T;
• 20 Stroudley (LBSCR) D 0-4-2T
• 3 Adams (LSWR) 415 class 4-4-2T

A load of other things went as well, but that's 74 suburban tank engines straight away, all in the region of 30 - 50 years old, gone in 1926.

Tom

 

I think the Southern s operational model was fairly similar to today's railway, mainly passenger carrying and with an emphasis on electric traction. With their aim of electrification their lack of building steam in large numbers was expected and sensible.

Did they really need 140 pacifics though? when you consider that the LMS with its large network of important main lines only had 51

 

Plus 1933 was the Brighton electrification and 1937 Portsmouth.

I suppose postponement of the SR electrification schemes must have freed up capital, and it seems this was inter alia put into the Bulleid locomotives, but it still amazes me there was such a huge disparity from like for like. I bet Hawksworth and Thompson, for example, were amazed at Bulleid's ability to get his board to authorise his schemes.

 

Count the number of powered wheelsets perhaps? But I agree, only real comparison is to look at the books for the expenditure.

 

It is worth bearing in mind the tremendous increase in traffic upon the railways during the Second World War and the Southern was the most affected. The Southern's efforts in dealing with over 300,000 men saved at Dunkirk and who needed quickly dispersing is one of the greatest efforts in the history of our railway system. Most of the D Day preparations with a massive influx of equipment on South Coast ports fell upon the Southern.

War damage particularly up to May 1941 was another major factor and the Southern were in the area that suffered most. In addition day to day maintenance suffered as experienced men were called up.

It is impossible not to have the utmost respect for those who made all this possible. It is hardly surprising that having been the leaders in modernising their system prior to war the Southern then had to change tack with regards to steam when it started. They were also the least reliant on goods traffic prior to the war so had less need to have new heavy freight locomotives than the other Companies prior to 1939. Even after the conflict started the need would have become for engines that could move heavy loads urgently which presumably was the reason Bulleid's pacifics were officially mixed traffic as opposed to express passenger.

 

There is another part of their operation you have missed though. Relative to the other members of the big 4 (and partly on account of having a high proportion of their traffic being passenger), they had periods of very "peaky" loadings (*). Summer holidays to beach resorts is one obvious cause of that, but you can add a vast array of special traffic: race courses, school traffic at the beginning and end of term, hop pickers' specials etc. An effect of that was keeping relatively large numbers of locos (*) in store, bought out typically for the summer and then put away again until the next peak. For that use case, keeping old locos in store for occasional use was probably better financially than building new locos to cover the peak but then having them unused for part of the time. A 40 year old Stirling or Adams 4-4-0 bought out to run a local passenger service in the summer (so a more modern N or U can cover a freight turn and an S15 thus released can run a relief portion of the Atlantic Coast Express) is probably already fully depreciated and so isn't really costing you very much to keep in storage. Cheaper in any case than building yet another batch of moguls that would be under-occupied for 8 months of the year.

(*) The other companies had peaks, of course, and ran plenty of special trains. I'd contend though that, because the SR was relatively small and relatively reliant on passenger traffic, the peaks were large as a proportion of the total size of the normal traffic.

(**) And also carriages: They kept old four and six wheeled stock in a variety of sidings at stations around London, ready to be used intensively for a few weeks of the year for hop pickers' trains, and then return to country stations to rusticate for the year. I've often wondered in what condition it was found at the beginning of each season, and what needed to be done to keep it habitable.

Tom

 

I've wondered about that. My thought is along the following lines:

If you look at SR motive power policy (and to an extent, that of the predecessor companies, especially the SECR), there were really three big themes that seem to have exercised Maunsell and his staff.

The first was understanding what they had inherited (in terms of comparable capabilities) and moulding it as far as possible into a standard loading ague to allow locos to move away from their home division. That problem seemed to get worked out quite quickly in 1923-25 and resulted, for example, in SECR N class moguls becoming ubiquitous west of Exeter while LSWR-influence King Arthur's went to Kent.

The second problem was about fuel supply and quality; in particular, most loco coal used by the SR had come on comparatively long journeys and suffered multiple rounds of handling (South Wales coal by rail from the mine to Cardiff; loaded onto a coastal ship and unloaded at Fremington in Devon, then back onto rail wagons for distribution up to London, for example). It also tended to be relatively expensive due to the transport costs. So there is a lot of experimentation on tweaks to steaming; alternative fuels (such as pulverised coal) or weird thermodynamic experiments like the Holcroft-Anderson recompression loco.

The third point - and this goes right back to Wainwright, but was a constant difficulty - was working heavy trains in Kent, and in particular the boat trains. That was a combination of restricted loading gauge and weight limit; heavy trains and steep gradients with no opportunity to "rush". (Sole Street Bank was five miles of 1 in 100 approached from a 15 mph limit at its foot). So bigger locomotives was a perennial problem: you can trace that through from Wainwright's attempts at a 4-6-0 (abortive) and then the biggest possible development of a 4-4-0 (what became the L class); Maunsell's "500 ton / 55mph" specification (which led to the Lord Nelson). The problem was always the weight limit, such that even into the 1950s with plenty of pacifics, double heading of the boat trains was the norm, frequently a Bulleid Light Pacific and a Wainwright 4-4-0. To which you might add "ah, but why 140 of them?" To which the answer is that Bulleid didn't believe in designing locos for specific duties, but wanted a small group of standard types. So if your biggest loco is a pacific, you build as many as you need for all the "large engine" duties, even if that takes you down into 4-6-0 / 2-6-0 territory.

In that content, the desire for bigger motive power makes sense, at least until electrification came along.

Tom

 

I’m not convinced about that model, and it’s noticeable that the good dr Beeching wasn’t either (though by the time he was at work the road alternative was definitely viable). It seems to discount the cost of making good under utilised resources and embed costs in the operating model.

On the loco front, I also wonder about the requirement for so many of the light Pacifics as a type. With standardisation in mind though, I also wonder whether they were really that much more expensive given the flexibility they provided.


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Yes, I should probably add that keeping old locos and carriages in store to service the peaks was not a bad way to manage that traffic - but the alternative, simply don’t service the peaks, either wasn’t considered, or wasn’t considered palatable. The modern railway has come to a different answer, and has more or less given up trying to service that sort of irregular traffic. A result being lower demand for rolling stock and reduced infrastructure (all those pesky sidings and under-utilised fruit vans gone …)

Tom

 

I would query this - perhaps a broader perspective is needed - what was the life span of the last generation of steam engines in Germany and France (two states modernising their railway systems around the same time)? I don't know the answer so I don't know how normal short life span is for final generation of an old style are.

Is the Southern not vindicated further - when they did need new 2-6-2, 2-6-4, 2-6-0 and 4-6-0s there were the BR standards available?

Now, of course, the counter point is the failure of the Leader - just a question - do we actually know how much was spent on it?

I think it is significant that key SR services were in the hands of the Bulleids (and pre-war electrics) and then the 4xx electrics from the mid 1940s until the early 2000s. Two generations by way of contrast to the 3-4 generations on the WCML, 4 on the ECML, 3-4 generations on the lines out of Paddington. Which I think is a pretty good return on investment.

 

Tsssk! What kind of a question is that...

Don't forget light pacifics did much of the work of the 6P/5XP range, so you'd need to add in a fair proportion of the scots/patriots/jubilees/black 5s. With pacifics, it's more comparing 40ish MNs to the LMS fleet.

Also, assuming you are hopeful of growth, there is no point building engines that are just powerful enough to replace existing ones.

Had nationalisation not happened and the leader worked, you can see all (bar some very limited exceptions) of non-bulleid locos being replaced with a unified stud of MNs, Light pacifics, leaders and USA tanks, as electrification eliminated all bar the west of england and some freight work as steam duties.

 

I think that was roughly the plan, except that you've missed the Q1s; and the shunting locos would have been 350hp diesels (of which the SR had experience); I think the acquisition of the USA tanks was more along the lines of a tactical opportunity than part of the planned strategy.

Imagine for a moment that all the locos had been successful. You have a high power express; a mid power, lightweight loco with wide route availability; a mid power maid-of-all-work designed to be able to take stopping passenger and cross country services in the day, but high utilisation for goods at night; a goods loco and a shunter / trip goods loco - plus of course the suburban and long-distance electrics. Not a million miles from, 20 years later, trying to run the network with a mixture of Class 47s; 42s; 33s and 09s. In other words, the steam locos didn't work out on reliability and availability grounds (spec. Leader) but the strategy was arguably sound.

Tom

 

Were Q1s part of the strategy or a stop-gap?
Clearly they wouldn't have been thrown away, but with east and central largely electrified, what did they do that a leader/light pacific/diesel shunter couldn't?

Equally, had the southern continued, and Leader failed, you can see the Q1 fitting in that part of the niche leader didn't.

I wonder how many austerity-esque engines would have fallen by the wayside before a "natural" demise of steam in c1980?(assuming a 40-year lifespan). Would their lighter, cheaper construction have caught up with them

 

Don't overlook that the WC/BB genuinely were mixed traffic locos. If one accepts that, the question becomes 'did the Southern need pacifics for work done on the LMS by Black 5s (842 of them, wasn't it?) and 8Fs (331 for the LMS, plus a fair old few for elsewhere)? Without too much by way of colliery, as opposed to 'coal' traffic (just the handful of collieries in Kent), the 8 coupled bruisers on the other three lines didn't feature (the SR only having a very few for specific localised tasks). Is the presence of a large mixed traffic design so strange?

For goods operations, by Bulleid's time, what did the Southern have? For much goods traffic, a crop of 0-6-0s, overwhelmingly of pregrouping vintage, but for heavier and/or faster work, precious little. In fact, pretty much just the Urie/Maunsell H15/S15 (total 71 locos) and Lawson Billinton's K Class (total 17 locos), none of which were unknown on passenger turns. The butchest legacy from the SE&C were the UBoats. Don't forget the Southern's goods market included a significant dairy traffic from the south-west and, postwar, a lot of imported fruit from it's ports.

For other reasons, reference to gradient profiles provides a good indication of the need for such seemingly extravagant provision of (light, don't forget) pacifics.

 

The drawback is that its a very expensive strategy, not only in terms of capital cost (3cyl Pacifics to do the work of 2cyl 2-6-0s and 4-6-0s) but also in terms of coal consumption.

 

Some folk just need the odd reminder we're still here!

On that specific, not so much 'building' .... I was thinking in terms of maintenance. Brighton was completely out of the construction game, between 1929 and 1939 after which, with new construction centre stage, much of the old LBSC fleet's maintenance was farmed out to Eastleigh and Ashford.

I've never seen it said in print, but have always suspected those venerable institutions would look more favourably on their own products than those weird (and by nationalisation, largely clapped out) Brighton interlopers. Add creeping electrification into the mix and the early demise of so many small ex-LBSC classes really isn't too much of a surprise. Pity, as I reckon a J Class 'pacific tank' would've been very useful to the Bluebell!

 

Well, the simple thing is this:
The GWR had a surplus of Halls, 2-8-0's/2-8-2's and panniers because they needed them for heavy freight and mineral traffic, hell of a lot easier than relying on 5600's and Large Prairies to work with horrificly long, fast freights.

The SR only really cared about the upper class twits who commuted to and from/in and around London, over priced holiday and dining trains, less need for the hoy paloy to be happy than the coal merchants.