Standard 8MT 2-8-2 New Build

That is an example of how government (both national and local) works, Fred. It is the maximum amount of expenditure for the minimum amount of benefit.

 

In hindsight they may have seemed a waste but when they were designed there was no modernisation plan and if the plethora of pre nationalisation and pre grouping designs could have been whittled down to a few standard designs then they may have been seen in a different light.

 

Or perhaps our love of simple and need for small UK locos blinded us to the progress made on foreign railways...

 

What would you have done differently, given the limited money immediately post-war, coupled with a war-ravaged infrastructure and many thousands of elderly pre-grouping locos still in service that, but for the war, would have been scrapped and replaced ten or more years earlier?

The big mistake in planning wasn't the BR standards . (OK, you could argue about one or two, such as whether we really needed two different class 4 tender engines; or whether the Clan was needed; or the class 3s). Fundamentally, they were sound, robust designs that could be built quickly and could have tided us over into the mid 1970s while a proper modernisation - i.e. widespread electrification and re-signalling - took place. The catastrophic planning blunder wasn't that we built 999 simple, robust, cheap (but maybe not the acme of thermodynamic efficiency) steam engines: it is that we built hundreds of eminently ropey diesels, but had too much faith in them and stripped away the steam infrastructure that still had valuable capital life left.

Tom

 

If argue that the Germans had a damned good try with the Einheitsloks from 1925 onwards.

 

I wonder what would have happened if the turbomotive 6202 had been developed? The War put a stop to that.

 

Was dieselisation not held back by our lack of foreign currency to buy the fuel oil needed at the time? Steam locos used home grown coal.

 

Hang on a minute. What about the conversion of steam locos to oil burning in the late 1940s. This was something that fell flat, thankfully.

 

Exactly my point. Insufficient dosh for the fuel oil.

 

I broadly agree with mr dragon here, but we did look at what was being produced in the USA. but the UK is nothing like the USA
I dont think we looked closely enough at Europe ( bearing in mind that Chapeleon had been swept under the carpet by his own railways that might not have made much difference with steam loco's...) where railways were in a much worse state than here and a more radical look at rebuilding was able to be considered.

 

You never mentioned any specific year on your original post. FYI fuel was still on ration in 1948. Now why do you think that was? Because we were awash with dollars to buy as much as we wanted?

 

I feel sure the designers were well aware of the progress made on foreign railways, but if we liked and, more importantly, needed simple and small, then all the knowledge in the world wouldn't make additional complexity worth its while.

 

I think there were a number of factors for opting to perpetuate steam in the aftermath of WW2. One was surely that we had a massive coal industry and no home produced oil the foreign exchange could be better used at the time. Secondly, dieselising wasn't just a matter of building new diesels, there was all the infrastructure to support them to take into account, for example the main workshops needed re-equipping, the depots needed rebuilding, fuelling provision to be made, as well as a massive re-training programme. I think it would have been clear to those at the sharp end that it was going to be some time before these issues could be addressed and they took the pragmatic solution to stick with what everyone at the time was familiar with.

 

Whatever.

 

The 1925 scheme was a German answer to the 1920s Depression era - caused in part by the League of Nations and the vicious reparations forced on Germany after WWI; Riddles Standard designs was the BR answer for necessary motive power with the intent that it be a stop-gap until monies could be directed to a programme of electrification. An interesting comparison is the willingness of the German Government to fund the 1925 scheme but the unwillingness of the UK Government to fund its post-war railway network on the basis that road transport was a better investment.

Coming back to Germany note that once able to rebuild its railway network after WWII it did so with electrification albeit building diesel locomotives to service the lines that would be electrified at a later date.