45 years ago this weekend....

[velocemitch]

British Railways ran out of Steam.

Last runs being reinacted this weekend too with Steam specials from Crewe to Carlilse (via Shap) and Liverpool to Carlisle (Via Settle).

I'm having a bit of a revival myself and chasing Steam up the Settle - Carlisle with a Camera for the first time in about 20 years.

[rs1952]

I considered last weekend to be the end of steam "proper" - the last time that you could turn up at a ticket office and get on an ordinary train that had a steam locomotive on the front.

Of course, to be more precise you had to be at Preston on the evening of Saturday 3rd August and either get the 2050 Blackpool North or the 2125 Liverpool Exchange. I caught the latter, and spent the afternoon at Lostock Hall MPD helping to clean 45305 for the occasion

There are quite a few shots of those times on my Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/

Please make allowances for the fact that there was a 16-year-old lad standing behind that Kodak Instamatic at the time

[velocemitch]

Yes I understand your point, if I were a few years older I would have been there too. I missed it all by about 5 years.

I've missed out this weekend too, my information was wrong and I stood in a field for an hour yesterday for a train that is running today. Can't make it today either :-(

[rs1952]

Bump

So it was only us two interested then?

I thought at least w124bob might have had something to say

[velocemitch]

Looks like it

[Yertis]

To be fair this is a car website, mainly.

I'm more of a July the 9th 1967 man myself. Or 7th March 1966. As a little boy I was vaguely aware of these things happening, or having recently happened. The S&D's ghostly presence was felt for a long time around my way.

[rs1952]

Yertis said:

To be fair this is a car website, mainly.

I'm more of a July the 9th 1967 man myself. Or 7th March 1966. As a little boy I was vaguely aware of these things happening, or having recently happened. The S&D's ghostly presence was felt for a long time around my way.

I saw a Ford Anglia wearing a 72C shedplate on the grille in the station approach road at Templecombe on 5th March 1966.

Is that "car" enough for this thread?

[W124Bob]

rs1952 said:

Bump

So it was only us two interested then?

I thought at least w124bob might have had something to say

I'm not that much of a dinosaur! Didn't start my railway career until '78, two things did strike me, some diesels still in service have now had longer careers than many of the steam locos they replaced. The humble class 20 4 decades more service than most 9f's. At my depot the last steam man finishes in November(ex Edgeley) In Manchester, of the depots I know he may well be the last in the city.

[rs1952]

W124Bob said:

I'm not that much of a dinosaur! Didn't start my railway career until '78, two things did strike me, some diesels still in service have now had longer careers than many of the steam locos they replaced. The humble class 20 4 decades more service than most 9f's. At my depot the last steam man finishes in November(ex Edgeley) In Manchester, of the depots I know he may well be the last in the city.

Down in my neck of the woods, our last steam man retired a fortnight ago at 67 and after 52 years service, although even he had only four years as a cleaner and then junior fireman at Bristol Barrow Road.

[rs1952]

W124Bob said:

some diesels still in service have now had longer careers than many of the steam locos they replaced. The humble class 20 4 decades more service than most 9f's.

'Twas ever thus. Good locomotives have always lasted longer than crap ones although, of course, a comparison between long serving diesels and the post-1948 standard steam locomotive classes is not really valid because of the dieselisatioon programme that was in full swing even before some of them had been built.

I would say that, had the decision to replace steam not been taken, the 9Fs would have lasted well into the 90s and there may have been a few still around today.

But back to the first part of the quote. The Beattie Well Tanks in Wadebridge and the LBSCR "Terriers" that survived into the 1960 had all been in service for over 80 years. The diesel output of North British locomotive works didn't last 10 years, and the less said about the "Baby Deltics" the better

[velocemitch]

What about the Claytons, weren't they been killed off before they had finished building the things?.

Still, I understand the comment and love to see (actually hearing is better!) the 37's and 20's going past my office, so much better sounding than the newer stuff.

[velocemitch]

Tests???.... they built 117 Claytons, that's some test!.

It was a job creation project, lets hand out as many contracts as we can to as many different companies, plus of course they were designing Locos for traffic which disapeared before they were even built. With the benefit if hindsight it was a farce really.

[rs1952]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

There is a common misconception that the WR "did its own thing" with the hydraulics, when everybody else was going diesel-electric.

The facts were that it was decided by the BTC/ BRB to test out diesel hydraulics, and it made more sense to concentrate them in one region (from the points of view of spares, technical knowledge of the fitters/ technicians, drivers traction knowledge etc).

By the way, just making sure that some of the hydraulic version of the NBL type 2s (classes 21 and 22 to those of you who weren't around pre-TOPS ) weren't allocated to Scotland as well, I just looked at their Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_22

I hereby put on record that nobody, absolutely nobody, at Bristol Bath Road ever referred to them as "Baby Warships" in the 7 years that I was there (1969 to 1976)!

Edited by rs1952 on Thursday 15th August 23:08

[P5Nij]

And contrary to popular opion, the 22s weren't half as bad as they were made out to be.... when I was at Old Oak in the early '80s all the old hands I spoke to about these plucky little machines said they were no worse than any other locos at the time, and had a good turn of speed out on the mainline. Once Old Oak had received it's batch for local trip work and empty stock moves in and out of Padd, they settled down to reliable service with moderate annual mileages helping the sutuation. One of the worst aspects of their career was the fact the NBL went bust so sourcing spares became a big problem.

[matchmaker]

P5Nij said:

And contrary to popular opion, the 22s weren't half as bad as they were made out to be.... when I was at Old Oak in the early '80s all the old hands I spoke to about these plucky little machines said they were no worse than any other locos at the time, and had a good turn of speed out on the mainline. Once Old Oak had received it's batch for local trip work and empty stock moves in and out of Padd, they settled down to reliable service with moderate annual mileages helping the sutuation. One of the worst aspects of their career was the fact the NBL went bust so sourcing spares became a big problem.

More reliable than their diesel-electric brothers the Class 21!

[Yertis]

I have a copy of a short film called "Black Five", made in 1967/8 at and around Carnforth by a producer called, IIRC, Paul Barnes. Anyway the closing scene shows a Black Five being 'towed away for scrap' by a class 28. Of course the Metrovick is long gone, while the Black Five is still going strong.

[W124Bob]

I have a book(in the loft) about the class 22's their downfall along with much of the rest of the Hydraulic fleet appears to have been in the components supplied by UK subcontractors which NBL used. The Scottish version by NBL was a conventional diesel electric with a Paxman engine built on a slightly longer frame and different bogies(very similar to those used on the Baby Deltics and class20). Incidentally a new Baby Deltic is being built using body parts from a class37 bogies from a class20 and a spare Deltic engine http://www.thebabydelticproject.co.uk/

[rs1952]

W124Bob said:

I have a book(in the loft) about the class 22's their downfall along with much of the rest of the Hydraulic fleet appears to have been in the components supplied by UK subcontractors which NBL used. The Scottish version by NBL was a conventional diesel electric with a Paxman engine built on a slightly longer frame and different bogies(very similar to those used on the Baby Deltics and class20). Incidentally a new Baby Deltic is being built using body parts from a class37 bogies from a class20 and a spare Deltic engine http://www.thebabydelticproject.co.uk/

As this thread was supposed to be about the end of steam I shall both answer Bob and get back on topic

Bearing in mind that, during the restoration process, the preservationists found out why Duke of Gloucester was such a god-awful engine and put matters right, we can only hope that those behind the Baby Deltic project manage to get a better reliability rating out of their new baby than BR got out of the originals!