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Abstract
This paper asks why was Britain slow to adopt diesel and electric traction on its railways. The management of Britain’s railways were aware of technical developments in electrification and diesel traction from the start. Advocates of electrification ranged across the rail industry and the UK had diesel pioneers such as the Armstrong Whitworth Company. British owned railway companies and equipment suppliers successfully pursued electrification overseas. Nevertheless, Britain’s domestic railways in the main stuck with steam until labour and coal shortages prompted change after nationalisation following WW2. Insufficient capital explains the reluctance to electrify during the inter-war period once the advantages became obvious, although Southern made considerable progress on its commuter routes into London. Britain’s railways remained ‘tooled-up’ for steam and locked into a labour intensive, coal using technology into the 1960’s. Fuel requirements for the Royal Navy set Britain on a twentieth century trajectory of oil use, a change that slowly fed into the rail industry once diesel technology became reliable.
Acknowledgments
This paper is derived from a presentation given to the Newcomen Society, Manchester in February 2020 which was developed from an earlier history of railway electrification in the UK.
Notes
1 For a discussion of FW Webb’s first name see http://www.steamindex.com/people/webb.htm
2 Speech at the Jubilee of the Crewe Mechanics Institute, 29 January 1896 see J. Chacksfield, FW Webb: In the Right Place at the Right Time (Usk: Oakwood, 2007), p. 112.
3 At a meeting of the ICE – mentioned in Chacksfield, Chacksfield, p. 112.
4 Dr Wilhelm Schmidt working with Dr Robert Garbe, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Prussian State Railways produced the first practical locomotive incorporating ‘superheating’ in 1898.
5 Webb compounds (and their perceived failings) have been much discussed by historians of locomotive power.
6 By ‘oil’ he meant ‘diesel’ in the language of today.
7 Presidential address to the Institution of Locomotive engineers in 1927. Gresley was knighted in 1936 – thereafter being Sir Nigel Gresley.
8 The electric railway was 17 minutes faster than a steam stopping train, and as trains accelerated quicker the capacity of the line was increased. Power was generated at a coal powered power station at Formby 7500v AC 3 phase, and transformed at 4 rotary converter sub stations and 5 battery stations to third rail at 625v DC. All the stations were also electrically lit. ‘The town clerk at Southport simply asked to be reassured that there was nothing lethal about the electrification’. H. A. V. Bulleid, The Aspinall Era (Shepperton: Ian Allan, 1967), p. 186.
9 Dick, Kerr’s electrical expertise came with the electric tramway boom which had started in the 1880’s; the company would go on to build equipment for over 8000 trams for both the UK and overseas. See J. Shorrock, Dick, Kerr & Co. Limited Engineers and Contractors: London, Kilmarnock and Preston, A History of the Company 1853-1919 (Preston: BAE Systems, 2016).
10 All the better to witness the latest Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera for which the Savoy was built.
11 Often referred to as the first electric train, although that accolade should go to Robert Davidson’s battery electric experiment on the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway in 1842.
12 Founded in 1858.
13 The first Blackpool trams used a conduit system that was susceptible to ingress of sand and seawater and was subsequently replaced by overhead line. Holroyd Smith was the first to experiment with overhead line equipment and Blackpool converted to this system in 1899. See https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Michael_Holroyd_Smith [accessed 26 March 2020].
14 Mather and Platt added the manufacture of electrical dynamos to its portfolio of advanced manufacturing at its Manchester base in 1883.
15 9.5 miles long and initially 200v DC side contact, the line switched to overhead line equipment in 1900.
16 The idea of powering this by electricity came via a friend of the developers (the Traill brothers), William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, who was personal friends with the Siemens brothers and knew of their experiments with electric locomotion. Hopkinson was at the time working for the Siemens brothers – see https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Giants_Causeway,_Portrush_and_Bush_Valley_Railway_and_Tramway_Co [accessed 26 March 2020].
17 Werner Siemens was raised to the hereditary nobility by Kaiser Frederick III in 1888 becoming after that Werner von Siemens.
18 ‘Study Group for electric High-Speed Railways’.
19 B. Hollingsworth and A. Cook, The Great Book of Trains (London: Salamander Books, 1996), p. 221.
20 The Berlin-Zossen Electric Railway Tests of 1903: A Report of the Test Runs Made on the Berlin-Zossen Railroad in the Months of September to November 1903. Published in the US by McGraw Hill, 1905, though it seems likely that engineers like the L&Y’s H O’Brien would have heard of this experiment.
21 Ibid, p. 19.
22 Ibid, p. 71.
23 George Westinghouse was the champion of AC current and on railways, the air brake, which would eventually become the braking system of choice on the world’s railways.
24 The Mersey Railway opened 1886 between Birkenhead, and Liverpool under the river Mersey. With most of its line in tunnels, and with very steep gradients, it was effectively bankrupt by 1888. Smoke in tunnels and in the underground stations had driven passengers to use trams and ferries.
25 By 1939 Italy had the highest percentage of electrified railways in the world, and the world’s fastest passenger train, the ETR 200.
26 A UK pioneer of the 1,500v DC overhead system. The line returned to steam haulage in 1935 as a result of the decline in traffic because of the trade depression and the need to replace some of the overhead line equipment.
27 See M. C. Duffy, Electric railways 1880 – 1990, London: Institution of Engineering and Technology 2003, pp. 35–36.
28 Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée – actually a shipbuilding company.
29 Brown Boveri (now part of ABB) was a Swiss Electrical engineering company founded by CEL Brown, the son of Charles Brown an English engineer who had founded SLM the Swiss Locomotive manufacturers, and Walter Boveri, a German born electrical engineer who had worked for Oerlikon.
30 ‘The Heilmann Electric Locomotive’, Scientific American, vol.77, issue 10, 4 September 1897 see http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/elheil.Html [accessed 11 December 2020].
31 Willans and Robinson moved on to producing diesel engines by 1904. They would go on to be part of the English Electric empire in 1919.
32 George Gibb was an innovative General Manager who introduced the ‘traffic apprenticeship scheme’ which brought promising young men in from the universities and industry to be trained in management of the railway. He was friends with Aspinall of the L&Y and a regular visitor to the US.
33 A decrease in passenger receipts of 57%.
34 The ‘Roads Board’ 1910–1919 was a government body to maintain and improve Britain’s roads using money raised by a motoring tax. At that point there were 140,000 motor vehicles in Britain, see D. Bayliss, What went wrong? British Highway Development before Motorways (London: RAC Foundation, 2008), p. 8.
35 Much helped by Edgar Hooley’s invention of ‘tarmac’ in 1902. The first use of this new road material took place on the Radcliffe Road, Nottingham. Six years later the model ‘T’ Ford went into production.
36 When the First World War ended it left a large number of ‘motor’ trained men and ‘army surplus’ lorries able to compete for short haul freight with the railways. The men could also work for local bus companies which took local passenger traffic (especially after the arrival of pneumatic tyred buses) from the railways.
37 A quote from PM Margaret Thatcher in 1989 that (with hindsight) actually marks the beginning of the end of the period of unfettered growth in road traffic, and road construction.
38 https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal, UK Coal peaked in 1913 AT 292 million tons.
39 From 11s p. ton in 1913 to 19s 9d per ton in 1924 – Hansard, 14.4.1925 Col. Lane Fox, answers to Royal Navy.
40 J. R. Bradley, Fuel and Power in the British Empire (Washington: US Dept. of Commerce, 1935), p. 27.
41 Both on roads and on the railways. One significant date from this period is the 10 March 1932, the opening of London Victoria coach station. The first scheduled motor coach service had started in 1925 between London and Bristol, another is 1928, Kerr Stuart testing of one of the first diesel lorries.
42 First mentioned in a speech by the then ‘Captain’ Jack Fisher in 1882.
43 Fisher argued the qualitative superiority of petroleum over coal as a fuel. A battleship powered by diesel motor burning petroleum issued no tell-tale smoke, while a coal ship's emission was visible up to 10 km away. It required 4 to 9 hours for a coal-fired ship's motor to reach full power, an oil motor required a mere 30 minutes and could reach peak power within 5 minutes. To provide oil fuel for a battle ship required the work of 12 men for 12 hours. The same equivalent of energy for a coal ship required the work of 500 men and 5 days. For equal horsepower propulsion, the oil-fired ship required 1/3 the engine weight, and almost one-quarter the daily tonnage of fuel, a critical factor for a fleet whether commercial or military. The radius of action of an oil-powered fleet was up to four times as great as that of the comparable coal ship.
44 Fuel oil being burnt in boilers to produce steam, this was not powered by a diesel engine.
45 Anglo Persian eventually became BP Amoco.
46 Kirkuk, in the Kurdish region started producing oil in 1927.
47 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bp-and-iran-the-forgotten-history/ [accessed 3 April 2020].
48 For BP early history see https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Co.
49 London Midland and Scottish railway (LMS), London and North Eastern railway (LNER), Southern Railway (SR) and Great Western Railway (GWR).
50 The Times, 22 July 1921.
51 B. Wilson, ‘Capital investment by the LNER 1923 – 1939’, Railway and Canal Historical Society Journal, no. 234 (2019), 397–411
52 LNER Stockholders Association.
53 https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Elec001.pdf [accessed 3 April 2020], see p. A14.
54 In July 1931 Herbert Morrison tried to persuade the railway companies to electrify on their own initiative in a meeting with the railway company chairmen ‘but they refused even to discuss their plans without guarantees of government aid’, L. Hannah, Electricity before Nationalisation: A Study of the Development of the Electricity Supply Industry in Britain to 1948 (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 165.
55 Duffy, op.cit., p. 263.
56 ‘The future of main line electrification on British Railways’. Paper read before the Institute of Mechanical Engineers by H.E. O'Brien, Member, Horwich, published March, 1924. The September reading of the paper in London prompted a meeting with Sir Guy Granet, Chairman LMS (and ex MR) after which O’Brien left the LMS.
57 William Stanier in his address as President of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1941 (24 October 41) would say that ‘as complete electrification calls for still higher capital charges, a total recasting of schedules and routes to promote intensive usage is necessary’. See O. S. Nock, William Stanier – A Biography (Ian Allan, 1964), p. 151. Stanier in the same address revealed that the average daily mileage of an LMS locomotive was 100 miles.
58 The same Charles Merz who had persuaded George Gibb to electrify the NER Tyneside routes.
59 The ‘Woodhead’ route principally connected the South Yorkshire coalfield with the power stations that kept the North West of England in electricity. It opened to electric haulage in 1955 and closed in 1981.
60 Managed by the Government of India by 1925.
61 Roland Curling Bond (1903–1980), then Assistant Works Manager (1923–1931) had been trained by the Midland Railway 1920–1923, and was later British Railways Chief Mechanical Engineer (1953–1965) responsible for the start of 25KV AC electrification on the West Coast main line.
62 Charles Fairburn was the on-site engineer for the Shildon–Newport electrification of 1915, having come from Siemens Dynamos. He moved on to English Electric where work included Great Indian Peninsula Railway. Southern Railway electrification and electrification in New Zealand. He was later CME LMS – introduced the DE shunters and started work on 10000.
63 Actually, the first diesel hauled train was tested on the Great Eastern section of the LNER in 1924, an operation that would have been sanctioned by Gresley. This was an Austrian built 60 HP 0-4-0 diesel hydraulic by Graz. See Railway Magazine, September 1924, p. 244.
64 Watkins moved from Armstrong Whitworth to Reyrolle (who built switchgear) in 1939/40 and from there to Automotive Products at Leamington Spa.
65 Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898 and still are today.
66 UK owned to 1948.
67 Unit CM201 managing 1,194 km non-stop on test. For more information on these remarkable trains see D. S. Purdam, British Steam on the Pampas: The Locomotives of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway (London: Mechanical Engineering Publications, 1977).
68 Armstrong Whitworth press release 1933.
69 The Class 33 of 1960 by BRC&W uses a development of this engine and these motors. It was designed initially to replace all the steam locomotives in Kent as part of the Kent coast electrification scheme and a number of examples are preserved.
70 The average start to stop speed between Berlin and Hamburg was 77 mph.
71 Engineering rival William Stanier of the LMS visited Germany, including riding on this train in 1936.
72 4472 – Flying Scotsman. The LNER always used this locomotive if there was useful publicity to be had, despite the fact shed masters and crews did not consider it the ‘best’ of the A1’s. As ‘The Times’ put it ‘It was intended rather as a test of the steam locomotive burning coal on a service similar to that now run in foreign countries by oil fed diesel locomotives’ (‘The Times’, 1 December 1934).
73 125 mph was the maximum quoted during Gresley’s lifetime. The 126 mph was based on an examination of the dynamometer roll which showed an 8 second peak. The celebratory plaque on the side of the locomotive which has ‘126 mph’ as the maximum was put on the locomotive just prior to nationalization.
74 Epitomised by the cover of the Blur album of 1993 ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ which featured a picture of Mallard at speed.
75 These 0-6-0 diesel shunters had been authorised in an emergency board meeting in 1941 and were in traffic by 1944. Built at Doncaster the diesel electric equipment was by English Electric, just like the similar designs on the LMS.
76 Tommy Hornbuckle (1880–1958) officially Chief Technical Assistant to CME. Hornbuckle had been an apprentice at Richard Hornsby and Sons, developer of the Ackroyd Stuart Oil engine after which he had worked with Deeley of the Midland Railway on the 1908 Heysham – Lancaster electrification, a ‘try out’ scheme for a Manchester – Derby electrification. He moved to Royal Ordinance Plant near Newcastle at the start of the war.
77 Papers held in the Tommy Hornbuckle Archive held at the National Railway Museum – include a c.1938 drawing of a diesel powered ‘Coronation Scot’.
78 Both steam worked services.
79 In T. Hornbuckle, The Application of Diesel Engines to Rail Traction and Discussion, The Diesel Engine Users Association, Technical Paper S133, 1936.
80 A. Riddles, ‘‘Coronation Scot’—A Railway Development’, The Junior Institute of Engineers, Journal and Record of Transactions, 58 (1947/48), 98–104.
81 Mallard’s famous record -breaking run. Gresley was happy with declaring a maximum of 125 mph and the speed record because the train had cruised at 120 mph for over 3 miles, clearly beating the LMS record. The 126 mph was only publicly declared after Gresley’s death in 1941, reinforced by an interview with the driver, Joe Duddington in 1944 and the celebratory plaque affixed to the locomotive just prior to nationalisation.
82 Sir Charles Batho, Lord Mayor of London, (and on the board of the LNER) at the inauguration of the summer only non-stop ‘Flying Scotsman’ service in 1928.
83 Stanier had been head hunted to the LMS from the GWR in 1932.
84 There is no biography or autobiography of Fairburn so it is difficult to know his views, other than to note the detail of his career which was mostly non-steam.
85 Hornbuckle archive (ibid).
86 I.e. steam locomotives - one of which is preserved at the NRM, LMS No. 2500.
87 D. Wragg, Wartime on the Railways (Stroud: History Press, 2006).
88 See J. Chacksfield, Ron Jarvis - From Midland Compound to the HST (Usk: Oakwood, 2004). Jarvis was assistant to Hornbuckle on the introduction into service of this LMS ‘diesel multiple unit’.
89 P. Atkins, Dropping the Fire: The Decline and Fall of the Steam Locomotive (Clophill, Bedfordshire: Irwell Press, 1999), p. 38.
90 Often called Britain’s first mainline locomotive No.10000 was built at Derby in conjunction with English Electric, its EE16 SVT engine was based on the 350 hp standard LMS shunting locomotive engine, pressure charged which had the effect of increasing the power output. See http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/EnglishElectric_MainlineDiesels1951.pdf, p.2.
91 Another ‘problem’ with 10000 was that manning it was difficult as it sat outside the ‘link’ system of time immemorial on the railway, whereby drivers worked up the ‘links’ until only the most senior drivers were on the ‘top link’ on long-distance expresses. Some of these were very much in the zone of ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’.
92 ‘Diesel-Electric Traction’ published in April 1946 at a time of locomotive shortage.
93 Cox had started his engineering training under O’Brien.
94 A scheme very similar to what had taken place in South Africa in 1924.
95 This included four strikes during the war, with a further strike in 1946 which caused power cuts in Chicago.
96 These ran on 4,376 miles of the US network. A notable date during this time is the introduction into service of Union Pacific’s last steam locomotive 844 in December 1944. Unlike all other steam locomotives in the US, this was never withdrawn from service and remains a flag bearer for the days of steam in the west of the USA.
97 Owing to the Driver getting ill, Riddles was often in the driving seat, an experience he clearly relished and which made him a darling of the US press.
98 The tunnel is just outside of the station ‘throat’ at the beginning of the route north.
99 In February 1945 a 17 coach train stalled and ran back into a train awaiting departure killing two passengers – see D. Wragg, The LNER Handbook: The London & North Eastern Railway 1923-47 (Sparkford: Haynes, 2011) or Railway and Canal Historical Society ‘Chronology of Modern Transport’ at: https://rchs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RCHS-Chron-Mod.pdf. Downloaded 10 May 2021.
100 Col. H Rodgers, The Last Steam Locomotive Engineer, R.A. Riddles CBE (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 160.
101 LMS 10000 was presented to the press at Euston, 18 December 1947 alongside 6256 ‘Sir W. A. Stanier FRS’. The stated intention was to compare the performance, costs and other key feature of the two designs, though no figures were ever compiled.
102 Arrears of maintenance and renewal and war damage estimated at up to £210 million – see T. R. Gourvish, British Railways 1948–73, A Business History (Cambridge U.P., 1986), p. 9.
103 Labour costs rose steeply by an average of 70%.
104 Famously described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton MP, as ‘a poor bag of assets’.
105 P. Atkins, Dropping the Fire, op.cit., p. 50.
106 Who had looked into the economics of diesel railcars for the LNER in the inter-war period.
107 Hansard. 20 May 1947, Lords Chamber, column 917.
108 Prompted by the announcement of the ‘Locomotive trials’ of 1948 according to L. A. Summers, British Railways Steam 1948 – 1970 (Stroud: Amberley, 2014).
109 Shortage of high-quality coal used by locomotives was also beginning to cause a problem a problem with railway emissions contributing to the ‘Great Smog’ of 1952. This caused over 4,000 deaths in London and led to the ‘Clean Air Act’ of 1956.
110 Select Committee on Nationalised Industries: report on British Railways, 11 July 1960; comments of BTC and Ministry of Transport.
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Robert Gwynne
Robert Gwynne is an Associate Curator at the National Railway Museum in York. He has written books on the Flying Scotsman and Railway Preservation as well as a wide range of articles and blogs ranging from ‘A history of trainspotting’ to the origins of railways in the UK (for the IET centenary). He has a regular column in Steam World magazine and frequently appears on television as a technical expert on railways.