Midhurst Whites bricks were supposed to be used to line the railway tunnel to the Isle of Wight, which never got built. The firm did, however, have one of the last industrial railways (2 feet 6 inches gauge) to be operated in Sussex. outliving the nearby LSWR/LBSCR lines by many years. You were fortunate to see it working!
We went twice, in 1971/2. The first time our minibus broke down in Petersfield; it was a Saturday and, by the time we arrived, the brickworks had closed for the weekend.
We were more successful the second time, when we saw on the way the Brighton-Exeter (SO) train formed of a Hastings DEMU, had a walk inside Midhurst Tunnel, viewed the lovely LBSC stations south of Midhurst, including (with permission) a ramble around amazing Singleton, were surprised to find a real train at Lavant (a gravel contract - we thought the line had been closed and lifted), had glimpses of the Chichester Waterworks Railway and what was left of the Hayling Island Bridge, and consumed fish and chips on said island before returning to Southampton.
I dipped into this thread regularly before I registered. I cannot not offer very much; I enjoy trains (my dad worked as an engineer on regional trains until he moved to an office job). Many regional trips when young, and I've been on the Indian Pacific [Sydney to Adelaide, not all the way to Perth yet] and The Ghan [Darwin to Adelaide]. It is interesting to read of your love for railways.
I can offer some photos (I have a sub-$300 phone so excuse the poor quality) of the railway station where I live; a small regional city (we have 2 cathedrals; it's that not our 25,000 population that makes us a "city"). I think for sheer grandeur, Albury, another small, regional city, which must have had a very small population when the thing was built, takes some beating here in New South Wales.
Armidale I don't know; that's an amazing photo of Albury! Am I right in thinking that, before the Transcontinental line was built, passengers had to change there because the trains coming from either side had different gauges?
BTW the "old" Ghan (which went no further north than Alice Springs) was narrow-gauge.
From Sydney to Melbourne they had to change at Albury until standardisation in 1962. The regional trains from Melbourne weren't standardised until 2011 (!); trains before arrived at a different platform on the narrow gauge. Albury has a 450 metre covered platform, which is rather long; I think to handle the two trains once needed.
I'd need to look up South Australia and Western Australia later, but I suspect differences.
Mark Twain passed through and commented “The strangest thing, the unaccountable marvel that Australia can show, namely the break of gauge at Albury. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth." (!)
The line to Armidale was closed last century, then reopened. It passes through quite hilly country (Armidale is at ~920m and towns to the south are higher). One train a day from and to. The train splits/joins the service from Moree at Werris Creek, south of here. More detail here for any interested.
(On Werris Creek, my dad as an engineer was based there. It was a main station once, now quite quiet. From Wikipedia: "For approximately 70 years, Werris Creek was the largest railway centre in northern New South Wales, the depot alone employing 800 people." Note this is a small country town. Not a major city. https://www.artsnwconnect.com.au/anwc-venues/rail-journeys-museum)
There are places like that in Britain. Perhaps the most notorious is the small Norfolk village of Melton Constable, once the hub of the Midland & Great Northern Railway. It had a works big enough to actually build locomotives, but today the nearest railway line is many miles away. One might also think of Highbridge in Somerset (which at least still has a much-reduced passenger station) or Oswestry in Shropshire.
Thank you. It is interesting to ponder these once-great industry hubs. When I catch the train I enjoy walking around Werris Creek station while the trains are coupled/decoupled.
Of course, the old steam railway required far more engineering works than are deemed necessary today, and almost all the old companies preferred to do as much in-house as possible. (The LNWR took this to extremes.)
This was one (political) reason for the slow move away from steam in the UK. These works and their thousands of skilled staff were not set up for anything else. Few had any significant knowledge of diesel or electric traction.
With the post-war consensus prioritising full employment, there was a great reluctance to discard these workers.
Indeed so. However the huge range of skills utilised in these works meant that they could easily be turned over, at least partially, to war work. And Gerry Fiennes, in "I tried to run a railway", was full of admiration for the way his staff at Stratford adapted to the new forms of traction.
I don't know about the works, but after WW2 in the face of high employment it became increasingly difficult to recruit and retain footplate and locoshed staff as the pay was low, the work arduous and filthy, the hours unsocial and the conditions awful. Things did improve after the Modernisation Plan as per the Frodingham article here: http://www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk/html/march_2025.html
There are places like that in Britain. Perhaps the most notorious is the small Norfolk village of Melton Constable, once the hub of the Midland & Great Northern Railway. It had a works big enough to actually build locomotives, but today the nearest railway line is many miles away. One might also think of Highbridge in Somerset (which at least still has a much-reduced passenger station) or Oswestry in Shropshire.
Woodford Halse is another obvious one - village of about 4000 now. Until the 1960s over 2000 men were employed on the railway there. Engine sheds, wagon works, enormous marshalling yards, station, five signal boxes, platelayers etc
Now the nearest railway line (never mind station) is probably Cropredy.
I think Highbridge has already been mentioned, but a great deal of unemployment and distress was caused in the town when the Somerset & Dorset works closed way back in 1930.
No doubt it was a logical step on the part of the LMS, and at least they had the decency to relocate the War Memorial from the Works to the S&DJR part of Highbridge station...
Most of the works buildings remained standing - in a derelict state - right up until the 1960s, which must have added insult to injury.
The railway workshops often employed thousands of men (and a few women) and their closure caused massive social upheaval and sorrow.
I grew up in Gorton. The whole area was built on engineering of one sort or another. Gorton Tank (GCR) and Beyer Peacock (private sector loco builders) were literally across the tracks from each other. Not far away were Armstrong Whitworth and Crossley Engineering. (Crossley Motors had moved out to Burnage by my time and Ashburys Carriage and Wagon was long gone.) There were other smaller enterprises and many locals also found jobs at the 'Car Works' - Manchester's huge bus maintenance plant in nearby Ardwick, which had formerly built whole trams - and bus bodies.
Almost all this is gone now, and what people do for a living I don't know. They can't all work in Tesco. But Gorton has turned in my lifetime from a proud, upper-working-class district to a quite ghastly slum.
The railway workshops often employed thousands of men (and a few women) and their closure caused massive social upheaval and sorrow.
I grew up in Gorton. The whole area was built on engineering of one sort or another. Gorton Tank (GCR) and Beyer Peacock (private sector loco builders) were literally across the tracks from each other. Not far away were Armstrong Whitworth and Crossley Engineering. (Crossley Motors had moved out to Burnage by my time and Ashburys Carriage and Wagon was long gone.) There were other smaller enterprises and many locals also found jobs at the 'Car Works' - Manchester's huge bus maintenance plant in nearby Ardwick, which had formerly built whole trams - and bus bodies.
Almost all this is gone now, and what people do for a living I don't know. They can't all work in Tesco. But Gorton has turned in my lifetime from a proud, upper-working-class district to a quite ghastly slum.
Much the same could be said, I suppose, of the former locomotive building activities of certain areas of Leeds and Glasgow, to name only two examples.
Of course, the old steam railway required far more engineering works than are deemed necessary today, and almost all the old companies preferred to do as much in-house as possible. (The LNWR took this to extremes.)
This was one (political) reason for the slow move away from steam in the UK. These works and their thousands of skilled staff were not set up for anything else. Few had any significant knowledge of diesel or electric traction.
With the post-war consensus prioritising full employment, there was a great reluctance to discard these workers.
I'm not sure that's as true as it sounds. People who were not alive then do not appreciate how unmechanised everything was, and so do not realise how much more labour intensive most industry was in those days.
In the 1950s there was quite. a marked labour shortage. A lot of industries, including the railways, were having difficulty recruiting enough staff.
To some effect, I think, judging by the number of Afro-Caribbean conductors one saw in London in the 60s (the days when they had proper buses, with an engine at the front, and an open platform at the back).
There are some good videos on YouTube illustrating this, with reference not only to the buses, but also to the Underground system - a big railway operation, by any standards, If you decide to look these up, DON'T read the disgracefully racist comments...
One of the factors in the death of steam was that you could no longer attract men to do hard, dirty work for peanuts. This was particularly true in prosperous areas with lots of employment opportunities, notably London.
I don't think it's any coincidence that steam lasted longest in the North East and North West of England, where opportunities were fewer - even in the golden, dying days of the post-war consensus,
There was a reason why the Labour Government of 1964 introduced a Selective Employment Tax. There was a shortage of labour in many areas, and the idea was to discourage what were deemed to be 'unnecessary' roles. E.g. bus conductors.
Steam locomotive depots were indeed very dirty places - I know whereof I speak, having spent some years of my youth living in a house within a hundred yards of one! My Old Mum washed the net curtains at least every two or three days, and my bedroom never had a window-sill completely free of soot...
It wasn't one of the big *glamorous* sheds, with lots of express engines, but dealt mainly with goods and mixed-traffic types, along with some tank engines for local trains. IIRC, there were about 50 engines allocated back in the mid-50s, but electrification of our main line, and the introduction of DMUs on some services, reduced the allocation to less than a dozen by the end of steam operation in 1965.
Am I right in thinking that, before the Transcontinental line was built, passengers had to change there because the trains coming from either side had different gauges?
In 1969 the standard gauge rail network was extended east from Port Augusta as far as Sydney, and west of Kalgoorlie all the way to Perth, making it possible to catch a train from the Pacific Ocean across the continent to the Indian Ocean.
I thought that working on diesels could be a dirty job, but this is what steam was really like behind the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC1BEc04i-0. Majestic and romantic from a distance, perhaps, but less so up close.
In 1969 the standard gauge rail network was extended east from Port Augusta as far as Sydney, and west of Kalgoorlie all the way to Perth, making it possible to catch a train from the Pacific Ocean across the continent to the Indian Ocean.
4,352 kilometers (2,704 miles).
Excuse the delay.
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You can get to Brisbane, but the rest of Queensland is narrow gauge. That's going north, though.
I thought that working on diesels could be a dirty job, but this is what steam was really like behind the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC1BEc04i-0. Majestic and romantic from a distance, perhaps, but less so up close.
And that was a BR Standard, fitted fitted with labour-saving devices such as a self-cleaning smokebox and rocking grate ... and no inside cylinders and motion either!
The largest steam locomotive I've ever worked on was a 2-foot gauge specimen, and at least everything the fireman (Me) had to attend to was reasonably get-at-able. A friend who, fairly late in life, decided to volunteer at a standard-gauge heritage railway remarked rather ruefully how large and heavy everything was, never mind the dirt...
I thought that working on diesels could be a dirty job, but this is what steam was really like behind the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC1BEc04i-0. Majestic and romantic from a distance, perhaps, but less so up close.
And that was a BR Standard, fitted fitted with labour-saving devices such as a self-cleaning smokebox and rocking grate ... and no inside cylinders and motion either!
I was wondering where it was. Of course, it might have been "away" from home, but probably not for such a thorough examination.
Did you ever read about servicing the New York Central "Niagaras"? They had an amazing utilisation rate but only because fireboxes etc were cleaned out while still hot by men in asbestos "space suits".
The care taken in steaming up after servicing is something to note. In North America it was often the practice to fill the boiler from a stationary steam supply to get it back on the road quickly. In a typical Canadian winter you can imagine the tortured pipework, rivets, firebox stays and everything else that must have resulted from this brutality. Perhaps they didn't do that from really cold after a washout.
E.S. Cox, ex Lancashire and Yorkshire, LMS and BR recorded how surprised he was by the lack of care some of the US companies that he visited took over their locomotives.
Fair enough - maybe I should have said most US locomotives, although many of the WW1 60cm gauge engines lasted well into the 1950s. The Baldwin 4-6-0Ts on the Ashover Light Railway come to mind, as do similar engines on the various 60cm industrial lines in France.
Perhaps the Lynton and Barnstaple's Lyn from Baldwin in 1898 deserves a mention as an especially good American engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_locomotive). It had a quite reasonable original working life and has been reincarnated as a rather handsome new locomotive.
There was a locomotive shortage in the UK circa 1899 = I suppose all the contractors were busy for whatever reason.
As a consequence, certain railways - I can think of the Great Central, the Midland and the Barry offhand - bought USA products. These engines were not long-lived, although I think the Barry ones lasted longest and were reboilered by the GWR.
The question is whether this was down to quality or down to the inherent conservatism of British railways.
For a start, the engines had bar frames - definitely Not Done Here. I seem to recall the GC engines allegedly had an inordinate appetite for lubrication oil. On the other hand, they did have commodious cabs, certainly a massive step-up from the very modest cabs seen on many native engines of this era.
I read somewhere that very early Scottish locomotives (1830s) owed much to American practice - or maybe it was the other way round, given the globetrotting of many Scottish engineers?
Later Scottish railways might well have resembled American lines more closely, had Scotland not been physically joined to England IYSWIM.
Some were broad gauge (5 feet 6 inches), and a gauge of 6 feet was to be found on several quite extensive railroads in the US.
The Great Central sent a delegation (including Sam Fay, J.G. Robinson and some Directors - plus, I think, selected grown-up sons and daughters) over to the USA specifically to study US railroad practice and see what they could learn. They toured various facilities, and I think this shows that the prejudice was by no means obsessive.
Several railways, including the GC, Caley and L&Y, experimented with large, USA-style goods wagons. Speaking generally, these were not a success. In part, this was because UK wagon loadings were often quite modest. It's no use having a 30-ton goods van to carry 2 tons of goods when a 10-ton vehicle is more than adequate. Coal merchants often preferred an 8-ton wagon (easier for one man with a shovel to unload). A bogie 40-tonner was the last thing they wanted! (The GC's bogie coal wagons were only ever used for loco coal. Not even industry could be persuaded to accept anything above a 20-ton 4-wheeler, and there were not many of them.)
Similarly, American-style saloon coaches (the type that is now usual, otherwise 'opens) were not at all popular in Victorian/Edwardian England. Most passengers still preferred the privacy of compartments. It was a very slow transition to where we are now.
One of the outcomes of the GC tour was to look at the possibility of introducing electrification. Especially for the Worsborough Bank, where coal trains needed one, two or even three banking engines. Robinson costed it out and decided it was unaffordable and better done with special steam locos. (I suspect he was an unreconstructed steam man.) This led, eventually, to the famous Beyer Garratt, a single, very expensive loco that was more or less a failure from the day it hit the track. (Part of the blame goes to the sainted Gresley, who complicated the design with three cylinders at each end, a GN concept that neither the GC nor Beyer Peacock would have adopted for this job.)
Less well known is a proposal to procure or make some gigantic USA-style locos (2-12-4s or something along those lines) to work 100 wagon coal trains from the Yorkshire coalfield to Immingham Docks. It was actually intended to open up two or three tunnels to enable these monsters to operate, as they were well outside the normal loading gauge.
What stopped this idea in its tracks, I don't know. Maybe the cost of opening up those tunnels. Or maybe it dawned on someone that it would be necessary to open out Woodhead Tunnel (and a couple of others) to get these behemoths to and from Gorton Works for maintenance.
If those engines had been built, they would have been - well, legendary.
Similarly, American-style saloon coaches (the type that is now usual, otherwise 'opens) were not at all popular in Victorian/Edwardian England. Most passengers still preferred the privacy of compartments. It was a very slow transition to where we are now.
Compartments are very romantic [not love, the other meaning] to me. I do not recall them at all here in the Antipodes in terms of being a standard [I had my, tiny, room on The Ghan and the Indian Pacific -- I wasn't with the rich and infamous]. When I went to Sweden in 2001 I travelled to and from Gothenburg/Stockholm and took a seat in a compartment. On the way back a woman joined me and we had a wonderful chat.
edit: on sleeping compartments, I had one wonderful trip from Dresden [?], maybe Berlin, I'm getting old, to Munich on the Nachtzug: lovely.
1. "Open" style carriages in America even extended, I think, to sleeping cars in the early days. They didn't have compartments with transverse beds, but bunks arranged lengthways on either side of a gangway and made private with curtains.
2. Gresley tried longer coal trains with his P1 2-8-2 goods locomotives. But they were too long for many goods loops and (presumably) sidings, so not a success. As a child living near the southern end of the Midland main line, I can remember 90-wagon coal trains hauled by 9Fs and, later, "Peaks" - the latter usually pushing a brake tender.
3. After Worsborough Bank was electrified, the Garratt went to the Lickey where it wasn't a success. Crews found its great length difficult when buffering up; more to the point it was so heavy that it was hard to avoid a really big "thump" when doing so. Conversely the Lickey banker "Big Emma/Bertha" was tried on the Toton-London coal trains and wasn't a success. I believe that its boiler was designed for short hard pushes, possibly being "mortgaged" in the process, and wasn't suitable for long slow drags. I do wonder though why the Midland didn't build some more S&D 2-8-0s for the job?
Perhaps the Lynton and Barnstaple's Lyn from Baldwin in 1898 deserves a mention as an especially good American engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_locomotive). It had a quite reasonable original working life and has been reincarnated as a rather handsome new locomotive.
IIRC I think they made some serious modifications quite early on, so whether it spent its original working life as the original locomotive intended by Baldwin might be a question.
I think Manning Wardle (builders of the original trio, and indeed the later 5th locomotive) either were or had been on strike along with the workforces of other British private builders, so they weren't in a position to fulfil the order*. Hence going to Baldwin.
*Amongst L&B enthusiasts there is also a (conspiracy?) theory that the original three Manning Wardles were a cancelled order from India, so there's also a question over whether they'd have been able to supply even them had they not been kicking around in the factory.
There was a locomotive shortage in the UK circa 1899 = I suppose all the contractors were busy for whatever reason.
As above, industrial action in locomotive builders in 1898. Mostly (not entirely) over by 1899, but no firm in a position to take on new orders of one locomotive.
... I do wonder though why the Midland didn't build some more S&D 2-8-0s for the job? ...
One was tried. I have seen a photograph of the trial. I have never discovered, and would be quite intrigued to do so, why the trial was not a success. Possibilities might be whether the bearings bore up all right on a journey from Nottinghamshire to Cricklewood rather than their more usual shorter one from Radstock to Bath or whether the 2-8-0 gave the wrong amount of extra power for what they were looking for. At that period the normal motive power for coal trains plodding down the Midland mainline was two 0-6-0s. Did they find that the S&D 2-8-0 would in practice only give them the equivalent of 1½ or even 1¾ 0-6-0s?
The big Fowler 0-8-0s were tried at the end of the 1920s but they don't seem to have been a success at anything. They could produce plenty of power but what their cylinders were producing was more than their frames and bearings could take. The Garrats were impressive to look at, but were not very reliable, and imposed a heavy burden on a single fireman heaving the same amount of coal on a shift as two firemen on two 0-6-0s.
When the LMS was designing the Fowler 0-8-0s, they looked at the S&D design but discovered that the cylinders stuck out too much for the loading gauge on much of a new system. I suppose it is also possible that the trial before the grouping that I mentioned might have hit the odd platform or other fixture.
All very interesting points. And, of course, many of the 0-6-0s were old and therefore "written down" in accounting terms. Probably two new LMS ones cost less to build that a single Garratt.
The Garratts would have been much better locomotives if the LMS had let Beyer-Peacock do things their way rather than insisting on Midland axleboxes (and wheel spacing!). But, seeing that they lasted for about 30 years, were they all bad?
The last survivor of the LMS Garratts (47994)was recorded in 1958 (by H C Casserley) as being *stationed at Hasland (Chesterfield), and may be seen on local freight trains in the district...* (My italics)
I bet the crew allocated that engine for the day weren't best pleased, though (on reflection) the fireman may not have had to do too much to keep a reasonable head of steam.
R E L Maunsell on the Southern Railway toyed with the idea of big Garratts, but was deterred partly by the idea of the frightful cost of lengthening platforms, loops, and sidings over much of the system. There is an outline drawing in one of Don Bradley's books, showing a splendid large-wheeled *Pacific x 2* locomotive, which would make a super *what if?* model. I daresay someone has built one!
There were a couple of industrial Garratts in Britain, and of course we now have them on the Welsh Highland (on which I've travelled behind one) and the Vale of Rheidol lines.
The Midland was a small-engine policy railway, for a variety of reasons. One may have been that pre-WW1 labour was relatively cheap and saving the wages of a driver and fireman was not necessarily a massive lever for capital expenditure.
I was interested to read that in the days of loose-coupled good trains, all such going northwards from Rowsley had to have a banking engine at the rear. As loops limited train lengths to so many wagons (40?), it really did not matter how big the train engine was. Anything much above a 4F would effectively be more powerful than it needed to be for the purpose. So why bother?
The Midland was a relatively profitable concern, so it probably thought it was doing OK. The crunch came when the expanded LMS found it did not really have anything suitable to work expresses over the WCML. They even tried Hughes's L&Y 4-6-0s on the job. It took Sir William Stanier to sort it, and I think it's fair to say even he didn't get it right the first time.
The Midland was a small-engine policy railway, for a variety of reasons. One may have been that pre-WW1 labour was relatively cheap and saving the wages of a driver and fireman was not necessarily a massive lever for capital expenditure.
I was interested to read that in the days of loose-coupled good trains, all such going northwards from Rowsley had to have a banking engine at the rear. As loops limited train lengths to so many wagons (40?), it really did not matter how big the train engine was. Anything much above a 4F would effectively be more powerful than it needed to be for the purpose. So why bother?
The Midland was a relatively profitable concern, so it probably thought it was doing OK. The crunch came when the expanded LMS found it did not really have anything suitable to work expresses over the WCML. They even tried Hughes's L&Y 4-6-0s on the job. It took Sir William Stanier to sort it, and I think it's fair to say even he didn't get it right the first time.
That's true about the road over Peak Forest. I knew that line in steam days but only discovered relatively recently that the banker was necessary not just to provide the extra push but to safeguard against runaways if any couplings broke. The load for anything going to Buxton was even shorter as it + engine and banker had to be able to fit between both ends of the arm of the curve that connected the Midland with the LNWR there. Otherwise, if it did not get a clear run through, it would block the junction at one end at least of the curve.
The claim that the Midland only built small engines is often repeated but is not quite as true as it sounds. The Compounds and the 999 class may 'only' have been 4-4-0s but they were larger than people realise, bigger than some 4-6-0s on other railways. The Compounds and the Somerset and Dorset 2-8-0s shared the same boiler.
The original parallel boiler Scots were very good engines for their time. They did, though, date from just before a number of marked improvements in detail design, piston rings that could go a lot longer and remain tight for example, that made them so much more even of an improvement in their rebuilt form.
Comments
One of the very few industrial railways I saw working was at Midhurst Whites brickworks in Sussex.
We were more successful the second time, when we saw on the way the Brighton-Exeter (SO) train formed of a Hastings DEMU, had a walk inside Midhurst Tunnel, viewed the lovely LBSC stations south of Midhurst, including (with permission) a ramble around amazing Singleton, were surprised to find a real train at Lavant (a gravel contract - we thought the line had been closed and lifted), had glimpses of the Chichester Waterworks Railway and what was left of the Hayling Island Bridge, and consumed fish and chips on said island before returning to Southampton.
I can offer some photos (I have a sub-$300 phone so excuse the poor quality) of the railway station where I live; a small regional city (we have 2 cathedrals; it's that not our 25,000 population that makes us a "city"). I think for sheer grandeur, Albury, another small, regional city, which must have had a very small population when the thing was built, takes some beating here in New South Wales.
BTW the "old" Ghan (which went no further north than Alice Springs) was narrow-gauge.
I'd need to look up South Australia and Western Australia later, but I suspect differences.
Mark Twain passed through and commented “The strangest thing, the unaccountable marvel that Australia can show, namely the break of gauge at Albury. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth." (!)
The line to Armidale was closed last century, then reopened. It passes through quite hilly country (Armidale is at ~920m and towns to the south are higher). One train a day from and to. The train splits/joins the service from Moree at Werris Creek, south of here. More detail here for any interested.
This was one (political) reason for the slow move away from steam in the UK. These works and their thousands of skilled staff were not set up for anything else. Few had any significant knowledge of diesel or electric traction.
With the post-war consensus prioritising full employment, there was a great reluctance to discard these workers.
I don't know about the works, but after WW2 in the face of high employment it became increasingly difficult to recruit and retain footplate and locoshed staff as the pay was low, the work arduous and filthy, the hours unsocial and the conditions awful. Things did improve after the Modernisation Plan as per the Frodingham article here: http://www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk/html/march_2025.html
Woodford Halse is another obvious one - village of about 4000 now. Until the 1960s over 2000 men were employed on the railway there. Engine sheds, wagon works, enormous marshalling yards, station, five signal boxes, platelayers etc
Now the nearest railway line (never mind station) is probably Cropredy.
No doubt it was a logical step on the part of the LMS, and at least they had the decency to relocate the War Memorial from the Works to the S&DJR part of Highbridge station...
Most of the works buildings remained standing - in a derelict state - right up until the 1960s, which must have added insult to injury.
I grew up in Gorton. The whole area was built on engineering of one sort or another. Gorton Tank (GCR) and Beyer Peacock (private sector loco builders) were literally across the tracks from each other. Not far away were Armstrong Whitworth and Crossley Engineering. (Crossley Motors had moved out to Burnage by my time and Ashburys Carriage and Wagon was long gone.) There were other smaller enterprises and many locals also found jobs at the 'Car Works' - Manchester's huge bus maintenance plant in nearby Ardwick, which had formerly built whole trams - and bus bodies.
Almost all this is gone now, and what people do for a living I don't know. They can't all work in Tesco. But Gorton has turned in my lifetime from a proud, upper-working-class district to a quite ghastly slum.
Yes, and I gather that the Railway War Memorial has been relocated near the general Town Memorial.
The derelict works made a sorry sight, and were featured in John Betjeman's film of the Evercreech Junction - Burnham line in the early 60s.
Much the same could be said, I suppose, of the former locomotive building activities of certain areas of Leeds and Glasgow, to name only two examples.
In the 1950s there was quite. a marked labour shortage. A lot of industries, including the railways, were having difficulty recruiting enough staff.
There are some good videos on YouTube illustrating this, with reference not only to the buses, but also to the Underground system - a big railway operation, by any standards, If you decide to look these up, DON'T read the disgracefully racist comments...
I don't think it's any coincidence that steam lasted longest in the North East and North West of England, where opportunities were fewer - even in the golden, dying days of the post-war consensus,
There was a reason why the Labour Government of 1964 introduced a Selective Employment Tax. There was a shortage of labour in many areas, and the idea was to discourage what were deemed to be 'unnecessary' roles. E.g. bus conductors.
It wasn't one of the big *glamorous* sheds, with lots of express engines, but dealt mainly with goods and mixed-traffic types, along with some tank engines for local trains. IIRC, there were about 50 engines allocated back in the mid-50s, but electrification of our main line, and the introduction of DMUs on some services, reduced the allocation to less than a dozen by the end of steam operation in 1965.
4,352 kilometers (2,704 miles).
Excuse the delay.
4,352 kilometers (2,704 miles).
Excuse the delay.
[/quote]
You can get to Brisbane, but the rest of Queensland is narrow gauge. That's going north, though.
And that was a BR Standard, fitted fitted with labour-saving devices such as a self-cleaning smokebox and rocking grate ... and no inside cylinders and motion either!
Did you ever read about servicing the New York Central "Niagaras"? They had an amazing utilisation rate but only because fireboxes etc were cleaned out while still hot by men in asbestos "space suits".
The Ffestiniog's Alco "Mountaineer" has lasted well!
As a consequence, certain railways - I can think of the Great Central, the Midland and the Barry offhand - bought USA products. These engines were not long-lived, although I think the Barry ones lasted longest and were reboilered by the GWR.
The question is whether this was down to quality or down to the inherent conservatism of British railways.
For a start, the engines had bar frames - definitely Not Done Here. I seem to recall the GC engines allegedly had an inordinate appetite for lubrication oil. On the other hand, they did have commodious cabs, certainly a massive step-up from the very modest cabs seen on many native engines of this era.
Later Scottish railways might well have resembled American lines more closely, had Scotland not been physically joined to England IYSWIM.
Some were broad gauge (5 feet 6 inches), and a gauge of 6 feet was to be found on several quite extensive railroads in the US.
Several railways, including the GC, Caley and L&Y, experimented with large, USA-style goods wagons. Speaking generally, these were not a success. In part, this was because UK wagon loadings were often quite modest. It's no use having a 30-ton goods van to carry 2 tons of goods when a 10-ton vehicle is more than adequate. Coal merchants often preferred an 8-ton wagon (easier for one man with a shovel to unload). A bogie 40-tonner was the last thing they wanted! (The GC's bogie coal wagons were only ever used for loco coal. Not even industry could be persuaded to accept anything above a 20-ton 4-wheeler, and there were not many of them.)
Similarly, American-style saloon coaches (the type that is now usual, otherwise 'opens) were not at all popular in Victorian/Edwardian England. Most passengers still preferred the privacy of compartments. It was a very slow transition to where we are now.
One of the outcomes of the GC tour was to look at the possibility of introducing electrification. Especially for the Worsborough Bank, where coal trains needed one, two or even three banking engines. Robinson costed it out and decided it was unaffordable and better done with special steam locos. (I suspect he was an unreconstructed steam man.) This led, eventually, to the famous Beyer Garratt, a single, very expensive loco that was more or less a failure from the day it hit the track. (Part of the blame goes to the sainted Gresley, who complicated the design with three cylinders at each end, a GN concept that neither the GC nor Beyer Peacock would have adopted for this job.)
Less well known is a proposal to procure or make some gigantic USA-style locos (2-12-4s or something along those lines) to work 100 wagon coal trains from the Yorkshire coalfield to Immingham Docks. It was actually intended to open up two or three tunnels to enable these monsters to operate, as they were well outside the normal loading gauge.
What stopped this idea in its tracks, I don't know. Maybe the cost of opening up those tunnels. Or maybe it dawned on someone that it would be necessary to open out Woodhead Tunnel (and a couple of others) to get these behemoths to and from Gorton Works for maintenance.
If those engines had been built, they would have been - well, legendary.
edit: on sleeping compartments, I had one wonderful trip from Dresden [?], maybe Berlin, I'm getting old, to Munich on the Nachtzug: lovely.
1. "Open" style carriages in America even extended, I think, to sleeping cars in the early days. They didn't have compartments with transverse beds, but bunks arranged lengthways on either side of a gangway and made private with curtains.
2. Gresley tried longer coal trains with his P1 2-8-2 goods locomotives. But they were too long for many goods loops and (presumably) sidings, so not a success. As a child living near the southern end of the Midland main line, I can remember 90-wagon coal trains hauled by 9Fs and, later, "Peaks" - the latter usually pushing a brake tender.
3. After Worsborough Bank was electrified, the Garratt went to the Lickey where it wasn't a success. Crews found its great length difficult when buffering up; more to the point it was so heavy that it was hard to avoid a really big "thump" when doing so. Conversely the Lickey banker "Big Emma/Bertha" was tried on the Toton-London coal trains and wasn't a success. I believe that its boiler was designed for short hard pushes, possibly being "mortgaged" in the process, and wasn't suitable for long slow drags. I do wonder though why the Midland didn't build some more S&D 2-8-0s for the job?
This photo is quite well-known, I thing: super-power! https://tinyurl.com/y46c66j3
IIRC I think they made some serious modifications quite early on, so whether it spent its original working life as the original locomotive intended by Baldwin might be a question.
I think Manning Wardle (builders of the original trio, and indeed the later 5th locomotive) either were or had been on strike along with the workforces of other British private builders, so they weren't in a position to fulfil the order*. Hence going to Baldwin.
*Amongst L&B enthusiasts there is also a (conspiracy?) theory that the original three Manning Wardles were a cancelled order from India, so there's also a question over whether they'd have been able to supply even them had they not been kicking around in the factory.
As above, industrial action in locomotive builders in 1898. Mostly (not entirely) over by 1899, but no firm in a position to take on new orders of one locomotive.
The big Fowler 0-8-0s were tried at the end of the 1920s but they don't seem to have been a success at anything. They could produce plenty of power but what their cylinders were producing was more than their frames and bearings could take. The Garrats were impressive to look at, but were not very reliable, and imposed a heavy burden on a single fireman heaving the same amount of coal on a shift as two firemen on two 0-6-0s.
When the LMS was designing the Fowler 0-8-0s, they looked at the S&D design but discovered that the cylinders stuck out too much for the loading gauge on much of a new system. I suppose it is also possible that the trial before the grouping that I mentioned might have hit the odd platform or other fixture.
The Garratts would have been much better locomotives if the LMS had let Beyer-Peacock do things their way rather than insisting on Midland axleboxes (and wheel spacing!). But, seeing that they lasted for about 30 years, were they all bad?
I bet the crew allocated that engine for the day weren't best pleased, though (on reflection) the fireman may not have had to do too much to keep a reasonable head of steam.
R E L Maunsell on the Southern Railway toyed with the idea of big Garratts, but was deterred partly by the idea of the frightful cost of lengthening platforms, loops, and sidings over much of the system. There is an outline drawing in one of Don Bradley's books, showing a splendid large-wheeled *Pacific x 2* locomotive, which would make a super *what if?* model. I daresay someone has built one!
The most amazing variety IMO were the Algerian express locos which, alas, were only introduced shortly before WW2. https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50095976418_b2feb10c0e_b.jpg
I was interested to read that in the days of loose-coupled good trains, all such going northwards from Rowsley had to have a banking engine at the rear. As loops limited train lengths to so many wagons (40?), it really did not matter how big the train engine was. Anything much above a 4F would effectively be more powerful than it needed to be for the purpose. So why bother?
The Midland was a relatively profitable concern, so it probably thought it was doing OK. The crunch came when the expanded LMS found it did not really have anything suitable to work expresses over the WCML. They even tried Hughes's L&Y 4-6-0s on the job. It took Sir William Stanier to sort it, and I think it's fair to say even he didn't get it right the first time.
The claim that the Midland only built small engines is often repeated but is not quite as true as it sounds. The Compounds and the 999 class may 'only' have been 4-4-0s but they were larger than people realise, bigger than some 4-6-0s on other railways. The Compounds and the Somerset and Dorset 2-8-0s shared the same boiler.
The original parallel boiler Scots were very good engines for their time. They did, though, date from just before a number of marked improvements in detail design, piston rings that could go a lot longer and remain tight for example, that made them so much more even of an improvement in their rebuilt form.