It’s not always about time. Cost is the big factor. When designing the route the designers look at the cost of the bridge vs the cost of building an extra 20-30 miles of railway. Whichever is cheaper gets the job.
there was an Open University program on the Tay Bridge disaster. It was very interesting. The crux of it ISTR was that the bridge designers had used integral lugs cast with the columns. As it turns out cast iron is not very good in tension, and the designers of the time never accounted for the dynamic loading from the trains and the wind which caused tensile loads on the lugs (the struts were fine as they were wrought iron which is OK in tension). The lugs suffered fatigue failures and the whole mess came down. Sadly, when Engineers get it wrong people end up dead.
IIRC at least some of the failure was due to the shockingly bad quality of the castings themselves – google on “Beaumont Egg” for some of the awful details, and if memory serves there was a problem with sulfur as well. Where I thought Bouch had the problem was (not having seen the Open University program) in grossly undercalculating the effect of wind load on the lattice ‘high girders’ – seems to me that both the fact of tension and the lever arm of the high (and not-well-laterally-braced) lattices led to the failure. Exactly what were the moments due to the train’s passage (according to the program’s analysis) that actually induced the ‘discontinuities’ in the cast-iron leading to failure? (I would suspect it was general vibration with crystallization/stress raisers at some of the … er, voids … covered up by the casting firm…
It is NOT just the “engineer” who ‘got it wrong’ in this case, although it is definitely possible that the high girders would have fallen at some time even if the castings were perfect. One has to feel sorry for poor Thomas Bouch, who died a broken man within just a few months of the disaster…
With respect to the Tay Bridge that is sort of my patch as i work in network rail train planning and Scotland is my area. The average time for an Edinburgh Aberdeen service is 2’40’’ with Dundee near as spit halfway. If you went Dundee - Perth - Ladybank you would probably add 30 min to the journey if not more and Ladybank Perth is a LONG single track section that would kill capacety (?). I dont know what the time would be Edinburgh - Stirling - Perth - Dundee - Aberdeen, but i would not be suprised if it came out at 3’30’’ or more and that would mean the car would just slaughter the railway. The private car was not on the scene when the Forth and Tay bridges were built, but tourist passenger traffic to the Highlands was a lucrative market to be in. The Caledonian Railway conected with the LNWR at Carlisle and could run via Motherwell - Mossend - Stirling - Perth - Montrose - Aberdeen. The North British Railway connected with the NER at Berwick and before the opening of the bridges the route was Edinburgh - South Queensferry, boat to North Queensferry, train across Fife, boat across the Firth of Tay, train Dundee - Aberdeen.
I think the lines were already there before the bridge was built. Thomas Bouch also built the first roll on roll off ferry so that the trains could run straight on to the ferry and off again on the other side, to minimise transit time.
Some of the girders from the original Tay Bridge were re-used on the replacement bridge. I think Bouch was let down by several factors:-
a) under estimating maximum wind speeds
b) some of the materials being sub-standard
c) after it opened Bouch recommended trains should observe a 20mph speed limit over the bridge. But before it fell down there were regular reports of trains exceeding 60mph on the bridge and odd nuts and bolts coming loose without anyone getting very worried!
Can I ask what colour you intend repainting the ALCO?
I can recall seeing them during the 15 months between July, 1969, and September, 1970, that I spent at BSC Port Talbot (in my “Sandwich Year” out of University), at that time they were in British Steel Corporation’s blue house colour.
The pre 1967 nationalisation Steel Company of Wales, on the other hand, painted locos in a dark red not unlike EWS’s present red, with the usual wasp markings to aid visibility.
The ALCo will probably go into BSC blue, although there’s the possibility of it carrying a sponsor’s livery during restoration.
The original red was applied by Schenectady prior to delivery. We’re pretty certain it’s actually Lehigh Valley red; this is’nt as daft as it sounds as Lehigh Valley received a “one-off” S1 in 1949.
The rail-boat-rail-boat-rail link was started in the late 1840’s. The lines in Fife were used as a trunk line even before the bridges were built, however it was still built up peicemeal. Several of the main intermediate stations all seem to be at the bottom of steep grades or on a sharp grade. The section from Camelon near Falkirk to Perth was joint and the North British could hand over through carridges from the south to the Highland for Inverness and the Caledonian for Aberdeen at Perth.
Townsend: I guess this part that isn’t clear to me. At the time the Tay Bridge was proposed,why was the expence of building a major bridge seen as a better investment than putting that same money into a well built line around the water? Was the deciding factor simply to cut running time? Or was the terrain around the water too formidable, that a bridge was the better option? Thanks
I can probably answer that one for Townsend, and the simple answer is competition.
In the age of railway mania, money and engineering feats were secondary considerations to expedience. If you could move your commodity from, in this instance, Dundee to all points South faster than your potential competitors then the investment in a bridge was entirely justified.
This holds true in most of the Western World. Think, for instance, of the astonishing engineering feats attained in getting competing railroads to the West Coast of the USA.
To revert to the unfortunate Thomas Bouch, it’s worth remembering that he was also the engineer on the NER’s Stainmore road. This route carried extremely heavy traffic - coking coal from the Durham Coalfields to the iron and steel works in North Lancashire and Cumberland, and included the massive Belah Viaduct.
When the route was closed and dismantled in the 1960’s the demolition of Bouch’s Belah Viaduct was beyond any of the demolition contractors of the day because it was so substantial and remote, so eventually the Army were called in to remove it.
Hate to say this, but he didn’t ‘redeem’ himself; Belah was near the start, not the end, of his career IIRC. (Thank heaven we still have Podgill!)
I do agree that most of his work is good… but I can’t help breathing a sigh of great relief, having seen his drawings for the proposed Forth bridge (for which the contract had actually been let!) that his version wasn’t built…
Simon Reed is quite right, the Tay bridge was built by the North British Railway of Edinburgh, and the Forth Bridge was built by the Forth Bridge Company. The shares of which were split 30% NBR, 32.5% Midland, 18.75% each for the GNR and NER. The Midland, GNR and NER being the NBR’s conection into England. The inland route via Falkirk, Camelon, Perth was owned by the Caledonian Railway of Glasgow, and to say the North British and Caley disliked each other is an understatement. Before the Great War rather than acept the competition had a beter route, the Caley ran services from Princess Street station in Edinburgh via Perth to Aberdeen. While the NBR ran an Aberdeen - Glasgow services with the through Aberdeen Glasgow coaches coming of the main Aberdeen Edinburgh express at Dalmeny Jnt just south of Inverkeithing.
Do you have any photos from your time at Port Talbot? We have B&W pics of 804 as delivered at Schenectady in US RR pre modified condition. I always wandered when they were painted BSC Blue. I have a pic of oneof the BSC S1’s in blue in 1965 (if the caption is right) but I’ve never seen a pic of them with wasp stripes in red either.
If you have ANY info on the Port Talbot S1’s that would help us, please pass it on to Simon. We’d love to meet you on one of the meeting days if you can make it.
Cheers
Michael Ratledge
Co-founder and Chairman
UK ALCo Group
What possessed you guys to pick an ALCo as a preservation project?
In the UK there is no other choice if you want to preserve an American diesel loco.
All the rest are EMDs and are all still in service (I think there is an ex Ford Motor Company GEC loco somewhere, maybe on the Kent & East Sussex Railway??)Three of the five original Alco S1s from Port Talbot stil exist, 801, 803 & 804. I am involved with the group that owns 803 (serial Number 77777, Feb 1950) This loco is at Wallingford on the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway in Oxfordshire and is not at present in operatig condition, although some work has been done which was largely undone by vandals unfortunately. I had replaced all the cab windows with laminated safety glass but they managed to break these too.
Malc.
I would also like to know how this ALCO ended up in Wales? Why didn’t British Steel Corp buy English Electric? What were they used for? I think i can understand why you want to save it as i’ve heard ALCO’s on videos and they sound great. Not that enviromentaly friendly but a top sound.
Quote:
I would also like to know how this ALCO ended up in Wales? Why didn’t British Steel Corp buy English Electric? What were they used for? I think i can understand why you want to save it as i’ve heard ALCO’s on videos and they sound great. Not that enviromentaly friendly but a top sound.
The Steel Company Of Wales (SCOW) built a large integrated steelworks at Port Talbot in South Wales and wanted powerful diesel locos to move the very heavy hot metal trains from the blast furnaces to the steel making plant. At that time, the late 1940s- early 1950s, there was nobody in the UK building diesel locos above two or three hundred horsepower for industrial use, in fact the majority of industrial loco builders were still building steam locos. Alco was in a position to supply off the shelf S1s at short notice so SCOW ordered five. They were very highly thought of by both the managent and the crews who operated them. When we went to Port Talbot to look at 803 before buying it, the works transport manager told us that they were the best locos that they ever had and was sorry to see them go.
Malc.
Slightly off topic, but they also have some old (1949 I think) AL:CO’s in Portugal which I’ve seen on a number of visits to that country. But I think they were re-engined in the 1970’s with Caterpillar engines.
I think they still have US built diesel locos of some sort at MArgam steel works. Because they’re out of the gauge for the UK National network the tracks are more widely spaced in the exchange sidings than is usually as these locos run into the exchange sidings where EWS locos take over.
The Alcos were in service for over 30 years with SCOW and had reached a stage where it was uneconomical to keep on spending money on them to keep them going. I think they were replaced with locos built by Brush Electrical Engineering at Loughborough, but I don’t know any details about them. When we went to look at 803 it had been out of service 3 or 4 years and was in a shed with 801. By this time 804 was already at Peterborough and 802 and 805 had been either scrapped or broken for parts to keep the others going. 803 was minus its side buffers and about half the battery cells when we bought it but was otherwise complete. We also got a load of spares with it and all the original Alco drawings and drawings of modifications done by SCOW, for example, they modified the cooling system by fitting a by-pass pipe with a thermostat in it to circulate the coolant only round the engine until it was up to operating temperature.
Malc.