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English locomotive to return to steam after 27 years
Always to hear of another of God’s Wonderful Railway coming back to life. Keep Calm and Steam On!
Wikipedia article, w/photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_4900_Class_4930_Hagley_Hall
Lest anyone infer otherwise from this article, the restored engine was used to haul what in America would be considered heritage excursion trains on a heritage line. Steam was phased out somewhat late in the UK, with some lines (the old and sadly now closed GCML springs to mind) running them until the late sixties, but by the seventies no scheduled British Rail trains were steam powered, the occasional excursion notwithstanding.
(Why so late? Lack of money and problems with the fact BR wanted to electrify the entire network, but were told fairly late on that wasn’t possible.)
Does everyone know what this loco looks like or could we see a picture of it?
reference: Bristol Zoo
reference: Bristol Zoo
This is a great article and all, and like I said the history of steam in Britain is slightly different to that implied but still interesting, but I think what this article really needs is a comment thread full of spam messages about a completely unrelated charity. If only someone, say, someone with too much time on their hands in DC, could post some meaningless subheadings followed by a dubious “charity” URL.
For Mr. Loggins - “Black 5” is an appellation given to 4-6-0 locomotives used by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway. They had lots of them and I’d guess that at least five of them are still in service on preserved railways. You can find loads of information about them on Google. They were very good mixed service engines but I’m sure the Great Western - aka God’s Wonderful Railway (-: - would suggest that the GWR Halls and their kin were better! British enthusiasts do a wonderful job of preserving and operating their steam locomotives - and the younger generation isn’t too bad with diseasels either!!
One of the reasons the British steam engines had a lot of power was they used 3 and 4 cylinder engines rather than just the two cylinder engines the US uses. If I rember the New Haven I-05 was one of the few 3 cyclinder engines. The basic complaint in the US was that it was maintenance intensive. They tend to have a much smoother drive and more power.
My dad, a former GWR locomotive engineer (engine driver in UK) was fond of telling me that he had driven locomotives from all the classes of steam locomotive on the GWR except for the King Class. This would have included the many Hall Class locomotives although he referred to them by their numbers rather than their class names, e.g. a King would be a 60XX class, or “a 60” he would say. He started work around 1918 as an engine cleaner in south Wales and then progressed to fireman and then passed fireman. As a driver he worked out of Severn Tunnel Junction (STJ) for 15 years in the Bristol, Gloucester, Badminton, Newport area with a further 10 years back in south Wales until he retired in 1964. His final year was driving English Electric Type 3 diesel-electric locomotives after his depot converted to diesel. During WW2 at STJ he also worked the U.S. locomotives that were sent over to UK before they went on to Europe. He must have gone through the nearly four and a half mile long Severn Tunnel thousands of times.
Interesting comments Paul, I take it by GCML you mean the Great Central? Not really old as it was the last of the main lines to be built.
Maybe the fact that the railways being Nationalized didn’t help with an over complicated structure, managers who couldn’t or wouldn’t manage. Unions that were scared of the thought of change and an image problem - being considered old in the jet age.
With hindsight it could be claimed that steam didn’t last long enough. Part of that lack of money was due to building steam locomotives that would work for less than ten years before being thrown on the scrap heap to be replaced by multiple classes of diesels many of which didn’t work.
Much of the rail system has since been electrified and a level of service is provided that is unthinkable in north America.
I find the British steam locomotives quite interesting - it’s amazing to this engineer how much performance they could get out of a relatively small and light engine. But I’m confused by the profusion of 4-6-0 types over there: Is this loco one of the famous “Black Fives”? Or have they all gone to scrap?
Whilst it is true that the vast majority of UK steam locos had two cylinders it is the case that nearly all of the high profile express passenger locos built by the “Big Four” pre-nationalisation companies had three or four cylinders. The LNER and GWR have already been mentioned. On the LMS three cylinder “Scots”, “Patriots” and “Jubilees” were followed by four cylinder Pacifics. On the Southern four cylinder “Nelsons” and three cylinder “Schools” followed by three cylinder Bullied Pacifics.
There were very few multi-cylinder steam locomotives on Britain’s railways - there were, of course, exceptions such as Sir Nigel Gresley’s LNER fleet - but most railways used 2 cylinder machines for most work. Probably 95% or so of British steam locomotives were 2-cylindered. What was different was the use of inside cylinders from the early days until the first quarter of the 20th Century (and until the middle of the Century for small tanks and goods engines).
The Great Western had just three types of 4-cylinder engines - the ‘Kings’, ‘Castles’ and ‘Stars’ - for express passenger work, and used much standardisation amongst the rest of its fleet, the ‘Halls’ being the largest class numerically. ‘Hagley Hall’ is just one of 17 members of the ‘Hall’ classes to be preserved, most of them in working order.