Good Evening, it’s just past 9pm here in the UK. I am a professional railroad employee working at the passenger station in the town of Chippenham, Wiltshire. Chippenham is 94 miles west of London on the old Great Western main line.
We are close to the Didcot freight yard which always busy with EWSRs JT42s (Class 66 to us) and Freightliners version (the 66/5s) which work the fast intermodals to from Southampton Maritime container terminal. Destinations range fromTrafford Park (Manchester) to Lawley Street (Birmingham) and as far a fiel as Glasgow (Scotland)
Since the arrival onto British shores of EMDs JT42 machines, it has given the UK railroas scene a distinctly US flavour which I’m sure a great deal of British railfans fail to recognise. The photographs in TRAINS provide me with much inspiration and this year I plan to try and capture some big GMs with a long lens.
Enjoy your train watching - keep those freight cars rolling.
Possibly the people using this thread can answer some questions about British steam:
Three of the four pre-nationalization, post-grouping railroads used Pacifics as top passenger power. The Great Western did not, but stuck with 4-6-0’s, their best, I believe, being the Castle class. Why? How did performances compare among the various Pacifics and the 4-6-0 Castles?
Was the Bounrmouth line the very last main-line top-rostered steam operation or was it in Scottland up to Aberdeen? In the summer of 1962 steam was in use on both, with Gresley A-4’s on Aberdeen expresses and Bulleid Pacifics on the Bournmouth Bell.
The most powerful GWR 4-6-0’s were the Kings - whether they or the Castles were better I wouldn’t like to say - depends on how you define ‘good’. The GWR did have one Pacific (Britain’s first), Churchward’s ‘The Great Bear’ built 1908 which all in all was not seen as a success, and was converted to a Castle in about 1921. And there was a post war design proposal under Hawksworth, which didn’t come to anything.
But the short answer to why they didn’t have any others is that they didn’t feel the need - the Kings and Castles were sufficient.
I’m sure there are lots of similar questions which could be asked over US railroads, as to why some never used otherwise common wheel arrangements.
Use of (ex-)LNER Pacifics in Scotland (on the ex-Caledonian (LMS) Glasgow-Aberdeen route) ended in 1966, the Bulleid pacifics on the London-Bournemouth-Weymouth route lasted until electrification in 1967. There were some (minor) Class 1 steam passenger workings into 1968, in Lancashire.