This is unacceptable in Canada! If the Queen can’t straighten these things out and give moral guidance to her subjects - Well! what good is she? Sittin on her ass all the time eating tea and crumpets!
Doc
I wish Winston was still around. He’d know what to do!
This is the sort of thing of which Winston would say, “This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put.” That’s the sort of thing Winston would say.
British Railways was formed by the nationalization of the variously privately-owner railways (primarily the Big Four) in 1948.
Friends of the Flange is a great site, very informational.
Ms. Enoch just released a new article on the Barry Scrap Yard.
http://www.friendsoftheflange.com/2015/02/the-luckiest-scrapyard-in-world.html#more
As that article also says, steam was almost gone by 1964. So I really don’t see how the Beeching cuts played a huge role in the phase out of steam, which was well into the mopping up phases by the time large scale abandonments began.
If it accelerated anything to a great degree, it was the retirement of much of the early diesel fleet during the late 1960’s. More than a few of which ended up dying in this very scrapyard, including at least one example that was the last of her kind but cut up just on the eve of today’s diesel preservation movement since all the attention was on steam.
It seems to me that with lines made redundant and so the equipment that ran on them is now redundant, which would be junked first?
I’m just glad that routes are now being reinstated such as the Waverly route in Scotland, designed to serve a suburban area of Glasgow. I think that will cause other lines to be rebuilt. 50 years after Beeching, people are finally starting to undo the damage that caused. People in Britain don’t want to drive either, it seems.
Yeah, but the vast majority of the steam fleet was already gone. Check out rosters for some of the postwar classes of steam at Wikipedia for an example (Many of the entries there for various BR steam classes include roster data showing retirement dates). Even with a lot of the newer postwar steam power, a lot left the roster in the several years leading up to the Beeching program.
For its effects on British Rail motive power, I’d say that these large scale abandonments had much more of an effect on non-standard diesels in the fleet and purchases during the later 1960’s, as the reduced need for locomotives allowed retirements of diesels to be accelerated and it also allowed them to defer purchases as existing diesel power was reassigned.
I’m sure it was the final nail in the coffin for steam, but it only killed off the last few stragglers like the well received 9F class (Which I think survived intact until the Beeching cuts were in-progress). I bet even without the the Beeching cuts, 1968 would’ve perhaps at best ended up being 1970 instead.
Steam’s fate was sealed in the mid 1950’s and most of the fleet was already scrapped or waiting to be scrapped by the time these cuts arrived, with the survivors (Which still counted in the hundreds) when mass abandonments began representing just a fraction of the fleet as it existed in the late 1950’s.
The Supreme Pickers of Nit have failed !!!
There is yet another NYC locomotive saved. It was donated by the NYC in 1962 to Chgicao’s own Museum of Science & Industry … Number 999. Preserved & displayed in the great hall, under the Stuka and the Spitfire.
Yes, 999 is pretty well known. Also two NYC 0-6-0’s, one in a park in Dayton, Ohio, and one on the Whitewater Valley RR in Indiana. Also a Boston & Albany “Eddy Clock” 4-4-0 at the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis, and a 4-4-2 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI. Maybe others.
But the two Mohawks are the only surviving representatives of NYC Big Steam.
(Correction: The 0-6-0 from Dayton is now in Utica, New York)