East Anglian Express Power

[Pyewipe Junction]

I've always thought that the GE Section got a very raw deal from the LNER in terms of its express motive power.

OK, so bridge weight restrictions are always said to have been the problem.

So how come British Railways were able to introduce the 'Brits' three years after nationalisation? Had all the bridges been strengthened during WWII, perhaps as a defence measure?

[Colombo]

I think it was a matter of the lack of 70 ft turntables as well.

Britannias (RA8) were lighter than LNER Pacifics which were RA9 loco. Were not SR Bulleid light pacifics tried out at one stage?

On the other hand Sandringhams were comparatively light RA5 locos and built for the GE section.


Colombo

[CVR1865]

The deal the old ge got from the lner was 2 fold. one being that the lner had little surplus cash and that a new class of loco B17, was more cost efficient than building pacifics and long turntables. Secondly the ge system only made significant money around london so the LNER invested in that with N7's and the artic stock to improve that end.

The majority of GE land being seasonal traffic and the running of branchlines, many of which needed upgrade work. So the LNER did invest a lot up until ww2, it wasn't really the glamour section and Stratford was left pretty much to do its own thing.

Simon

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

It would be fair to say that the GE lines do not have severe gradients!

The Holden standardisation policy on the GER left the LNER with a good, standardised, fleet of mainly small, but simple and reliable, engines, which did not need replacement. A higher proportion of GER engines survived to nationalisation, and indeed to the end of steam, than any other pre-Group railway.

I have read that the investment in the B17s was blamed for a pay cut imposed at about the time they were introduced.

[Pyewipe Junction]

Sorry, I'm going you have to disagree with you guys.

Why bother to introduce the Britannias on the London - Norwich route if there was no need for them (which seems to be the implication of responses to my original post).

I've read more than once that the Brits revolutionised the London -Norwich expresses, so I'll go back to my original question: why couldn't this have been done under the LNER?

BTW Andrew, I think you'll find that there were more ex Caledonian, North Eastern and possibly North British engines around for longer than ex Great Eastern types.

[CVR1865]

In the 1950s more people (as a percentage of the population) were taking holidays in England so there was more traffic going up the GE mainline. If you look at the difficulty of producing the B17 to weight for the GE section where it comes in over and over too heavy then you will see why the LNER goes no bigger.

War brings around technical innovation at a greater pace and this feeds back into civvy street so by the time of nationalisation construction techniques have sufficiently moved on to make a light pacific so the Brits are introduced. Probably with minimal re-inforcement work. So given the chance the LNER may well have introduced their own light pacifics.

I use light in the sense of reduced mass, or axle load. the weights were as follows:
143 tons (old money) Brit. going with the LNER A1 having an axle load of 20tons in 1922 and a total weight of 150t. Then the same axle load of the B17 of 18tons would be well within the realms by 1951. the B17 total wieght is given as between 76 and 80 tons (i assume loco only, richard?) so the axle load for its size appears quite high. This is summised as i cannot for the life of me find the Brit's axle load anywhere so if someone actually knows. . .

The truth in this matter is no doubt somewhere in between everyones opinion.

Simon

[richard]

Yes engine weights. There were a number of tenders with the B17s. Combined with the 6 sub-classes, the B17s are one of the most complicated classes to list the weights for - that's why I skipped most of them!


Richard

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I'm trying to think what significant bridges there are between Liverpool Street and Norwich Thorpe.

There are not a lot of bridges on the Cambridge line, either.

Much more to the point, I am fairly sure that Britannias ran over the troublesome (and now closed) swing bridges at the North end of the East Suffolk!

It's a puzzle.

[Wainwright]

In the 1920s / 30s, did no one senior at the LNER think about moving (for eg) ex NER or NBR Atlantics to the GER?

It's always struck me as odd that the GE region retained the 4-6-0 'anomaly' on probably the least graded route in the entire group whilst Atlantics (partic if they were GNR ones) could still be standing in for Pacifics (inc A4s!) until the 40s!

I've read that a blending of the C1 design with features (particularly boiler/cylinder design) from the K2s or K3s (either new build or rebuild) seemed on the cards for a long time ... would this have ended up in East Anglia had it been built in numbers?

[Wainwright]

OK, ignore some of the above as I have now checked the axle loading on the NBR and GNR Atlantics at least but why was 4-4-2 not considered for what became the B17s? Or was it? And were C2 transfers an option?

[PaulG]

[quote="Andrew Craig-Bennett"]It would be fair to say that the GE lines do not have severe gradients!

The GE main line between London and Norwich via Ipswich was a very difficult route for locos and crew, because it was constructed very cheaply.

If you look at a map of the route you will find the line crosses a number of river valleys resulting in a very switch-back route and in most cases the bottom of a run also has a sharp curve! The curve radii are also such that even today the 100mph max line speed is restricted in numerous places.

From MP16 to MP19 at Brentwood you have a rising gradient of between 1:100 and 1:80 and at the summit you have Shenfield Station with its junction to Southend.

Between MP29 and MP30 you have the viaducts built on a curve through Chelmsford Station. In both directions, the viaduct is approached by over one mile of falling gradients.

The history of Colchester Station (MP51-MP52), resulted in further speed constraints, not resolved until the rebuilding of the platforms and easing of the curves in BR days.

The approx 3 miles of down hill gradient of 1:127 from MP57 to MP59 ends in a sharp curve through Manningtree Station, junction for Harwich and over the viaduct!

etc etc

Whilst current research into the railways of East Anglia has found Cecil J Allen "The Great Eastern Railway" book first published in 1955 "wanting" in a number of areas, it is interesting to read that in 1855 the London to Norwich service via Cambridge had some average start-to-stop speeds of between 47.5 and 46mph, when the remaining railways of Great Britain, other than the GWR and GNR, could barely reach 40mph!

Regards
Paul

[Blink Bonny]

Might the fact that the US Air Force just about took over East Anglia for its bomber bases had a lot to do with the major bridge strengthening programme?

Even a Flying Fortress with its light bomb load (compared to a Lancaster) still took nearly three tons of bombs aloft and several thousand gallons of fuel. Then there were the millions of bricks salvaged from bombsites all over the country that were shipped to the new aerodrome sites to form cheap hardcore.

Small 0-6-0s just were not up to the job of hauling these trains so many upgrades were made to allow WDs and S160s to haul much longer trains than the GE section had been used to. I would think that BR simply completed the job to allow Brits.

Yes, Bullied light Pacifics were tried out on the GE and the redoubtable R N Hardy made sure that they went back where he thought they belonged!

As to why larger engines were felt to be required after Nationalisation, I suspect the increased threat from private motoring meant that train speeds had to be increased and this would have meant either bigger engines or lighter trains.

[hq1hitchin]

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the LNER was an impoverished railway and what little money it had was spread thinly when it came to building express passenger locomotives. Given that the B12 was a good design and capable of handling almost all GE jobs, it makes you wonder whether the B17s would have been built at all, had the B12/3s come along first.

The Norwich main line is far from an easy road, I remember being very impressed riding to Norwich from LV for the first time on a Cl 47, having come from the GN, where we thought it a waste to allocate them to Stratford! The engine had to be worked hard to keep time.

Certainly, the Britannias revolutionised Norwich services, but that wouldn't have happened if Michael Barrington Ward had had his way "What - send them to that bl**dy tramway!" he said when he first heard where they were to be allocated. Luckily Master Fiennes got his way instead.

Incidentally, the V4 was a little crackerjack when first trialled on the GE, I wonder if we'd have seen more of them on that section had the war not intervened?

[brsince78]

Luckily Master Fiennes got his way instead.

It was Gerry Fiennes and his colleague Stuart Ward who were the reason for the first tranche of 25 Britannias (minus 2, one for each of the Southern and Western Regions) being allocated to the G.E. main-line services. They redesigned the timetable based around maximising the utilisation of locomotive and rolling stock and realised that the Thompson B1's that were in use at the time did not have the ability or the capacity (in terms of coal and water) to run the service. Fiennes at that time was also chairman of a committee that oversaw the building programme of the new standard locomotives. Two Battle of Britain locomotives were borrowed to prove that the new Pacifics should be able to deliver the timetable.

The above is summarised from Gerry Fiennes book, "I tried to run a railway". Essential reading..... if you can get your hands on a copy....