That 70000 train at the start is still running today! It has had a few problems, including a big breakdown last year, since returning to the line in 2011, but it's still going! 😁
@delivix I was going to make this exact comment, glad I scrolled down first! Shinkansen celebrating 60 years this year & still going strong, although the MAGLEV is the new kid on the block in Japan.
@@schmill2.... and China. The old bogey of actually stopping the damned things safely still applies though!! Current speed records for MAGLEV All Comers 375 mph (603km/h) 🇯🇵 In service 268mph (431km/h) 🇨🇳 The first linear induction motor was developed by Prof Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College London 🇬🇧 back in the late 1940s .... then like the computer and the jet engine, the UK did sod all else, preferring investment went elsewhere.
@@Jaxymann The Italians couldn't do steam locomotives very well and haven't got much coal anyway, they were presumably early into hydro and so electrification made some sense. They ended up with obsolescent 3 phase and low voltage systems.
In 1952, that air killed about 10 -12,000 people across London, with another 100,000 made ill by smog. I don't want to taste it, see it, smell it, or even recall it as other than a cautionary tale .... and yes, I DO remember mainline steam and smoke belching from almost every chimney pot as soon as the temperature dipped towards the end of autumn.
it's worth mentioning, that when new, The Britannia's had hand rails on the smoke deflectors, but after an accident that was caused by them when they obstructed the driver's view, according to the report, they were replaced with cut away hand holds.
@@TheHoveHeretic similarly, I'd thought that with all the engines on the LMS (Royal Scots, Patriots, Princess Coronations) and SR (Nelsons, King Arthurs) with much the same style of smoke deflector, with grab rails, if those were a _real_ issue, it would have been raised long beforehand and corrected?🤔 I half fancy that it was at least in part the Western Region enginemen - who'd _never_ liked the Britannias, and somehow couldn't ever get good performances out of them - leaping at a chance to throw some mud at what everyone else found to be an excellent design, but then I'm biased being East Anglian where they were a total Godsend and crews adored them.
@@michael32AOdd isn't it ... or perhaps merely perverse ... that the Western Region took to the 9Fs to the extent of using them on named express trains! The Maunsell 'mogul' design was used over on the GSR in Ireland (the initial purchase from Woolwich Arsenal being by the pre-grouping MGWR). As Classes 372 and 393, they never carried smoke deflectors there. The only Irish locos to employ them were GSR No.402 (but no other 400 class!) and the GNRI's Class VS (the sadly extinct 'simple' variant of the V Class compound).
Britannia was originally gonna be an NRM locomotive as well, but she was swapped for brother Oliver Cromwell due to Britannia being so badly worn out at the end of British mainline steam.
You can thank Dai Woodham for that. But for him, we'd likely have no more than a couple of dozen survivors and most of those would never turn a wheel under their own power again.
It's not a few. Due to a quirk with the dismantling of trains, the number I heard was ~80% of active stock got saved when they went over to Diesel. Very hard to take apart. One did get built from new old stock about 20 years ago. There's a great documentary about trains on Great Courses Plus. Railways or summat by Neil Patrick Allitt, has a free 1 month trial. Great doc.
@@TheHoveHeretic Absolutely, I visited Barry scrapyard in 1983, it was incredible walking along the lines of ghostly rusting engines with their faded paintwork and Lion and Wheel BR symbols. It's amazing how many were saved, even engines that had been cannibalised to provide parts for other projects were themselves saved.
Given the "Brit" was brand new and their allocations often replaced far smaller locos, you have to wonder if the driver had ever had charge of a pacific before? All steam locos tend to "sit back" on starting, transferring weight to the trailing axle, making slip more likely.
Got to love the Standard 7 (nicknamed the Britannias after 70000 "Britannia" or 'brit' for short). The Standard 7 is by far my favourite class of steam locomotive!
As late as 1967 in the last days of steam, I used to rejoice when the Fridays only relief train from Manchester to York was hauled by a Britannia class loco.
@5:04 although the Standard Class 7 4-6-2 was slightly longer, the Standard Class 8 4-6-2 was heavier and both the Class 8 and the Standard Class 9F 2-10-0 were more powerful.
a massive lesson learnt about the benefits of standardisation... immediately forgotten by ordering two dozen different diesels from a dozen suppliers with no interchangeable parts and which couldn't even work together in multiple. Can but hope GBR makes it make sense and builds some standardised designs.
Back around 2010 a work colleague of mine did some volunteer work on Britannia at Southall. One day he came to my desk and placed the whistle from Britannia by my computer, where it stayed for the rest of the day!
0:43 Great Scotland Yard. It's A LNER Gresley Streamlined A4 Pacific Main Line Express Steam Locomotive No.60033 Seagull. A Bit Like Mallard. Thanks Mate. XXxxx 🇬🇧 🇦🇺 🇺🇸
Thank you for listening to me BBC Archive, about your films, television programmes, clips etc related to anything railway related to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the British Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Terrorties. Can we please also see the Channel Tunnel opening and the BR Class 373 Eurostar as this was 1994 and this being the thirtieth anniversary.
@@TheMusicalElitistPoint of Order: By the time the Brits came out, Babbage's 'differential engine' had been invented, ignored and forgotten for ¾ of a century and Alan Turing's pioneering computer had been designed, built, used to win the war, dismantled and 'D Noticed' (except for being given to the CIA) for half a decade.
With basic maths knowledge and simple skills you could construct a slide rule. I doubt whether anyone could make an electronic calculator. We have become so dependent on electronics and CAD many are forgetting basic principles of design and drawing office skills that produced these locomotives. I
They 'sort of did'. Back in 1951, official policy was still the postwar 'export everything, import as little as humanly possible'. We had coal, we didn't then have oil. Coal was priced in Pounds Sterling, oil in US Dollars. Steam was supposed to hold the fort until the widespread electrification we're still waiting for ... and if some of the comments on this thread are owt to go by, will continue to be waiting for indefinitely. The loose end-date Riddles and the BR management of that time had in mind for steam traction was from the 1980s, which was upended by the 1955 Modernisation Plan ( ever seen the 1955 Modernosation Plan? 'comprehensive' and 'detailed' are two words you wouldn't use to describe it! ). 0:02
@@TheHoveHeretic Electrification would really be the way to go as like steam it was powered by coal. We had the successful Manchester-Sheffield-Wath 1500v system with regenerative braking in 1954 "scrapped it ! "
Politics and economics. The L MS had constructed 2 diesel express locomotives, 10000 and 10001, they were the pioneers, the Southern had constructed 3 mainline Diesel locomotives, I'm sure it was plain to see for any engineers at the time, that they were the future along with mainline electrification as pioneered by the LNER. But, after the war we were short of money, ironically still are, couldn't afford to buy in oil for diesels, we had just Nationalised the coal industry and were sitting on an awful lot of coal, still are actually. So it was inevitable that a new series of steam locomotive would be constructed, 999 of them I seem to remember. The last, class 9F 92220 was completed at Swindon works, now a shopping centre, in 1960 and retired , but preserved in 1965, a working life of only 5 years. The highest number BR standard,92250 was completed at Crewe, now mostly a housing estate, in 1957/8. So that's how we got a very expensive fleet of locomotives with a short life. Equally ironically, many of the Diesels that ousted steam had a short life as well. Nice old film, times change, WFH, shop online, they call it progress.😉🤣🤣🤣
And the basic diesel engine design that was used in both of the types mentioned is still active now. Designed by English Electric, and obviously modernised and upgraded over the years. E.g. the 16 cylinder version used in the class 50 is still based on the old 12”x10” design.
Couldn't or wouldn't? Money being spaffed up the wall by UK governments is scarcely anything new and the investment record in the UK has been appalling since WWI .
I grew up on the LNW out of Euston. The period when diesels replaced steam now seems so short. Electrification was a huge step forward but the waste of resources in putting in all those (not terribly successful) diesels and scrapping many nearly new steam locos and all their infrastucture seemed utterly pointless.
@@TheHoveHeretic you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right? countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk; France-early 70s Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled Spain-early 70s Portugal-early 70s Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK Austria-early 70s Czechoslovakia-80s Denmark-early 70s Acouple of nteables just for some depth In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66. In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
73 years later we don’t even make Virgin steel ,all our locomotives ,rolling stock is railway companies are foreign. Our manufacturing is decimated and the vast majority of the workforce couldn’t even fix a puncture on a pushbike or put a bulb into a car light , they take it to Halfords. Absolutely pathetic.
Lots of modern cars make it almost impossible to get to the headlight bulb. Last one I did, had to remove the whole headlight unit from the car. Agreed, modern youngsters have probably never repaired a tyre puncture on their ‘pushbike’, but they are able to help their elderly relatives with technology. Different skills for different eras.
4:20 Who's he kidding about Britain still leading the world in steam locos? For obvious reasons there had been no new developments here apart from a few of Mr Bullied's eccentricities, in over ten years. So the Britannias along with all the other BR standard engines pulled together the best of the established designs along with a few revolutionary features such as Crosti boilers on a few of the 9Fs. Meanwhile the US had built steam engines, such as the Pensy T1s, capable of hauling 1000 tons at 100mph for 100 miles. Baldwin and Alco had taken steam developments far further than anything attempted here despite not beating Mallard, officially at least but then it all stopped faced with the onset of diesel..
We dont know exactly why that confidence evaporated but listening to the reterick from the then mininster it reminded me of the last government and their idealised view of the world, (which Brexit would deliver for the UK glorious riches). Countires in far flung corners of the world just waiting for GB PLC to come to them and sell them all of the wonderful stuff made in the UK. Not. There is some commonality in the fact that the UK government of the time was also Conservative.
@@doubledecker1985 are you sure about this - Alfred Barnes was the Minister of Transport in 1951. In 1951, the Conservative government appointed the same minister to both Transport and Civil Aviation, which were eventually merged in 1953.
British railways never tried the Hudson. Maybe it was unnecessary. The New York Central added trailing truck boosters, which increased their starting power.
@@marrrtinNot counting steam's better known 'last redoubts', the end of mainline steam in the UK was ahead of: France (1975) West Germany (1977) Spain (broad gauge 1975) Portugal (broad gauge 1977) Japan (1975) Australia (1973) New Zealand (1971) .... and in the UK, the VERY last mainline steam wasn't the 15 guinea special .... over in Northern Island, the faithful Class WT 'Jeeps' soldiered on into 1970, about the last duties being 'top and tailing' heavy spoil trains connected with motorway construction.
@@marrrtin you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right? countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk; France-early 70s Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled Spain-early 70s Portugal-early 70s Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK Austria-early 70s Czechoslovakia-80s Denmark-early 70s Acouple of nteables just for some depth In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66. In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
just more 'must prove how clever i am by running britain down' falsehoods. you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right? 1968. countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk; France-early 70s Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled Spain-early 70s Portugal-early 70s Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK Austria-early 70s Czechoslovakia-80s Denmark-early 70s Acouple of nteables just for some depth In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66. In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
0:040:15 This Is A Newsflash. This Is Kermit The Frog Reporting From The Sesame Street News Reporting Live At London's Marylebone Station In London In England In The UK And With BR's Famous Steam Locomotive No.70000 Britannia. A Bit Like LNER Gresley A3 Pacific No.4472 Flying Scotsman. A Different Story. XXxxx 🇬🇧 🇦🇺 🇺🇸
Only on suburban routes and the busiest main lines. Quieter routes are never worth electrifying. Electrification costs a fortune to maintain in reliable order.
TBF, there were stirrings here well before WWI, not all of which used Magnus Volk's system with a slightly higher voltage. The LBSC was well into investing in 6.6kvAC overhead ... unlike the British electrical engineering sector, meaning the whole supply chain from Germany came crashing down when someone took a potshot at a bloke in a pram back in 1914. Then there's been the insane start/stop cycle, meaning the UK's OHLE expertise has been squandered every time the investment tap is turned off ....
and yet Britain ultimately axed steam before most european inc western european countries... countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk; France-early 70s Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled Spain-early 70s Portugal-early 70s Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK Austria-early 70s Czechoslovakia-80s Denmark-early 70s Acouple of nteables just for some depth In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66. In 1961 the international Golden Arrow ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
Much of Europe was already state owned. Some UK railways were changed to electric in 1903 and 1906, but the cost of such work was too high for mainline services.
@@GrumpyL5 Britain's railways were state owned from 1948. An investment in electrification would have been a very shrewd thing to have begun at that point, but I guess the government were too busy pretending to be a global superpower, spending the Marshall Aid money on trying to develop A-bombs and the V-bombers to drop them from (obsolete almost as soon as they left the drawing board)
So, the Brits designed a new steam locomotive 2 years after the last one was built in North America. And using coal, at a time when many over here were burning oil.
Built new more efficient locomotives yes, given that was what the network was designed for, and the workshops were equipped for. At that time the UK had plenty of coal mines and that was before north sea oil.
Whilst a wonderful object - the fact that we were still spending time and money on steam as late as this is truly awful! France, and Switzerland were already getting well along with diesels and all their advantages which of course we came late to - again!! Still, a nice thing.
you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most and both Switzerland and France kept steam on their national networks longer than the uk, you know that right? countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk; France-early 70s Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled Spain-early 70s Portugal-early 70s Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK Austria-early 70s Czechoslovakia-80s Denmark-early 70s Acouple of nteables just for some depth In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66. In 1961 the international Golden Arrow ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
Hmmm, not so sure there .... Riddles was only given permission for a single Class 8 to replace wrecked 46202. That was awfully close to the emergence of DP1 ("Deltic" of 1955). I suspect the only thing which might've saved steam for a few more years would have been changes to overriding government policy ... as opposed to what we got i.e. the constant stop/start the railways (along with practically everything else underpinning the UK economy) suffered from once the dust from WWII had settled somewhat. There have been several attempts to revive steam, notably the ACE3000 advanced by the US coal industry in the face of the old shortages of the 1970s and more recently David Wardle's 5AT project here (officially suspended as recently as 2012). That one spawned a proposal for a 15in gauge 2-8-0T to meet operating conditions on the Bure Valley Railway, but thus far, the reconstructed ZBs seem to be perfectly adequate. Details of all three are available online for anyone interested. As a commercially viable - let alone environmentally acceptable - technology, steam as a prime mover on the railways is as dead as A-Line flares.
@@TheHoveHereticNo such thing as DP1. That is a 21st Century invention; the original blue Deltic was only ever known as Deltic during its working life. It never carried, and never has carried, a number.
Britain soldiering on down the developmental dead-end of steam. Across the pond, the US had been embracing diesel-electric traction since the 1930s. In continental Europe electrification was taking place.
Oddly, one of the earliest mainline diesel locos I'm aware of was Danish. If you can believe it, that machine came with a wooden body styled to match clerestory stock. That may be similar thinking to some early diesels carrying steam loco like chimneys, I'd imagine. In the UK there are two early Kerr Stuart machines, 2ft gauge Works No.4415, under restoration on the F&WHR and Std Gauge No.4421 restored to traffic in 2022 currently located on the Foxfield Rly. Both are 0-6-0DM locomotives.
Following up… I understand why they persisted with steam: the country was virtually bankrupted by WWII so had the funds neither for a mass electrification programme, nor oil imports. Plus the UK is an island of cheap coal. That said, France was in a similar situation, nevertheless SNCF ploughed on ahead with electrifying.
@@fairalbionone bu-the-by .... In mainland Europe, WWII was followed by the US financial support under the aegis of the Marshall Plan. In the UK, it was followed by decades of Lease-Lend repayments, not finally settled until Blair's time in No.10.
1951: BRITANNIA - The New Standard Class STEAM ENGINE | Newsreel | Retro Transport | BBC Archive. 22.10.24. 0712sm. I ain't that far gone...but having these lunatics out and about, whilst myself generally being an affable type, isn't really working...
to me developing a new mainline steam train in 1951 was bonkers. No wonder they were left behind by the rest of western Europe in the decades that followed.
@vlzmusik Why? The design process began in 1948. Sterling was weak and there was a policy of preferring UK goods eg coal, to imported oil, so as to conserve foreign exchange . A diesel locomotive cost 5 times as much as a steam locomotive of the same power; the figures are not much better today. There were no diesel locomotives as powerful as the largest steam classes. All the repair and maintenance infrastructure was gear to steam, as well as the staff able to do the work. There was a fleet of ageing and inefficient steam locomotives which needed to be replaced. Bonkers? The subsequent problems that arose with attempts at dieselisation demonstrate that the policy for new build steam was anything but.
Far from bonkers. We didn't need to rely on oil; doing so ruined the economy,. We were good at building steam engines. At low cost and reliable operation. They needed labour and coal to operate. Two resources that were indigenous.
@@paulthiessen6444 The last steam locomotive built for British Railways was Evening Star in 1960. The last one built for industrial use in this country was in 1964. Both of these still exist. The last one built for export was in around 1970. Regular steam on standard gauge main lines was in 1968, but BR still had a narrow gauge line in Wales for years after that, and a few steam cranes for even longer. The problem with Diesel was that we had little or no domestic oil production at that time, so it all had to be imported, while we did have coal.
It wasn't like that at all The new diesels were under powered and unreliable. Many had very short working lives. The exercise was a monumental waste of money. It was motivated by concern about image and political pressure.
Why? It's a good technology. There were big improvements between 1960 and 1990, and there have been more in recent years. Railways the world over have saddled themselves with an unnecessary financial burden and missed out on an important opportunity to keep down their costs.
![NISAMANEE - TADA (ท้าดา) [ OFFICIAL MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hcQHEPMmJpU/mqdefault.jpg)
That 70000 train at the start is still running today! It has had a few problems, including a big breakdown last year, since returning to the line in 2011, but it's still going! 😁
And to think, only 13 years later the first Shinkansen came on line. Absolutely wild.
@delivix I was going to make this exact comment, glad I scrolled down first! Shinkansen celebrating 60 years this year & still going strong, although the MAGLEV is the new kid on the block in Japan.
Mitsubishi was still building steam well into the 1960s, if not later still
@@schmill2.... and China. The old bogey of actually stopping the damned things safely still applies though!!
Current speed records for MAGLEV
All Comers 375 mph (603km/h) 🇯🇵
In service 268mph (431km/h) 🇨🇳
The first linear induction motor was developed by Prof Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College London 🇬🇧 back in the late 1940s .... then like the computer and the jet engine, the UK did sod all else, preferring investment went elsewhere.
And to think 15 years before, the Italians had ETR-200 electric high speed trains that ran at 125mph back in the mid-1930s.
@@Jaxymann
The Italians couldn't do steam locomotives very well and haven't got much coal anyway, they were presumably early into hydro and so electrification made some sense. They ended up with obsolescent 3 phase and low voltage systems.
I can almost taste the air in this film!
In 1952, that air killed about 10 -12,000 people across London, with another 100,000 made ill by smog. I don't want to taste it, see it, smell it, or even recall it as other than a cautionary tale .... and yes, I DO remember mainline steam and smoke belching from almost every chimney pot as soon as the temperature dipped towards the end of autumn.
Smells like delicious coal smoke and lung cancer!
@@TheHoveHeretic Moaners are still complaining now and all this has gone!
@@levelcrossing150Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
As an asthmatic I wouldn't have lasted long in those days
And Britannia is a preserved icon nowadays...
1:16 What a shot!
it's worth mentioning, that when new, The Britannia's had hand rails on the smoke deflectors, but after an accident that was caused by them when they obstructed the driver's view, according to the report, they were replaced with cut away hand holds.
That was down to the Western Region (ex-GW) lines even doing signals differently from every other UK railway!
@@TheHoveHeretic similarly, I'd thought that with all the engines on the LMS (Royal Scots, Patriots, Princess Coronations) and SR (Nelsons, King Arthurs) with much the same style of smoke deflector, with grab rails, if those were a _real_ issue, it would have been raised long beforehand and corrected?🤔 I half fancy that it was at least in part the Western Region enginemen - who'd _never_ liked the Britannias, and somehow couldn't ever get good performances out of them - leaping at a chance to throw some mud at what everyone else found to be an excellent design, but then I'm biased being East Anglian where they were a total Godsend and crews adored them.
@@michael32AOdd isn't it ... or perhaps merely perverse ... that the Western Region took to the 9Fs to the extent of using them on named express trains!
The Maunsell 'mogul' design was used over on the GSR in Ireland (the initial purchase from Woolwich Arsenal being by the pre-grouping MGWR). As Classes 372 and 393, they never carried smoke deflectors there. The only Irish locos to employ them were GSR No.402 (but no other 400 class!) and the GNRI's Class VS (the sadly extinct 'simple' variant of the V Class compound).
Britannia was originally gonna be an NRM locomotive as well, but she was swapped for brother Oliver Cromwell due to Britannia being so badly worn out at the end of British mainline steam.
Wonderful beasts of Iron and Steam - it's great that Britain maintains a few of these machines in working order today!
You can thank Dai Woodham for that. But for him, we'd likely have no more than a couple of dozen survivors and most of those would never turn a wheel under their own power again.
@@TheHoveHeretic Thank you for that information, I shall take a further look at the man.
It's not a few. Due to a quirk with the dismantling of trains, the number I heard was ~80% of active stock got saved when they went over to Diesel. Very hard to take apart. One did get built from new old stock about 20 years ago.
There's a great documentary about trains on Great Courses Plus. Railways or summat by Neil Patrick Allitt, has a free 1 month trial. Great doc.
@@TheHoveHeretic Absolutely, I visited Barry scrapyard in 1983, it was incredible walking along the lines of ghostly rusting engines with their faded paintwork and Lion and Wheel BR symbols. It's amazing how many were saved, even engines that had been cannibalised to provide parts for other projects were themselves saved.
Proud comments about design and power, but not a single comment about all of the wheelslip seen in this report...!
Given the "Brit" was brand new and their allocations often replaced far smaller locos, you have to wonder if the driver had ever had charge of a pacific before? All steam locos tend to "sit back" on starting, transferring weight to the trailing axle, making slip more likely.
Yeah nobody is really even though the wheelslips were INSANE, I mean 3 straight seconds of lost traction!
Look at the smog!! Different world.
Love this class of loco.
Got to love the Standard 7 (nicknamed the Britannias after 70000 "Britannia" or 'brit' for short). The Standard 7 is by far my favourite class of steam locomotive!
As late as 1967 in the last days of steam, I used to rejoice when the Fridays only relief train from Manchester to York was hauled by a Britannia class loco.
@5:04 although the Standard Class 7 4-6-2 was slightly longer, the Standard Class 8 4-6-2 was heavier and both the Class 8 and the Standard Class 9F 2-10-0 were more powerful.
Watch and weep for what is lost. Not the locomotives, but the ability to build them. We even made our own deisels. Now imported.
Yes they had working communities that helped each other get through life.
They made 160 in the first year alone, three a week! How long has it been since we had the capability to achieve that, I wonder.
The next generation will send them all to China for scrap, on the altar of "climate change".
Crewe: Gone. Swindon: Gone. Doncaster: Gone. Vulcan Foundry: Gone.
European industry was taxed to death.
a massive lesson learnt about the benefits of standardisation... immediately forgotten by ordering two dozen different diesels from a dozen suppliers with no interchangeable parts and which couldn't even work together in multiple. Can but hope GBR makes it make sense and builds some standardised designs.
Back around 2010 a work colleague of mine did some volunteer work on Britannia at Southall. One day he came to my desk and placed the whistle from Britannia by my computer, where it stayed for the rest of the day!
Oh my god, why is nobody talking about the wheelslip xD
When British engineering was the envy of the world. Almost nothing is left now. Imagine buying our engines and rolling stock from abroad nowadays...
japanese and chinese cats left the chat..
Thank You Thatcher for turning the Workshop of the World into the junkyard of the world
@@ShubhamBhushanCCA huge jump from these already obsolete locomotives to 1979. When doling out blame for perceived failures.
@@ShubhamBhushanCCYou can blame the trade unions in the 1970s for that.
@@ShubhamBhushanCC Thatcher is the only reason the country was able to get back on its feet after 40 years of socialism.
0:43 Great Scotland Yard. It's A LNER Gresley Streamlined A4 Pacific Main Line Express Steam Locomotive No.60033 Seagull. A Bit Like Mallard. Thanks Mate. XXxxx 🇬🇧 🇦🇺 🇺🇸
Thank you for listening to me BBC Archive, about your films, television programmes, clips etc related to anything railway related to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the British Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Terrorties. Can we please also see the Channel Tunnel opening and the BR Class 373 Eurostar as this was 1994 and this being the thirtieth anniversary.
2:58 Note the slide rule. Not a calculator in sight with this precision engineering and testing!
Yes because they didn't exist then. Now all calculations like these are done with computers, boomer.
@@TheMusicalElitist Anyone can use a calculator but it takes skill to use a slide rule🤣
That’s because calculates wouldn’t exist for 20 more years.
@@TheMusicalElitistPoint of Order: By the time the Brits came out, Babbage's 'differential engine' had been invented, ignored and forgotten for ¾ of a century and Alan Turing's pioneering computer had been designed, built, used to win the war, dismantled and 'D Noticed' (except for being given to the CIA) for half a decade.
With basic maths knowledge and simple skills you could construct a slide rule. I doubt whether anyone could make an electronic calculator. We have become so dependent on electronics and CAD many are forgetting basic principles of design and drawing
office skills that produced these locomotives.
I
Ive been filming Britannia all week.
Nice new locomotive! It looks like British Railways has great sensible plans in the future!....
Obsolete technology mate, the future is already there but they can not see.
They 'sort of did'. Back in 1951, official policy was still the postwar 'export everything, import as little as humanly possible'. We had coal, we didn't then have oil. Coal was priced in Pounds Sterling, oil in US Dollars. Steam was supposed to hold the fort until the widespread electrification we're still waiting for ... and if some of the comments on this thread are owt to go by, will continue to be waiting for indefinitely.
The loose end-date Riddles and the BR management of that time had in mind for steam traction was from the 1980s, which was upended by the 1955 Modernisation Plan ( ever seen the 1955 Modernosation Plan? 'comprehensive' and 'detailed' are two words you wouldn't use to describe it! ). 0:02
@@TheHoveHeretic Electrification would really be the way to go as like steam it was powered by coal. We had the successful Manchester-Sheffield-Wath 1500v system with regenerative braking in 1954 "scrapped it ! "
Politics and economics.
The L MS had constructed 2 diesel express locomotives, 10000 and 10001, they were the pioneers, the Southern had constructed 3 mainline Diesel locomotives, I'm sure it was plain to see for any engineers at the time, that they were the future along with mainline electrification as pioneered by the LNER.
But, after the war we were short of money, ironically still are, couldn't afford to buy in oil for diesels, we had just Nationalised the coal industry and were sitting on an awful lot of coal, still are actually.
So it was inevitable that a new series of steam locomotive would be constructed, 999 of them I seem to remember.
The last, class 9F 92220 was completed at Swindon works, now a shopping centre, in 1960 and retired , but preserved in 1965, a working life of only 5 years.
The highest number BR standard,92250 was completed at Crewe, now mostly a housing estate, in 1957/8.
So that's how we got a very expensive fleet of locomotives with a short life.
Equally ironically, many of the Diesels that ousted steam had a short life as well.
Nice old film, times change, WFH, shop online, they call it progress.😉🤣🤣🤣
There was also the mistaken belief by the government that the new Standard classes could be sold on the export market to other countries.
And the basic diesel engine design that was used in both of the types mentioned is still active now. Designed by English Electric, and obviously modernised and upgraded over the years. E.g. the 16 cylinder version used in the class 50 is still based on the old 12”x10” design.
Sad that most were scrapped a few years later. The reality was UK could not afford properly modernise with electrification.
Yes they were taken to the cutters torch way before time.
Couldn't or wouldn't? Money being spaffed up the wall by UK governments is scarcely anything new and the investment record in the UK has been appalling since WWI .
I grew up on the LNW out of Euston. The period when diesels replaced steam now seems so short. Electrification was a huge step forward but the waste of resources in putting in all those (not terribly successful) diesels and scrapping many nearly new steam locos and all their infrastucture seemed utterly pointless.
@@TheHoveHeretic you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right?
countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk;
France-early 70s
Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled
Spain-early 70s
Portugal-early 70s
Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK
Austria-early 70s
Czechoslovakia-80s
Denmark-early 70s
Acouple of nteables just for some depth
In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66.
In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
@@andrewyoung749I produced much the same list in response to another post .... so, yes! 🙂
73 years later we don’t even make Virgin steel ,all our locomotives ,rolling stock is railway companies are foreign. Our manufacturing is decimated and the vast majority of the workforce couldn’t even fix a puncture on a pushbike or put a bulb into a car light , they take it to Halfords. Absolutely pathetic.
The result of political corruption
Lots of modern cars make it almost impossible to get to the headlight bulb. Last one I did, had to remove the whole headlight unit from the car.
Agreed, modern youngsters have probably never repaired a tyre puncture on their ‘pushbike’, but they are able to help their elderly relatives with technology. Different skills for different eras.
BUT we will get to Net Zero first - RESULT!
Our 1960s Triang electric train set featured 70000 Britannia pulling Pullman cars but I never realised its origins in rail nationalisation
Within 12 years Britannia lost its nameplates and maintenance was cut back - finished up at Carlisle Kingmoor sounding like a bag of spanners in 1967.
Steam locos worked their hearts off during their final days. Many were run into the ground before being withdrawn. .
4:20 Who's he kidding about Britain still leading the world in steam locos? For obvious reasons there had been no new developments here apart from a few of Mr Bullied's eccentricities, in over ten years. So the Britannias along with all the other BR standard engines pulled together the best of the established designs along with a few revolutionary features such as Crosti boilers on a few of the 9Fs. Meanwhile the US had built steam engines, such as the Pensy T1s, capable of hauling 1000 tons at 100mph for 100 miles. Baldwin and Alco had taken steam developments far further than anything attempted here despite not beating Mallard, officially at least but then it all stopped faced with the onset of diesel..
Wondering where that confidence in the future went.
We dont know exactly why that confidence evaporated but listening to the reterick from the then mininster it reminded me of the last government and their idealised view of the world, (which Brexit would deliver for the UK glorious riches). Countires in far flung corners of the world just waiting for GB PLC to come to them and sell them all of the wonderful stuff made in the UK. Not. There is some commonality in the fact that the UK government of the time was also Conservative.
That minister is Alfred Barnes, the Minister of Transport in the then Labour government.
@@simonrobbins8357 The penalty of being too fast Thanks
@@doubledecker1985 My mistake - now i know why some people say they all sound the same
@@doubledecker1985 are you sure about this - Alfred Barnes was the Minister of Transport in 1951. In 1951, the Conservative government appointed the same minister to both Transport and Civil Aviation, which were eventually merged in 1953.
I miss that sound of Chickey chick , Chickey chick .
You and no PW engineers .... anywhere! 🙂
You obviously don't work on the railways as CWR revolutionised maintenance and line speeds
British railways never tried the Hudson. Maybe it was unnecessary. The New York Central added trailing truck boosters, which increased their starting power.
When most western countries were or had moved away from steam, the UK carried on, having to cut services due to a coal shortage.
1951 - America: Dieselizes
Europe: Electrifies
UK: Rule Britannia!
There was an advantage to having one's railway infrastructure bombed to smithereens.
@@marrrtinNot counting steam's better known 'last redoubts', the end of mainline steam in the UK was ahead of:
France (1975)
West Germany (1977)
Spain (broad gauge 1975)
Portugal (broad gauge 1977)
Japan (1975)
Australia (1973)
New Zealand (1971)
.... and in the UK, the VERY last mainline steam wasn't the 15 guinea special .... over in Northern Island, the faithful Class WT 'Jeeps' soldiered on into 1970, about the last duties being 'top and tailing' heavy spoil trains connected with motorway construction.
@@marrrtin you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right?
countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk;
France-early 70s
Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled
Spain-early 70s
Portugal-early 70s
Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK
Austria-early 70s
Czechoslovakia-80s
Denmark-early 70s
Acouple of nteables just for some depth
In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66.
In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
just more 'must prove how clever i am by running britain down' falsehoods. you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most right? 1968.
countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk;
France-early 70s
Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled
Spain-early 70s
Portugal-early 70s
Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK
Austria-early 70s
Czechoslovakia-80s
Denmark-early 70s
Acouple of nteables just for some depth
In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66.
In 1961 the international Golden Arroiw ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
All the comments on here make me feel so young! 😀
You'll get over it .... we all did!!
Where did all that confidence, skill, job-pride and faith in our British future go ???????
Back when Britian still made things.
This country used to be so good
Those exhaust notes are not a Britannia class. Very distinctive bark they have.
0:04 0:15 This Is A Newsflash. This Is Kermit The Frog Reporting From The Sesame Street News Reporting Live At London's Marylebone Station In London In England In The UK And With BR's Famous Steam Locomotive No.70000 Britannia. A Bit Like LNER Gresley A3 Pacific No.4472 Flying Scotsman. A Different Story. XXxxx 🇬🇧 🇦🇺 🇺🇸
When Britain built stuff.
👏🇬🇧
Meanwhile, across Western Europe, electrification was in full swing, having begun before the second world war.
Only on suburban routes and the busiest main lines. Quieter routes are never worth electrifying. Electrification costs a fortune to maintain in reliable order.
TBF, there were stirrings here well before WWI, not all of which used Magnus Volk's system with a slightly higher voltage. The LBSC was well into investing in 6.6kvAC overhead ... unlike the British electrical engineering sector, meaning the whole supply chain from Germany came crashing down when someone took a potshot at a bloke in a pram back in 1914.
Then there's been the insane start/stop cycle, meaning the UK's OHLE expertise has been squandered every time the investment tap is turned off ....
and yet Britain ultimately axed steam before most european inc western european countries...
countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk;
France-early 70s
Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled
Spain-early 70s
Portugal-early 70s
Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK
Austria-early 70s
Czechoslovakia-80s
Denmark-early 70s
Acouple of nteables just for some depth
In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66.
In 1961 the international Golden Arrow ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
Much of Europe was already state owned. Some UK railways were changed to electric in 1903 and 1906, but the cost of such work was too high for mainline services.
@@GrumpyL5 Britain's railways were state owned from 1948.
An investment in electrification would have been a very shrewd thing to have begun at that point, but I guess the government were too busy pretending to be a global superpower, spending the Marshall Aid money on trying to develop A-bombs and the V-bombers to drop them from (obsolete almost as soon as they left the drawing board)
My God . Look at the smog ! 😢
.... and next time someone pines for open fires, town gas and steam locos .....
So, the Brits designed a new steam locomotive 2 years after the last one was built in North America. And using coal, at a time when many over here were burning oil.
Built new more efficient locomotives yes, given that was what the network was designed for, and the workshops were equipped for. At that time the UK had plenty of coal mines and that was before north sea oil.
When our elders still cared about the future generations.
Whilst a wonderful object - the fact that we were still spending time and money on steam as late as this is truly awful! France, and Switzerland were already getting well along with diesels and all their advantages which of course we came late to - again!! Still, a nice thing.
you realise Britain modernised its railways early compared to most and both Switzerland and France kept steam on their national networks longer than the uk, you know that right?
countries in Europe that kept steam longer than the uk;
France-early 70s
Both Germanies-late 70s west/1994 east, and no not just the narrow gauge, berlin had an allocation of 2-10-0s in the early 90s used on freight and the 'cucumber' train. easily googled
Spain-early 70s
Portugal-early 70s
Switzerland-1968 a few months after the UK
Austria-early 70s
Czechoslovakia-80s
Denmark-early 70s
Acouple of nteables just for some depth
In 1975,almost 10 years after UK binned steam, W Germany still had express locos of class 01, the same vintage as Flying Scotsman which was withdrawn in 62, working expresses out of Hof, and only withdrew class 01.10s from express services out of Rheine in 1977, long after their comparable top tier UK locos such as Duchesses and A4s had been binned in 1964/66.
In 1961 the international Golden Arrow ldn-paris was de steamed in the uk ldn-dover section, but once across the channel your onward connection to p nord was still until 1968, by a magnificent, but antiquated, pacific steam loco ex plm 231k or nord 231e dating from between 1910 and 1930 ie rather older than the 1940s merchant navy uk steam loco working the uk section had been until 61.
If they didn't butcher Duke of Gloucester's build, we would've had a whole class of Standard 8's, the most powerful steam passenger train ever.
Hmmm, not so sure there .... Riddles was only given permission for a single Class 8 to replace wrecked 46202. That was awfully close to the emergence of DP1 ("Deltic" of 1955). I suspect the only thing which might've saved steam for a few more years would have been changes to overriding government policy ... as opposed to what we got i.e. the constant stop/start the railways (along with practically everything else underpinning the UK economy) suffered from once the dust from WWII had settled somewhat.
There have been several attempts to revive steam, notably the ACE3000 advanced by the US coal industry in the face of the old shortages of the 1970s and more recently David Wardle's 5AT project here (officially suspended as recently as 2012). That one spawned a proposal for a 15in gauge 2-8-0T to meet operating conditions on the Bure Valley Railway, but thus far, the reconstructed ZBs seem to be perfectly adequate. Details of all three are available online for anyone interested.
As a commercially viable - let alone environmentally acceptable - technology, steam as a prime mover on the railways is as dead as A-Line flares.
literally less powerful in tractive effort and horsepower terms than the duchesses...
@@andrewyoung749 I thought it was comparative to the LMS locos?
@@TheHoveHereticNo such thing as DP1. That is a 21st Century invention; the original blue Deltic was only ever known as Deltic during its working life. It never carried, and never has carried, a number.
Britain soldiering on down the developmental dead-end of steam. Across the pond, the US had been embracing diesel-electric traction since the 1930s. In continental Europe electrification was taking place.
It's still a perfectly good technology for routes which do not carry enough traffic to cover the costs of electric traction.
Oddly, one of the earliest mainline diesel locos I'm aware of was Danish. If you can believe it, that machine came with a wooden body styled to match clerestory stock. That may be similar thinking to some early diesels carrying steam loco like chimneys, I'd imagine.
In the UK there are two early Kerr Stuart machines, 2ft gauge Works No.4415, under restoration on the F&WHR and Std Gauge No.4421 restored to traffic in 2022 currently located on the Foxfield Rly. Both are 0-6-0DM locomotives.
Following up… I understand why they persisted with steam: the country was virtually bankrupted by WWII so had the funds neither for a mass electrification programme, nor oil imports. Plus the UK is an island of cheap coal. That said, France was in a similar situation, nevertheless SNCF ploughed on ahead with electrifying.
@@fairalbion sncf kept steam longer than br, as did db, dr,sbb,renfe,cp,dsb. all into the 70s, some into the 80s, but there we are...
@@fairalbionone bu-the-by .... In mainland Europe, WWII was followed by the US financial support under the aegis of the Marshall Plan. In the UK, it was followed by decades of Lease-Lend repayments, not finally settled until Blair's time in No.10.
1951: BRITANNIA - The New Standard Class STEAM ENGINE | Newsreel | Retro Transport | BBC Archive. 22.10.24. 0712sm. I ain't that far gone...but having these lunatics out and about, whilst myself generally being an affable type, isn't really working...
designing a new steam train in 1951 seems very backwards
The technology continues to develop. There was nothing backwards about it.
to me developing a new mainline steam train in 1951 was bonkers. No wonder they were left behind by the rest of western Europe in the decades that followed.
@vlzmusik Why? The design process began in 1948. Sterling was weak and there was a policy of preferring UK goods eg coal, to imported oil, so as to conserve foreign exchange . A diesel locomotive cost 5 times as much as a steam locomotive of the same power; the figures are not much better today. There were no diesel locomotives as powerful as the largest steam classes. All the repair and maintenance infrastructure was gear to steam, as well as the staff able to do the work. There was a fleet of ageing and inefficient steam locomotives which needed to be replaced.
Bonkers? The subsequent problems that arose with attempts at dieselisation demonstrate that the policy for new build steam was anything but.
it was already a bad idea in 1948, and no amount of BBC propaganda can persuade me it wasn't.
Far from bonkers. We didn't need to rely on oil; doing so ruined the economy,.
We were good at building steam engines. At low cost and reliable operation. They needed labour and coal to operate. Two resources that were indigenous.
diesel engines soon came and made all these obsolete😂
I didn’t know they were still making new steam engines in 51. Crazy when you think jet fighters were the norm by then.
@@paulthiessen6444
The last steam locomotive built for British Railways was Evening Star in 1960. The last one built for industrial use in this country was in 1964. Both of these still exist. The last one built for export was in around 1970.
Regular steam on standard gauge main lines was in 1968, but BR still had a narrow gauge line in Wales for years after that, and a few steam cranes for even longer.
The problem with Diesel was that we had little or no domestic oil production at that time, so it all had to be imported, while we did have coal.
@@srfurley rev up your coal engines!!
@@srfurleywhich would've been better utilised generating electricity.
It wasn't like that at all The new diesels were under powered and unreliable. Many had very short working lives. The exercise was a monumental waste of money. It was motivated by concern about image and political pressure.
isn't it a sign of technological decline?
the rest of the developed world was developing diesel engines at these times
Why? It's a good technology. There were big improvements between 1960 and 1990, and there have been more in recent years. Railways the world over have saddled themselves with an unnecessary financial burden and missed out on an important opportunity to keep down their costs.
Indeed, thankfully soon corrected.
If you check out some of the other comments, steam was used in a lot of Western European countries after it was binned by the U.K.
Look how polluted it is.