Why the British Rail Modernisation Plan Failed

in the 1950s the newly formed british railways prepared to undertake a highly ambitious plan to revolutionize the nation's war-torn network in order to make it suitable for the 20th century investing millions of pounds to introduce a widespread refurbishment of the infrastructure operations and rolling stock of the country sadly what would later be known as the modernization plan of 1955 only accomplished a small number of its objectives and by the end of the planned period the uk rail network would be both much smaller and laden with more debts and corporate inefficiency than ever before british railways was formed on january 1 1948 as part of the transport act of 1947 where in the bankrupt battle weary big four railway companies the london and northeastern railway the london midland and scottish railway the great western railway and the southern railway were merged by the government to form a single nationalised operator while cash injections needed to rebuild the system will be done by direct state funding the operation of british railways fill under the railway executive of the british transport commission or btc an arm of the government that was tasked with rebuilding and revitalizing the road railway and canal networks of the uk and it was during this period that two plans were considered british railways as an organization comprised of managers and staff of railway background proposed that a comprehensive plan should be undertaken to modernize the network to make it comparable to the european rail systems including major infrastructural rebuilds to iron out curves while also introducing widespread electric and diesel traction in the wake of world war ii the rail networks of france germany holland and belgium had been largely destroyed by vicious land battles and aerial bombardments thus allowing each rail operator a blank canvas on which to rebuild their systems to a far more efficient blueprint than what had come previously although britain's network had been damaged by air raids and was worn out after years of neglect the general structure was still very much intact therefore it would have cost much more to decommission remove and rebuild existing sections of the operational permanent way in order to smooth curves and increase speeds to this end the btc proposed instead the introduction of a fleet of new higher efficiency steam locomotives that would act as interim measures before eventually bringing forward widespread diesel traction and limited electrification a more cost-effective method but one that would leave many of the previous infrastructural issues in place in 1951 btc pushed forward the plan for a brand new fleet of steam engines resulting in the br standard series of locomotives which while among the most efficient steam engines ever built were ultimately a needless stop gap that would only work for less than half their expected operational lifespan the only other initial modernization undertaken during the first decade of br's existence were previous initiatives proposed by the big four including the introduction of early diesel prototypes by the lms on the midland main line out of london's pancreas and the electrification of the wood head route between sheffield wath and manchester with 1500 volts dc overhead wires as for the wider network british railways did start the 1950s making a marginal working profit but with the rise of domestic air travel on long distance services and highly convenient car travel on regional journeys the company began to lose its customer base this impact being felt especially on the branch lines of rural england scotland and wales which had held a monopoly on their respective markets since they'd replaced the horse and cart over a century earlier in 1954 the uk government seeing the losses being made by british railways demanded an investigation be made in order to determine how the situation could be remedied and in december of that year a report named the modernization and re-equipment of the british railways was published the intentions of the plan being to bring the railway system up to date followed two years later by a government white paper that stated the modernization plan would eliminate br's financial deficit by 1962. the most important aspects of the modernization plan were to increase speed reliability safety and line capacity while also making sure that the image of the railway was improved in order to reinvigorate interest in train travel with the plan proposing a total projected cost of 1.24 million pounds approximately 29 billion pounds in 2020 the essential objectives of the plan were to electrify the principal mainline routes out of london including the east coast mainline west coast mainline and southeastern main line to replace steam with diesel traction to introduce new passenger and freight stock to re-signal and renew the existing track work to close branch lines which are either loss-making or duplicated other more efficient lines and to create a series of marshalling yards in order to organize wagon load freight operations more economically the problem was however that the modernization plan was based on a large series of compromises while also failing to understand the changing trends in both passenger and freight conveyance the first issue was that the previously considered comprehensive rebuild of the network to iron out corners and improved speeds was dropped meaning that all the modernization plan would do is dress up the existing victorian era infrastructure with new traction and signals while failing to address the main problems that slowed trains down secondly the original br plans to electrify all main lines out of london including the lines west to bristol and cardiff north to leicester derby and nottingham and east to ipswich and norwich were abandoned with electrification focusing instead on only three lines the west coast mainline to birmingham manchester and liverpool the east coast main line to leeds in york and the south east and main line to dover in the end only two of these three routes would be delivered under the modernization plan the east coast mainline electrification being dropped due to the cost of having to rebuild the roof at king's cross station in order to accommodate the complex overhead gantries while the west coast main line was electrified as far as liverpool between 1959 and 1965 and the southeastern mainland was electrified between 1957 and 1961 next was the introduction of brand new rolling stock for both freight and passenger operations as older wooden body carriages from the big four era as well as the original mark 1 coach of 1951 were replaced from 1964 by the steel-bodied mark ii coach a requirement following the harrow and will stone disaster when during a collision of three fully laden passenger trains on the morning of october 8 1952 112 people were killed in what was the worst peacetime railway disaster in british history the primary cause for deaths in the accident being the fragility of the wooden bodied rolling stock for freight older wooden bodied wagons would be replaced by steel-bodied equivalents while a new series of higher capacity hopper wagons tankers flatbeds and goods fans would improve both the strength of these vehicles while also reducing maintenance costs but many of these were made redundant as the need for wagon load freight was replaced by new systems of conveying goods this leads to the next issue the creation of multiple vast marshalling yards across the uk in order to improve the efficiency of forming and splitting wagonload freight trains that had originated with a variety of different private and government customers the most notable of which were mixed traffic freights that would have individual wagons owned by said customers to suit a demand br perceived to be flourishing marshalling yards of up to 30 tracks were either introduced or expanded at a variety of strategic locations including tinsley seven tunnel junction cadder and healy mills complemented by a huge fleet of diesel shunters such as the class 08 unfortunately br had completely misread the growing trend for containerized shipping during the late 1950s and early 1960s meaning that the need for wagon load freight was now being replaced by block trains that had no need to split or be formed at marshalling yards to serve individual customers rendering most of these facilities obsolete within years of their opening compounded further by br being legally bound to its status as a common carrier wherein it was obliged to provide carriage for virtually any type of goods regardless of quantity large or small between any two stations on the network at set and published rates while road hauliers and trucking companies had no such legal restrictions and could therefore both undercut the railways rates and turn down work that was uneconomic on the subject of introducing new locomotives vr intended the large-scale introduction of diesel traction to replace steam with a total of 2 500 locomotives for mainline service to be procured in 10 years at a cost of 125 million pounds or 3 billion pounds in 2020 together with the aforementioned replacement of rolling stock at a cost of million pounds or 6.8 billion in 2020 with long-term aspirations being to electrify all trunk routes that would be operated by 1100 electric locomotives at a cost of 60 million pounds or 1.4 billion in 2020 plus an additional 125 million pounds for electric infrastructure or 2.8 billion in 2020 while the concept was sound the execution was problematic with the transition from steam to diesel being sharp and uncompromising with all active steam locomotives regardless of their age required to be withdrawn by august 1968 including the then brand new br standard locomotives which had only between 4 and 12 years of work under their belts by the time this date came to pass even though they have been designed to operate until as late as the 1980s next was the ordering of 174 diesel locomotive classes from six independent manufacturers by british railways the choice of so many builders being due to political pressure to keep the workforce of certain constituencies employed regardless of their lack of experience when building diesel locomotives while br's design offices stipulated a requirement for three different power categories that would fulfill the needs of its mainline operations these being known as types type ones being locomotives of less than 1 000 horsepower type 2s being of less than 1 500 horsepower and type 3 being of less than 2 000 horsepower but this was later expanded to type 4 for locomotives with less than 3000 horsepower and type 5 for locomotives with more than 3000 horsepower the problem was that br chose to have diesel locomotives replace steam locomotives on a like-for-like basis with up to five different classes of diesel locomotive per power category that comprised a substantial fleet of engines while also representing diverse engineering designs that range from their type of transmission to their engine size to their operational speed the purpose being to determine the most successful design elements that would ultimately form longer term large scale orders what resulted were 7 type 1 classes including the class 14 class 15 class 16 class 17 and class 20 as well as some class 21s and 22s 10 type 2 classes including some class 21s and 22s class 23s 24s 25s 26s 27s 28s 29s and 31s 3 type 3 classes including class 33s 35s and 37s 10 type 4 classes including class 40s 41s 42s 43s 44s 45s 46s 47s 50s 52s and two prototypes and one initial type 5 class these being the class 55 deltix of these each geographical region of the british rail network had different preferences for types of diesel traction with the western region preferring the hydraulic classes including class 35 42 and 52 the midland taking on the extremely heavy diesel electric class 40s as well as class 44 45 and 46 peaks and the eastern region adopting the highly powerful but small numbered fleet of 22 class 55 deltix at the same time reliability for these locomotives thanks to their many manufacturers and the varied experience of each in building diesel engines was a mixed bag with some classes such as the class 37 47 and 55 being very sturdy and robust machines while the original class 43 warships were prone to breakdowns the class 15 and class 16 being maintenance heavy and prone to overheating and the class 17 claytons being among the most unreliable diesel engines ever employed in britain with an average availability of only 60 due to power plant faults the result was that by the end of the 1960s british trail was forced to undertake a major rationalization of its fleet both due to the pervasive unreliability of many classes but also the need to create spare parts for individual types of locomotives for the likes of the class 15 16 and 17 being withdrawn by the mid-1970s after only 10 to 15 years of use while the venerable but non-standard hydraulic fleet of the western region were all out of service by 1977. the many failures of the modernization plan ultimately led to the hiring of richard beeching who was commissioned by br to identify cost-cutting measures eventually resulting in the initial proposal of the plan to cut back loss-making or needless branch lines being expanded to prune away large sways of the network under what would be known as the beaching axe exacerbated further by the anti-rail transport minister ernest marples who held business shares in road building companies and thus chose to remove hundreds of stations and several mainline routes such as the waverly route between carlisle and edinburgh and the southwestern main line between exeter and plymouth via oakhampton some of which had been proposed for rationalization by beaching but not outright closure the only success of the modernization plan was the electrification of the southeastern main line and the west coast mainline as well as several suburban routes out of london with the west coast electrification being delivered in tandem with several classes of 100 mile an hour electric locomotives ranging from the highly successful class 81 85 and 86 to small 10 batch prototype class 82s 83s and 84s each of which were only created as part of a pilot study into improved electric locomotive design and withdrawn not long afterwards the electric wires would eventually reach glasgow in 1974 and were complemented by the improved class 87 electric locomotives from that year introducing 110 mile an hour operations between london and scotland and among the fastest express passenger trains in the uk the legacy of the modernization plan's failure left a shadow on britain's railways up to and beyond the privatization of br in 1994 which struggled on with a debt that was never fully repaid while also being laden with costly marshalling yards that saw barely any traffic hundreds of diesel locomotives that were either surplus to requirement the moment they were built or were crippled with unreliability and now operating a significantly rationalized network which left many highly populated towns such as dudley coleville aldridge and newcastle underlying without a direct rail connection essentially the battle for the modernization plan was lost long before it was drafted as rather than following the trends of european railways to fundamentally rebuild their systems into modern efficient and fast networks with new infrastructure and routings costs were cut wherever and whenever possible opting instead for the same victorian era track work that had long been rendered obsolete by increasing speeds and frequencies while it's understandable that such a significant infrastructural challenge could not have been met immediately thanks to the post-war debts weighing down the british government it was not beyond the scope of reason that these upgrades could have been implemented over time and that the modernization plan should instead have been a rolling plan of electrification and infrastructure improvements spanning between 20 and 30 years rather than what essentially amounted to a costly facelift that failed to fix the comprehensive problems with britain's railway network you

Channel: Ruairidh MacVeigh

Views: 210,457

Keywords: emu, diesel, express, multiple unit, rail, train, electric locomotive, passenger, shunter, trains, dmu, branch, diesel locomotive, class, engine, mainline, railways, steam locomotive, locomotive, freight, railway, track, British Railways, British Rail, Modernisation Plan, 1955, Richard Beeching, Beeching Axe, Ernest Marples, UK, United Kingdom, Britain, BR, Great Britain, Nationalisation, LNER, LMS, GWR, Southern Railway, World War II, Electrification, Class 86, Class 55, Deltic, Class 17, BR Standard

Id: R79tjrdkGJE

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021