The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters


PREVIEW： Epochs #243 ｜ The History of Steam Power with Alex Masters： Part IV


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nick William Stanier George Stevenson Lloyd George Yorkshire MacDonald Scotsman Chatham Gresley Exeter Durham Raven Kent Jill

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London and the South Western Railway, the London and North Western Railway and the Southern & Western Railway are just a few of the great British railroads of the 19th century. From the early days of the LNWR and the Scottish & North Western to the Great Western and the London & South Western, these are some of the biggest and most influential companies in the country at the time of the Great War.

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00:00:00.000 The London Midland and Scottish are probably the most interesting because it's built out
00:00:28.220 of companies who hate each other.
00:00:30.980 Right.
00:00:31.860 The Lancashire and Yorkshire and the London Northwestern Railway go through their own
00:00:37.980 mini merger.
00:00:39.300 I'll say mini.
00:00:40.060 The LNWR is the biggest private company in the world at that point in 1921.
00:00:46.520 And effectively, that's the two of them trying to, they know the mergers is coming.
00:00:51.720 So they're trying to protect their own interests by being the senior partner in the merger.
00:00:56.720 Unfortunately, at grouping, they then merge with the Midland Railway and the positions
00:01:05.600 in the board are filled by seniority.
00:01:08.700 So the railway operating board, who actually like run the trains and set the policy, are
00:01:15.580 all done by Midland men.
00:01:17.800 And the Midland running out of Derby are a very, very proud, quite arrogant in some ways
00:01:23.560 company, who does things in a very different way to the London Northwestern, almost to like
00:01:29.560 spite them.
00:01:31.440 The London Northwestern run what they call a big engine policy.
00:01:36.300 So they have big steam engines running big, heavy trains all the way up to Scotland.
00:01:43.060 The Midland runs a weird little and often.
00:01:46.600 So they run little trains fast and frequently.
00:01:50.940 The two, they then try to run the London Northwestern trains with the Midland ideology patched on top.
00:01:59.420 And it just doesn't work.
00:02:00.540 And then almost out of spite, the Midland operating division starts scrapping a lot of London Northwestern
00:02:11.620 equipment, even if it's good, if it's good stuff, just because they want the Midland engines
00:02:16.380 to be running the trains.
00:02:17.600 Really?
00:02:18.240 Yeah.
00:02:19.020 And they end up in...
00:02:19.980 And this is all still in the 20s?
00:02:21.180 This is in the 20s.
00:02:22.080 So this leads to what they call the motive power crisis, where it turns out you actually
00:02:27.100 can't run a big train with a small engine.
00:02:31.200 Unfortunately, the last designs of the LNWRs, the Claughtons, as their primary express engines,
00:02:37.660 aren't brilliant.
00:02:40.400 They're cracking looking machines.
00:02:42.500 They're very respectful machines.
00:02:44.660 Big 460s.
00:02:46.060 So they've got a front four-wheel truck at the front to guide them into the corners.
00:02:52.560 Four cylinders across that, and then six at the back for driving.
00:02:57.080 The four cylinders all act on the leading coupled axle, which goes back into your GCSE
00:03:03.120 geometry.
00:03:03.760 Because the coupling rods are so short, it means that the valve timing is always weird.
00:03:08.500 And the steam circuit isn't brilliant, so they're not actually that fast.
00:03:12.700 And they're also not particularly economical.
00:03:15.180 But the Midland is trying to run with a 440, so they've got one less driving axle, which
00:03:21.840 just aren't big enough to pull the loads.
00:03:24.200 The Midland is also running a weird standardization policy, but on weird things.
00:03:31.400 Any railway enthusiast within 20 minutes will start complaining about what they call the
00:03:35.700 Midland axle boxes, which is the boxes the axles actually turn in.
00:03:44.060 They're phosphor bronze, oil goes in the top, happy days.
00:03:48.420 The Midland ones are all quite small, which on little engines is absolutely fine.
00:03:52.820 But on big engines, the pressure of the axle in the axle box is too high.
00:03:59.780 You end up squeezing the oil out instead of it flowing around the axle.
00:04:04.800 You've then got two metal surfaces with no oil between them, so they fuse up, and it's
00:04:09.880 terrible.
00:04:10.180 They try and build big engines with Midland principles, and it doesn't work, and eventually
00:04:18.340 they have to go running to the Great Western for a set of castle plans, and then go up to
00:04:23.780 the North British in Glasgow for the Royal Scots.
00:04:27.200 And then they nick William Stanier from the Great Western in 1931, and he almost builds
00:04:35.920 up the railway, the engine fleet, back from scratch.
00:04:39.720 He just has to do that.
00:04:42.880 The Southern are a weird one, because unlike the other three, their majority traffic is
00:04:50.780 passengers.
00:04:52.380 And the Southern, yes, they run down to Exeter and even into Cornwall, but their primary
00:04:57.660 operating field is the south coast of England and the London commuter traffic.
00:05:06.640 There's not a lot of freight going, you know, there's like hops up from Kent and a bit
00:05:11.060 up from Southampton docks, and the coal trains in from, they actually buy their coal from
00:05:16.980 South Wales.
00:05:19.460 But the majority of it is commuter traffic and holiday traffic.
00:05:25.520 People.
00:05:25.980 People, it's people.
00:05:27.060 So they don't really build freight engines.
00:05:28.840 They've also, even since like 1903, been electrifying.
00:05:34.720 So all that.
00:05:35.940 From that early?
00:05:36.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:37.060 So all that third rail stuff in the southeast.
00:05:40.260 I didn't think it was anywhere near that early.
00:05:41.300 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:41.820 All that third rail stock in the southeast that everywhere else in the country uses overhead
00:05:47.100 wires, because even outside here.
00:05:50.260 Because that was seen as the best way to do it post-war, post-World War II.
00:05:58.260 Before then, they ran it on 650 volt DC from a third rail.
00:06:01.920 And that was what the southeastern and Chatham was doing in 1902.
00:06:08.900 And that's what they've been doing ever since.
00:06:11.060 So they're their own little thing.
00:06:12.640 They've got, one of the weird things about their operating environment is because it's
00:06:17.340 mostly passengers and because it's mostly holiday traffic, it means you've got to keep
00:06:23.020 an enormous amount of coaches to transport all the people.
00:06:27.140 But for most of the year, they're just sat in a shed.
00:06:29.240 It's only in the summer when you need them.
00:06:30.920 And running commuters means you've got to run everybody in for nine o'clock and get
00:06:35.680 them all out again at five.
00:06:37.620 There's actually very, very little traffic in between.
00:06:41.260 So they have to run like, I'm sure you've done, you know, like the run into Victoria up
00:06:46.700 from Clapham Junction.
00:06:48.160 And you've got, you know, 12, 15 lines across.
00:06:51.840 And one's more from Essex into Liverpool Street.
00:06:54.040 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:54.460 Same thing.
00:06:54.800 And that's just to handle the traffic for an hour and a half in the morning.
00:07:00.920 And an hour and a half in the evening.
00:07:02.680 So they do, they're not doing too badly, actually.
00:07:08.440 I think the Southern, they, a lot of the little lines get together.
00:07:14.980 The London Southwestern runs into Cornwall.
00:07:17.580 It's competing against the Great Western, who they've not merged with.
00:07:20.940 So the Southern keeps that competition.
00:07:22.920 So what the government tries to do is essentially give each of the four companies its own like
00:07:27.440 monopoly zone.
00:07:28.960 And then on the borders, it gives you a bit of competition.
00:07:32.420 Right.
00:07:32.640 So the LMS and the LNER are competing up to Scotland.
00:07:35.860 The LMS and the GWR are competing to Birmingham and then on to Liverpool and in Wales.
00:07:41.980 But the GWR get the monopoly on the sort of Thames Valley.
00:07:48.100 And then they're competing with the Southern down to Plymouth.
00:07:51.300 And they, and then the Southern gets essentially the Southeast as its little operating empire.
00:07:57.920 One little question I had, going back slightly.
00:08:01.920 Is that, that moment in time in what, 21 is it?
00:08:05.560 Yeah, 23 is when it actually happens.
00:08:07.520 The thing that's popped into my mind is this, we've got the first Labour government.
00:08:14.980 Is this Ramsay MacDonald, is it?
00:08:17.400 It's not the Liberals.
00:08:18.800 Just before then, I think.
00:08:19.760 Just before then.
00:08:20.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:21.280 Because I feel like that's, that's obviously such a massive thing.
00:08:24.140 Yeah.
00:08:24.960 Isn't it?
00:08:25.520 That's, we're going to change the whole, we're going to change the game.
00:08:28.540 Yeah.
00:08:28.900 Here.
00:08:29.460 Yeah.
00:08:30.080 Massive, massive thing.
00:08:31.300 What, I think what they're trying to do is.
00:08:33.100 I mean, obviously it seems to me, in hindsight, looking back, it just seems better.
00:08:37.520 Or at least more efficient.
00:08:38.700 I mean, having that old Victorian Edwardian mishmash of chaos is not, it's not, it's
00:08:44.980 not ideal.
00:08:45.800 But nonetheless, it's sort of such a big thing.
00:08:47.700 So much, so much money and power getting screwed around with there.
00:08:53.200 So just make, let's just make four companies. 0.60
00:08:55.740 Yeah.
00:08:56.260 That do it.
00:08:57.080 Of course, after the war, we end up with one. 0.99
00:08:59.140 One.
00:09:00.200 Still, at that point, just the politics of it.
00:09:05.500 Like, yeah.
00:09:07.420 Nationalisation was discussed.
00:09:10.100 Full nationalisation.
00:09:10.880 Full nationalisation.
00:09:12.360 Because, you know, they've been talking about this as basically the armistice.
00:09:15.700 But they didn't go for it.
00:09:17.280 And I think it, I think it is because it was a, it was this sort of wartime coalition.
00:09:20.520 And then was it, was it the last administration of Lloyd George after that?
00:09:24.400 Yeah, it would have been, yeah.
00:09:25.600 So they, they still had the sort of, no, Britain's prosperity is based on free trade and, and friendly
00:09:32.080 competition and all the rest of it.
00:09:33.240 So that's, that's why they went with the big four and then to try and give them a little
00:09:37.640 bit of monopoly, but also, so they've got security, but then also a little bit of competition
00:09:41.760 to keep the sort of prices.
00:09:44.420 It's an interesting, just, I think purely from the political side, it's just an interesting
00:09:49.220 thing.
00:09:50.840 Again, an interesting sort of moment in time.
00:09:53.240 Yeah.
00:09:53.720 So it didn't last forever.
00:09:54.680 We haven't got the big four anymore, have we?
00:09:56.140 No.
00:09:56.700 Well, that's right.
00:09:57.120 Anyway, carry on.
00:09:57.760 Carry on your side.
00:09:58.580 They came in in 23 and actually they didn't, for all the cultural weight that they have.
00:10:05.300 And this is seen as the golden age of the railways.
00:10:07.260 I'd actually debate.
00:10:08.160 There was about 1910, but this is the golden age of the railways.
00:10:11.300 This is where you get all the art deco posters that go in coffee shops.
00:10:14.200 They only actually lasted for 25 years because then they were all nationalized in 1948.
00:10:20.100 Admittedly, we had the second world war as well then.
00:10:22.240 But so.
00:10:23.520 Those great 1930s designs.
00:10:26.420 Yeah.
00:10:26.880 The things that they're, they're like art deco trains.
00:10:29.460 Yes.
00:10:29.840 Sort of.
00:10:30.540 Yes.
00:10:31.200 Engines, you know.
00:10:32.340 So this is, and actually flying Scotsman herself is a product of the LNER publicity department.
00:10:40.760 Because it's one of the fascinating quirks that because the LNER was absolutely brassic, didn't have two openings to rub together.
00:10:49.300 They were the, they were like the pioneers of modern marketing.
00:10:53.040 So they were really, really good at, they were the ones who developed like the corporate image.
00:10:58.580 And in fact, you know, the railway font that we use these days, which is kind of Jill sounds, but it's actually called transport.
00:11:04.020 But the LNER developed that in the twenties and then they do all their corporate marketing in the railway font, which is why it, it triggers some nostalgic thing in our brain because it's been used for a hundred years now.
00:11:18.740 All the corporate marketing, what they do with the corporate marketing, what they want is clout.
00:11:26.160 And this is where the locomotion, the original George Stevenson locomotion, number one, has been on a plinth in Darlington railway station since 1842 or something like that.
00:11:41.060 They, they then bring her out. 0.57
00:11:43.440 Um, and in 1925, we have the centenary and what they actually do, they don't fire the engine up.
00:11:51.860 They actually put a little petrol engine in its tender and put some oily rags in the chimney and set fire to them.
00:11:58.600 So there's a bit of smoke coming out the top.
00:12:00.300 And of course, because it's a silent film, you can't tell because it, what it would actually be doing as it went down the railway and put it next to, um, one of the Northeastern railway, big Pacifics.
00:12:11.440 Um, because right at the very end of the pre-grouping era, the North, the NER comes out with the Raven, big Pacifics and the great Northern railway comes out with the A1s of which flying Scotsman is the first one built by the LNER.
00:12:30.360 So they built one engine, they built one engine called great Northern and she comes out on like December the 28th, 1922. 0.50
00:12:37.960 And then flying Scotsman built in January, 23.
00:12:41.620 So she's the first one.
00:12:43.040 And a Pacific is, uh, uh, is a wheel arrangement.
00:12:48.260 It's a 462.
00:12:49.400 So you've got four, uh, little wheels at the front to direct it into, and they just sit on their own little bogey.
00:12:56.980 So to direct it into corners, to haul the front of the engine into corners and four wheels gives you great stability at speed.
00:13:05.340 Six driving wheels in the middle.
00:13:07.640 They are six feet, nine inches across.
00:13:10.400 They're huge wheels.
00:13:12.700 Uh, for high speed, long running, uh, gives you enough traction.
00:13:18.120 Um, but without making the engine too long.
00:13:20.360 And then what she's got, she's got two little wheels at the back, again, like the Peyton T to support an enormous firebox. 0.98
00:13:27.740 All right.
00:13:28.460 So going right back to the start of our conversation, the big wide firebox is partly for your steam raising capability because you've got a big grate.
00:13:38.740 You can have a big fire and that means lots of steam, but it's also, as you're going from London to Scotland, that, that fire is covered, getting covered in clinker.
00:13:46.420 So the fire is getting dirtier and dirtier and dirtier.
00:13:49.680 So it's, it's ability to raise steam is slowly going down.
00:13:52.960 So there's literally no way of dealing with that during, whilst the fire is still going?
00:13:57.500 There is now.
00:13:59.320 Oh, okay.
00:14:00.040 But not in the twenties.
00:14:01.380 Okay.
00:14:01.840 No.
00:14:02.480 Um, what you have to do is when you get to the other end, you have to work with the irons, which are like a massive long shovel and a big long dart.
00:14:13.680 You know, there's eight, nine feet long, made of an inch bar with a point on the end and you have to go in through the fire door and sort of smash it all up into little pieces as best as you can and shovel it out.
00:14:25.100 A horrible job, really horrible, nasty job and dirty job because all the ash, of course, it's absolutely red hot.
00:14:31.800 So the moment you take it out the door and there's just dust everywhere and it tastes horrible.
00:14:37.300 Um, but if you've got a big wifi box, you can get to Edinburgh before that becomes critical.
00:14:45.640 Um, the LNER marketing department get ahold of this.
00:14:51.020 They've done the centenary.
00:14:52.360 The LN, the LNER is the first, you know, the first railway in the world.
00:14:55.980 We've been, they do the Mercedes thing, you know, we invented the car.
00:14:59.380 Um, they get to claim that they invented the railway, so you should go by them.
00:15:04.660 They also then do a, a press nonstop run from, from London up to Edinburgh.
00:15:16.180 And after the railway races in the 1890s, uh, the absolute speed becomes less of an issue.
00:15:25.760 I think it's because some of them got quite close to having quite a massive accident.
00:15:30.960 Um, so they all sort of had a gentleman's agreement to actually back it off a bit, but the LNER rip
00:15:37.400 up the rule book and they go, right, it's not going to take us eight and three quarter hours
00:15:40.860 to get to Edinburgh.
00:15:42.280 We're going to do it in six and a half.
00:15:44.220 And everybody goes, Ooh, that's quiet.
00:15:45.780 Let's go in some, um, the, the, the really simple thing they do.
00:15:53.060 And it's, it's such a genius little thing was it used to be, you would take you, you
00:15:58.480 know, four hours roughly to get to York crew change, and then you do the next four hours
00:16:04.180 or back before then it'd be an engine change.
00:16:05.940 Cause you'd change companies running a steam engine continuously at high speed for that
00:16:12.920 length of time is not advisable.
00:16:15.620 So what they do is like things start melting.
00:16:18.200 No, the crew wears out of the crew.
00:16:20.700 Yeah.
00:16:21.060 The crew wears out of the shoveling of the shoveling of the coal and the sweat and the
00:16:25.840 heat and they need, you know, a pee and a sandwich.
00:16:29.640 Um, so what Gresley comes up with is a corridor tender and through the tender under the bunker
00:16:36.720 of coal and through the water tank in the, in the flying Scotsman, there is a little corridor
00:16:42.260 only about 18 inches across.
00:16:43.640 So you can shuffle in through it and then you open the little door into the cab and
00:16:50.240 at speed, you know, the, the Scottish crew comes out, gives the English chap a tap on the
00:16:56.080 shoulder.
00:16:56.520 They swap into the seat and then he goes back through and then the first compartment in the
00:17:01.080 first carriage is for the crew.
00:17:03.400 So he can sit there, he can have a cup of tea and, you know, eat his sandwiches and job
00:17:07.920 well done.
00:17:09.240 It now means he doesn't have to stop.
00:17:11.580 So they have a massive, you know, we've now not 25% out of the time it is to Edinburgh.
00:17:20.180 Amazing.
00:17:20.540 Um, because back in those days, of course, Edinburgh is the sort of second financial center in the
00:17:27.300 empire after London.
00:17:29.040 There is a lot of Anglo Scottish traffic and up the Eastern, up the Eastern coast, you've
00:17:36.440 got business chaps going to Leeds, you know, Middlesbrough, Tyneside or Durham, all these 0.70
00:17:45.300 places up the massive centers of industry, a massive amount of goods.
00:17:50.540 Going up and down.
00:17:52.220 And because they don't have zoom, there are people do proper business trips.
00:17:58.600 So a chap from Newcastle will go and see his, his accountant in London.
00:18:04.960 So there's an enormous amount of traffic going back and forth.
00:18:08.700 Big press trains like that get the, get the railway traffic.
00:18:14.960 Um, and then, so the Scotsman does that in the twenties.
00:18:20.540 Have the great depression in 1933.
00:18:26.180 I think it is they strap her to the dynamometer car, uh, which is a scientific test car.
00:18:34.940 Um, it's very clever.
00:18:36.800 Actually, they've got like a telephone connection to the cab so that the driver can report on,
00:18:42.120 um, reverse a position, throttle position, uh, what the steam pressure gauges are telling
00:18:47.600 him, how much water is still left in the tank, you know, how sweaty the farm is getting or
00:18:52.100 the rest of it.
00:18:52.540 Um, and then on the dynamometer car, they've got a strain gauge on the couplings.
00:18:58.380 So you can see how hard the engine's pulling, they've got a very accurately machined little
00:19:03.740 wheel.
00:19:04.900 Um, so you can measure exactly how fast you're going and exactly how, um, far you've gone
00:19:12.260 up the railway.
00:19:13.280 All this then feeds into a big telemetry thing with lots of nibs, you know, making wavy lines
00:19:18.800 on the, on a, on a sheet of paper, which is moving forward at like, so two inches a mile
00:19:23.520 or whatever it was.
00:19:24.440 So you, and then you roll it all out and you can see exactly how the, it's also used for
00:19:28.520 like measuring the quality of the track.
00:19:30.500 So you can see if you suddenly get a bumpy line, it's like, right, well, the track gang
00:19:34.460 needs to go out and fix that bit between mile post two and one or whatever it is.
00:19:39.520 Um, she's, she's then the first authenticated engine to do over a hundred miles an hour. 1.00
00:19:45.560 And it's only in 1933.
00:19:47.620 We hope you enjoyed that video.
00:19:49.920 And if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.