EARLY DAYS WITH DIESELS
The mid-day Ilfracombe to Waterloo train drew into Yeovil Junction behind No. 35006 Peninsular & Oriental S.N. Co. On the turntable a ‘West Country’ Pacific blew off impatiently. Then something strange arrived from the east, eliciting comments of surprise from passengers already bored by the long trek from North Devon.
“It’s a diesel,” commented one. “No, it’s a gas-turbine,” declared another, who thought he knew better. Actually, it was No. 10000, Britain’s first successful main line diesel-electric loco, trying out its paces with the 1.00pm Waterloo-West of England back in June, 1954.
Although diesel shunters were already proving reliable and economical on their relatively mundane tasks, little progress had been made in the UK with diesel traction for main line work. Probably the first was Armstrong Whitworth’s 800 horsepower 2-6-2 (1-Co-1) in 1933; but after trials on LNER metals it suffered a crankshaft explosion, which brought the experiment to an abrupt end.
In 1947, the LNER announced its intention to replace 32 Pacifics with 25 1,600hp diesel-electric locos for the East Coast Main Line, but following Nationalisation in 1948, the newly formed Railway Executive cancelled the scheme.
The idea of diesel locos of Type 3 output on ECML expresses cuts across the Gresley ‘big engine’ policy; so one can assume they would have been worked in multiple.
Meanwhile, on the LMS, this is just what chief mechanical engineer H G Ivatt had planned. In 1946 he and Sir George Nelson, of English Electric, set in motion the design of two 1,600hp diesel-electric locos, to pair up (with just one crew) on such prestige services as ‘The Royal Scot’, and to undertake easier tasks singly.
‘
Home-grown’
The prospect of dieselisation did not appeal to everyone. R A Riddles, vice-president of the LMS and then Railway Executive board member for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, thought steam should continue until superseded by electrification. With its low first cost and its dependence on ‘home-grown’ coal as opposed to imported oil it seemed the obvious short-term choice. His henchmen, R C Bond and E S Cox, were also ‘steam men’, so the building of 999 steam locos of 12 standard types from 1951 to 1960 was no surprise. However, Ivatt admitted “if, for the sake of
