A martian may happen to read the Wikipedia insert for the BR Class 400 (EE Type 4 D200 series) and think of them as rather a faiiled locomotive. There is always the comparison to the great and wonderful pacifics and brittania classes they displaced initially, and then how they had to play second fiddle to the more powerful 'real' type 4s and of course, the soveriegn abilities of the Deltics.
We have to step back from that as enthusiasts, gritting our teeth if we were fans of the 'whislters'. Firstly we have to accept some of the points, but also we have to argue that on the one hand the forties werent quite intended for that work in one way, and on the other hand they provided years of working high income medium heavy services.
The first perspective those pipe smoking 'kettle' fans and modern day 'bring back steam' false nostalgia whipper snappers should be confronted with is this. The forty was a mix of two forms of much earlier locomotive, both concieved back in the mid 1940s pre nationalisation. Firstly EE had collaborated with LMS of course on the two CoCo prototypes which eventually saw the light of day just as nationalisation fell. These were intended to work mixed traffic, but in working express passenger services they were most always worked in multiple. Secondly it appears that although the southern regions' 10203 was produced in 1954, its heavy 1CoCo1 design dated back a decade to Bullied's drawing board. Interestingly, the 102 series for SR were not intended as mixed traffic and were geared up to a whacking 110 mph, probably then 53:9 or something like that, for working the through express passenger services to the costal ports.
So BR ordered on the safe a little, still concerned about maximum axle weights and opted for specifying 1CoCo1 for all the initial type fours, and thus in fact making them over weight beasts the lot of them. Also by 1956, EE had developed air charged intercooling which gave a boost of around 20% in power and improved torque and fuel consumption. EE could have stuck with 10 early production D200s in this heavy guise and ordered either a CSVT v12 at around 1850-2000 hp, or V16 at a higher rating. Indeed they did offer this format, but such was the contentment in the BTC and BRB with both the peaks and the D200s that orders of several hundred units were placed before they could be sold on higher horse power and lighter construction in Co Co arrangements.
As this is a syphon blog, a little aside about that magical 2000hp rating for the v12 CSVT. 37 292 was rated up to this level, the methodology noted somewhere on the internet, and it was to my own experience and accounts of others, not a happy runner. Also the east african 'bone' locos EE made , looking like the bastard child of a twenty and a thirty seven, or a prototype class 58 even, were rated at 2000 in the mid sixties, but they only lasted into the early 80s. But you can look to what AEI australia, EE's licensed builder, who went on to take the v12 to 2350 hp before it became the metric RK with large whiney turbochager, and they took the modest v8 up to 1750hp successfully in a class of Bo Bo locos for Malaysia ( Class 21 or 28 there I cant remember which) . The failings of the similarily uprated v16 CSVT are oft quoted, but the 50s had a mixed bag of issues and were thrashed hard on 100mph services for three decades, laterly many semi fast stopping services. The success of the 37 and the portugeuse 2350 hp locos is always taken as testimony to this being dead right as a percentage uprating over the older SVT in a rail traction application at least. However given a big order for possibly then 500 units in around about 1959 ( ie remaining d200 order and all the 37s) then EE might have put their boffins to work upgrading the now proven 12 CSVT which they had exported to Africa already in 1956 and onward. Perhaps bigger turbos and modified valve gear, or maybe they would have trialled gear driven cams instead of the supposedly bug -bear timing chains of the Syphon G, EE Type 3. It wasnt to be and 37292 was just a standard engine with the weaknesses of the timing chain and sticky valve gear revealed at this higher rating. EE to my mind, could have fixed it. A 12 is inherently smoother running than a 16 as well.
So back to 40s and why they get sneered at by some 4-6-2 beardy-weirdy types. BR had already assumed that for the larger trains they would follow the American convention with their 1750 / 2000 hp GM 645 locos and 'robots'. or running multiple diesels. I guess by the early experience of the CoCo LMS designed locos, they knew that over 3000 hp from DE power was needed to operate the 500 plus ton intercity express trains. This type of power would then surpass the output of the best stoked 'tin can' as we patronisingly called ahem, those kettle driven locos, and then exceed their journey times by far due to not needing to rewater or change crew so often. The final steam workhorses like the 'Peppercorn' pacifics and Evening Star, had massive amounts of torque and drawbar horsepower. Essentially two to four pistons working at over 200 PSI could create a massive amount of midspeed horsepower. However at higher speeds many locos were prone to excessive wear and they crews had to work really hard to maintain those speeds. Deltic, pull the handle carefully, oh, and be a good boy and stop pulling back when you get to 100mph.
The plot thickens here too. Through the 1950s and into the 60s there was a Tory government and it got a little corrupt when it came to the transport minister and his brother in law, who was big in road construction and those who wanted the fledgling national airlines to flourish domestically as well as internationally. Add to this the new found affluence and the economic Ford-Keynes -Milton golden economics of car production and personal mobility, then the railways were going to be kind of second fiddle and lose some of the premiere shine of the previous era. On the one hand we did though have a massive investment in dieselisation and new track bed, whille on the other ancilliary or duplicate lines were hacked away after the Beeching Report. What this boiled down to was that doubling up of the D200s was seen as wasteful in the rush to de-steam, and over time, many fast non stop passenger expresses would be deleted from the diagram board in order not to compete with airlines and motorcars, a situation which continued into the days of the APT prototype fleet under Thatcher, who did not want end to end competition with the newly privatised British Airways on the then key Glasgow /London route.
Given that forties could have been paired up for all those trains, or twin higher geared 37s used, then the steam lobby would just bemoan dieselisation. On many services steam needed to work in tandem pairs or be banked anyway to avoid wheel slip or grinding to a hault. Single 1750 -2350 EE locos could then have been used on the semi fast services with loads of 8 or less coaches.
Now we come to the second point. Although forties were relegated, that was a glorious thing. It meant they worked out very useful lives first in the 1960s displacing steam from a lot of freight and lighter sub 100mph expresses and medium range trains. They were also very reliable compared to the new fleet of type fours with the LDA intercoold or eventually the class 50, and had a much loinger service interval than the Deltics, often being so stretched out beyond 8,000 hours as to hasten major dammage in some 40s leading perhaps to the first rounds of withdrawals. As steam fell away and the peaks and duffs came on line, 40s could be moved away north to work on the twistier routes where 90mph is not going to happen all that often anyway. They then displaced some slower type 2 workings or multiples, such as in Scotland, and really in a lot of ways lived a charmed life being celebrities who went first from BBC national prime time to regional day time broadcasting so to speak, but thus they endeared themselves to in particular 'Northerners' in the halcyon days of bashing in the mid 70s to the mid 80s.
Despite being a little pedestrian in acceleration and overloading when coaxed too much on even light gradients, the 40s did a very nice job indeed on load 8 running a 75mph service and were more reliable in miles per casualty than the Peaks or of course the ubuquitous Duff. In their last bastion of premiere intercity diagrammed workings, Scottish Region, they were only superceded and bettered by shove duffs working shorter trains and having far higher maintenance intervals. Admittedly a duff will work a load 8 Aberdeen or Inverness service a little quicker, but with the ETH on there is little or nothing in it. During their swansong, 1983/85 , there were english depots sending them north and scottish control and depots not sending them back again, because they knew they had a reliable stand in and recovery loco. They started to attract a very large following and I was very glad to have had one of the very last saturday workings over the Carlisle - Settle route and back with one, plus random bagging them around the place, and plodding up and down on the Fife circuit one day, nice and toasty warm with a steaming 40048 being the 16 wheels in charge of that service, and a now well know railway director buying the 'family ticket' green special day rover for us to do the trip together in autumn 1984.
Gone they are not, seven existing and six were mustered this week to celebrate their collective 60th birthday, and quite a sight that was!! Whistle down the wind of railway history you old EE type 4s !
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