Play The Dark Isle, Ring 8 Bells For the Past Which is Gone.

This will be the last post for a while at least in my blog of memoires and musings of all things with yellow ends and blue body sides. Both requiem and ulogy.

I first started doing haulage as we called it, behind class 37s as a hobby in 1980, having had a short period as a spotter. Gone immediately was my ambition to clear-everything, that is to strike off all locos in the listings book as being spotted. Instead in was the great game which I fell upon like going through the wardrobe into Narnia or finding a secular meeting going on in the snug of the pub to which you were ushered in, and welcomed as a new believer.

That was it in a nutshell, we were all 'believers' and more over of course 'followers' usually of one faith over the other. By in large that had meant following one of the big five locomotives in the 1970s but by 1981 the smart money  had moved onto the swansong of only one of those , the class 40, and over to the class 37 as it entered a new unexpected era of widespread passenger workings. There were also of course the MacRat crowd, lamenting the spluttering epitaph of the dieing class 27 in particular, which met a more ignomonious end of life scurrying around on the fife circuit and Dumfries route and being subject to frequent failures. One thing most of us could agree on and that was we hated duffs and duff bashers!

Back then on my first visit to a works, St Rollox, there was an immediate feeling of nostalgia, of the railway and rolling stock belonging to an era which was old fashioned yet vibrant. A testimony to british engineering that 1950s technology was reliable and economic 30 years later. Having said that in 1980 the youngest duffs were less than 7 years old, while the syphons over D6950 were still fledgling teenagers. Rolling stock off the main ECML&WCML\&GWML was mostly still mark I steam vacs.

Of course back then there was actually the start of a completely opposite situation of what is now DMU/EMU domination. First generation DMUs were so knackered that something had to be done, and this affected all regiosn where  in particular locos like the 30 something classes found new use hauling semi fast and stopping passenger services. The locos were freed up from the decline in light and mixed shunted freight, the coaches were cascaded down from ECML/WCML where air cons and HST sets ruled the roost even by the mid to late 1970s.  So then the scene was set for possibly the most riotous fun a haulage fan could have in the years forward  to the eventual withdrawal of class 40 in 85.

It was a great game. New loco hauled diagrams. Alterred availability of locomotives. The unreliability of the sulzer LDA engines. Not only on the standard diagrams which were loco hauled or became such in this great era of yellow-blue bashing. The public en masse still took the traditional working class holidays to Blackpool, Scarborough Yarmouth, Newquay and Skegness. This meant addex trains from July to the Aiugust Bank Holiday weekend with whatever old stock they had, and no need for a loco with ETS. Also sets were freed up as replacement rakes in case of failures on DMU and Class 45 /47 routes. By the summer of 1983 the 47/7 fleet and 27 fleet were so unreliable that your were almost certain to get a few 'big' NBs working those routes if you spent a week bashing.  Each new timetable threw up a multitude of tantalising 'bails' which involved running over foot bridges or galloping down underpasses when there was no crew change, just a chance crossing or a pause due to single line operation.

On top of basing yourself with a local transport area day pass from one metropolitan area, there was of course the main event for most back then, and that was going on an 'all line' fortnight for the serious bashers, or a regional rover for a week for us 'neds'. For me that meant one thing and that was the Freedom of Scotland. The aim of either end of the spectrum of expense, was to do routes by loco hauled trains and cover them with a rare loco if possible, while also mooching about the city terminals waiting for 'gen' or 'viewing' particular trains, in our case most often the carstairs portions, the 0715 Ayr/Glasgow and the 1715 Glasgow-Edin.  Many big loco bashers slummed it in terms of loco haul and went for the scenic extremities of the network. Penzance with a 37 or rat. The far north with hopefully a pair of 26s. The infamous 1S81 and its forwarding overrnight to Elgin with a type 2 or boilered 37.

For me the highlights of my short five year career as a syphon basher were mostly on freedoms or on excursions to the west country and midlands.  The best day ever was probably doing the overnight to Inverness, followed by the wick service with a pair of 26s to Dingwall, followed by a 26 to Kyle, then the ferry over to Skye, the bus over said island and then a good thrash down from mallaig again to complete the Scottish grand tour. Then you could say the craziest day was the first day of syphons on the Cambrians, pairs and single big NBs and as many bashers if not more than Ada's and Berts ! Hundreds. They drank the pub at Caersws dry on the fester for the purposefully impossible bail at Mach'. I include a little appendix below which I will maybe update for the sake of accuracy, just being a bit of a disjointed list of best thrashes.

The Skye route was a must do for myself. An itinerant 14 year old lieing to my mum about it being with a gang of pals, I set out to do it alone really after I stepped onto the platform at Dingwall, solo. Other Must-Dos of the time were the riotous 1S81, all the way from Carlisle if you were a 'top man' for the day with most often a roarer on the top. The bail at Blair Atholl, blair aweful to make for a piss poor doss as an overnight, which often ended up being Pitlochry . Down again to cover the 0650 Ft Bill bedz and if that was rancid out towards Ayr for the 0715.

If you took the 0650 Ft Bill then the de rigeurr foot move was from Tyndrum Upper over the Glen to the halt at Tyndrum lower. The cobbled road out the upper station which was original to  the 1880s and the walk through the mist drenched glen before most of the country had got to worrk was the sign of a devoted syphon basher.

Other must dos by 1984 were to get 40s on some of their traditional routes on service trains, this meant Settle-Carlisle, Dundee, Blackpool and so on.  We managed to do 40 118 over Settle , steaming on 5th of january. Booked a dual heat duff we went anyway and it was on. There were a lot of people who would become prominent in the CFPS on that train or its return that day. 40047 on the other hand boasted only me and a man who would go on to be the director of Virgin rail, then a 40, western and v220 nut.

In 1985 various things happend, 40s came to an end and not nearly enough of them have been preserved unfortunetly. Locos like 40155, 170 and so on were in very good nick and it was criminal to cut them up. Also boilered stock took a bow from time tabled diagrams with the advent of the 'combine harversters' aka 37/4s and the cascading of other ETH class types into secondary duties. Sprinters were establishing themselves too and the end was nigh on invisible plakats we hung round our own necks.

I got older,  into outdoor sports more, more sheepishly interested in girls, and lost interest in continuing with ETH stock and no 40s to add variety to endless v12 miles of growling EE type 3s. I lost a whole gang of freinds and all those weird adult aquaintances who on reflection now were at best eccentric and a little school boyish while at worst just a bit sad. 

Regrets? No, not one minute would I miss and not one minute more would I spend. I would be very happy if there was a heritage train on the WHL and far north with type 2 and 3 haulage, and a 40 running in Scotland somewhere, but for me there is no going back and it was a more of less clean break in autumn 1985. It seems like then it was more a nostalgia trip than now when I look at youtube where every so often someome has digitised their 8mm or VHS footage of all things blue and yellow at the ends.

Today I took time to look at some footage from MC Metals, Crewe and Donnie works from the time when the second generation locos were being decimated and the peaks and forties were decaying hulks. Also a look at 37s having their open heart surgery to become the new HGRed sub classes. It was kind of like looking at videos of your grandparents being in hospital and it felt like you were seeing a funeral you couldnt face to go to. It was kind of a catarthis today looking at lumps of blue and yellow steel , just disected boxes now with their lungs, muscles, nerves and hearts strewn around in piles like offal at an abetoir. It kind of gave me some closure in a way. Now 37s will of course continue to rumble over UK metals a while longer, and for the rest of my life at least on preserved routes. However it is more that the era we lived through often felt stolen from us I think. We lived five years of withdrawals of locos we loved. The deltics, the forties, the boilered diagrams.

Like much in life, good eras and good times are fleeting. We think they are constant, they will go on, we can keep on reliving them. In fact they always fade away or die abruplty. Change is the only cliche in life..Our interests change or become impractical to follow. Boats, planes and trains get cut up en masse and a couple go into an endless retirement from their former glory. Freinds move on, lovers come and go. Children consume our middle lives ..the only constants are that there will be decline, decay, death and then renewal, novelty and enterprise again.

So if that was the era for you or an era before, and you like me now find the internet rekindles interest, then just look back and let a tear come to your eye. Maybe take a wander down to East Lancs or NYMR or Boness with the kids and have a wry smile at the enthusiasts and the 25mph workings but dont start ranting on about where and when and all. Those days are passed now, and in the past they must remain.

Good bye.

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Appendix

Memorabilia. The trips and the trashes which stood out in my mind

Class 27 of all things to Oban, with John E Auguston, drain pipes, white socks and massive pentax wide format an' all. Gave me a taste for trundelling along in mark I steam vacs. Later preferred their more reliable cousins, the 26s.

Bailing at Helensburgh upper off a 37 at night, the thrash a foot away from the walkway through the iron lattice work. The thrash was deafening. I was hooked.

Seeing a pair of 37/0s haul the big aluminium ingot train up Arrochar bank while over the other side in the Argyll wilderness with a scout leader 'cheify' on a nature watch pack tour.

Kind of lowlights in a way> turning down 40047 on the ft bill euston bedz from of all places DUMBARTON, it was a dodgey move home for a nipper. Also turning down 40165 i think, or one of the last boilered centre coded 40s on the 22>40 glas -edin mail. on a freedom at the time i think too, much embarressed now. Not taking 40150 further than cumbernauld from mossend. "what a bunch of neds, bailing here, bashing 40s on a transcard" . while on 40s, 40155 replacing a failed peak at chester, we did it to warrington, great forty thrash with a late train and a stick weilding expert up front. 40188 of course, 1040 carlisle leeds 5th january 1985. riot, with a better thrash in the dark on the way home unfortunetly, would have been nice if the driver on the up service had thrashed her as much. Of course 40170 too dropping on the Inverness Bedz as far as perth, and working the return NB. It actually had a bricked second mans window, so allegations that the 40 bashers including the 'bradford bender' had smashed the windscreen on the duff which was booked and on pole position at eastfield are unfounded. They managed to brick the forty's side window, suggesting they were kids not able to chuck track ballast any higher!!! 40047 with a well known railway director, edin/dundee/edin the fife circuit in 1985. Not a great thrash, but I think it was the last steam heat 40 run I ever had if it was after 40118.

37014 made a good few monster runs on the whl and other places. One with load eight on the 1650 ft bill on a hot august evening, the loco was absolutely singing up the crianlarich banks. Also it ran like the wind with the infamous peter walker at the helm, with an hour late ex ft bill eth bedz, ethel in tow, which said PW made up entirely between crianlarich and dumbarton. He knew the route intimately and with this being the only airbraked rake on the WHL, he could really put the anchors on after getting max speed. I have never been so fast on the whl, and it felt like he was doing over 90 through cardross.

37028 on a self imposed eva and brother's  'baglet' tour. voh it was. Quite big, we expected it to be dualled or there were already rumours then in 82/83 about what became sprinters, and locos being mothballed. did it all the way to fort bill, then i think a rancidish 025 or the like mallaig return, and then all the way back.

37188 qrrived as a gleaming blue steed to eastfield in stark contrast to the wrecks which had come to ED from stratford depot, who seemed keen to get rid of dross first, 014 being an exception. I only remember one run on 188 actually out of many dozen runs behind her, with fred the skin head.  it was a very clean running and powerful loco compared to the likes of 025, 027 and the long standing wreck 108.

37264 ex works. This was many a syphon bashers beast, having been one of the only high number 37s to be stratford based with a boiler. It was a good runner at IS and later ED, but the latter gave it the full treatment , ground in all the valves and probably put a new timing chain on her, and she ran like hell fire but with hardly any dark exhaust. Clag was bad then, a sure sign of a loco needing a trip for a D exam.

On clag, 37175 was the worst offender at ED for many years: smoke, flames, and a tendency to over rev. It allegedly hit the 1000 rpm rev limiter and shut down up queen street tunnel one day. It also had messed up field diversion system, and would cut out at full power and try to divert. Had  175 omnce with the returning fake boilered class 20 , a syphon oddity if ever there was one. It was put on on mindays on the ft bill bedz because the line was always slippy due to there not being any sunday services. It allegedly alleviated wheelslip and prevented the train from coming to a hault, but the odd monday I had it on the up service, up being the bigger smoke, not the wee Ft Bill, it was just a nice noise behind a thrashing syphon , kind of a little sister saying " I can run and play with you too, me too !! "

One loco which did get better for a while was 025. I think I had her on the rather slack dumfried route to get the line for a syphon. When it came to the WCML after Annan., the driver went ballistic and the thing thrashed through second and into third field and just pumped away until eithe he got a yellow signal or he reckoned it might be a bit uncool to over run the platform at carlisle.  Also had heating the infamous 1s81, just to have a syphon on it, and it thrashed like hell through stirlingshire. hell fire for a loco which was before and after 1984 a bit of a heap, but was preserved with a functioning boiler at least then.

Also on dumfries , we had 37119, D6700 for posterity all the way to carlisle on a rupert special family rail card extra run having been to bristol to bash what ever was there.

37 296. Little did we know it would become a humdrum ED class 37/4, it just appeared on Scr during the miners strike and dropped on the infamous 1715 glas edin. excess ticket ensued. great thrash. all the macrat 27 neds including the worst, sellers and blakey, were on it to get a line in the book. Perth man said they had to jack the tunnel up / it was so big you see. it struggled to get over 75mph or maybe the driver didnt botherr too much.

I did also a 37 12x to stranraer for the route. nothing of note on the way down, but after telling the driver it was a good loco, he decided to give it welly up the galloway banks and it was a thrash to remember from the itinerant big nb. Also not much to write home about as the power unit was sick, we did 37292 at 2000bhp on a euston-stranraer, getting the maybole /kilmarnock route for syphon at the same time. In that guise it worked only a handful of passenger trains during the miners strike of 84.

I think also my first run to Brora or Helmsdale with 37262 and another on return  must be up there, because thundering through the night up there in december with sleet and rain was cool. also that month in 1983 decmeber i took 37183 with the empty flat bed wich had a through steam pipe for the stock, on the only mixed goods passenger train then running in the UK. have photo to prove it.

Riots then, well doing the far north bashes and when 37s  as above, dropped onto the stranraers, the dumfries route, the carstairs portions and the odd glas edin service, plus them doing the skegnesses and scarbororuhghs from either newcaslte or edinburgh on return to glasgow. 37174 showed the fife tip top a clean pair of heals out of haymarket with load 9 vs load 4 pah, 27 junk.

we had hoped Ethel would mean that any old ed or ML syphon could drop on the sleeper, but alas the loco was booked onto the mrk 1 steam vacs still used to mallaig at the time. The only riot was when 133 was sent up in a dual header on the 1650 or the 1820 oban in the winter to releive a failed loco, probably 025! Unfortunetly the drivers took the pair up easy, but at least they bothered to connect the blue start up.

The biggest ever riot was of course the completely barmy first day of syphons on the cambrians. there were undoubtedl more bashers than punters. riot. total utter riot. we drank the pub dry at caersws.

other things of note, first family rail card run to bristol with rupert. 50008 , the shreddies and that mad 4511x on the glasgow bedzx to brum. up[ lickey like it wasnt there. much better than a duff . I thhink we went just out of NB season and there were no 37s to be had, with only one or two dual heat workings possible out of cardiff then. We also saw part of a very eventful or rather fateful test train for british locomotive production: we saw a stone train being hauled under test by a pair of 56s and it was those tests which lead to the class 59 being considered a better loco, whcih they are, and then the yingy shed 66s being ordered with public money.
My first ever shreddie was part of another type of tour , a mystex, which was going to chester or shrewsbury from glasgow. We kidded ourselves on we didnt know where the mystex was going. we bailed at crewe to take a shreddie down and very impressed were we too. lovely movers, so much betterr than their vermin relatives.

I'll finish where I started now that I have mentioned vermin type 2s. Syphon bashers had a soft spot for 26s partly because if one turned up on the far north route, you were as well to take it, but more over that it annoyed 25 and 27 bashers, because the crompton equipped machines with their early 6LDAs were better made and more reliable than their after comers from BRCW. I had a rare run on a pair of them on the first wick & thurso one cold october morning frrom snechie, and in a pair they could inflict dammage on that route as far as tain at least. But back on the WHL, and one wet but icey cold satruday we all turned out as usual to put more mileage on the usual ED suspects, especially 188 my beast, when lo and behold the whole line had gone back ten years and it was teacuppping heaven for macrat fans. Only the sleeper and one other service got a 37 that day, there was some blah blah gen about the boilers all needing inspected after a failure of one. It almost doesnt need to be said, but every train that day ran bloody late and the whole affaire was pedestrian until finally we piled on the 1650 Ft Bill which had a decent bit of v12 kit on the front. Vindicated. Sypohon Bashing, I LOVED YOU

Class 37 Self Steering "Bendy Bogies" (CP5)

  The desire for more power to move passengers faster and lift heavier freights on the west highland line, and lines north of Inverness, lead to the obvious candidate being the RA5 EE type 3 aka the class 37, 1750hp CoCo loco. In a techincal paper recently made available I find a fascinating insight into what was a class novelty soon brushed under the carpet by 1986, namely the "bendy bogie" experiment.

As a design, the CoCo bogie has many advantages, but one challenge is getting them to go round curves and we have a lot of those in the Highlands of Scotland!

The fact is of course that Class 37s had a much longer history with the ScR than most bashers and cranks knew, although that being largely a non boilered allocation to Eastfield and Grangemouth and thus in fact, their use limited due to demands for steam heating even in May and late August on these routes.

It seems that the WHL was not a route of choice for 1960s controllers allocating out EE type 3 motive power, and I propose they were probably either a) reserved for medium weight coal and petrochemical freights elsewhere ;  or b) banned from the route due to Co Co configuration.

Prior to tests of boilered EE type 3 locomotives at some point around 1977-78, I never saw myself or heard any "tractors" living within earshot of the route, nor did I see then or now any photos of 37s on even freights up there despite a decade of allocation to relevant depots. Someone will no doubt correct me and please, be my guest!

The Background History, Geography, Engineering and Economics!

By the late 70s, the mainstay of WHL traction, the class 27s, were becoming unreliable and there was a desire to have faster timetables on the west-highland line in order to compete with road transport. To put it in perspective, 27s ran a timetable almost 50 minutes longer from ft william and suprisingly 40 minutes from Oban. In a later twist of irony, these timings are similar  to sprinters which required a fudging of class 37 timetables in order to look competitive.

Road improvements at various points on the Mallaig to Glasgow "A82", the  road-to-the-road-to-the-Isles as they call it, were either in planning in the late 70s or actually completed. In order to remain relevant on passenger timings and also to have a synergy with the aluminum and paper industries at fortwilliam and oil/petrol to Oban, then more horse power would be needed and the 37 of course being RA5 with the pulling power (max' tractive effort) as high as many type 4 and even the type 5 deltic, would seem to be ideal (55,000lbs force at 18mph for the EE type 3)

The west highland line however is less than ideal for any locomotive or indeed multiple unit due to its torturous nature in gradients, curves and slippy rails. In steam days the line eventually demanded the somewhat over-spec'ed Black 5 be utilised, but this measure of power and superior tractive effort prove successful in steam as it did in diesel with the essentially more power than needed class 37. Many steam fans in their 40s and 50s would tell us that the black 5s would out perform the little tin-cans in classes 24,25,26,27 and 29 which replaced them from the route.

At one point there was chat and a reference in some rag about the 37s speeding up timetable and improving cornering. Perhaps that was either wishful thinking or outright propaganda then. BR was already planning for some way of working around this and although open to modification, they did not want to invest in new bogies (although at a cost we heard for a new wheel and axle with driving gears- set of over a hundred grand and this being not infrequent for Eastfield cl 37s it may have been wiser!) Perhaps someone could offer a comment on the BoBo bogies of the various type 2 designs and how the axle to axle span differs or other benefits of the double bogie with fewer axles, but that is immaterial: we were going to get more "horse" and not going to get RA6 Bo Bo class 33s up the WHL!!

They Knew All Along About CoCo Issues to be Found midst Lochs and Mountains Then? 

British rail technical and the class 37 fleet management in operational engineering must have known about the potential problems of running at maximum line speeds with a Co Co loco from experience with such routes in Wales, and it is reported that some modifciations, or tweaks, to the existing bogies on ED allocated "syphons" were made to allow probably for a more compliant ride at cost of some high speed stability ( with better track bed and in particular modern points, this was probably not such  an issue as it had been in late 40s BR!)

Eastfiled locos turned out with a white stripe at the tumble home bend on the locos body sides to denote this apparently, while I do not recall 37 175 having this actually, and we believed the time that 081 had it for some ceremonial/royal/tour working with an ETHEL. I do seem to remember that the white stripe denoted a speed limit on the specific locos though.



UK DE loco Bogie Design from 1947-1990 : A Fundemental Fudge ?

British locomotives like any other have vertical suspension, with the springs and dampers an obvious part of the construction. Hidden from view, the traction motors are "nose suspended" to the internal main-frame of the bogie with their own suspension such that they can ride with the axle while being cushioned from verticle shocks and horizontal movements.

Now here is the rub, you must also spring and dampen horizontal movements, because you do not want the massive forces created by the usual uneven ride of a loco as it rolls, pitches and yaws ; three aircraft and nautical terms for "shoogeling" as in Glaswegian.

Essentially this then has more to do with building engineering for earthqaukes, in reverse, where the mass which is oscillating is above the earth! There is a requirement to reduce impact forces on corners and dampen any horizontal movement transverse to the direction of travel.

So the bogies allows for this in the "commonwealth" type by having a main frame higher up in the bogie with the main circular bearing the bogie rotates under the loco on, while the axles and traction motors are then suspended on other structures which allow for some independent movement. Conversely, the characteristic 'cantilever" beam of this type of bogie  then holds all three axles vertically compliant and transmits these conjoined elements and forces to the suspension springs.

So in this way the wheel set can move to follow the rail even if the loco above is pitching, rolling or yawing, and dampen the forces. Further to this then the axles and traction motors can move to a given degree of horizontal independence with the vertical forces being resolved by the cantilever beam.

As young spotters then, we thought that the cylinder and rod arrangements on this type of bogie were brake pistons, but in fact these are an ingenious part of the system to control the extent of horizontal, independent movement while actually being laterally mounted to fit in the space available to the BR gauge.

Compromise Makes for A Good All Round Bogie System in the UK:

The independent axles main advantage is of course actually in tackling curves of a radius shorter than cant of the line and wheel bevel angle would not require this (as in fact is part of the practice of very high speed trains now, where unwanted horizontal movements under application of tractive effort or braking resistance may set up oscillations, greatly amplified by the high speed: hence HS1 and HS2, bullet train in Japan and the whole TGV thing running on very shallow curves with enormous radii) The axles of a locomotive or rolling stock for that matter must to some extent follow the radius of the curves which are sharper than allowed for in the tolerances of the higher-speed-track bed solution.

Essentially despite the whole bogie rotating around a sensible designed pivot point on the loco, the wheel set when presented with a prominent curve shall we say, are on one side forming a cord on the arc of the rail and on the inside trying to form a tangent. This has to be further corrected for in order to reduce wear to both the track and the bogies, in particular the wheel flanges and tyres but also other components which we will discuss here.


The system design then for a limited amount of independent axle transverse movement has three purposes which relate in their entirety to safe progress:

1) reduce forces on the track: ie the bogie tries to educate the radius to the "chord" between contact point and indeed between bogies.

2) reduce wear on the locos flanges and other components

3) make the ride smoother and both spring load the sideways forces and dampen them  to further this end.


Articulated Bogie Designs (eg Class 66)

Most north American locomotives do not use this approach of significant, radius-following, independent axle movement, but rather allow for a limited articulation in the  whole bogie frame design: often on CoCo design, the innerst axle pivots or rather has a limited rotation on its own frame rather than the axles itself "floating". There are probably some unwanted effects of this under traction and breaking, or over poor points etc, and with transmission/suspension of vertical forces  but now this is of course very wide spread in the UK being a feature of the class 66. For lower speed routes where it is desirable to reduce wear on the flanges and the tyres  on the wheels and the axles, gears, armatures and bearings, it would seem that this would be a better solution.

However the class 37 and most of its contemporaries were based on proven technology from the 1950s and before even, from successful and reliable designs  in the emerging diesel electric traction field. Ironically though, many steam locomotives feature a trailing wheel under the cab behind the main driving wheel which is articulated !!. The issue did not come up until the 37s were sent to Terra Scotia en masse! By then the articulated frame approach had been proven too at various speeds and track beds were far safer for modern locos to ride at higher speeds over.

Typical British Approach: Boffins with Cotton Reels.... Make Do And Mend with Ingenuity 

Confronted with a limited budget for a limited end  benefit in terms of return-on-investment then the engineers were faced with compromise and make-do-and-mend.  Typical for the political atmospehere at the time, the usual public funding issue of getting a budget to repair unsuitable materials every year, but never a larger budget in one year to eliminate or engineer out those issues, no doubt played a part. 37 bogies' would then need to "shoogle" more, yet not cost the earth to do so.

I can imagine the early tweaks were then to allow for softer sideways "preload" so that the axles could react quicker and perhaps small adjustments in the total horizontal movement possible. However, a bit like a plank of wood getting nailed down really hard at one end and the other springing up, eventually you are going to reach a limit of movement in part of the system and that prove to be critical in the "nose suspended" traction motor suspension. This has both an unfortunate simple leverage effect which could amplify small adjustments in axle transversing and also of course this is the absolute key to motive power thus being expensive to get wrong.

To summarise this fascinating article as a layman; and I hope I do justice for the inginuity of the engineers back then:

1. The nose suspension box for the traction motors was critical and modified to include an "X" shaped rubber suspension element to allow for more movement from more directions
2. The axles were engineered or allowed to run further in the lateral direction and to do this quicker
3. New side ways springs and dampers were employed to then work with this longer and faster lateral travel

Success in Engineering and Failure in Economics

The trials with the bogie were evaluated as being very positive, as detailed to a very high technical degree in the paper . The results showed that the new design conformed to tolerances for these type of movements on tracks, thus being safe and the prediction was that there would be significantly less wear on the wheel sets.

However we were in a position by then of 1985 and "sprinterisation" was planned for and the lower geared 37/4s and eventually /5s would be used on heavy frieghts at lower speeds. It seems most likely to me that there was no capital budget for this adaptation to a set of 12 locomotives or so, which seems very short sighted and a result of the whole annual budget bull shit the Uk was in at the time in all departments: on the one hand not being able to spend more on year to save costs in the subsequent years, while on the other using up as much of the budget you had for operations in order that you didnt get it cut back from the actual spend. From water works to the admiralty, this was the Tory fueled "double think" of the 80s and early 90s.

As I heard from railway staff at the time, a new wheel set for a standard 37 was over 100 grand, and maybe that was higher for the new CP7 lower geared bogie. So spending one year to save for the whole life cycle of a sub class would seem sensible. On the other hand, the actual worse cause of wear was wheel spin and some other forms of wheel-spin-prevention and arrest could have been a wiser investment in terms of cost-benefit-saving.

No matter what, 37s are still today in fact working to Mallaig after having had the longest relationship with the line of any diesel loco, spanning 3 decades.

The Best Thrashes!!!

Well which in a nutshell then, were my best ever thrashes?

I am jsut going to make a list, some locos and diagrams to be corrected or filled in later

37028 to Ft Bill

37028 vorh set up if I remember right for far north working. Big at the time, and it was an okay performer. Rarity in that it and 37017 were two of the very few vac'only 37s dotting around Scotland at the time. I ended up only ever bagging a few VO, but quite a few VB's turned up on loan to ScR while they awaited HGR E or H exams.

Good run with my sister in law in tow and a party atmosphere on the train, sarnies and flasks packed on a baking hot day in c 1983.

Track bed went on fire north of Rannoch or somewhere adding to the party atmoshpere ( still cant remember the station, seemed like a disused halt. Have piccies somewhere )

37014 1650 Glas-Ft William.

37014 features in the best ever, ever thrash below. But this was well up there., It was running either load six or eight on a hot summer saturday, and it was particularly thrash north of Ardlui with the curves showing off the attacking punch of the EE type 3 or this torturous route.


26 000 and 26 000 0635 IS to Far North (to Dingwall)  My first ever big overnight and it was to do the classic, probably either october 1982, december that year on a "Loanded" 10 quid freedom or summer 1983. It was damp and chilly at snechie.

This is the only type 2 in the book of thrashes because by in large type 2s were crappy underrated locos which should have been re-engined to 1500 hp at least. You needed two of them to get going, but this route really showed what a pair could do with type 4 power and 140 tonnes of momentum up front. We hurtled through the countryside and it was only with some regret that I bailed for the more usual Achnasheen leap, or perhaps I did cross - Skye for another thrash.

37025 Mallaig to Ft William 198x post my cross Skye bus and ferry move.

The cross skye move was accomplished with the freedom of scotland waived at both ferries and a dosey bus driver: it wasn't valid on the busses but was on the ferries. Seeing I was a 14 year old on my tod he let me on and I journeyed to a sweltering Mallaig. It must have been nearly 30'C there for some reason and the train was unbearably warm until we got going. By god we got going, I have not comeo out of Mallaig so fast since! The driver calmed down after Arisaig, but for those 10 minutes he was as they say, possessed.

37014 + EHTEL

This is the famous one, with Chris Gibb on board : all of us on the ex WCML buffet just behind the sleeper cars with Peter Walker making up almost an hour between Crianlarich and Dumbarton to leave almost on time there as I waved goodbye to him doing what with 37014 ? THats right, more notch 8 and get it all moving !!  This is well written elsewhere, but Peter knew the CAPABLE speeds and with the air brakes he could really just slam them on for Garelochhead, Faslane and then Rhu. The run past cardross was like being on the WCML, must have been 90 mph in the 60-70 zone. Absolute hell, have blogged on it b4.

4514... Bristol- Glasgow Beedz. Blogg3ed on this too, absolutely amazing, waved bye bye to a nice pair of enormouse 37s on lickey as we went up it at over 70 mph. I never respected these locos before or indeed after, but this was a diesel run to remember and a fantastic bit of stick merchanting!!  Also I think we went via Worcester loop or whatever which required a pilot loco : this was  another huge 37 and once again, it was not deemed necessary to plug it on the front as often happened on those services with a duff in tow.

Peter Waterman and some other ex drivers say that the 45 was the best loco they used, beating all comers but that is partly down to huge tractive effort being available with their massive weight. If they had been on ScR when I was a basher (and i did intend to do them out of Edinbra on the ECML  but never got round to it, fearing being stuck without  a last train or decent over night move) then I would have taken them instead of duffs when on option and covered lines with them perhaps. But then 40s may well have lasted longer in that parrallel universe and then 45s were the enemy.

37296 1715 Glasgow Edin

37147/174 Scarboroough- Glasgow, from Edingburg.

Both above showing the ease at which a 37 in standard form could tackle a 70mph average speed on the route with a decent rake of stock.

37209 1984 July, to and from Stranraer. Not much on the way down, determined to do the whole route with a big NB 37 though form Glas Cent. After telling the driver I thought it was a good loco, and the train leaving 2 minutes late, the thrash up the glens there was spectacular. A well functioning bit of kit, with a driver who just let it rip.

33000 Crewe- Shrewsbury, Bailing off an Addexx / Mystex at Crewe we took a Cardiff service instead of the duff, sans billett. The wee 33 totally surprised me, being my first ever one and I was truly grateful to Sulzer for making at least one fine LDA variant . Type 3s always had to work for their living and I rate all type threes, even a soft spot for non ETH 31s.

50 008 0900 Bristol-London to Bath.

First run on a 50 with the first compo not stuffed with Ruperts or other neds. Stuck my head out a whiole and the loco just showed how much faster than a duff they were when working well, and how VERY much better they sounded than any sulzer sloshing strummer.

Varioous Roarers

We were lucky in having Bert_Exs and Mystexs from dear aul' Glesga because they were comprised of the old mark I 100mph airbraked stock and nearly always a Roarer. Roarers werent really any good at accelerating from a start, 86s and 87s being better, but over an 86 they did seem to hurtle around at speeds between 70 and 100 for some reason. Maybe the mark Is just made them feel faster, and certainly they went over 100mph if they had the road on these limited stop specials.

By 1983 though the surviving 81s and 85s had begun to go bang quite often so we did record two failures.

More on the night:

37 026/025, to carlisle in the dark down the WCML goign mental and the same on 1S81

I did of course want to do a few routes with 37s and cleared a fair bit of the standard stuff at least. 37s on the Carlisle Via Dumfries in winter were rare, and having 1) not done the line with a syphon 2) not having anything better to do than 110 miles off one thirty seven rather than 35 off three up the WHL.

Nothing of note to Annan because the route is effing boring and effing poor for a 37 becasue a heck of a lot of it is 40-50mph right in 2nd feild divert, the 37s achilles heel on twisty and gradient strewn routes with speed limits of between 50 and 60mph: they rarely impress unless the driver gets above divert and breaks the limit! However upon ajoining the WCML south of Annan rather gingerly over the points and maybe to a signal, the driver vented his frustration at field diversion by going through all three on the WCML, necessitating a rather heavy bit of braking to come to a halt in the station. Jeckyll and Hyde you could say, and the way the mark I's were ratteling I'd say it was over 90mph.

1S81 was usually some crappy tea cup or tip top with boiler on, but it dropped a 37 with boiler, probably 025 one night and it showed the type two diagram that it was just a wee lassie, and the big brother type 3 was now in charge. Thrashed the hell out of it with a very impressive run as far as stirling. I may have bailed there, line acheived for a tractor can't quite remember, but a boilered 37 at Perth on a chilly summer midnight hour does ring a bell .

37 264 ex works, no clag, just thrash up the WHL with Davey Fraser saying it was the best loco on eastfield in his inimitable "old man" way. Great thrash, hardly any clag which equals a well prepared set of valves and timing chaine tuned to perfection.

37 188 was one of my beasts as was 178 . 175 was just too claggy nutty to be a contender but neds love clag these days!!

40170 on the overnight to Perth, blogged before. Nice tunes up the QSt tunnel!!!
40155 as blogged, why oh why did they cut up locos in such good nick when we had rancid type 2s and some tatty duffs whcih could have been cannibalised to keep their bretherin of vermin going at other depots while a selection of the best 40s whislted on providing secondary back up power admirably into the 1990s???

40 118 05 jan 1985 Carlisle Settle with Reidy, Rupert and Co. Particularly hell on the way North really big thrash out of Settle. Two coaches at least more or less stuffed with bashers. I mean the revenue from bashers would have paid for the refurbishment of a class of 20 of these old slugging beauties ???

Apart from that I think there are a few I will remember, including my first decent run behind a 37-4 out of ft bill which was hell in the snow up the valley to Tulloch and beyond " like a canon in the night"

By then I was in fact a bert, I viewed 37-4s as new fangled stuff, 40s were gone, 1984 had happened ( miners strike and all) so I retired pretty much officially in April 1985.

Do I regret not bashing longer because 37s came to work a lot more lines in scotland ? Well hell no!!! I had healthier hobbies to persue and I had had my run for my money of bashing. It was all just a game and I liked the back drop and thrash of my dear old west highland line over anything else. When sprinters came in there, I started using the bus which is a lovely run over via Inverary for anyone going that way, and then I eventually got my driving licence.

I turned up for the last weekend of 37s on the normal WHL serbvices to be confronted by a gaggle of insects (probaby now all "top men" with shares in good 37s!!) calling my beloved Syphons, "growlers" and warning me that this was indeed the last weekend. I felt that they were the new generation and that the old timers were gone, and anyway I was flung off another train because transcards had become invalid on the west highland line which left a fascist bad taste in my mouth. It was time to move on.

Go back and do it all again? Hell yes!!!!1

Glasgow Queen Street Tunnel and the Edin- Glasgow Service

As a feat of engineering you have to admire the sheer bloody mindedness of putting a north bound terminus station at the very heart of the then recently modernised city of Glasgow. This entailed running a dead straight chord of track down from south of Bishopbriggs: the tunnel itself is actually referred to as Cowlairs- Queen Street or just Glasgow Queen Street Tunnel. At 1 in 42 it was insurmountable by traction locomotives until 1908, and even then only by utilising specially built banking locomotives.

Banking on Banking

Banking remained common into the diesel age. However the introduction of more powerful class 37 and 47 locos pretty much negated the need for this banking. Indeed some trains were run down on a dead slow reverse shunt of upto 7 coaches I remember when there was  a lack of locos to haul down and provide uncoupled banking up over. To add insult to injury, on WHL trains when the dittery little class 27s were banking a 37, a spirited driver on the lead loco would outrun the 27 . This could lead to problems because the 37 would bang into first field diversion, the diesel-electric top of first gear. How dangerous this ever became of a situace I do not know with  75 odd tonnes of teacup scurrying to try and catch up with the rake or not as the case may have been.



Jewel in the Crown of Scottish Railways

The Glasgow Edinburgh route must surely be the jewel in the crown of the Scottish Region: negotiating the climb pretty much unabated to Falkirk and then the wide river valleys of west Lothian to then penetrate the very heart of Edinbra,' dissecting old and new town in the valley which used to be occupied by a lake! It connected the two largest cities together. At the time, Edinburgh a fading political centre post unification and dissolution of the parliament there, while Glasgow, the industrial and economic second city of the empire.

 You can chunder along between Scotland's two greatest city's in about 50 minutes now, and you could get there actually quicker in less than 40 on sunday mornings with an intercity 125 in the 1980s ( although it was published as 45 minutes, it went faster)

Slithery Issues

The gradient, and the weather, have always caused issues for traction. When opened in the late 1840s, hemp rope and a winch at cowlairs were used with braking wagons, the locos being removed from use in this passage up and down. This hemp rope of 5 inches circumference,  did become wire, but seem to be called the rope-pull until locomotive banking was introduced and presumaby braking was better on single units with tenders who could then descended the gradient unimpeded.

The tunnel is dank and seemed to be prone to getting greasy rails. So banking was par for the course until the more powerful locos worked the shorter rakes ( between 3 and 5 for WHL and the push pull "shove duff" glas-edin services)  Longer rakes were stlll delivered down and banked up by whatever loco was around, and often it would work a later shorter load train anyway. There was at times some methodology, but quite often a "Big NB" or a class 40 or a teac-up/tip-top dittery sulzer type 2 would come down and be punted as working say the 1715 Glas-Edin extra non stopper or a Dundee, yet only saunter off at Cowlairs and be spirited away to Eastfield or where-ever over the mysterious Springburn, Coatbridge and Bridgeton meandering connection routes..

I guess there was a limit to the allowed reverse shunt delivery in coach legnth, probably load 6 Mrk Is or II a-c's, regarded as safe. However with the introduction of 37/4s with their lower gearing and 47's on most other services in the mid 80's banking was obsolete on load 8 even.

The route basivally punishes all the diesel trains that work it, and I dare say was a back breaking and unromantic experience for driver and fireman on steam. You have the opportunity allowed you by the relatively straight route while you have this unceasing gradinet eastwards to Falkirk and the heavy braking which begins at Cadder for a 47/7 set at top speed.

Isambard McKingdon?

Really as I say, Glasgow Queen Street and its umbilical tunnel,  was a very victorian bloody minded approach to being competitive in the 1800s. It was scotland's HS2 if you like. However Glasgow Queen Street High Level has been a fantastic asset for city centre business, education and travel because it delivers people right to where they work, shop or study. It was of course built in an atmosphere very much AGAINST any notion of an integrated transport policy. Railways were the new whizz kid empires, fighting against the embedded fifedoms of the canals and even the stage coaches and ferry men.

I can imagine a top hatted railway magnet of the time, side burns bigger than fife and kinross, cigar wafting over the maps and plans, streaking a quill pen down from Bishopbriggs and making a definitive circle in the heart of the newly planned and evolving Glasgow city centre. " We will put them here, thousands of people within 5 minutes walk of their call of business Gentlemen !!"

Better Solutions and Crazy Economics

 A far better approach to delivering punters to the city,  would have been to run the track round to locations either east (High Street area) or west ( Charing cross area ) and then connect them as they are indeed today with the low level line. Queen Street High level was however made where it was, and  as a grandiose quilled pen slash and circle on the map.

A terminus at the east of the city centre with the curve past springburn to then the bishopbrigs-Lenzie cut would have been handled by locomotives in the 1850s at least. Indeed there was of course a major terminus at High Street- for freight and mail. This whole area of the city leant itself much more to access also across the Clyde, it being not of navigable importance north of the weir.

A terminus at the west, Charing Cross Area, would have provided both the western commuter and the northern commuter access to a fast growing financial centre of the city, now a shadow of its former self , slashed and still the gaping  open wound we know as the M8 through. A slash through the heart of what had become pretty much the "central business district" of dear auld glesga between the wars.

However, there it was placed , this Northern Terminus : bold, risky but with the high reward of city to city communications from heart to heart. The biggest proximity and time saving benefit for those with the cash to splash. The broadband superhighway for the wealthy and borgiouse middle classes of the 1840s.

Dieselisation and 20 Years of Push Pull Twixt Glesga and Edina'

Post war the route saw the introduction of diesel multiple units which probably tackled the fastest limited stop service then in about an hour and a half. Way faster than anything but a plane then. But the building of the M8 in the mid to late sixties required faster traction. Ironically enough for all those tea-cup sulzer fans, the most successful trial was with load 5 and class 37s runing in as little as 40minutes in trial runs non stop, with 105mph being recorded by one driver told to forget the 90mph safety rating of the EE type 3!. Banked up by the incomming loco, this would have been an impressive service. But this meant more crew and more time at each end and the lack of a need for banking at the Dun'edin end.

37 haulage would have possibly been most effective with three trains an hour given loco drop on's at each end  of the route  or a rapid run round at Edinburgh  because it would allow for good utilisation of the locomotives at the Glasgow end, with the banking 37 only having a short time to wait for the next arrival before dropping onto the head of it and allowing the crew from the one just arrived to bank the loco in this leapfrogging way.

However you utilised capital equipment it would have meant more train crews on the route than really "necessary" when compared to using a single type 4 and running round or the ideal situation, push pull, single power unit.

 37's could though, have been a very good stop gap while the shove duffs were prepared. The route was often tackled under 47 minutes non stop by 37s, and on semi stoppers like the 1715 Glas-Edin the more rapid acceleration of 37's cancelled out the better mid range pulling power and top speed of 47s. The EE type 3 would have needed additional maintanence as did all locos on this route but essentially for a 50 minute two stop timetable the 37 would have tackled the diagrams better than the "tea cups" and duffs which by 1984 were so unreliable that at least one push pull set was off most of the time on the route with a 37 often at the head of the replacement.

In any case Polmont / Linlithgow somehow got their stops added which makes then little difference 37 vs 47/7.

Shoving, Puffing and Going Bang Often


Push pull was seen as the solution, and what was available was the class 27s, where the series 1 dmus could be swapped over to slower type 2 booked services, and their light frieght work had pretty much dried up ( read my comments before about the what a waste of time buying thousands of sub 1300hp locos for main line services was) . The 27s in their/1 and ETH fitted /2 guises did a pretty good job but were thoroughly knackered by the end of the 70s and in need of replacement. Hard acceleration, hard braking and thermal cycling took their toll on them, as it would have done on 37s, The 47/7s with their 100mph rating, required a very high level of inspection and maintainance to stay on top of the classes' rubbishy engine block and brakes. The sub class did an admirable job and it remains to this day the fastest actual timetabled, regular twice an hour service that the route has ever had. Also they provided regular services to Aberdeen and Perth , and delivered great gladness to thrity seven bashers in 84-85 when they went bang regularily and the whole rather horrid air-con (coffins) would be displaced for a 37 with a good old rake of non air con' stock.

Why Have Sparks Taken so Long to FLy up Glasgow Queen Street Tunnel ?

So the tunnel was always an issue for combustion based traction, and was tipped for electric traction as soon as it was available in the late 1800s. I guess this would have been electric loco power cars running off a third rail. A concept we will come back to. However it was 1976 actually when rennovations included the deeper floor excavation and use of concrete ladder trackbeds which would allow for the realigning fairly readily for 25kv overhead, as had been accomplished on the low level route in the early 60s.

Why this never became anything? Well in the 70s there were hundreds of jobs in servicing and overhauling diesel traction in the less-than affluent springburn area. Also there were other commuter towns in the suburbs of glasgow which could be plumbed into the existing 25kv network. Ayr was earmarked for this and in fact it pretty much got wires in favour of the Glas-Edin route if I remember correctly, being an easy shot, just really from Paisley, making it about 30 miles of wires,  with only short tunnel sections and the main obstacles being bridges needing lifting or replacing. The extesnion to Largs probably meant that the true cost was comparable to an Edinburgh run. Also the ECML electirfication had been seen as a goer, the deltics being a stop gap for wires in fact. So there was little really against electirfication of the Glas-Edin via Falkrik route, other than a then safe Tory seat in Ayr securing wires and 25kv under Dear Auld Thatcher.

Another nail in the pre milenium coffin for electrificaiton was the carstairs route being electrified.  We in Glesga always looked upon Edinburgh as a biscuit tin lid city for silly light industry, a bunch of religious muppets on the mound,  students and culture ponses turning up in Auguist. How little did we metal bashers know that such poofy stuff, coupled to funny-financial dealings, would make Edina into the economic engine of post 1990 Scotland!  Edina got her connection to both main trunk UK lines with a necklace of 25kv overhead wires, serving through services and stoppers on the Cartstairs route to the Dear Green Place in the west as an after thought. So we had on this route intecity 225s taking well over an hour to bridge the salt-and sauce chasm and new rather rubbishy, unreliable DMU's on the north route doing it slower than 47/7s.

Final insult to injury was the attempt to perhaps get the east end of Glesga's housing estates access to Edina's  economic prospects, if not the inhabitants valuables, by running wires over the old route from Airdrie through the 'burns' and 'gates to the evil source of all that is sauce on your chips.

1980s Musings on What Could or Should Have Been

Anyway, a far cheaper solution to speed up the route, would have been, as suggested on a committe with Graham Green,to gear down some intercity 125s and make them a coach shorter, tearing out all the kitchens and most of first class, and bringing a non stop journey time down to 30 to 35 minutes to haymarket at least.

Indeed a "zing" ( IC 125) did work sunday mornings to Kings X from Glesga QS, probably because there was no Royal Scot 0910 on sundays. Thiss thing flew over the route, doing almost the ton through spam valley and probably full on 125 past cadder yard.

I only did it once IIRC; to cover the fife circuit for forties in 1983/ 84 and to then view and take the first SCABBEX ( Scarborough to Glasgow return holiday extra ) back, it usually being a completely enormous class 37 or a spare ETH duff as I think it was on the two occaisions I viewed it, the massive beastly syphon being taken off at Edinbra on platfrom 13 IIRC do go and do somethign useful in the NE, while jo strunmer was in excess on the SCr on sundays.

 Trams/zings  call them what you will, they would have been a deserved traction and rolling stock set for the route connecting the two main cities,  but the issue of making them non standard and keeping them reliable enough would have plagued Scottish Region. However, you could have attempted a derating to 1900 hp or so each end, and jsut whipping out the restaurant car so they would fit in GSQ amd operate with some better reliability ( a major issue was thermal cycling - ie engines being thrashed to 2250hp and then run down for the next stop!)

Far better though upon reflection, a new built end-to.end power car system with slidey doors and floors you can whipe the pee-wee and tartan special off after sparring with the Jambos or the Hibies. Indeed a single VP185 v16 unit with a DVO on the other end woudl have done a fine job in the summer when the rails are a little less greasy up the hole. Following elecrtification then these would find use on the Aberdeen routes.

Today's Solutions for Tommorrows Problems...

My PC , eco friendly version for today then would be a five coach single diesel power car with a v8 VP185 at about 2000 hp, and a third rail pick up and running gear under the DMVSO or whatever the pushed driver end would be. Third rail up the tunnel with max amps all the way, giving you a peak of 2 - 5  minutes 3300hp !! Diesel swithced on at the first vent and ready to take over powering at say cowlairs or even bishopbriggs.

Once Englandshire has paid its many billions for HS2......HS2's consutlancy process that is....then eventualy the route will have glorious overhead 25kv wires and we will sail over in 40 minutes. About the same time a 37/0 would take on a non Stop Scabbex in 1983.

The Class 38 Connundrum

BR / BTC came very close to having class thirty eights. You can trace this back to the very development of the CSVT engine which was the obvious successor to the SVT even by the time the first D200s had completed commissioning.

Further the last orders for 37s were seen as being largely a freight dedicated batch and EE apparently offered the "bone" cabbed 2000hp locos they sent to east africa ( now sudan and somalia)

What form would the class 38s or class 40/1s have taken though ?

This is a fascinating flight of fancy in fact. There are several possibilities.

Firstly the earliest solution would have been a production run of 2000hp D6700s. There may have been radiator modifications, perhaps a higher capacity boiler. One option EE may have taken up though could have been dual heat with a boiler space and space for a straight six 450 hp auxiallry motor ( a duplicaiton of the boiler / Engine space as penned in the sales panphlet to BR for D6700) . This would have needed more legnth to fit the additional equipment and allow for longer range fuel tanks. Weight would have then pushed up about 6-8 tonnes for the frame and tanks and 2 tonnes for the engine : thus making an RA6 loco. EE would have kept the proven deltic/D6700 gearing although fitted cast bogie frames and stronger armature equipment to tackle the extra thrashing.

EE also offered the v16 CSVT at the then "safe" 2350hp rail de-rating, approximately the same as the D6700 as lowered from marine / power station rating per cylinder. This rating ended up in the successful C1800s of Portuguese railways. Brush were also in the picture here as locomotive manufacturer! This before the class 31 type was re-engined with the 1470hp SVT version of the v12.

There were several precedents for brush being asked in: one they had produced a 2000hp class 31 with a air charge cooled Mirlees unit, and they had worked on peaks by that time in the very early 60s. The other being that BTC/BRB did want a degree of standardisation but wanted some wider perespective in delivery-solution and not being too bound to one supplier.

However neither were to be, and it took EE making DP2 and BRCW's Lion to move things forward for more modern, lighter weight type 4s to start appearing in production by the mid 1960s.

By then EE had more experience of the CSVT engine and were confident that the then full marine rating was just as applicable to rail traction. It wasn't long after D449 was delivered that the RK engine gained over 3000 hp for marine application and went on to 3250 and more in the mid seventies.

So EE offered the 2000hp in the "east african railways" design, probably with ETH as an option. However BRB declined and stayed with the same strategy as the D200 order- it is standard as a class by numbers now, don't fix if it aint broken.

Type 3s and the newly ruston re-engined almost type 3 Brush type 2, were proving themselves to be very useful: tackling especially freight diagrams previously larger or multiple steam locos were seen on, and also taking over the diagrams of mid powered steamers like the black 5 and castles in generally excellent fashion.

Meanwhile the type two investment showed itself already to be a folly because the underpowered "rats" were often needed paired up to work even 300 ton trains and the single unit traffic they had been built to command, was drying up post Beechings and the rise of the lorry and motorway. There are enough "standard gauge" railways in the world at that time for the standard LDA6 loco fleet to have been decimated down by sale to needy railways with less ambitious speeds and a requirement for low gross weight of locos over poorer trackbeds and bridging. Some of the "rat" classes should have been upgraded to the far superior LDA 8 engine as type threes to join their more successful cousins as type 3s, which became the Class 33.

 350 to 1000 tonne freight was where the railway excelled and on the passenger side, the intercity and express cross country and commuting services were also the economic area the railway could win in, and these diagrams remain so today and will become more so in future . Type 3s could command the lower end of this tonnage  in single units, and the larger end would prove to be economic for a long time as double units until the advent of SEPEX and the american creep control systems enabling single units to start 1000 tonne plus trains.

So in 1964 to 65 the BRB could have decided to take up EE's offer for a 2000hp 12 CSVT based, slab end loco.  However rather than being a substitute for the last 40 or so D6700s, an order for a new loco class, to be the "little sister" to the then planned EE type 4 production run from the success of DP2.  What form then a "syphon Super G!"  ??

Well by then the order for a new class would have been with slab ends but most likely with internal walk through for driver safety and inspection "on platform" of internal mechanism failures. An extended order of D6600s to 2000hp with ETH fitting could have been another tantalising possibility. However there was also a dwindeling number of RA5 lines. Perhaps a new 2000hp loco would have been given higher weight and for freight dedication, a lower gearing like the 20s and later CP7 bogies?

I like to think that an EE super-syphon would have been in effect a mini fifty with pleasing tumble home sides. It would have probably retained blue star, buffer level multiple working and hence, as the original d400, with an elegant roof level horn box and route indicator below cab window. Thus it may have resembled a cross between the D400 and the shorter, lighter C1800 exported to Portugal.

What gap in the haulage requirements of the mid to late 60s would this loco have filled ? Well given a full dual heated, stretched RA6 variant then it could have been employed on the then rather common expresses to reginional cities and towns from the then partly electrified WCML which were then served in the early 60s still by steam, d200s and peaks: the latter being total overkill for hauling load 6 to 8 on a 40 to 70mph route. The first generation DMUs were already proving troublesome on trans penine and other express and semi fast services so there was another chance to displace these to their rightful place on regional stopping services. Other diagrams and routes for an ETH / dual heat class could have been cross london with Southern region stock, and dragging southern region units around like 33/1s but maybe on routes like the MULE or as above, cross london or SE to SW services.

 A 2000hp loco at RA5 with ETH and standard gearing would have as an alternative, been a very useful bit of kit replacing for example type two double headers on ex WCML route5 s to Aberystwyth and the WHL. We must also remember that the crown prince of passenger traction weighed in at a humble 105 tonnes, the supreme Deltic. Light weight was seen as the key to good power to weight delivery and high speed by EE despite the tendency to wheel spin.

This is another little issue on the electrcial power delivery : EE were ready with AAA arrangement for traction motors with independent current reduction per motor as implemented on the class 50. How much use would this have been on a class 37  with even more horse power ?

The final tantalas I present is then also a matter of electro-mechanics: 1) would the locos have the KV10 style sensibility 2) would EE have dared to use a fourth field diversion to a final, higher voltage enabling 95-100mph "cruising" ? Post 1995 bashers don't believe that the humble 37 could top 100mph in single form. They would have day-in-day out on the Glasgow-Edinburgh run and in pairs on the Super west country services (replacing and supplementing Westerns). The Kv10 could have rendered the locos actually more reliable or with a cheaper service because in theory it reduces driver demanded overloads and hence wheel slip. At the same time it would have deminished the real strong point of 37s- being able to groan up gradients on high amps at decreasing speed.

The one over riding question would be if the CSVT unit in the 1960s form should have ever gone to the rating of 167 hp per cylinder : 50s were experiencing engine block cracks in the 1980s, while 37s rode on and could have remained as a class of over 150 locos today given the traffic for them on Ra5 routes. Inherently a multiple of three , 120', is a smoother engine for an equivalent per cylinder rating because the power delivery pulses are more balanced ; this is the dub in the fifties. 37 292 was a lame machine when I had it, but was that due to the uprating or to a lack of up-rated maintainance on the valves and timing chain ? I think a fleet of 2000hp super syphons could have seen their wings clipped by dertaing to 1850 or all the way to D6700, but also they would have been standard enough, new enought and useful enough to have gone through HGR and received alternators and CP7 bogies.

In the 1970s there was no stomach in reality but for the highest performance end of freight and passenger ( HST) and the ECML was still planned to be electrified. Had we never had diesel hydraulics or so many vermin type 2 sulzer slugs then there would have been an obvious gap for a light type 3 / 4: Sulzer offered the v8 version of the LDV engine for example or derated v12s to various customers. Also the fuel crisis could have set the scene for the reduction of type two multiple working and the slowing of type 4 diagrams. Type 3s and the Brush 2, have all been quoted as being the best fuel economic locomotives relative to the broad duties they tackled.

At least EE fans can look back at the various machines: the ever ready 08's and 20s, the magnificent stop gap deltics which long out lived their design missive, the duplicitous 50s- soveriegn when working but flawed in original complexity and even HGR remodellign, the robust class 40 and finally the ubiquitous, all conquering class 37 : a locomotive which spanned 50 years of railway history, working the legnth of breadth of the Uk, tackling everything from the heaviest freights, the most challenging routes and even propelling the APT on speed trials on the ECML : the most renown and resolute of all classes by nature of their ability to take on more than they were designed for and to live longer than anticipated to the joy of railway fans the legnth of Blighty!!!