Diesels are history!

Although Dr Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine in 1892, it was not until 1947 that the London Midland and Scottish Railway developed a successful mainline diesel locomotive. The railways were nationalised in 1948 and it was decided by British Railways that they would continue to build steam locomotives to a new standard design. The reason for this was that diesel fuel was very expensive and had to be imported, whereas coal was relatively cheap and plentiful. Very few people had motorcars in the 1940s and the railways were recovering from the damage that they had suffered during the Second World War both from enemy action and lack of maintenance.

In the 1950s Britain became more prosperous and the pollution caused by the burning of coal became a real concern. London in particular, suffered from ‘smog’, which was caused when smoke from coal fires mixed with coal smoke to produce a thick choking atmosphere. British Railways had many thousands of steam locomotives. It took many hundreds men to clean and service in this fleet. It was an extremely dirty job and it became very difficult to recruit people to work in such conditions.

In 1955, British Railways produced its modernisation plan whereby its entire fleet of steam locomotives would be replaced by diesel and electric locomotives. The former Great Western Railway lines from London Paddington to the West of England and Wales presented a problem in that the section of line between Exeter and Plymouth is extremely hilly and has many twists and turns whereas the route between Bristol and London is relatively straight and level. British Railways (Western Region) engineers looked to Germany where engineers had developed a locomotive that could perform over the steeply graded Black Forrest routes. The engineers in Germany used a diesel hydraulic transmission to transfer the power from the engine to the wheels with an excellent power to weight ratio compared to heavy weight diesel electric locomotives being designed and built elsewhere.

The Westerns were built at Swindon and Crewe between 1961 and 1964. Their introduction enabled trains to be run at much higher speeds than had been possible with steam locomotives. The 1960’s were a time of great change on the railways. British Railways was losing large amounts of money despite the modernisation scheme and Lord Beeching was hired by the Government to give the railway a thorough makeover. His remedy was drastic and involved the closure of many secondary and branch lines and the rationalisation of the network.

In 1967, it was realised that the modernisation of the railways had been mishandled. Instead of testing a variety of prototypes and selecting the best as a standard design, British Railways had ordered many different designs from a number of manufacturers. This meant that maintenance was both difficult and expensive. As a result, it was decided to concentrate on a standard diesel electric design and to send the rest of the fleet for scrap. This policy also meant the closure of a number of locomotive workshops, which eventually including those at Swindon.

The first Westerns were taken out of service in 1974. As a protest at the rundown and eventual closure of Swindon Works, the unions adopted Western Courier as a mascot and refused to break it up on the basis that it had been taken out of service with relatively minor faults and could have been easily repaired. Western Courier was purchased for preservation in 1976. Swindon Works closed in 1985, 150 years after the Great Western Railway was incorporated.