THE LAST STEAM-WORKED PUSH-PULL TRAINS ON BR
BACKGROUND
TODAY we are familiar with express trains which are pushed by a locomotive while the driver controls it from the cab at the front of the first coach. While these controls are now electronic, in the days of steam push-pull trains they were mechanical.
Such a train would typically comprise an ancient tank engine pulling or pushing between one and three coaches. When pushing, a driver would be controlling the regulator and brakes of the engine from a cab or compartment in the front coach. In both examples the advantage is that loco and train do not have to be uncoupled and run round on completion of a single journey.
Push-pull trains were also described as 'auto-trains' by the GWR and 'pull-push trains' on the LMS.
On Nationalisation, BR inherited a host of push-pull-fitted tank engines from all of the 'Big Four' railway companies, each using its own method of operation. Only in Scotland does the practice seem to have been uncommon.
Then still very much in the era of steam thinking, BR embraced the concept and continued to convert older engines to, and build new ones for, push-pull working. The latter were the Ivatt and Standard Class 2 2-6-2 tanks, introduced by the LMS in 1946 and BR in 1953, respectively.
Despite the limited introduction of diesel railcars before the Second World War, the first real threat to these engines came with the implementation of the Railway Modernisation Plan of 1955, which committed BR to replace steam traction with diesels.
The first DMUs had started to appear in 1954 and quickly eliminated push-pull working across great swathes of the country, particularly in east and north-east England.
This in turn led
