HIGHS AND LOWS: 200,000 MILES BEHIND BRITISH STEAM

David Ward in Steam World’s sister magazine Steam Railway (December 2004) made some critical comments on GW locomotives over the last 25 years of his whole professional experience, including 16 years when steam was the prime mover. To quote his letter of the time, “performance is all about consistent reliability in being able to meet the demands of the timetable.” This prompted me to analyse my own experience as I timed all my long-distance runs and many shorter main line or suburban runs behind steam in the period from 1957 to 1968, and a few steam specials in that era and since 1971.

The broad conclusions of my analysis were published in a letter to the editor of Steam Railway (February 2005). However, most of the material is more pertinent to the subject focus of Steam World, so I am further elaborating in this article on my findings about the reliability and performance of British steam locomotives during this period and adding some positive details of the highspeed exploits I’ve experienced as well as cataloguing the failures and acute loss of time for locomotive reasons.

I was living in Woking while attending London University from 1957-60, and travelling daily to London for work in 1961, after which I became a WR Traffic Apprentice (1961-64), located variously on the WR in the Reading Division, South Wales and the West Country. As an enthusiast, I made many runs outside the demands of my job on all BR regions – I have details of some 4,666 runs of which I calculate 772 were over 50 miles main line (most much longer) and 3,894 were shorter distance, over 15 miles but less than 50, mainly Woking–Waterloo and return, or Paddington-Slough-Maidenhead–Reading–Oxford, or Cardiff–Newport/ontypool Road, or Cardiff–Bridgend–Swansea–Llanelly–Carmarthen. After