DOWN MAIN IS 25: WHERE NEXT?
Steam Railway’s ever-present main line column marks a quarter century. But rather than just take a nostalgic view, TONY STREETER invites some of main line steam’s stalwarts to comment on its future…
Here’s a realisation: Down Main is 25 years old this issue. A quarter century. As long as the ‘Big Four’ existed, and longer than BR steam. So it would be easy to wallow in nostalgia. Maybe even understandable. But let’s not do that, for what would it achieve? Instead, let’s think not about the past but the future - and whether steam will survive or fail. To do that, it would be natural to ask those intimately involved what they think. Logical even; after all, who has a better handle on this than those who face the challenges and worries of running wonderful yet longobsolete technology on today’s network day in, day out (and often at night too)? Today’s scene has plenty of eloquent and involved observers - operators, promoters, engine owners… There’s no shortage of topics either: at a time when the Rail Safety and Standards Board is looking to introduce new guidelines (SR470), when Network Rail wants to stop steam-age vehicle toilets fouling the track (SR455), when the railway is becoming ever faster, and paying for overhauls ever more of a challenge (SR470) there’s plenty to talk about. Yet sorry chaps… you have your say often enough. This time, I’m going to park the normal approach to this column. Rather than my voice commenting on an issue of the day, or me asking people to respond to the news… let me edge to the corner of the footplate, and give the seat to others. They are names many readers will know. Maybe not from last week or last month, but these are people who have lived through and shaped some of steam’s most memorable moments, and have the creases and scars to show for it. They are the players who bequeathed us the movement we have today, but who have now largely stepped into the shadows. They have the experience - and these days the distance, too. So it’s ‘welcome back’ to some of those who were never short of a view in the time after DM’s creation, in the summer of 1992, and have something to say now. Forget about the last 25 years - collectively these guys can add a couple of centuries of experience to that. And they still have plenty to contribute. There are warnings in what they have to say, but positive stuff too. Common strands, but not total agreement. Who is the most persuasive? Read on to hear the arguments then decide for yourself…
SLOA CHAIRMAN, ‘DUCHESS’ BOSS…
“We were so proud to have a steam locomotive on the Royal Train for the first time in 38 years - that was a sea change moment.” Brell Ewart remembers the time back in 2002 when a gleaming red Duchess of Sutherland was hooked on to the famous plum-red vehicles, and hauled the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh across Wales. For the founding chairman of the Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust and former chairman of the Steam Locomotive Operators’ Association, No. 6233’s pioneering sojourn was a natural highlight - but he’d been involved for many years by that point. Running ‘4MT’ No. 80080 in the 1980s after its Barry restoration, following that up with No. 46203 Princess Margaret Rose (1990), creating the PRCLT (in 1993) and restoring ‘4MT’ No. 80098 (1998) and the ‘Princess Coronation’ (2001) - all these were already on his CV. Brell stepped back from the PRCLT and the main line - nearly ten years ago now, in 2008. Yet he still keeps a keen eye on steam (not to mention Sheffield Wednesday football club). What then, is his view of the future? “I always had the view from when I first went on the main line with the locomotives that we would be foolish as a movement to think we could do what we wanted, when we wanted. I equated it at the time to landing a Tiger Moth at Heathrow - and I still hold that view.
I HAVE ALWAYS REGARDED RUNNING STEAM LOCOMOTIVES ON THE MAIN LINE TO BE A PRIVILEGE, NOT A RIGHT BRELL EWART, CHAIRMAN, SLOA
“Some lines may always be available, but those into London won’t be. “If we stick to that basic principle, I see steam running for a long time. Because the technology we’ve developed now - with building Tornado and the like - far surpasses what we had then when steam restarted in 1971. “The main line railway is a far faster railway than it’s ever been - and it will get faster still. Do we increase the speed of our locomotives? In my view, no. “We were the first to do 75mph, with No. 46203 in 1994 on the North Wales Coast. We noticed a significant increase in wear and tear. Yes, for ‘Pacifics’, if we could increase it to 80mph, that’d be OK.” “I still gnash my teeth at times when I see people doing things I wouldn’t have done. There have been a number of locomotives that have, say, run on the East Coast Main Line and stopped the job… you can’t do that. I don’t think we ever set off a lineside fire with No. 46203 or the ‘Duchess’.” “If we’d said in 1964 or 1965 that we’d still be running in 2017 we’d have been taken away by men in white coats. It’s precious, so let’s treasure it.” “I have always regarded running steam locomotives on the main line to be a privilege,” he concludes, “not a right.”
THE DRIVER
David Court - it’s a name that undoubtedly still brings a smile to the faces of people who enjoyed many a run with him on the handle ‘up front’, even though it’s now some eight years since he last drove a main line passenger trip. That was in 2009, with what had previously been EWS and is now DB - four decades after he accompanied
Flying Scotsman across America as a BR fireman in 1969. Sadly, he thinks steam will be squeezed in future: “With Great Western electrification and IEPs coming on the East Coast, I’m really sure that dedicated lines will come. Already, it’s really hard to get paths through Doncaster, where I am. “If it weren’t for Open Access I think we’d have gone a long time ago. “I would like to think it won’t be just secondary lines - but I think it’s inevitable.”
NR’S TOP STEAM MAN
Stephen Cornish had already been on the railway for 30 years when he first ‘sat in the chair’ as Railtrack’s Special Trains Manager. He knew, he says, “that the days ahead were not all going to be wine and roses. (Certainly not wine, given the railway industry’s Drugs & Alcohol Policy, and a delivery of roses from a grateful steam locomotive owner seemed an unlikely prospect.)” Stephen admits though, that one thing caused him “particular anxiety”. David Wilcock had been author of this column since its start in 1992 and, says Stephen: “I knew these pages, and had read David’s wellinformed but often quite swingeing criticisms of various aspects of steam operation and the people responsible. Railtrack had, quite rightly, come in for a severe pasting on several occasions and now, as one of the people responsible, I was clearly going to be in David’s crosshairs.” “‘So go for the lion in his den’, I told myself, ‘Get on speaking terms… before he finds his first brickbat to throw.’” So Cornish and Wilcock met - and Stephen found Dave “to be a nice guy, clearly passionate about steam on the main line, and very focused on the need to tell Steam Railway’s readership the whole truth and nothing but the truth. From the outset, we found we could work together well, so long as I didn’t try to pull the wool over his eyes in any way, and in the fullness of time Down Main proved to be a good channel of communication between a somewhat maligned national infrastructure provider and the many thousands of people who enjoyed main line steam. Down Main was critical when criticism was deserved, but genuinely supportive when the need arose.” After the Hatfield accident, says Stephen, “it was Down Main that recognised all that the Railtrack Special Trains team was trying to do to keep the business afloat, and it was Down Main that encouraged everyone to work with us. I’ve kept a good many press cuttings from my railway career, but the one of which I’m most proud is from Steam Railway No. 252, where David talked about all that my team and I were doing in that time of crisis, and provided me with huge encouragement at a really difficult time. “It’s now eight years since I retired, and a huge amount has changed in that time, not all of it for the better in the steam world. It’s certainly true that by the time I retired, almost all of the ‘old guys’ had done the same. These were men who had been railwaymen in the latter years of steam, who knew about it, and weren’t fazed by it. As we approach 50 years since BR finally kicked steam into touch, the very last of the ‘old guys’ will have gone, and that’s a definite challenge for people wanting to run steam on the main line today… “The way forward has to be what it’s always been: the people who want to operate steam on the main line have to demonstrate that they can do so responsibly and in absolute safety. They have to demonstrate that - as Bob Meanley of Tyseley always used to say [to me] - a steam train is just another train, not a freak or a novelty. They have to demonstrate that when things go wrong they can adapt and adjust as well as any other player in the industry when the need arises. They have to demonstrate that although they may be amateurs by definition, they are professional by behaviour. “They have to demonstrate a willingness not to attempt the ridiculous, but to show common sense and a readiness to listen to, and accept, good advice. And the industry itself needs to recognise all of this. The 50th anniversary of the last BR steam working must be commemorated in 2018, but it really concerns me that over-ambitious plans could turn a commemoration into a debacle, and alienate even those elements of mainstream railway operation where the steam movement has sympathy and support. “It also concerns me that an affordability crisis may be looming on the horizon. The costs of railway operation continue to increase, and the costs of steam operation are naturally embroiled in this spiral. And yet riding behind a steam locomotive isn’t a pursuit that any rational person is going to prioritise over heating and lighting their house and paying the mortgage. My concern is that promoters will attempt, totally understandably, to squeeze every last penny of profitability from a train, and will become more strident and more persuasive in their attempts to get that ‘one extra coach’ on the back. The extra coach means extra weight and extra length, and ramps up the performance risk. It may mean, like everything else in life, that the steam enthusiast has to pay the real cost of his chosen pleasure, and that could be a difficult pill for many to swallow. “The industry needs to remember all the time… that steam traction was what created today’s railway, and that back in the day steam locomotives hauled the ‘Cornish Riviera Express’, the ‘Royal Scot’, the ‘Golden Arrow’ and the ‘Atlantic Coast Express’, the intensive passenger services on the LT&S, and the lumbering freight from Willesden to Bescot and… oh, pretty well every train that ever ran. Steam is our railway heritage and the industry must be grown-up enough
THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO OPERATE STEAM ON THE MAIN LINE HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY CAN DO SO RESPONSIBLY AND IN ABSOLUTE SAFETY STEPHEN CORNISH, CUSTOMER RELATIONS EXECUTIVE - SPECIAL TRAINS, NETWORK RAIL I WOULD LIKE TO THINK IT WON’T BE JUST SECONDARY LINES - BUT I THINK IT’S INEVITABLE DAVID COURT, DRIVER
to understand that steam has a place even today and must be taken seriously. I really believe that so long as everyone, industry-wide, takes it seriously, steam will survive and will prosper.”
HE WHO HAD TO BE OBEYED…
Even now, magazine editors are used to receiving peppery letters from David Ward - pointing out perceived shortcomings, whether about the main line, or preservation in general. Yet it’s now well over 20 years since the former BR steam supremo retired, in 1994 when InterCity disappeared as the private railway dawned. For years before that, everybody became used to the idea that what ‘Wardy’ said, went. He’d started on the railway way back in 1948. Yet the man who remembers ‘Britannias’ on the Great Eastern, and who was there through the ‘Return to Steam’ years, has lost none of his passion for the main line. “It is in everybody’s interest that this should be allowed to continue,” David says. “However, it needs to be recognised that the design of today’s steam locomotives was obsolete over 50 years ago and their operation on today’s main lines, with their intense line occupation at high speed, is making it very difficult to path steam-hauled trains with their slow acceleration, low average speed and the requirement for water stops every 80 miles. “This situation will get worse in the next five years with the introduction of IEPs and 110mph EMUs, with their rapid acceleration operating a much higher frequency timetable. The recent decision to judge right time performance on a train as being not more than one minute late (compared with five/ ten minutes now) will mean regulators and signalmen will be more averse to taking risk when regulating heavy, slow-moving steam trains ahead of timetabled trains. “Even on lines like the Settle & Carlisle and Carnforth to Hellifield, discussions are taking place on more frequent local services which will inhibit paths for steam trains. The