ONE PHONE CALL ON A SUNDAY: THE REAL TRIGGER FOR THE BR ‘STEAM BAN’?
Why angering the chairman of British Rail during his sunday lunch apparently had negative repercussions for steam…
One person who knows about running steam in a nationalised set-up – because he did it – is David Ward. Before all that, he was around when BR actually banned it…
Let me take you back… for I’m talking of the three years of famine from 1968 until King George V and the Bulmer’s Pullmans set out from Hereford in 1971.
The long accepted line is that BR simply wasn’t interested, as it phased out not only steam but the facilities and training to look after it. But was that the full story?
David Ward was there. As divisional commercial manager at Norwich he’d been the nominated person to look after Alan
Pegler’s Flying
Scotsman when the ‘A3’ ran from the East Anglian city; he later took over the whole shebang, overseeing main line steam for BR until 1994. That was because he moved to the London Midland Region in 1969 and, with places like Tyseley and Carnforth, found after the ‘Return to Steam’ that most of the activity fell across his patch.
But it was also because he was interested in steam, and because there were “interesting people” involved. He recalls though that “it was a tussle with them very often – it was a challenge!”
But back to the ban.
“These people like Julian Riddick [Sir Nigel Gresley], Pat Whitehouse [Tyseley and father of Michael], the Bahamas society… they really were a pain…” says David.
“They’d put all proposals for trains [in] and then cancel them… the upshot in the end was the guy from the Bahamas society… rang up Sir Henry Johnson who was the chairman at the time.”
Johnson, David says, “was a very professional railway operator” who “knew his stuff”. But he didn’t react well to being rung at home on a Sunday, while he was having a lunch party.
“Johnson was absolutely furious, so on Monday morning, when he got back to the office, he immediately put a ban on.”
“I mean Johnson took the view that… the railway’s got an enormous deficit, we’re bringing on all this new rolling stock, we’ve got to concentrate on this, we don’t want our senior engineers diverted onto
dealing with steam engines which we’re getting rid of. You know, it gives quite the wrong impression.
“And that’s the background to the ban…” There was an exception: Pegler had a contract for Flying Scotsman that was still valid. “But he decided, foolishly in my opinion, to take it to America. When if he’d kept it running, he could probably have opened the door again.” Instead, that would have to wait for Johnson’s retirement in 1971 – and his replacement by W.G. Thorpe. That brought an opportunity – and the man who took it wasn’t an enthusiast, but a businessman and major BR customer: Bulmer’s chairman Peter Prior, someone David describes as a “marvellous guy” who “knew what he was doing.”
“He took the view – he’d done market research and he found there were two million people who were interested in steam engines. So he said, well, why don’t we restore a steam engine instead of spending all this money on TV advertising?’
“And that’s how he got ‘KGV’, out of the National Collection.”
“So Thorpe said ‘well, we’ll conduct an experiment, just to see what is involved. And you, Mr Prior, will be responsible to see it goes without a hitch.’”
“It was Prior who made it happen. There’s no doubt at all.” ●● Next issue: David Ward on Alan Pegler, Marylebone steam, and what he really thinks of Great Western engines.