Not enough locomotives to go round...
DAVID CLOUGH examines the debate in the late 1980s as to which BR Sectors received which electric locomotives when common-use ceased to apply
British Rail’s Regional structure was an inheritance of the 1923 Grouping, when 120 companies were amalgamated into four railways based largely on geography. The idea of a fifth (Scottish) company was ruled out because overall it would not have been viable, and today Scotland’s railways receive the largest Government subsidy.
At nationalisation in 1948, Scotland finally got its own Region. The routes of the former Big Four continued as individual Regions, save for dividing the former London & North Eastern Railway’s lines in England between the Eastern and North Eastern Regions. Notwithstanding Regional boundary changes and line closures, at the start of the 1980s BR was still a geographically based organisation.
By then, functionality was seen as a more relevant model than just geography, especially when inter-city and freight services were expected to at least cover their costs or turn in a profit. And so 1982 witnessed the creation of a parallel, overlaying structure to the Regions - based on business units that directed policy, while the Regions continued the day-to-day operation of the network. Thus emerged InterCity, Provincial (the forerunner of Regional), Parcels, Freight, Freightliner and Departmental.
It was not until 1987 that the locomotive fleet was divided between the Sectors, nominally at first in that specific units were not dedicated solely to a particular owner (although this did come about later).
The story starts at a meeting on July 29 1987 to discuss AC locomotive Sector allocation for 1988-89 in the context of Rail Plan budget formulation. Those present represented InterCity, Parcels, Freight, Freightliner, London Midland Region and the Director of Operations. Network SouthEast (NSE) was not represented.
The meeting had two objectives. Firstly, there was the issue of motive power requirements for each Sector on a class-byclass basis. Secondly, there was an urgent need to produce a budget for the Rail Plan by the following month. Several issues remained unresolved, notably West Coast Main Line empty stock movements, double-heading on freight trains, and North London suburban requirements.
Cost and resource data was to be produced on three bases: Sector dedication, InterCity dedication/remainder shared use; and shared use of locomotives. It was agreed to fudge the figures for the Rail Plan budget due to lack of time, by assuming a steady-state cost. Sectorspecific maintenance practices needed scrutiny to see if these revealed cost differences.
By August, the AC locomotive fleet allocation for 1988-89 by Sector was given as follows:
NSE allocated five units to Anglia and four to North London. Class 90s were in the course of construction, with 50 eventually built. Class 91s were also being built, but these were for InterCity use on the East Coast route and not relevant here
The overall total for Classes 81/91 was 194, but a month later these numbers were swollen by the inclusion of three Class 82-3s used by InterCity on empty stock workings at Euston, while the number of Class 85s (and ‘81s’) had become 43!
For planning purposes, the Director of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering had provided a figure of 125 locomotives that would be available to cover 135 May 1988 diagrams, taking account of repair, maintenance and overhaul demands.
Classes 89 and ‘91’ were taken out of the total for the detailed diagramming of West Coast traction. Giving InterCity a dedicated fleet and pooling the rest between the other Sectors would require 161, while dedicated pools for each Sector pushed up the requirement to 172 - a shortfall of 47.
In any event, there was a marked shortage of AC electric traction forecast for May 1988. And unsurprisingly, dedication of the resources to the Sectors, rather than the prevailing common-user approach, made matters worse.
Such a result should have been obvious because, for instance, InterCity had a muchreduced requirement between 0000 and 0600, during which time freight and liner trains had a continuing demand. One further point is that, overall, 172 locomotives cost significantly more to operate than 135.
As if the forecast shortfall was not bad enough, no account had been taken of Motorail and Fridays-only passenger services, as well as the impact of Freightliner using the recently created opportunity to run more electrically hauled liners round the North London Line from the WCML to East Anglia.
After some more number crunching, and excluding Anglia and Departmental, giving InterCity a dedicated pool was shown to require the same number of diagrams as full common user arrangements.
While InterCity still had 77 diagrams, the number for all the remainder had been squeezed into 58 - to get down to 135 in total. In order to get this result, InterCity Class 87s were made available in pairs for Freightliner when not required for passenger work.
Having an estimated 125 electrics to cover 135 diagrams was now seen as acceptable
by InterCity, which was leading on the discussions and which would be the only Sector with a dedicated pool.
Analysing the 58 pooled diagrams identified the prime users as follows:
To address the shortfall, InterCity was prepared to consider using diesels under the wires from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester. Anglia electrification, Saturdaysonly and special train needs remained unresourced.
The phasing-in of Driving Van Trailers (DVTs) during 1988-89 had been forecast to save eight diagrams, a number used in the submission to the BR Board for investment in these vehicles. More work now cut this to just five.
Arising from the new study, InterCity chaired a further meeting to persuade the other Sectors to let it have its own dedicated fleet. Justifying its argument, the chairman said “use by other Sectors of marginal time in InterCity diagrams had produced a solution which did not yield a corporate disbenefit”. This presumably meant that BR was not worse off overall, that InterCity was OK, and that the other Sectors could use slots in its diagrams when InterCity had no requirement for the traction.
Needless to say, there was not immediate agreement for InterCity’s proposals. The Railfreight businesses pointed out that restricting locomotives to the 75mph maximum required for their services would save on maintenance. This was the motivation for a proposal to convert some Class 86/2s to Class 86/ 5 and limiting them to 75mph,
about which InterCity had “unease”. This was because the latter Sector planned to cover its extra weekend demand by hiring in from other Sectors, as it did already with diesels. Restricting a locomotive to 75mph would preclude such hiring-in. As a trade-off, InterCity was prepared to accept the Class 86/ 5 proposal, providing it got its dedicated fleet.
It was pointed out that, at a time of a traction shortage, InterCity had exacerbated the situation by transferring the East Coast Main Line overnight trains to the WCML.
Addressing the shortfall issue, InterCity offered to retain one Class 82 and two Class 83s for empty stock. But the proposed diagrams already included two members of these classes, so the gain would be one at best - assuming 100% availability. An improvement in the availability of Classes 81 and ‘85’ at the time of the meeting (from 67.7% to 81.7%) would add to the resource side. Changes to InterCity and Parcels diagram specifications could also yield savings.
Perhaps surprisingly, no one challenged the availability figures for the locomotive fleet and whether these could be improved by changes in maintenance routines. Higher availability would have reduced the shortfall in traction.
Bearing in mind that these discussions came about as part of the budget-setting process for the following year, there was no consideration of the relative costs for each type of train utilisation. Did running at up to 110mph by InterCity incur higher maintenance costs than Freightliner hauling 1,000-ton loads? The cost of maintaining an electric train supply facility on its traction was an issue for the freight businesses.
Unsurprisingly, Railfreight wanted to examine having its own dedicated fleet towards the end of 1988. This brought into play the arrival of Class 92s, the design for Channel Tunnel operation.
With Anglia electric services up and running, InterCity wanted to dedicate a pool of ‘86/2s’ to these services. Routine servicing and maintenance up to ‘B’ exams would be done at Ilford, with ‘C’ exams and above still handled at Willesden and with Stratford responsible for overhauls. This was to be an interim measure, pending Norwich Crown Point carrying out all maintenance from May 1990.
The predicted shortage of AC electric locomotives continued (as forecast) into 1988, with deliveries of Class 90s being offset by the withdrawal of Class 81s and ‘85s’. Railfreight’s view was that the pain of shortages was not
Several issues remained unresolved, notably West Coast Main Line empty stock movements, double-heading on freight trains, and North London suburban requirements.
being spread fairly, especially because Class 90 deliveries were running late and the new arrivals had not yet bedded in.
A Railfreight manager wrote to the Sector Director in October 1988 to report on the outcome of a “wearisome” meeting of the AC Electric Loco User Group. He felt that the LMR’s Regional Operating Manager was lacking commitment to the Sector being able to create a dedicated locomotive pool.
The manager observed that there was still a shortage of motive power because deliveries of Class 90 barely kept pace with withdrawals of Classes 81 and ‘85’. Pessimistically, he envisaged only a marginal improvement by May 1990, the date by which the Sector was aiming for partial dedication of its traction.
Moving forward to April 1990, the AC electric fleet had evolved to the position outlined below. For this breakdown, Freight and Freightliner numbers have been merged.
Of the five surviving ‘81s’, InterCity had two and Freight three (although one from each Sector was stored unserviceable).
Arrival of the DVTs had enabled InterCity to dispose of the examples of Classes 82 and ‘83’ that were kept purely for Euston empty stock movements.
A total of 27 ‘85s’ were shared between InterCity, Parcels and Freight, with five stored. Freight had renumbered 11 as Class 85/1s, and these were nominally restricted to 80mph.
InterCity had the three ‘86/1’ conversions. Of the 57 ‘86/2s’, Parcels owned nine and InterCity the remainder, of which 15 were based at Ilford for Anglia services with the remainder at Willesden for the WCML. Class 86/4s were divided between Freight (19), InterCity (4) and Parcels (3). Sub-Class 86/ 5 had not materialised, but Freight had created Class 86/6 by converting 12 Class 86/4s for dedicated use.
All 35 Class 87/ 0s belonged to InterCity, and the thyristor prototype 87101 was with Freight.
Of the 35 Class 90s in service by then, InterCity had 15, Freight 15 and Parcels 5. InterCity took the first batch to release Class 86/2s for Anglia work.
Class 92 deliveries were behind schedule and none was in traffic.
By this date, delivery of new Class 321 EMUs for Euston outer-suburban services had removed any requirement by NSE for AC locomotives. In due course, full dedication of AC locomotive traction did come to pass, but the above demonstrates the frustrations of the managers during the late 1980s in dealing with a motive power shortage at a time of budgetary pressures.