What was the driver for electrification?

[mailman]

Any one know why the UK decided to electrify its rail network?

Regards

Mailman

 

[YorkshireBear]

Any one know why the UK decided to electrify its rail network?

Regards

Mailman

Which electrification are you on about? Tyneside? Southern? WCML? Woodhead??

Need something more specific.

generally because it has quite a few benefits in terms of reduced maintenance, lighter trains, more efficient, better performance and improved passenger satisfaction due to nicer carriage ambiance.

 

[euryalus]

It was generally accepted that railway electrification offered many advantages, which is why the Europeans adopted this mode of operation on a huge scale after World War II. However, in the UK, the benefits were questioned during the Marples era, when the government of the day was more interested in road construction than the nationalised railway system.

 

[broadgage]

Electric traction when compared to steam has many advantages, including
No smoke, steam or soot to dirty the trains or buildings
Ready for instant use without waiting for steam to be raised
Usually greater acceleration especialy valuable on routes with many stops
No stopping for coal or water, or space taken up with coaling and watering facilities.
With multiple unit or DVT operation can be driven from either end without running the loco round.
Electricity is readily available for heating, lighting, and air conditioning the train.
Electric locomotives need less maintenance than steam, therefore a smaller fleet can do the same work.
With EMUs virtually the whole length of the train can carry passengers, an 8 car EMU might fit a terminal station that only took 7 coaches plus loco and tender.

Electric traction as compared to diesel has advantages, but not allways as clear cut as replacing steam.
The main advantage is lower fuel costs as oil prices rise.
Electricity is cleaner than diesel, though modern diesels are much better than old ones.
Electric traction SHOULD be more reliable than diesel, less to go wrong, though this is not allways realised in practice.
Electricity can be produced from many sources of energy including wind, solar, nuclear, and tidal power that are completly unsuitable for directly powering a train.

The main drawbacks of electric traction are the great capital costs, and the fact that a power failure stops everything.
Diesel fuel and coal are easily stockpiled against shortages, cant do that with electricity.

The future is electric, oil supplies are depleting and becoming ever more costly, within the lifetime of our younger members I expect that oil fuel will be too expensive for regular railway use.
As I said in another thread, I can forsee a VERY LIMITED return to coal burning steam locos for branch and secondary routes and perhaps for engineering trains.
There will allways be a demand for steam on heritage railways, and when maintaining 100+ year old steam locos becomes too expensive, I can forsee a small batch of new ones being built with a few destined for outlying bits of the national network.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

If you mean the relatively recent enthusiasm for electrification after 15 years of next to no wiring:

a) diesels are increasingly unaffordable and still have significant emissions problems
b) hydrogen fuel cells (the previous nirvana) are still years/decades off viability
c) the major European manufacturers are uninterested in designing diesel trains, as the UK is virtually alone in wanting a big diesel fleet
d) we are in a phase of growth on the railway and the time is ripe for investment
e) all the advantages noted by others above still apply
f) the major schemes (GW, NW, TP etc) are triggered by life-expiry of existing diesel trains and there will be a surplus of useable electric units from Thameslink/Crossrail which would otherwise be parked

The electric spine is to jump-start electric freight and DC-AC conversion, plus wiring the MML and the east-west rail route.

But the U-turn is amazing.
I remember one Transport Minister saying the public didn't know or care what traction was used, and diesels were cheaper and quicker to build.

 

[JamesRowden]

The future is electric, oil supplies are depleting and becoming ever more costly, within the lifetime of our younger members I expect that oil fuel will be too expensive for regular railway use.
As I said in another thread, I can forsee a VERY LIMITED return to coal burning steam locos for branch and secondary routes and perhaps for engineering trains.
There will allways be a demand for steam on heritage railways, and when maintaining 100+ year old steam locos becomes too expensive, I can forsee a small batch of new ones being built with a few destined for outlying bits of the national network.

I think that it might be simpler to have the passengers pedal power (via electric power) the train with a rechargable battery onboard to power the train when there are not many passengers onboard and a supercapictor/flywheel to be used for regeneratve braking/acceleration. The passengers could then reclaim money for the amount of energy they produced and do some good exercise at the same time.

Or if it is only the extremity of a line that is not eletrified then a train could just have a rechargable battery onboard which would either be charged when on eletrified parts or could be placed in/out of a train by a crane at a battery recharging site at the start of the non-electrified part.

 

[Muzer]

There will allways be a demand for steam on heritage railways, and when maintaining 100+ year old steam locos becomes too expensive, I can forsee a small batch of new ones being built with a few destined for outlying bits of the national network.

Reminded me of the guy who wrote this great poem on the (still present!) Dilton Marsh Halt:

Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
We thought as we looked at the sky
Red through the spread of the cedar-tree,
With the evening train gone by?

Yes, we said, for in summer the anglers use it,
Two and sometimes three
Will bring their catches of rods and poles and perches
To Westbury, home for tea.

There isn't a porter. The platform is made of sleepers.
The guard of the last train puts out the light
And high over lorries and cattle the Halt unwinking
Waits through the Wiltshire night.

O housewife safe in the comprehensive churning
Of the Warminster launderette!
O husband down at the depot with car in car-park!
The Halt is waiting yet.

And when all the horrible roads are finally done for,
And there's no more petrol left in the world to burn,
Here to the Halt from Salisbury and from Bristol
Steam trains will return.

 

[rebmcr]

If it is only the extremity of a line that is not electrified then a train could just have a rechargeable battery onboard which would be charged when on electrified parts.

Battery technology is on the cusp of a technical leap, and over the next 10 years demand will be higher and higher. It's probable that progress can be made to realise that scenario.

 

[broadgage]

Battery technology is on the cusp of a technical leap, and over the next 10 years demand will be higher and higher. It's probable that progress can be made to realise that scenario.

Agree entirely, especialy for relatively short trains, or those that spend most of their time on electrified routes but need to serve non electrified branches or diversionery routes.

 

[pablo]

After WWII, we owed the Umerikans a lot of dough, which had to be paid back. At the same time we had a government that they didn't like, so they poured money into Europe, via the Marshall Plan, as a bulwark against the Eastern Hordes and ignored us.
So, we couldn't afford large capital expenditure and had to soldier on with our clapped-out steam railway for another ten years. 1500vDC was an exception, mainly because, IIRC, it had been instigated before the war, was paused and then dusted off after. There was also an inherent conservatism in railway engineering that was only broken by "The Modernisation of BR" aka the Beeching Plan!

 

[ainsworth74]

At the same time we had a government that they didn't like, so they poured money into Europe, via the Marshall Plan, as a bulwark against the Eastern Hordes and ignored us.

Erm, we were the biggest beneficiary of Marshall Plan money...

 

[gordonthemoron]

Britain got more Marshall Plan money than Germany, but it was wasted on maintaining than the empire rather than rebuilding following WWII

 

[pablo]

Oooooooh. I stand corrected!

 

[euryalus]

It was generally accepted that railway electrification offered many advantages, which is why the Europeans adopted this mode of operation on a huge scale after World War II. However, in the UK, the benefits were questioned during the Marples era, when the government of the day was more interested in road construction than the nationalised railway system.

I don't think anybody has responded to my earlier statement, in which I imply that the Macmillan government hated the railways and, given half the chance, they would have shut down the entire system. As I understand it, they came pretty close to abandoning the West Coast electrification scheme, which was said to have been "unjustified" in terms of the likely return on capital. But then, to mis-quote Many Rice_Davies "They would say that, wouldn't they".

 

[MattRobinson]

Don't forget that there was electrification of many suburban lines during the latter part of the nineteenth/early part of the twentieth centuries, long before dieselisation came about. We should have moved straight from stream to electric traction, like the rest of Europe...

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[DXMachina]

Also, postwar Britain was short of electricity generating capacity and even shorter on transmission infrastructure - both of which had been a persistent issue in wartime and hadnt been properly tackled.

The foundation of the CEGB and the National Grid were efforts to tackle it but the situation required efforts to conserve and reduce electricity usage. Plans to vastly increase electrical demand wouldnt have been popular...

 

[Bevan Price]

The future is electric, oil supplies are depleting and becoming ever more costly, within the lifetime of our younger members I expect that oil fuel will be too expensive for regular railway use.
As I said in another thread, I can forsee a VERY LIMITED return to coal burning steam locos for branch and secondary routes and perhaps for engineering trains.
There will allways be a demand for steam on heritage railways, and when maintaining 100+ year old steam locos becomes too expensive, I can forsee a small batch of new ones being built with a few destined for outlying bits of the national network.

Whilst personally I would love to see new build steam operating regular services on the main lines (daily, all-year, as opposed to something like the Fort William / Mallaig services), I doubt it will ever happen. Apart from the related infra-structure costs, getting enough staff to work on steam (especially maintenance) would be difficult - or very expensive. These days, it seems that some people would rather be unemployed than work in conditions they consider dirty or uncomfortable.

More likely for the shorter branch lines - if the technology can be further developed - is the use of lightweight rechargeable batteries, probably based on the use of lithium - with lightweight trains - maybe (horror) an updated Pacer type vehicle with aluminium alloy bodywork.....

 

[Tiny Tim]

The 1955 Modernisation Plan (not to be confused with Beeching in 1963) aimed to get rid of steam in favour of the electrification of main routes and the dieselisation of everything else. BR wanted to go straight to electric and were reluctant to invest in diesel. The result was the apparently perverse decision to carry on with steam. Despite BR's enthusiasm for electric traction, the necessary funds were only sporadically available due to government intransigence, a situation that remains to this day. When steam withdrawals were stepped up, there was insufficient reliable diesel traction to take it's place.

 

[Gwenllian2001]

The 1955 Modernisation Plan (not to be confused with Beeching in 1963) aimed to get rid of steam in favour of the electrification of main routes and the dieselisation of everything else. BR wanted to go straight to electric and were reluctant to invest in diesel. The result was the apparently perverse decision to carry on with steam. Despite BR's enthusiasm for electric traction, the necessary funds were only sporadically available due to government intransigence, a situation that remains to this day. When steam withdrawals were stepped up, there was insufficient reliable diesel traction to take it's place.

There was nothing 'perverse' in carrying on with steam. The railways, at the time, had a very good stock of proven and reliable steam locomotives for all kinds of traffic. Diesel locomotives were limited to the various shunters which evolved into the 08 and a handful of mainline machines; the LMS twins and the SR trio, which were closely related, despite their appearance. There were a couple of prototypes, like the 'Fell' monster; the Deltic and 10800, none of which were proven in service. BR was then faced with a whole raft of new designs, both Diesel Electric and Hydraulic. The idea was to test these designs over a period but the political masters of the day, in order to 'help' British industry, pushed for large numbers to be ordered before any real evaluation was possible. The results are too well known for me to go into but it was a recipe for disaster.

Ironically, it was the descendants of the LMS twins and the SR trio that came to be the most reliable, in the shape of the 37s and 40s. It is hardly surprising that some of the 37s are still earning a crust. The technology might be old but it is robust.

On the other hand, the 'first generation' DMUs were, on the whole, excellent and gave sterling service for long after their expected life span. These units owed a lot to the experience gained by the GWR, and its successor, with quite a few of the GWR units lasting into the Sixties. They were withdrawn as a result of a surplus of newer DMUs becoming available as lines closed and services being run down.

Electrification was, of course, the real goal and diesels were supposed to have been a stop gap. Imagine what the HST would have been like without the encumbrance of diesel power and all its associated weight and moving parts.

Maybe the wheel has, at last, turned and the dreams of the Fifties will finally come to fruition. Having said that, the Barry and Taff Vale Railways were, quite sensibly, considering electrification before the First World War. It's been a long time coming.

 

[rebmcr]

probably based on the use of lithium

More likely nano-graphite by the time it's relevant.

 

[sarahj]

I once read somewhere that the NER was planning to wire up York to Newcastle, but when it joined up to form the LNER the plan was dumped.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

A lot of effort went into the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electrification in the 1930s-50s.
I know this started as an LNER project but it seems like a dead end.
It it had been King's Cross-Peterborough, say, or Leeds-Newcastle we would have had a main-line scheme up and running in the early fifties which could have been expanded incrementally.
As it was, the Woodhead scheme just ossified and then died.
The lessons then had to be learnt all over again on the WCML.

 

[jopsuk]

It is one of (several) great shames of the 50s-70s that the Woodhead system was not retained and converted to 25kV throughout- if it had, undoubtably it would have been extended, and I would reckon we'd already have electrics running St Pancras-Sheffield.

 

[sheff'd victoria]

It is one of (several) great shames of the 50s-70s that the Woodhead system was not retained and converted to 25kV throughout- if it had, undoubtably it would have been extended, and I would reckon we'd already have electrics running St Pancras-Sheffield.

Didn't they say it was cost ?

Then in 1984 they changed the section from Manchester to Hadfield/Glossop from 1500v DC to 25KV ac :roll:

 

[lord rathmore]

Advantages are numerous: lower running costs & damage to track, quieter trains, faster acceleration, lack of exhausts (important in stations & residential areas & lessens damage to tunnel linings & overhead structures).
Disadvantages as stated earlier mainly cost & when the wires go down the whole thing can grind to a halt (as last week south of Peterborough).
I remember the Woodhead electrics at 1500v DC - nice machines. An early 1950's committee actually decided that was the standard electrification system for UK going forward - (that's why Shenfield line was wired up at 1500Kv and later converted)- but shortly after, trials in France were proving beyond doubt that 25Kv AC gave lower power consumption, potential for higher speed and the technology for traction motors etc was leaping ahead. That left Mcr to Sheffield isolated with an outdated system, so when the coal traffic declined dramatically in late 60's/early 70's, it was possible to justify closing it as they thought the alternative route via Hope Valley would do the job. (Ironically Hope Valley route was on the Beeching list for closure, but survived).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Advantages are numerous: lower running costs & damage to track, quieter trains, faster acceleration, lack of exhausts (important in stations & residential areas & lessens damage to tunnel linings & overhead structures).
Disadvantages as stated earlier mainly cost & when the wires go down the whole thing can grind to a halt (as last week south of Peterborough).
I remember the Woodhead electics at 1500v DC - nice machines. An early 1950's committee actually decided that was the standard electrification system for UK going forward - (that's why Shenfield line was wired up at 1500Kv and later converted)- but shortly after, trials in France were proving beyond doubt that 25Kv AC gave lower power consumption, potential for higher speed and the technology for traction motors etc was leaping ahead. That left Mcr to Sheffield isolated with an outdated system, so when the coal traffic declined dramatically in late 60's/early 70's, it was possible to justify closing it as they thought the alternative route via Hope Valley would do the job. (Ironically Hope Valley route was on the Beeching list for closure, but survived.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Another driver for the recent announcements is that Crossrail and Thameslink and going to release a very large sum of EMUs that still have service left in them!

 

[mailman]

The future is electric, oil supplies are depleting and becoming ever more costly, within the lifetime of our younger members I expect that oil fuel will be too expensive for regular railway use.
As I said in another thread, I can forsee a VERY LIMITED return to coal burning steam locos for branch and secondary routes and perhaps for engineering trains.

With the impending closure of 20% of the UK's electricity generating capacity from as early as April this year AND our continued reliance on the least practical forms of power generation which cant generate power when its most needed (ie. when its cold and dark) I think we are more likely to run out of electricity before we get anywhere near running out of black gold.

Otherwise, all great replies. Many thanks to you all.

Regards

Mailman

 

[route:oxford]

The 1955 Modernisation Plan (not to be confused with Beeching in 1963) aimed to get rid of steam in favour of the electrification of main routes and the dieselisation of everything else. BR wanted to go straight to electric and were reluctant to invest in diesel. The result was the apparently perverse decision to carry on with steam. Despite BR's enthusiasm for electric traction, the necessary funds were only sporadically available due to government intransigence, a situation that remains to this day. When steam withdrawals were stepped up, there was insufficient reliable diesel traction to take it's place.

Wasn't there also a 1951 plan?

I'm sure I've seen maps dated around 1951 for the planned closure of Glasgow Queen Street station and migration of services to a brand new Buchanan Street station - which was to coincide with electrification of services to Edinburgh

 

[HSTEd]

With the impending closure of 20% of the UK's electricity generating capacity from as early as April this year AND our continued reliance on the least practical forms of power generation which cant generate power when its most needed (ie. when its cold and dark) I think we are more likely to run out of electricity before we get anywhere near running out of black gold.

Otherwise, all great replies. Many thanks to you all.

Regards

Mailman

Electric rail traction is actually a rounding error on national electricity demand.
And the Railway could operate its own generating capacity if it really needed to.
It would still be ahead of operating conventional diesels as they are effectively numerous generating systems travelling around the network, where they are weight and volume limited.

 

[gordonthemoron]

And the Railway could operate its own generating capacity if it really needed to.

LUL used to and Deutsche Bahn still do (there's one between Airport & Hbf in Cologne)