So, correcting a flub of mine: I mention off-handedly that the Fury was scrapped. This is true...if you consider that it took about fifty years for that to happen. The Fury was initially rebuilt into a Royal Scot Class number 6170 "British Legion" and served the railway for several decades. Sorry I didn't mention that!
Considering how the series mainly covers western vehicles I would like to offer a couple of things from the other side of the iron curtain: 1) VL 26 - an electric accumulator/contact network shunter with major reliability issues because of it's hybrid system, to the point that it was universally reffered to as "Scheiße" 2) early ChS4 models that had little in terms of protective measures against electro magnetic waves coming from their own engines, which meant that they consistently exposed their crews to EMP waves 3) K series german imported elecric engines - built like crap, so vibrations caused their onboard ignitrons to fall apart scattering nuts, bolts and mercury all over the vehicle. 4) Early VL 61s, the same problem as with the above, luckily - no casualties. 5) The teploparovoz experimental vehicles from the 1930s - hybrid diesel-steam powerplant, I just cant imagine what could go wrong with such an amazing Idea. P.S. Also the swiss electric steam engines - when your max efficiency in terms of power consumption is around 2% even such a stopgap design starts to look kinda bad.
@The Commodore P051 I wondered about that because 3 short term solutions seem obvious. One is to leave off a car or 2. Two is to add a B unit, and three is to change to lower gears, or if torque exceeds traction, add weight over the drive wheels, which could either be just ballast or something useful like a bigger engine. What is "refraining"?
Considering the number of incompetant or failed Diesels from British Rail, its no suprise that Diesels consistently are the bad guys in Thomas the Tank Engine.
There’s plenty of good diesels in both _The Railway Series_ and _Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends._ Both have Daisy (BR Class 101) BoCo (BR Class 28) and Mavis (BR Class 04), the books have Bear (BR Class 35) Pip & Emma (BR 43 HST) and The Works Diesel (BR Class 47), and the show had Salty (BR Class 07) and Paxton (BR Class 08).
I think it's more like their persistence that they were better than the steamies, was just them not only being full of, but also lying to themselves. 😂 "We diesels are way better than you steamies," said Diesel. The train hands are laughing and rolling their eyes as they look for fire extinguishers. "If you say so," said Emily in disbelief. "As soon as they put out my engine fire, I'll show you!"
I think you just insulted the Pacer.🤣 To everyone here, my apologies. I thought that was in reference in the AMC Pacer. I now realize what the reference was to. I don't think you could insult that Pacer. Sorry.
@@jefferyindorf699The car is fine, the car even had a racing history. The train... well... there's probably county fair roller coasters I'd rather ride.
The Aerotrain's locomotive was called the LTW12 (Lightweight 1200 horsepower). It had the same power plant as the EMD SW1200. That's right! It was nothing more than a gussied up switcher.😊
:09 BR had a Class 50 named Furious. I saw her once, in June 1984, on a two-week trip to the UK. When she pulled out of the station, she lived up to her name.
The Aerotrain looks like they welded a car on top of the locomotive and called it good. It even had fashionable headlights. (Did the turn signals work?) Maybe a convertible next time?
The Aerotrain is like that first girl in Middle School who blossomed out. It doesn't matter if it worked or if she could slap a noun and a verb together, they just both look so awesome that they can just sit there and look pretty.
A major thing to remember in the history of British Railways/British Rail... in 1923 dozens of rail companies were forcefully amalgamated into four by the Government, who again amalgamated the four into one in 1948.... on paper, in reality it took until the late 1960's for a major shake up to happen. So you had 60+ year old designs still limping on in regular use. The "Standard" classes were mostly updated versions of existing classes, mostly successful... British Railways continued construction of designs that pre-dated the first amalgamation. In General the "Western Region" (ie. the former Great Western Railway) dieselised not as diesel-electric but as diesel-hydraulic. They mass produced with less than rigorous testing, in the US a locomotive would undertake hundreds of hours and miles of testing, in the UK they'd be tested as best as possible, then rushed into production to replace absolutely clapped out steamers, and continued repairs as make do and mend.... the band-aid patch for a broken arm.
I recall reading somewhere that the coaches for the G.M. Aerotrain were based on the structure of the interstate Buses that G.M. was building at the time.
The "nun's hood" was a Coffin feedwater heater. Feedwater heaters were mostly an expensive, high-maintenance way of doing what an exhaust steam injector did much more simply: adding water to the boiler without reducing steam pressure noticeably and recovering some of the latent heat of evaporation (which is surprisingly large).
Great series. Interesting to see some of the lesser known engines being covered. I would suggest the LBSCR E2, but beware of the thousands of Thomas simps who defend the E2 only because Thomas is based on it.
Said simps are like literal 10 year olds I like Thomas but most of the loco classes the Good Reverend choose to be the basis for Thomas characters were garbage (Thomas, Boco, Henry being a fictional failed loco design and James are all based on either terrible or underperforming loco's) The literal children in this fandom make me not want to be a fan of Thomas lol
I heard that Thomas was going to be based off another tank engine. One that looked similar to a E2 but with bigger side tanks, but I not sure what it was. Also from what I understand the Reverend hated Henry and wanted to get rid of him using the story of Henry’s tunnel. His design was a mistake by the illustrator.
honestly, I don't think the E2 were terrible, but they weren't great either. They were at best below average (FYI my scale is: terrible, sub-par, below average, average, above average, satisfactory, and excellent - & generally I consider only terrible and sub-par to be the worst). Most of their flaws seemed to have been average flaws rather than unusual or engine breaking.
There is no amount of sufficient evidence to prove Edward Thompson hated the designs of Nigel greasly when thompson took over as CMO of the lner the UK was on the brink of WWII and the LNER was in terrible shape and had no standardization of parts thompson reduced the amount of different boiler types the LNER had which was 16 down to 8 which is a major accomplishment and was overall dedicated to to improving the LNER
@barnabyjoy I know there's a podcast episode done by Railway Mania about Thompson and it's such a good bit of information on the type of man and CMO he was and before I listened to that and went and got my own information I was one of the foamers who thought he just hated Greaslys designs. It's like the whole "Thompson picked Great Northern first to destroy the first Greasly pacific." Claim actually it was the Railway board of the LNER that wanted Great Northern rebuilt first because it was completely worn out at the time.
Side note, the GM Aerotrain car bodies were straight up GM new style bus bodies modified and set on railroad wheels, at high speed the cars jarred very badly due to how light they were and that they used air shocks instead of springs
The Thompson L1: the standard loco for stopping trains on my local line to London. We called 'em '677-ers'. I didn't know about the shaking apart - fascinating. A vid on Thompson would be interesting: his rebuild of the Gresley A1 was odd, but his B1 all but excellent. He detested the Gresley conjugated valve gear, having spent much of his time in maintenance and hence keen to use only 2 cylinders where possible.
@@ryancampbell4119 Yeah, it was a pritty shitty result of a rebuild but I don't feel that it was done as a deliberate smear. It was an attempt to avoid conjugated valve gear - although there were other options available. Stanier too was not a fan.
How could an engine that most manufacturers make in every scale and every serious modeler has on their layout be a bad train? The PRR T-1 was a beauty. Can't wait to see her rebuild finished.
I think if the aero train was heavier, it would have actually had more power because it’s weight gives the wheels more traction giving the engine more pulling power. This is why large, heavy engines are the most powerful
It’s good to know that there is someone else out there who is a T-1 fan. Please make a video on it do i don’t feel like i’m crazy when i call it a good train.
looking at the GM Aeortrain for the first time - that thing looks like an amusement park scooter. You know those things your average teenagers drives around with or against their teenage buddy to constantly bump into the one in which the teenage girls sit that he or his buddy fancy most 😂
Being raised in the UK on City of Truro's 100 mph (possibly), 4472 Flying Scotsman's 100 mph (probably) and Mallard's 126 (almost certainly), I'd love to see the PRR T1 hit 140, with unarguable, modern measurement in place of the dynamometer cars, and realize the ambitions of its creators - historical and current. So many locomotives might have actually been the fastest, 80 years ago, and you'll still be able to argue the case for your personal choice but...what if there's a definitive, 21st century record holder?
It is very unlikely that a PRR T1 actually reached anything near 140mph. Any such clocking would be informal, done with very basic equipment and as realistic as the 10 second 0-60mph time claimed by an acquaintance for his unmodified Datsun 1600 (510 to Americans), as measured by a casio digital watch and the car's untested speedometer.
With regards to Edward Thompson, check out the rail mania podcast on him. It’s a real good peace. There are things to be said about Thompson, like how he was come during a war when staff and material were at a premium, but I agree he is over-vilified in history
10:48 I believe this is the problem with the areotrain. The wheels on a train, and the rails are made of steel. Steel on steel contact has very low friction, but since trains are usually heavy, the weight allows them to create enough friction between the wheels to get moving better. But the Areotrain was really light, so it couldn't apply much pressure on the wheels, which is probably why the trains couldn't get much speed.
To be fair Thompson wasn't delt a fair hand. He was working under wartime conditions, under heavy government restrictions and with materials, labour and time in short supply. so little wonder some of his locos fell short. As for gresley, that guy is seriously over rated, for every good design he created, A3 / A4 etc, he produced some real turkeys, look at the P1 frieght locos, a huge 2-8-2 that was only really of use when pulling trains too long to be handled by any of the LNERS sidings,. His P2 looked great, but had so many issues they became a total liabilty and even chewed up the tracik they ran on. His M1s were too heavy for their own lines and his U1 garret suffocated its own crew to death!
The scarier problem with high pressure steam than the pressure is the fact that the temperature of the steam is extremely high! High pressure steam can reach temps as high as 500-600 degrees at the pressures you mentioned. So a little leak let's that highly saturated steam release to the atmosphere at stupid temps and extreme expansion rates. I bet if they ever got the fury up to it design potential,they would had problems with the cylinders blowing out and the normal venting action as the cylinders stroked would have caused erosion faster than the metallurgy of the time to keep up with.
I don't know which class it was, but a Type 2 Diesel class built by North British specifically for service in Scotland was so unreliable that BR had to buy some A4 steam locos back from a scrap dealer to replace them until something better became available.
12:55 Locomotives need to be heavy for better traction. The train it hauls needs to be lighter. Further, only the front two axles were powered, the rear unpowered axle was heavier than the front two.
This is the first video I saw on your channel. I enjoyed your research and your passion about these locomotives. As a fellow train buff I am happy to see context like this. Very nice work!
I think British Rail just produced soooo many locomotives of sooooo many designs, there is bound to be a lot of mess ups. Plus the butchers murdered so many....
Problem was in us they had already designed diesels wile running steam but UK had nothing due to a massive withdrawal of steam, so they went " let's have lots of different designs and see who the better builders were" so lots were put in but some people's designs were rubbish and some were fixable but most weren't. My list of best UK locomotive manufacturers ENGLISH ELECTRIC BRUSH SULZER CLAYTON 2021 VERSION
11:00 - that's actually the Rock Island's Jet Rocket sevice, which used the same loco type (EMD LWT12) hauling a TALGO set rather than the EMD-bus-design coaches ofvthe Aerotrain. It wasn't much more successful that the Aerotrain, either. One wonders if the locos had been built with SW1500 engines instead of SW12 ones...
Ngl for the next list, you should add the AT&SF 3000 class (2-10-10-2 Wheel Config.) if you haven’t added it already It was a massive failure, built between 1911 and 1912
Honestly I think the prr t1 is unfortunate for it’s time however the same can be said for many designs that were too late or didn’t reach full potential
I've seen the Aerotrain at Kirkwood. What gets me is if GM wants to build a train like a bus, why not just put flanged rail wheels on a PD4104, or PD4501?
I think that you are being a bit unfair to Edward Thompson. He took over a railway system in crisis, owing to World War II. A lot of his decisions that he gets criticized for, or get called acts of spite towards Gresley, were in fact necessary improvisations. He also arguably did most of the groundwork for the Peppercorn Pacific's, which were excellent locomotives.
One of the last surviving Class 21s took part in rerailing exercises after the 1968 Hither Green disaster. It ended up in Woodham Bros yard in Barry, South Wales and was eventually cut up. There was too much interest in preserving steam from the yard for anyone to be interested in it. There were also the last two NBL-built Class 41s which suffered the same fate at Barry.
Idea. Make a list of electric only list! These lists are mainly full of diesel and some steam. Only 1 electric throughout the entire series. So why not make an only electric only list?
Am probably one off the few people who thinks Thompson wasn't a bad designer considering he was thorw into a job in a middle off a world war as well as lner despite being the second biggest railway company in the UK it was the poorest and had about 190 different locomotive design with most beening out dated engine that where life expired so Thompson really had his work cutout for him design new engine when bomb are been drop from German aircraft causing magor damage and people getting killed left and right so I can cut him alot off slack for him
If the Grouping had happened a year earlier, edward Thompson would have been the first Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNER, instead of deputy to Nigel Gresley, who was only about 5 years older than him. He deeply resented this, and devoted his time as CME to undoing as much of Gresley's work as he could. His pacifics were slightly more powerful than Gresley's, but suffered from cracked frames, poor ride and jerky cornering. His B1 class was outstanding, the equal of the Lms Black 5, SR N15 and GWR Castle; the rest of his locos were better forgotten.
The Class 21s weren't strictly British Railways locomotives, in that BR didn't design or build them - they were built to a BR specification. They were designed and built by the North British Locomotive Company, which was a long-time builder of superb steam locomotives, but just not experienced at building diesel locomotives. Their diesel engines were a German design built under licence, with its metric dimensions converted to imperial measurements, and NBL were more used to heavily-built steam machinery, not prescision-built diesel engines, and this all contributed to the engines and the rest of the locomotive not being reliable. NBL going out of business (as no longer building steam locomotives and no more customers for their unreliable diesels) was the nail in the coffin for the Class 21s (and 22s).
Nah, the PRR T-1 belongs on the list 100%. Cool locomotive, but man the later built ones were terrible with wheelslip. When departing Harrisburg station their train would routinely be shoved by a K-4 to get it started because the drivers slipped like crazy. The only duplex that didn't have this issue was the Q2.
This is the first I've seen of you. Nice well researched video. I don't know if you've covered them yet but if you make more like this, i think as a fan of them myself, the baldwin centipedes would go well in one of these lists.
I know that you might be sick of the British Rail engines, or even anything out of Britain, but for a nation where almost every company had different classes of engines for numerous jobs. I suggest looking up the G class of NZ (Garretts) where they broke switches on the section of track which they were designed to operate. They got turned into a Ab class varient which became one of the most numerous class in NZ and was the most successful.
At least the Fury wasn't a serial killer. BTW British Rail was state owned...is there any surprise that it failed? Governments can screw up a nocturnal emission.
I think with Thompson I’m mixed While I do think that he’s overhated (there are facts that make me skeptical such as the timing he rebuilt Great Northern suggests it was a regular maintenance and he didn’t rebuild it purely by choice) I do think he didn’t appreciate how much some of Gresley’s stuff mattered
He was definitely super jealous of Gresley's success and legacy. It's a shame he was so absorbed by that because when Thompson focused on an original design of his own he really was a perfectly capable engineer.
While I can agree Thompson was overshadowed by Gresley’s larger influence, he never outright hated Gresley and his designs. The two of them had different opinions on certain design practices. Thompson’s main goal was standardisation, something Gresley didn’t really follow and had a preference for regular layouts of valve gear rather than Gresley’s conjugated motion which the two clashed on. Thompson had the right idea, but his designs were rather flawed unfortunately. That being said, Peppercorn’s designs, while more Gresley themed, used the same elements as Thompson’s designs such as the divided drive valve gear and were an overall improvement of Thompson’s rebuilds. Thompson wasn’t a bad man, he was just doing his job which he got stuck with during war time. Since there wasn’t many new materials for building new locomotives, Thompson had to rebuild older ones.
@@HistoryintheDark Is there any evidence that affirms Thompson's jealousy. Any argument with Gresley was down to the valve gear of Gresley's patent. While locomotives with such valve gear could run well provided they are maintained properly WWII exposed what happens when they're not, and Thompson was acting on recommendations of those who did the inspections.
the thing about Edward Thompson hating Gresley is a load of bs, here's a good video debunking that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AsY6AW5Ts08.html
Plus, the Aerotrain had the same problem that the British one in the first video did. The passenger cars were BUS CHASSISES! And, with many railroads of the time deferring maintenance, the ride was, very rough,
i think the aerotrain was a clear case of style over substance it was drop dead gorgeous but also underpowered and seriously flawed maybe if they had based the locomotive on a more powerful engine and fixed the suspension it could have been something really great but sadly that never happened
HOW COULD YOU MISS TALKING ABOUT THE WHEEL ARRANGEMENET OF THE AEROTRAIN??? The Aerotrain was a B-1 arrangement, two powered axle truck in the front and one unpowered axle in the rear. It had a 1,200 hp engine so that should have been enough power, but only half of the locomotive was pulling the train
Class 21 called a political controversy in the UK, when the Daily Telegraph revealed that BR was buying these new locomotives with taxpayers money only to move them straight into storage because they were so useless, so something had to be done, hence the Class 29, even though BR had a surplus of medium sized diesels due the collapse in packed freight traffic.
Why does it feel like the Brits have a bad time building and designing diesel prime movers. So, here's my question, was this just a railroad thing? Or was this endemic to the rest of the economy?
1. The Fury wasn't scraped, it was rebuilt into a normal steam train. 2. Please make another worst trains of all time and please include the Thompson A2/2.
