The Quest for Speed Steam Days

BBC Four Collections - archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this collection, Gary Boyd-Hope has selected programmes

celebrating Britain's steam railway legacy.

More programmes on this theme

and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'It's hard to explain the fascination of steam and speed.

'Why do hundreds of people pay good money to get onto a steam express

'which they know, by law, can't go any faster than 60mph?

'Is it something to do with the fact that a steam engine at 60

'seems to be going as fast as anything else at 100?

WHISTLE BLOWS

'Perhaps it's some powerful folk memory of the sound

'and smell of steam.

WHISTLE BLOWS

WHISTLE BLOWS

'Any one of the hundreds of experts travelling this train could

'probably tell you just by listening with their eyes closed how the

'engine and driver are doing, and even why the wheels are slipping.

'Not that many of them will have their eyes closed on a day like this,

'even in a tunnel.

'This A4 Pacific, Sir Nigel Gresley, is the ultimate in steam glamour.

'Its sister engine, Mallard, took the world speed record

'for steam in 1938 and never lost it,

'but there's a lot more to speed than just breaking records.

'It's also big business -

'a case of getting a coachload of paying passengers from A to B

'faster than your rival company, as any engine designer would tell you.

'Even so, fast engines have always had an air of elegance and glamour.

BRASS BAND MUSIC

'When Patrick Stirling built his famous single-wheeler, No. 1,

'for the Great Northern Railway, he was after power and speed,

'but he somehow made it look very good as well.

'This was one of the crack express engines of the 1870s.

'If you had lived between London and York a hundred years ago,

'this is the Intercity special that you'd have seen,

'steaming past at anything up to 80mph.

'Hauled by engines like this,

'the London to Edinburgh train took about nine hours,

'which beat the old stagecoach record by a good day or two.

'And yet, in a funny sort of way,

'they still treated the engines like horses.

'At Grantham the locomotive would be led off for food and water,

'and a fresh one put between the shafts.

'At York, the same again, until the 400-mile haul to the north was over.

'Today, No. 1's on a rare day out from York Museum,

'but it still spins along like a well-oiled sewing machine,

'only slightly dwarfed by its complement of modern coaches.

'All these engines had their own regular firemen and drivers.

'Today, the tender loving care comes from driver John Belwood

'of the railway museum.'

So this is Stirling's great wheel, the single wheel.

That's it.

- How big is it? - It's eight feet diameter.

Why did it have to be so big, then?

Well, these were an express passenger engine,

and the idea was to cover as much ground as you could

at as high a speed as was possible, and obviously, the larger the wheel,

the greater the distance you covered per eight revolutions,

and I suppose the major disadvantage with a single wheel

was the lack of adhesion.

Because it was all on this one...?

This was the only pair of wheels that were being driven that gripped

the rails, whereas if you had a four- or six-coupled locomotive,

you spread out that adhesion over four or six wheels.

- So more skidding? - More tendency to skid and slip.

I like the way you always say more TENDENCY to slip!

I can't help thinking these rather graceful curves - sexy, even -

are not entirely functional.

Yes, they aren't really functional.

It was thought to be an elegant way of connecting the circular shape

of the small box with the circular shape of the cylinder.

Gave you a nice sweeping appearance.

Nice way of coupling two curves together.

I've got to drag you back to this wheel again, actually.

I'm fascinated by it,

because this is the thing for me which makes it look,

I've got to say, old-fashioned.

I mean, although it's lovely to look at,

it looks to me as if it's sort of the end of an era,

rather than the beginning of the 20th century.

Well, it is, yes. I mean, I suppose the rocket was a single-wheeler,

and although there was a sort of Indian summer

of single-wheelers on one or two railways

with the introduction of steam sanding about 1895,

really, the single-wheeler was outdated by 1890.

The design really had finished by then, because they had

problems with adhesion, and the need for heavier trains.

WHISTLE BLOWS

The main thing was that trains were getting heavier, and the demand from

the passengers for better facilities, better riding carriages, which meant

heavier, better facilities on-train, corridors, vestibules, toilets.

Previously they used to have sort of station stops for physical needs,

whether it was eating or discharging, sort of thing!

'From time to time,

'the railway companies indulged in bouts of racing to the north.

'In 1895, Patrick Stirling himself sent out a message to his staff -

"The London and North Western Railway Company have

"expressed their intention to reach Aberdeen before us.

"This, of course, we cannot permit."

'But Stirling died only a few months later,

'probably knowing in his heart of hearts that his famous engines,

'once model-of-the-year, were already last year's fashion look.'

The problem was that the large-diameter wheel really inhibited

the development of the boiler.

You could have got a longer boiler, but

a too-long a boiler doesn't steam very well,

because by the time the heat is all generated at the back end of

the boiler, the heat goes through the tubes towards the front, and if the

boiler's too long, there's no heat in the gasses from the firebox

at the front end, and all you're doing is carrying cold water around.

There's more to this design business than I'd realised.

It's all a matter of compromise, as most designs are.

'The new look came from a quarter which had been

'out of the headlines for a while - the Great Western Railway of Brunel

'and broad-gauge fame, with the green and gold charisma which made it the

'best-loved company to those who loved it,

'and inspired more resentment among others

'than any railway company had a right to expect.

'In the early 1900s, the company set a standard and speed

'for years to come.

'Their new locomotive designer, George Churchward,

'in his first year in office,

'built an engine which was the first ever to do 100mph -

'even though news of the world record was kept secret for 15 years.

'The City of Truro was a hybrid design, with a much more effective

'new boiler set on a frame and chassis

'borrowed from his predecessor.

'In fact, Churchward had designed the revolutionary boiler

'while his old boss was still in office.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'There's still a little doubt over whether the City of Truro did,

'or did not, reach the ton - enough doubt, at any doubt,

'to enable you to pull a GWR man's leg.

'I tried it on Keith Beck.'

Keith, I've been looking at the City of Truro

and I find it hard to believe that that engine could have done

much over 96mph, let alone a hundred.

Well, I suppose it is a bit difficult to comprehend,

because it's very small, compared with more recent steam locomotives.

There is a dispute as to whether it did 102-point-something,

or whether it was only 100, but I think there is agreement

that it was the first thing on wheels to reach 100mph,

despite the size of it.

Nobody was really saying

"We're going to be the first people on wheels to go 100mph."

There was a race on between two companies - the Great Western

and the London South Western.

The Great Western took the transatlantic mails from Plymouth.

The South Western took the passengers,

and each was determined they were going to reach London first.

And in the course of trying to set up THE record run,

the 100-mile-an-hour was just incidental

and happened without, I think, deliberate intent.

It was business, and this was an additional publicity

that happened to come in.

Though one has to remember that some people were rather

frightened of speed and...

Yes, isn't it true that they tried to hush-up the 100-mile-an-hour record?

Yes, certainly there were attempts that it must be suppressed

and not be released to the public.

There were two schools of thought.

One wanted, I think,

to blaze it from the housetops as a Great Western feat.

Others said it would frighten people from ever travelling

on the Great Western if we go at these excessive speeds.

And there were one or two nasty accidents at that time,

due undoubtedly to high speed, and the competing line -

the London South Western - came off the line

in the middle of the night with its train at Salisbury,

killed a number of people, and that effectively put an end to

the race between Plymouth and London with the transatlantic mails.

So the City of Truro might have been famous for the first train to

come off the rails at 100mph?

Well, it could have been, possibly, but fortunately,

it managed to cover all the curves,

and there were quite a lot in the west of England, severe snake-like

curves without any damage, and without too much rocking and rolling.

Was there anything special about those compared to any other

engines at the time?

The boiler was quite unusual,

that most railway engineers used a boiler that was parallel throughout.

On City of Truro, there was a boiler which

tapered from the back by the firebox, down to the front where the smokebox

and chimney is, which wasn't used on any other railway

in this country other than the Great Western, for many years.

It was a Churchward design.

The Americans had used it for many years,

and Churchward seems to have been the first engineer in this country

who actually read about what happened on the other side of the Atlantic,

took note of it, and said, "That's a good idea - we'll try it."

And he adopted it and used it on all his engines,

and City of Truro was one of the earliest engines that had it.

'Before 1900, the speed of trains had risen from 5mph

'to about 100.

'In this century, steam engines were never to get that much faster.

'What they did was to get bigger, thicker, and more powerful.

'Clun Castle was built 30 years after the City of Truro

'and still has the same look.

'What's different is that it's been through a body-building course

'and can pull much longer, heavier trains.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'This is Clun Castle pulling out of - suitably enough -

'the city of Truro, but it was from Cheltenham that for a long while,

'the Great Western had the world's fastest scheduled service -

'Cheltenham Flyer.

'Over the home stretch, from Swindon to Paddington,

'the start-to-stop average was 71mph.

'According to the book, on a good day the train would touch about 90.

'Quite why so many people wanted to fly out of Cheltenham as fast

'as that was never really properly explained, but the publicity was well

'worth it to the GWR, and they flew a camera up specially to record it.

'But then the initiative for speed was snatched back by the East-coast

'route to the north, where Nigel Gresley's Pacific designs

'were emerging as the fastest ever.

'It was hard to prove this in the 1920s, when running times to

'Edinburgh had not changed for 40 years, but in the 1930s,

'the race to the north was on again.

'The LMS held the top speed record of 114mph in early 1938,

'but this was broken that year by the most famous of all A4s - Mallard.

'Now stripped down ready for the operating theatre,

'Mallard is being restored at the National Railway Museum in York.

'Strange to think, really, that the

'world steam record is now the daily maximum of every daily Intercity 125.

'When the streamlining is stripped away, the A4 begins to look

'a bit more like an ordinary engine - more Clark Kent than Superman!

'In fact, GWR supporters will sometimes

'whisper in your ear that the A4s may have been fast,

'but they didn't have the stamina to finish the course.

'And wasn't there some design weakness as well -

'an Achilles heel ready to let down the fastest runner?'

So this is the infamous big end?

Yes, this the middle big end on the A4.

And this is what ran hot when the Mallard broke the record in 1938.

'Top Shed man Peter Townend looked after the A4s after the Second World

'War and will defend them against any suggestion of misbehaviour.

'Though he does admit there was always room for improvement.'

This web made it much stronger, more rigid,

and then we put a new piece of steel glut in there

instead of a brass glut, and then the bearing was made of continuous

white metal shell bearing, instead of the white metal pocket.

The lubrication method was changed and the trim intake now,

and a restrictor put in there.

The oil comes through here, and if that felt pad is worn,

all the oil flows through, and your bearing will run hot.

So the most critical thing on the locomotive, really,

is to make sure that pad is not worn.

Otherwise you lose the oil, and this bearing can run hot

and melt the metal, and you fail to locomote it.

'These massive chunks of metal seem to take you right back

'to the heart of the Industrial Revolution -

'nothing electronic or computerised here.

'Actually, Gresley was one of the few loco designers who spared

'a thought for the maintenance men,

'and very few jobs on his designs involved crawling under the engine.

'The A4 even incorporated a safety device, which -

'believe it or not - depended on the efficiency of the driver's nose.'

When Mallard broke the record in 1938,

the middle big end ran hot, but it had been fitted with a heat detector

inside the middle big end crank, and this went off and emitted a smell,

which was detected in the cab, and the driver and inspector failed

the locomotive on this occasion in Peterborough instead of going

through to London.

- That's it. Ready. - Hup!

- Forward. - To us!

- Steady! - That's it. Roll it round.

All right.

- That's in, is it? - Back to me.

- Right. - Mind your fingers.

I had 19 of these locomotives, A4 locomotives at King's Cross

and a total, at one time, of about 40 Pacifics,

and these were going out on every express train from King's Cross,

some going to Newcastle, York, Doncaster -

and in summertime, the A4 loco worked through to Edinburgh non-stop.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'The elegance of these graceful beasts looks effortless, but the

'streamlining conceals the effort. Breaking speed records going downhill

'is all very well, but getting a steam engine to travel fast uphill,

'and thus maintain a good average speed, was always a tough problem.

'Breaking 60 uphill was thought to be hard enough,

'but Gresley regularly got the A4s up to near 80.

'Nor did the extra speed lie just in the streamlining.

'Designers found it in what seem to us to be minute adjustments to

'the boilers and valves, even in the chimney.'

The boiler fitted to the A4 locomotive was of the round-top

variety and it was the largest that could be fitted over

the 6 foot 8 diameter driving wheels.

You're looking through the combustion chamber,

which was longer on the A4 locomotive

and this enabled the tubes in the same length of boiler to be shortened

This would produce a quicker steaming boiler.

The one feature of the A4 Mallard,

which broke the record that was different to the previous A4

locomotives was the fitting of the double Kylchap blast pipe.

The double Kylchap blast pipe would improve the power of the locomotive

by reducing the back pressure from the cylinders, and this was done by

increasing the size of the blast pipe tops, and that in turn increased the

power available at the draw bar by about 400-500 horsepower.

The effect of the Kylala cowl between the blast pipe

and the chimney base would be to spread

the pull of the fire across the tube plate, and enable a much more

even draught which made the loco steam very much more freely,

and you could maintain the full boiler pressure without difficulty,

and this in itself would also increase the power of the locomotive.

Straight down the back.

STEAM TRAIN APPROACHING

'A Kyltrap double blast pipe arrangement may seem a bit

'technical to you and me - well, to me, anyway - but it did the trick.

'10mph faster than locomotives without it,

'and more to the point, cheaper on fuel and easier to fire.

'The golden age of steam really came to an end with the war,

'and things were never quite the same again.

'Some people would say that the age of steam should have ended earlier.

'After all, other parts of Europe had already made the commitment

'to diesel and electric power in the 1930s.

'The A4s were perhaps not so much world champions

'as a glorious sunset, or the last of a line of kings.

'And yet, the extraordinary thing is that

'while thousands can tell you which steam engine broke the world record,

'and when, I've yet to meet anyone who can tell me

'with confidence what the diesel or electric rail speed record is today.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'The image of Mallard and the A4s lives on.

'The further the age of steam and speed recedes from our anonymous age,

'the more potent become its sights and its sounds.'

WHISTLE BLOWS