The Age of the Steam Locomotive Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam

LOCOMOTIVE WHISTLE BLOWS

Steam power brought about a revolution in transport.

It was among Britain's greatest contributions to industry.

In the age of steam, the railways moved everything and everybody.

They changed society for ever.

My interest in railways started at a very early age.

I was born in a street of terraced houses,

similar to Coronation Street. All clustered together.

As a lad, from the back window, I could see the signal box of the main line to Manchester.

On moonlit nights, you could hear the whistle blowing as it approached Bolton.

It'd bash across the end of this ginnel,

fire hole door open, and you could see characters on the footplate.

That's what inspired me and got me interested in steam engines.

Then, I got really lucky.

I sat on the end of the platform with a platform ticket in the rain,

and the guy'd bring the train in, and stop it dead level with me at the end.

Have a quick look to see if there was anyone about,

and then give me a wave to jump on the engine.

We went 20 miles. It were quite exciting.

That was 1950, when locomotive engineering was at its peak.

At the Bluebell Line in East Sussex,

they have the largest collection of ex-southern region locomotives in the country.

The last steam locos were withdrawn from British Rail in 1968.

But here you can still see them steaming away.

This one's a Bulleid Light Pacific Blackmoor Vale, built in 1946.

The reason for the name Bullied is, it's named after its creator,

Oliver Vaughn Snell Bullied.

He introduced new things like electric welding on his locomotive building to reduce weight.

And he put this beautiful characteristic streamlining on to reduce air resistance.

Blackmoor Vale was one of the last Pacifics to run on British Rail.

Steve, it's like the ultimate, isn't it? The refinements.

I know that Mr Bullied did a lot of welding, but what else is there?

-I've noticed other fancy bits.

-They made things easier for the crew, like the steam operated doors.

On the main line, when you're doing 80-90 mile an hour,

they're great, cos there's a big draw on the fire.

-Operating the doors quickly, helps keep the...

-Keep the heat in.

Another thing's electric lighting. To light up the gauges.

You can see the boiler water level, see the reverser in the dark.

These would've done 80 to 90 miles an hour on the main line.

On this preserved railway we're allowed 25.

At 25 miles an hour, it feels like it'll take off,

-and you've got to hold it back.

-Very frustrating.

-Yes.

Anybody who's never had a ride on a locomotive going fast has never lived.

The Pacifics were the supreme end of the steam engine.

They remind you of when steam engines were king of the rails,

and British Rail were the envy of the world.

ENGINE WHISTLE BLOWS

Under the fancy paint and lagging is this, a locomotive boiler.

You look at it, there's the cab with two windows in each corner.

Near to them is this big square bit, sticking out, and then the boiler barrel, the round bit,

goes along to the funnel end and this bit is called the firebox.

All these are screwed stays that go through this outer plate,

through two inches of water, and through the firebox which is on the inside.

If these stays weren't here, when the pressure's up to 150 lbs per square inch,

it would end up like a beer barrel. All these stays are very important.

Round the back, this is if we were steaming along the railway.

Now, the footplate would be about here.

Of course, much wider, maybe six, seven feet wide

against this two foot wide.

Then you open the door and fling in the wood and right at the far end,

you can see the tubes which Stephenson's Rocket were the first locomotive to have it like this.

Them tubes go from the firebox to the smoke box at the other end.

The products of combustion, the heat goes through the tubes,

boiling the water a lot faster than great single-flued boilers -

like the early locomotives that they made.

It's time we put more wood on to get the water boiling. Here we go.

Locomotive engineering reached its peak between the 1930s and the 1950s.

It was the time when the great passenger express locos were built.

The early railways were very primitive affairs. Basically, just horse-drawn waggonways.

Their early history was quite chequered and confusing.

The first railways got coal from the collieries down to rivers and the sea.

This here is the Tanfield Waggonway or light railway,

which shows us a lot of how early railways were developed.

Opened in 1725, it's reputed to be one of the oldest in the world.

When it first started, it was actually horse drawn.

In the 18th century, it were the biggest thing that moved coal in England, possibly all the world.

This wagon isn't an original one.

It's a replica of the type of wagon used on here with wooden rails.

You can see even wooden wheels. It's all wood apart from a few iron spikes.

Wooden rails and wheels had lots of disadvantages.

It only lasted 12 months before the rails were worn away.

They had trouble with the track setting on fire.

They came up with some ingenious gimmicks.

They did an actual double row of wooden track,

so as the top length of it wore away, they could move sections without disturbing the sleepers.

This lasted until the 1830s, when the track were replaced by metal.

By this time, the first steam-powered locos designed to run on metal tracks appeared.

The pioneer, as with many things associated with steam,

was the great Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick.

Trevithick's first steam locos ran on the roads.

But the roads were so bad, he decided to have a go at one to run on the rails.

In 1804, he was asked to build a small locomotive

for a South Wales mining and iron company, called the Pen y Darren.

This is it. This is a replica of it.

It was the first steam locomotive that worked for a living.

It's a rather ponderous thing as you can see.

The Pen y Darren pulled a load of ten tonnes of iron ore and 70 men,

for a distance of some ten miles at five miles an hour.

It won Richard Trevithick a prize of £500 for being

the first man in the world to build a successful locomotive.

Pen y Darren was the first steam engine to work on a railroad.

But there were problems with it,

like getting enough grip for smooth wheels to run on a smooth track.

Trevithick abandoned his experiments, but other engineers worked away at the idea.

In the early 1800s, one place led the world.

It's Northumbria you've got to come to, to find the early days of the railways.

On the Pockerley Waggonway, in the Beamish Open Air Museum,

they've recreated what the railways of the period actually looked like.

Inside this shed, there's a collection of locomotives

from the very earliest days of the railways.

This magnificent locomotive is a full size working replica.

It's got a wooden chassis, and it's called the Steam Elephant.

Study it and look at the funnel. It's where it got its name from.

It's just like an elephant's trunk.

Originally built in 1815 by Chapman and Buddel, for the Wallsend Colliery,

It worked from 1815 to 1840, and then mysteriously disappeared.

These early locos were built for the coalmines in the northeast.

It was here that the most famous man in railway history worked.

George Stephenson was an engine wright at Killingworth pit.

He'd be familiar with locos like the Steam Elephant.

He didn't invent the locomotive, but he played the leading part

in turning them onto a means of hauling coal and transporting passengers over long distances.

It was the beginning of the railways as we know them.

Many think railway history started in September 1825,

when George Stephenson's Locomotion No. 1 pulled 38 wagons

from Shildon to Darlington, then on to Stockton.

The train weighed 90 tonnes and went at the unbelievable speed of 12 miles an hour.

It had two cylinders which drove crossbeams and rods.

The driver's position is stood on the side on a plank,

which is rather precarious. He works the valve levers,

and lets the steam into the cylinders.

On the first run, George Stephenson drove the locomotive and his brothers acted as firemen.

It must've been exciting. Like being an airline pilot in 1825.

Incredible.

It had no brakes to stop the thing. The fireman had to jump off,

and pin down the brakes on the coal wagon. Quite a hairy occupation.

At the unbelievable speed of 12 miles an hour!

After the success of the Stockton and Darlington line,

Stephenson became principal construction engineer for a line between Liverpool and Manchester.

As it neared completion, they had to decide what sort of motive power was to be used for the line.

Some wanted horses and some thought stationary engines would be best.

Stephenson backed the loco, and he managed to persuade the directors to hold a competition,

known as the Rainhill Trials, to decide on the best design.

Rocket, entered by George Stephenson and his son Robert was the most successful machine there.

It outperformed the other competitors with a top speed of 24 miles an hour.

At the National Railway Museum they've got a cutaway replica of Rocket

that shows the innovations that made it so successful.

Stephenson went off track and came up with a revolutionary design,

which incorporated the fire tube boiler

and which really is the prototype for all modern locomotive boilers of today.

In relation to its weight and power,

it went faster than any other locomotive built before.

It did away with all the beams and levers of earlier locos.

This was a revolutionary boiler, never done before.

The fact that the shell had 25 copper tubes

going from either end, and the way to transfer the heat

from the fire into these tubes were this creation here.

The beginnings of the true firebox.

It worked better than a single fire tube into the boiler of the earlier models.

The other thing were the blast pipe,

which, when the piston turned the wheels round

the escaping steam for the valve chest went along that copper pipe

and into the base of the funnel and created a vacuum in the bottom

which drew the fire with a degree of violence.

Another thing were the connecting rod which connected the piston

to the crank pin on the front wheel hub.

It led to nice smooth running.

Wooden front wheels on springs. Early engines didn't have springs.

A clever way so the front axle can oscillate and rock about.

The crank pins are as big as a tennis ball inside there.

It's a round, steel ball on the end of the crank pin,

and the brasses are hollow like an internal sphere.

So wherever in relation to the piston rod were the connecting rod, the thing would never bind up.

The brilliant idea of using many tubes

in the boiler instead of one or two big ones was a good one.

Stephenson didn't invent it.

A man called Booth drew on the back of a fag packet,

or some piece of paper!

Stephenson was good at weighing up what was the best on the market

and, if it hadn't been patented, using it himself.

It turned out really successful!

The Rocket ran for a few years after its trials at Rainhill.

The cylinders were too high up and the whole thing was top-heavy.

When you opened it up it used to rock about,

but the Rocket is really without a shadow of a doubt

the forerunner of the modern steam locomotive as we know it today.

Alongside Rocket they've another of the competitors

built by Timothy Hackworth who was Superintendent on the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Timothy built the Sans Pareil

to enter the Rainhill trials and it were really Stephenson's only rival.

The Sans Pareil were quite old technology for the time.

It had the usual shell with the huge flue in it.

It had one or two other oddities.

The driver were at one end and the fireman were at the other!

After a promising start, disaster struck.

A cylinder split from top to bottom.

The water pump failed and they nearly ran out of water, which might have caused an explosion.

It must have been difficult for Hackworth to build a locomotive.

He didn't even have a workshop.

He had to buy all the parts in.

The main parts - the cylinders - were done by his rival, George Stephenson.

He was bitter because the word "sabotage" came into it at the end

and ruined his chances of winning the Rainhill trials.

I don't think it COULD have won.

The Rocket was the engine that were far superior.

With its fire tube boiler it was a much better steamer altogether.

The success of Rocket finally established what motive power

were going to be used on the Liverpool to Manchester railway,

and it was immediately equipped with locomotives.

Stephenson got the contract to build it.

The work was done by his son Robert at his Forth Street locomotive works

in Newcastle which became the leading manufacturer in the world.

By 1830, around a 100 locomotives had been built in Britain.

Stephenson introduced the Planet class for work on the Liverpool and Manchester.

Other railways had different ideas.

A steam locomotive didn't take over overnight.

Even after the success of the Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool to Manchester railway,

other railways were being built.

It was a combination of old horsepower and new horsepower.

It seems a convoluted and hotch-potch method to do things

but it worked because that's what they had here at the Cromford and High Peak railway in Derbyshire.

When the entrepreneurs wanted to build a canal from the Cromford Canal to the High Peak Canal

it proved too expensive to cut and build locks over these hills.

They settled for a system of inclined planes and flat parts.

On the flat, horses were the motive power but on the inclined planes

they had double-acting winding drums and engine houses.

The wire hawser went round this wheel, down to the bottom of the hill and round another wheel.

It would have been an endless rope haulage system.

The full ones came up the hill carrying ten tonnes of limestone

The empty ones came down as a sort of counterbalance.

Originally there were nine of these winding engine houses.

This is the only one left and it still works.

This is it. This is the winding engine at the top of the incline.

It was built in 1829 by the Butterly Iron Company down the road.

Basically, it's two single-cylinder steam engines joined together by a common crank shaft.

And as you can see behind me, the flywheel is in the middle and the rope drums disappear with the rope

out through the wall.

In the days of low pressures they needed more pressure.

It were quite common to build two engines and place them side by side.

Rope haulage railways like this

were quite common and continued to be built well into the 19th century,

mainly to pull coal.

This is the Bowes railway that operated until 1974.

This sort of thing never really took off for passenger railways.

As the railway network spread across the country

it was the locomotive that won the day.

Between 1830 and the end of the century, massive progress was made in locomotive design.

This one at the National Railway Museum was based on a design

Robert Stephenson came up with in the 1830s.

It's amazing what progress was made in such a short time.

Here on the Bluebell Line, they've got a couple of engines in steam that go back to those early days.

By the 1870s, London was growing and they needed little locomotives

for what we now know as commuting services.

Fenchurch was one of the locos designed for the job.

STEAM HISSES

Lovely!

-That was all right, wasn't it?

-Yes!

This locomotive - Fenchurch - is what's known as a Terrier.

It's a small locomotive and very popular in the southern counties

and on the rural lines.

It was designed by Mr Stroudley in the 1870s and they made a lot. There's a lot of nice bits on it.

The exhaust could be converted from going up the funnel

or diverted to the water tank which pre-heats the water and saves a bit of water

that would normally condense in the atmosphere.

Considering it were made in 1872 and is still here...

it's quite a credit to Mr Stroudley!

The development of the railways wasn't straightforward.

Especially when the great engineer

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was involved.

Britain's railway network had developed a 4ft 8.5 inch gauge.

Brunel's Great Western Railway was built with a seven foot and quarter inch gauge.

When Brunel got the idea for his railway

he already thought that George Stephenson and his son

and their 4ft 8.5 inch railway was far too narrow.

That's why he settled for 7ft wide, like this, you see.

Of course, already half of England

was covered in 4ft 8.5 inch railways.

It didn't seem to dawn on him that it would be a bit awkward.

He thought that it wouldn't be much trouble getting off a narrow train

and getting on one that was 7ft wide.

For a time they had both systems.

The 4ft 8.5 and the 7ft gauge running together.

But it must have got complicated when they come to a junction

or a crossover.

If you're outside a railway station what's just got 4ft 8.5...

Outside Paddington with both sets it must have been a complicated affair.

It's the reason they did away with Brunel's extra line on the outside.

Bit of a shame really.

If they'd kept them 7ft wide it might be a lot smoother

and a lot faster and everything.

But Mr Stephenson won with his 4ft 8.5!

The sad thing is that in the 1890s they did away with the broad gauge.

All the locomotives that couldn't be converted were given the chop.

ENGINE WHISTLES

There are no original Great Western broad gauge trains around today.

To see what they were like they've built replicas.

This is Iron Duke which I rode at the National Railway Museum.

Here at the Didcot Railway Centre they are constructing a replica

of a broad gauge Firefly class locomotive.

They've got the frames, cylinders, cranks, the wheels and everything.

The boiler's been tested and all they have to do is get it into the frames and connect it.

Then they can ride on a section of 7ft gauge track they've built.

In spite of losing the battle of the gauges, the Great Western Railway went from strength to strength.

In 1902 they appointed George Jackson Churchward as the locomotive superintendent.

He produced designs which were far ahead of the time and successful.

The work that was begun by Churchward

was continued by CB Collet who took over in 1922.

His kings and castles had become a benchmark in the designs of passenger locomotives.

By the 1930s, the Great Western Railways engines

were amongst the most famous in the land.

Here at the Didcot Railway Centre

you get the feeling of what steam locomotion was like on the Great Western Railway.

TRAIN WHISTLES

Mmm!

Fair turn of speed this time.

The maximum we can do is 25mph

but it's quite straightforward and comfortable.

What were the big improvements on these particular things?

A larger boiler and a four cylinder arrangement.

Two sets of lotions which drive each pair of cylinders.

I read somewhere...when they'd got to get from London to Bristol at a mile a minute...

That was one of the requirements and they certainly achieved that.

-They could go faster but 100mph was pushing them.

-Yes.

How many of this particular class have survived?

Eight, I believe. There were originally 171.

What lines did they run on?

The Great Western radiated from Paddington so they used them for going west to Bristol,

on the lines through Exeter and Plymouth and to Wales and Birmingham.

By the 1930s when this was built,

steam locomotive had come a long way from the first efforts they'd made a hundred years earlier.

Between 1804 and 1971, Britain had built 110,000 steam locomotives.

The development of the railways

was one of the greatest technical developments in British history.