RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 23, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 23, 2020 26 minutes ago, JeffP said: There were locos like that in 1958, even I remember them. But by 1963, almost all were likely to be found looking like that. Even the Top Shed A4's, those that survived, didn't stay clean long. I think any pretence of looking after steam locos had been abandoned by 1963 Jeff. The decline started well before that though in some places. In 1959 Grantham shed, which had always been well known for turning out well kept engines, suddenly stopped cleaning them at all. Thereafter they looked appalling, and that was the beginning of the end of my interest, for a while anyway. 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzer Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 There were of course the two Liverpool St station pilots, a J69 and an N7 that were kept in concours condition with the crews supposedly being paid a small extra allowance to keep them immaculate. It’s seemed strange to me as they always seemed to be in the same place never moving while the “ working “ locos often left much to be desired in terms of appearance. Also in the late 50’s double manning was introduced on the Enfield Town Line from Liverpool St and once each pair of crews had their “own “ engine many of them would come in unpaid on a Sunday morning to give their N7’s a good clean while the N7’s From Walthamstow and Stratford remained dirty. I often wonder how much of the lack of cleaning was due to lack of staff and how much of it was lethargy of a management that increasingly no longer cared infecting others. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 23, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 23, 2020 1 hour ago, jazzer said: There were of course the two Liverpool St station pilots, a J69 and an N7 that were kept in concours condition with the crews supposedly being paid a small extra allowance to keep them immaculate. It’s seemed strange to me as they always seemed to be in the same place never moving while the “ working “ locos often left much to be desired in terms of appearance. Also in the late 50’s double manning was introduced on the Enfield Town Line from Liverpool St and once each pair of crews had their “own “ engine many of them would come in unpaid on a Sunday morning to give their N7’s a good clean while the N7’s From Walthamstow and Stratford remained dirty. I often wonder how much of the lack of cleaning was due to lack of staff and how much of it was lethargy of a management that increasingly no longer cared infecting others. Of course it could be said that if there was little or no work for them, the crew would have plenty of time to keep them pristine. Pride in one's work is and always has been a very important factor, so more and more locos becoming common user, and a culture promoted from the top that steam was outdated and finished wouldn't do much for desire or morale either. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Popular Post great northern Posted January 23, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Popular Post Share Posted January 23, 2020 Here is a "I wonder why I took this" photo. and here is another of that V2, on account of the fact that I had to leave it here last time I ran trains, and then couldn't remember whether I'd already photographed it, which of course I had. So its monochrome, for a change. 26 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium St Enodoc Posted January 24, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 1 hour ago, great northern said: Here is a "I wonder why I took this" photo. and here is another of that V2, on account of the fact that I had to leave it here last time I ran trains, and then couldn't remember whether I'd already photographed it, which of course I had. So its monochrome, for a change. I like the first one. It says "looking at the railway" rather than "taking a photo", if you get my drift. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzer Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 16 hours ago, great northern said: Of course it could be said that if there was little or no work for them, the crew would have plenty of time to keep them pristine. Pride in one's work is and always has been a very important factor, so more and more locos becoming common user, and a culture promoted from the top that steam was outdated and finished wouldn't do much for desire or morale either. Quite. Christian Woolmar’s excellent book “Fire And Steam” paints a bleak picture of BR management in the 1950’s. Constant bickering between the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive often about relatively trivial matters like livery and logos, while wasting money on 30 new marshalling yards like the one at Perth that was closed within 6 years while business was being lost as freight was at times being lost for days on end, and the flyover at Bletchley which cost £1.6 million ( around £30 million in today’s money) which was never used. Powerful senior managers building their own empires, such as the London Midland Region bidding for 660 new electric locos when 100 were sufficient, and Local managers coming up with crack pot schemes to electrify hopelessly uneconomic lines in Lincolnshire. Several reorganisation were programmes planned by civil servants who didn’t understand the industry,rather than railway men All this money was being wasted while little or nothing was being spent on what the travelling public wanted most - clean trains. Its hardly surprising that pride in the job was gradually eroded. 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flying Fox 34F Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 8 minutes ago, jazzer said: Quite. Christian Woolmar’s excellent book “Fire And Steam” paints a bleak picture of BR management in the 1950’s. Constant bickering between the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive often about relatively trivial matters like livery and logos, while wasting money on 30 new marshalling yards like the one at Perth that was closed within 6 years while business was being lost as freight was at times being lost for days on end, and the flyover at Bletchley which cost £1.6 million ( around £30 million in today’s money) which was never used. Powerful senior managers building their own empires, such as the London Midland Region bidding for 660 new electric locos when 100 were sufficient, and Local managers coming up with crack pot schemes to electrify hopelessly uneconomic lines in Lincolnshire. Several reorganisation were programmes planned by civil servants who didn’t understand the industry,rather than railway men All this money was being wasted while little or nothing was being spent on what the travelling public wanted most - clean trains. Its hardly surprising that pride in the job was gradually eroded. Has anything changed? Paul 1 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 9 hours ago, St Enodoc said: I like the first one. It says "looking at the railway" rather than "taking a photo", if you get my drift. I think that puts into words what was in my mind when I took it. Of course, it isn't very realistic though. In real life 1958 the identity of the B17 would have been completely hidden behind the van. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Popular Post great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Popular Post Share Posted January 24, 2020 I can't remember featuring many goods trains under the roof, so this one seemed appropriate. Next we come to an interesting fact. The Timming of a locomotive always seems to result in promotion to the more prestigious trains. 60003 has graduated from Class C work, albeit the Scotch goods, to the Heart Of Midlothian. The arrival of this train resulted in alarm and confusion among railway operatives at the station, but more of that later. 26 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium St Enodoc Posted January 24, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 2 hours ago, jazzer said: London Midland Region bidding for 660 new electric locos when 100 were sufficient If they'd bid for 100 they'd probably have ended up with fewer than 20... 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold jollysmart Posted January 24, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 24, 2020 35 minutes ago, St Enodoc said: If they'd bid for 100 they'd probably have ended up with fewer than 20... Reminds me of when I worked for a nationalised industry and one of the senior managers wanted an additional two units of motorised plant, Expensive and specialised around £40K at the time, so he bid for 6 and got them all approved. He then had 3 times the number that he wanted or needed or had work for and had no one trained to use them. another complete waste of money. It wasn't only on the railway. Sorry for the thread hijack. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 3 hours ago, Flying Fox 34F said: Has anything changed? Paul No, and that is the chilling thing, isn't it? Why do we never learn? Well over 30 years ago, I became a civil servant, whether I wanted to or not. We retained our local management though for a few years, and it was bearable, despite the fact that the ratio of fee earners to bureacrats changed dramatically and very quickly. However, word got around that Nottingham was a happy and committed workplace, but one which ignored a lot of the set rules to achieve that desirable state. Result? Outsiders were sent to "sort the place out", and they did. Within a few months I went from looking forward to going to work to counting the days to retirement. The outsiders were not people who actually did the day job themseves. Of course not. 4 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium John Isherwood Posted January 24, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, great northern said: No, and that is the chilling thing, isn't it? Why do we never learn? Well over 30 years ago, I became a civil servant, whether I wanted to or not. We retained our local management though for a few years, and it was bearable, despite the fact that the ratio of fee earners to bureacrats changed dramatically and very quickly. However, word got around that Nottingham was a happy and committed workplace, but one which ignored a lot of the set rules to achieve that desirable state. Result? Outsiders were sent to "sort the place out", and they did. Within a few months I went from looking forward to going to work to counting the days to retirement. The outsiders were not people who actually did the day job themseves. Of course not. This will ring true for any local government engineer during the latter half of the twentieth century. 'We' were given tasks and budgets, and allowed to get on and produce the desired outcome by the most practicable and efficient means that 'we' could devise. Then, around the time on the Millenium, 'they' perceived that 'we' were 'unaccountable'; they found it difficult to 'prove' that 'we' were working efficiently. Moreover, 'they' needed bigger budgets to fund more of 'them', and so it was declared that 'we' were inefficient and 'we' had our budgets slashed. At the same time, 'their' budgets were greatly increased because 'they' were going to need much more personnel in order to make 'us' efficient. Fast forward a few years, and the budgets allocated to 'us' were tiny; 'we' had a whole raft of procedures to fulfil before 'we' could actually do anything productive, and then a further raft of procedures to fulfil in order to 'prove' that 'we'd' done the job 'efficiently'. Needless to say, by the time that I threw in the towel, procedures cost many times the value of the work done, and 'we' were being accused of being even more 'inefficient'. I'm SO glad that I'm out of the 'mad-house' !!! (No slight intended to anything other than local government 'administration'). Regards, John Isherwood. Edited January 24, 2020 by cctransuk 3 4 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TrevorP1 Posted January 24, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 40 minutes ago, great northern said: No, and that is the chilling thing, isn't it? Why do we never learn? Well over 30 years ago, I became a civil servant, whether I wanted to or not. We retained our local management though for a few years, and it was bearable, despite the fact that the ratio of fee earners to bureacrats changed dramatically and very quickly. However, word got around that Nottingham was a happy and committed workplace, but one which ignored a lot of the set rules to achieve that desirable state. Result? Outsiders were sent to "sort the place out", and they did. Within a few months I went from looking forward to going to work to counting the days to retirement. The outsiders were not people who actually did the day job themseves. Of course not. So familiar Gilbert, and not just in the public sector. 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bigwordsmith Posted January 24, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 24, 2020 8 minutes ago, cctransuk said: This will ring true for any local government engineer during the latter half of the twentieth century. 'We' were given tasks and budgets, and allowed to get on and produce the desired outcome by the most practicable and efficient means that 'we' could devise. Then, around the time on the Millenium, 'they' perceived that 'we' were 'unaccountable'; they found it difficult to 'prove' that 'we' were working efficiently. Moreover, 'they' needed bigger budgets to fund more of 'them', and so it was declared that 'we' were inefficient and 'we' had our budgets slashed. At the same time, 'their' budgets were greatly increased because 'they' were going to need much more personnel in order to make 'us' efficient. Fast forward a few years, and the budgets allocated to 'us' were tiny; 'we' had a whole raft of procedures to fulfil before 'we' could actually do anything productive, and then a further raft of procedures to fulfil in order to 'prove' that 'we'd' done the job 'efficiently'. Needless to say, by the time that I threw in the towel, procedures cost many times the value of the work done, and 'we' were being accused of being even more 'inefficient'. I'm SO glad that I'm out of the 'mad-house' !!! (No slight intended to anything other than locoal government 'administration'). Regards, John Isherwood. A couple of months ago one of my Facebook Friends, a former client who is a real friend as well, shared this with me. I think it is very apposite to the discussion! 3 18 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewartingram Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 I find it quite amazing when watching "The Chase", or similar quizzes on TV, that so many contestants are managers (and usually at a youngish inexperienced age, and often scruffy too). Doesn't anyone actually have a job making things any more? Stewart 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 19 minutes ago, cctransuk said: This will ring true for any local government engineer during the latter half of the twentieth century. 'We' were given tasks and budgets, and allowed to get on and produce the desired outcome by the most practicable and efficient means that 'we' could devise. Then, around the time on the Millenium, 'they' perceived that 'we' were 'unaccountable'; they found it difficult to 'prove' that 'we' were working efficiently. Moreover, 'they' needed bigger budgets to fund more of 'them', and so it was declared that 'we' were inefficient and 'we' had our budgets slashed. At the same time, 'their' budgets were greatly increased because 'they' were going to need much more personnel in order to make 'us' efficient. Fast forward a few years, and the budgets allocated to 'us' were tiny; 'we' had a whole raft of procedures to fulfil before 'we' could actually do anything productive, and then a further raft of procedures to fulfil in order to 'prove' that 'we'd' done the job 'efficiently'. Needless to say, by the time that I threw in the towel, procedures cost many times the value of the work done, and 'we' were being accused of being even more 'inefficient'. I'm SO glad that I'm out of the 'mad-house' !!! (No slight intended to anything other than locoal government 'administration'). Regards, John Isherwood. What a brilliant summary John. I don't think I've ever seen it summed up so well. Mind you, when we were local government we had 48 fee earners to 5 adminstrators. By the time we had been civil servants for a year we had less of the former, and at least ten times as many of the latter. They of course had exclusive use of the plushest wing of the complex. This was 1986/7 though, so presumably local government hadn't caught up yet. 4 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Popular Post great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Popular Post Share Posted January 24, 2020 Days without daylight, image store nearly empty again, so only one tonight. Andrew K McCosh comes off, and heads for New England. 34 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
croydon junction Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 9 hours ago, bigwordsmith said: A couple of months ago one of my Facebook Friends, a former client who is a real friend as well, shared this with me. I think it is very apposite to the discussion! modernity in a nutshell 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
westerner Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 Love the weathering on that A4 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
landscapes Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 40 minutes ago, great northern said: Days without daylight, image store nearly empty again, so only one tonight. Andrew K McCosh comes off, and heads for New England. Great photo Gilbert 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium great northern Posted January 24, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted January 24, 2020 43 minutes ago, great northern said: Days without daylight, image store nearly empty again, so only one tonight. Andrew K McCosh comes off, and heads for New England. Tim's latest, and the first time I've had enough light to show it off properly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium thegreenhowards Posted January 25, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 25, 2020 18 hours ago, stewartingram said: Doesn't anyone actually have a job making things any more? Stewart Of course they do. They just live in China and get paid peanuts! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Popular Post great northern Posted January 25, 2020 Author RMweb Premium Popular Post Share Posted January 25, 2020 Another day of gloom forecast, and we are down to the last two images in store. All is not lost though, as earlier in the week someone heard that it was brighter a bit further North, and went and got some pictures at Little Bytham, so they are in reserve. Another WD clanks past Crescent Junction box with coal empties. But at the station, all is confusion. 60070 is a Gateshead engine, but the Heart of Midlothian is a Heaton duty. Some incompetent has sent the wrong engine down from New England. Apparently he'd mislaid his glasses, and saw 52A instead of 52B. Anyway, despite the Gateshead driver's loud complaints, he's been told to take the train anyway, and "sort it out when you get there". The thought of holding everything up while the right engine was located and brought down was considered unthinkable. 33 1 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffP Posted January 25, 2020 Share Posted January 25, 2020 Just to go back to management, (sorry), the final straw for me that got me to quit teaching was the huge number of folk who could walk into my classroom, unannounced, with a clipboard, and watch me teach. Then, at the end of the lesson, they'd tell me I wasn't doing this, that, or the other, right. But on being asked how it should have been done, their response was always the same: " That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to find out". And yet I knew that not one of them could have done my job. And that included the odious OFSTED inspectors, and so-called advisors. 2 2 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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