Many of the new diesel locomotives that British Railways ordered to replace steam were either useful for tasks that were no longer needed or simply useless, yet the solution to the need for a flexible, adaptable, light freight locomotive already existed.

While such white elephants as Class 17 (1962-65) and Class 14 (1964-65) were devised, ordered, constructed and found wanting, the first batch of 128 English Electric Type 1 locomotives, later designated Class 20, had been built between 1957 and 1962.

They conformed to the misguided thinking of the time, ironically – a design based on the American switcher, rated at 1,000hp with a maximum speed of 75mph, lacking a train-heating boiler and so unsuitable for passenger trains except in hot weather.

The cab filled one end, and much of the locomotive frame was given to a long bonnet which concealed the single English Electric power unit, its weight providing adhesion for hauling heavy loads.

By the mid-1960s British Rail were lumbered with various patterns of unsuitable locomotives as the need for light freight locomotives declined, and the Class 20 proved adaptable to a range of purposes.

Crucially, they were capable of operating as multiple units – two or three locos driven from one cab – so they could handle heavier loads without increasing crew costs.

Marshalling them in pairs nose to nose provided the driver with maximum visibility of the road ahead in either direction.

Some even appeared on passenger trains, in tandem with other classes fitted with heating boilers.

Indeed, in 1966 BR ordered another hundred Class 20s to replace the ragbag designs that had to be junked quickly.

They lasted well, and turned up in unexpected places, such as the construction phases of the Channel Tunnel and High Speed One.  Of the original 228, 39 are still in existence.

They have proved popular with the leasing companies that supplement current operators’ traction needs, such as Direct Rail Services and Harry Needle Railroad Company (HNRC).

And they are usefully employed on heritage railways. Known to enthusiasts as “Choppers” because their exhaust resembles a helicopter, their noise is instantly recognisable, redolent of a particular period of British railway history, shortly after the demise of steam.

Apart from the profligate construction of untried and untested designs, the other problem with British Railways’ hastily ordered diesel fleet in the 1950s was the failure to visualise the changes that were about to overtake the transport industry.

When the order went out to replace steam locomotives with diesel, the British Railways Board ordered one-for-one replacements.

There seems to have been little appreciation that the growth of road transport and the government’s huge post-war investment in motorways would inevitably rebalance the opportunities for railways to make money into and beyond the 1960s.

So there was no long-term need to replace hundreds of small steam shunting engines with a diesel equivalent, and many of these new locomotives lay idle in store or were scrapped without being much used, whether or not their designs had proved fit for purpose.

British Railways Class 14, built at the BR works at Swindon (1964-65), was an attempt to construct a light shunter with better visibility than the steam locomotives it was intended to replace.

Twenty-six were ordered initially in 1963, followed by a further thirty before the first actual locomotive was completed.

Like the ubiquitous and highly successful 08 family of shunters, Class 14 had steam-locomotive driving wheels and connecting rods to provide adhesion and stability, but they were underpowered for some of the tasks that were available to them.

They were withdrawn from service from 1970 onwards, not because of design deficiencies but because the work for which they were intended – shunting single-wagon loads, pick-up goods trains and short-distance freight – disappeared in a very short time.

Unlike the lamentable Claytons, the Class 14 found a ready market among industrial users, particularly collieries, where many of them worked for twice or three times the length of time they were in the BR fleet.

Latterly, they have proved popular on heritage railways, where they are adept at hauling light passenger trains at relatively low speeds. Of the 56 locomotives built, nineteen still exist in preservation and another five have been exported.

Once when I was a teenager, out for a bike ride with my mates, I stopped to take a picture of the formerly triangular Ambergate Station, where the former Midland Railway main lines from Derby to Manchester and Sheffield bifurcated.

Decades later, I showed this image to an evening-class group in Matlock and, while the nice old ladies listened patiently, the rail enthusiasts in the audience began to make ecstatic noises.

It turned out that the locomotive in the picture was a considerable rarity.

Even I could see it was non-standard, painted in red ochre, with a centre cab and long bonnets concealing the engines.

This was an example of British Railways Class 17, known colloquially as “Claytons” after their manufacturer, one of a number of pilot designs commissioned after the decision was taken to replace steam traction with diesel under the 1955 Modernisation Plan.

The Claytons were a notorious result of indecisive and confused planning, undue haste to deliver untested innovatory designs, and the sheer stupidity of ordering off-plan without waiting for a prototype to be completed.

Built by Clayton Engineering Company and Beyer, Peacock & Company between 1962 and 1965, the design was an attempt to devise a single-cab locomotive with adequate visibility for the driver.  It failed.

Earlier prototypes had followed the pattern of the American “switcher” shunter, with a cab at one end behind a single large power unit.  Like the steam locomotives they replaced, which traditionally placed the cab behind the boiler and firebox, they gave the crew a limited view of the road ahead.

Providing adequate sight-lines from the Claytons’ single central cab necessitated twin power units, low enough for the driver to see past them, and these were inadequate and unreliable.  Indeed, the sightlines were still unsatisfactory because the length of the bonnets masked the track immediately ahead of the front buffers.

Some of the later deliveries of Class 17 were immediately withdrawn from the active list and stored.

After the last of 117 Class 17 locos had been delivered in 1965, the first withdrawals took place in 1968, and by 1971 they were all scrapped except one, D8568, which was sold for industrial use and is now based at the Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway, Oxfordshire, where it operates from time to time.

Almost nine years ago I wrote about Wingfield Station, Derbyshire, prompted by its inclusion in the Victorian Society’s Top Ten Endangered Buildings list for 2012.

This elegant ashlar-faced building is the only surviving example of Francis Thompson’s twenty-four stations commissioned by Robert Stephenson for the North Midland Railway.  It opened in 1840 and closed to passengers in 1965.

The historic building list description describes it as “…a subtly proportioned building with a delicacy of detailing that was greatly admired by contemporary commentators who appreciated its refined architectural qualities”.

Its design was good enough to appear, transformed into a suburban villa, in a supplement to John Claudius Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture (1842), and the pioneer historian of railway buildings, Christian Barman, in 1950 described it as “the most perfect of all station houses”.

By 2012, all the Victorian Society could do was fulminate about the neglectful owner and the lack of activity by the local council.

However, there was new energy at local level, when the lively South Wingfield Local History Group, founded in 2007, pressed English Heritage to upgrade the station building from Grade II to Grade II*, and their campaign succeeded in April 2015, prompting Amber Valley Borough Council to seek a compulsory purchase order and take the building over, in partnership with the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust.

The Trust has a long and honourable history, dating back to 1974, of rescuing Derbyshire buildings in distress and returning them to economic use.  One of the first of its projects was Francis Thompson’s Railway Village in Derby.

On December 11th 2019 Wingfield Station was formally handed over to the Trust, which has secured £137,000 of development funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a £263,000 grant for urgent repairs from Historic England.

Detailed examination of the building has revealed that it was never modernised, so it’s possible to restore it almost exactly to its 1840 appearance, complete with original paint schemes and recovered wallpaper from the ladies’ waiting room.

The intention is to adapt it to office use, with guaranteed occasional public access for its historic interest.

Presumably office workers can live with trains thundering past all day.  Trying to sleep there would be a different matter.

(If you want to sleep in a functioning Derbyshire railway station, go to Cromford. There are no overnight trains on the Matlock line.)

Recently I came across a random copy of the Railway Magazine for November 1975, which featured the Grand Steam Cavalcade that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the first public railway in the world to use steam locomotives.

As we contemplate the bicentenary of the S&DR, due in 2025, it’s worth remembering the context of the 1975 event.  Previous celebrations in 1875 and 1925 were attended with pomp and pride by a railway industry that still dominated British transport.  In the 2020s “heritage” railways are an essential part of the tourist industry.

Yet in 1975 British Rail looked towards an uncertain future, less than a decade after the Beeching cuts and the demise of steam.  Steam traction had been banned on BR lines from 1968 to 1972 except for Flying Scotsman, which had the benefit of a contractual anomaly.

Nevertheless the British Rail Engineering Ltd wagon works at Shildon, located on the original line of the S&DR, put on a magnificent show which featured – in motion and where possible in steam – a chronological procession of railway locomotives led by a modern reproduction of George Stephenson’s Locomotion and ending with the last BR locomotive to be built, 92220 Evening Star, and the power-car of the prototype High Speed Train.

The Railway Magazine editor, J N Slater, wrote up the experience with the acumen of an aficionado.  The enthusiast press-corps, “Your Editor and Assistant Editor (and the Assistant Editor of the Railway Gazette International)”, travelled by rail from King’s Cross on a sleeping-car excursion that included a second-class sleeping berth, full breakfast in the restaurant at Newcastle Central, travel out to Shildon and back and the return journey to King’s Cross for £9.00.  Equivalent walk-on fares for this journey would have amounted to £16.11. 

Between 250,000 and 300,000 spectators are estimated to have witnessed the Cavalcade on Sunday August 31st, and many more had previously visited the Rail 150 exhibition in the wagon works.

Of the thirty-five locomotives in the procession, two had previously appeared in the 1925 event – Great Northern Railway no 1 (hauled by LNER no 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley) and no 990 Henry Oakley – and one, North Eastern Railway no 910 (hauled by LNER no 4472 Flying Scotsman), had appeared in the 1875 and 1925 processions.

Without doubt the 2025 bicentenary will be an exciting show for tourists and enthusiasts alike, but 1975 will be a hard act to follow.

And it will most likely produce some entertaining hissy-fits in the preparation: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/15/rival-railway-museums-in-row-over-steam-train-ownership.

The writer L T C Rolt tells a story about the moment when steam traction was first applied to a public railway.

George Stephenson had worked hard to persuade the directors of the Stockton & Darlington Railway to lay out most of their new line to be worked by steam locomotives, and in September 1824 had ordered two engines, No 1 Locomotion (initially named Active) and No 2 Hope, to be ready for the opening.  (Another two, No 3 Black Diamond and No 4 Dilgence followed later.)

Locomotion was delivered necessarily by road, and its arrival is recorded in the memoir of one of the navvies who built the line, Robert Metcalf, written in unpunctuated broad Northumbrian.

Once the engine was set on the track, the workmen needed a light to start the fire that would generate steam and enable it to move.  Candles and lanterns were sent for, but in the meantime Robert Metcalf lit up his pipe, using his pipe glass to focus the sun’s rays on the tobacco.

Contemplating a batch of oakum packing for the locomotive feed-pump, Metcalf realised he could save time by using his pipe glass to start the fire in the firebox:  “it blaze away well the fire going rapidly lantern and candle was to no use so No 1 fire was put to her on line by the pour of the sun”.

Rolt comments, “There is surely some symbolic significance in this little piece of humble and quite spontaneous ritual by which the sun’s heat kindled fire in the belly of the first locomotive in the world to move on a public line of railway.”

No 1 duly hauled the first train of coal and passengers from Shildon to Stockton on September 27th 1825.

In 1828 the boiler exploded, killing the driver, at Aycliffe Lane station, after the fireman had fastened down the safety valve.

Locomotion worked on the railway until 1841, and then, after fifteen years’ use as a stationary engine, it was restored and displayed, usually at Stockton except when it was loaned out to exhibitions elsewhere.

It last steamed in 1881, and from 1892 until 1975 (except in the years of the Second World War) it was displayed with another early S&DR loco, Derwent (1845) at the main-line station at Darlington Bank Top.

For the 150th Anniversary celebrations of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1975 a working reproduction was constructed, which has recently been the subject of a “tug of love”: Darlington to have replica Locomotion No 1 on display | The Northern Echo.

The Stockton & Darlington Railway, famous across the world as the first public railway to use steam locomotives, extended beyond Stockton and Darlington, so people who don’t know the area need to look at a map to understand its full significance.

Authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1821 and opened on September 27th 1825, the original line ran from Witton Park Colliery, inland near Bishop Auckland, to the company’s headquarters and works at Shildon, then to Darlington and onwards to a quay on the River Tees at Stockton: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway#/media/File:Stockton_&_Darlington_Railway_with_today’s_lines.svg].

The objective was to enable South Durham coal-owners to compete more effectively with their Tyneside rivals’ superior access to the sea.

Its initial construction was a partnership between Durham entrepreneurs, particularly the Quaker Pease family led by Edward Pease (1767-1858), and the practical engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848).

The features that gave the S&DR worldwide significance were not apparent in the 1821 Act. 

When Stephenson took over as surveyor he modified his predecessor’s route, reducing it from twenty-eight to twenty-seven miles and eliminating an expensive tunnel, while ensuring that the entire route east of Shildon was suitable for locomotives.  He advocated the use of malleable as well as cast iron rails.  He designed an iron-truss bridge over the River Gaunless, now on display at the National Railway Museum in York.  He and his partners at Robert Stephenson & Co manufactured four locomotives and two stationary engines to power trains alongside horse traction.

Oddly, the track gauge of the S&DR was originally 4 feet 8 inches, not the later standard gauge of 4ft 8½in.

Shildon was the westernmost limit of locomotive working and so was the obvious location for the company’s works.  The first superintendent, Timothy Hackworth (1786-1850), had gained mechanical experience working with his father John at the Wylam colliery where locomotives were in use from 1812, and the new railway works quickly attracted a population to what became New Shildon.  In later years, locomotive production was transferred to Darlington and Shildon became the largest wagon building and repair works in the world until it closed in 1984.

Beyond Shildon the original S&DR line was operated by horses and stationary steam engines.  Two inclines, Etherley and Brusselton, conveyed wagons over the ridges that separated Witton Park and other collieries from the valley of the Tees.

The two inclines were replaced in 1842 by a diversionary route through Shildon Tunnel, yet their archaeology is still apparent, and this well-produced video explains how they worked:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht-t-J2qUQ0.

The site of the wagon works is now a splendid modern transport museum, Locomotion [https://www.locomotion.org.uk], which houses exhibits from the National Railway Museum collection and links significant surviving buildings, including Hackworth’s Cottage, the coal drops, the goods shed and the Soho workshop.

It makes a resonant contrast with the Head of Steam museum [https://www.head-of-steam.co.uk], housed in the historic, rail-accessible Darlington North Road railway station.