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BR Swindon & Crewe 52 C-C


Locomotive History
Information and History
 

The "Western" affair - and some morals


From Modern Railways No 184 (January, 1964). Reproduced with the kind permission of Ian Allan Publishing Ltd

The trouble with the "Western" class transmissions, briefly discussed last month, did not prove as disruptive operationally as first impressions threatened. The whole class was not affected, but only those that had attained the mileage at which the roller bearing failures were occurring, or roughly 20 per cent of the total fleet. The fault in the bearings was detected when a transmission returned to the manufacturers for a routine strip and examination after 100,000 miles running was opened up; the discovery prompted investigation of other transmissions which had completed a similar mileage and similar conditions were found. It proved possible, however, to limit withdrawals to some six locomotives at a time. In an operation lasting only two days, each transmission with a defective bearing was returned to service with a replacement of the same type (four spare transmissions were available to allow a proportion of repair by replacement). By the year’s end bearings of a new type were expected to be available to modify by degrees the transmissions of the whole class. There are two comments to be made on this further B.R. diesel misfortune. The first is that its occurrence reiiects neither on hydraulic transmissions in general nor on the main components of the "Western" class transmission systems in particular; the root cause was collapse after a period of a conventionally designed bearing through uneven distribution of wear, a mishap of a kind which might happen in any new mechanical apparatus during its initial period of service. The second observation is that this setback is not another black mark against British-built diesel locomotives and their equipment - in fact, only a small proportion of criticism one hears levelled at the British product is fair when, as is so often the case, it ignores a crucial fact. No new motor car goes into mass production until a prototype has been exhaustively tested - and even then motor manufacturers concede that the early purchasers will unearth "bugs" in everyday use which require modification, so that it may be a further year before the design is perfected in all particulars. A new aircraft prototype undergoes still longer proving. The massive fleet of B.R. diesels, on the other hand (and in total contrast, notably, with the German Federal Railway stock), has been ordered straight off the drawing board. One can fairly, if one feels it to have been incorrect judgment, condemn this as asking for teething troubles and protracted programmes of detail modifications. But it is unfair to talk disparagingly of the 80-odd detail modifications that a new type is found to need after some six months of service as though they were inherently a reflection on British design and workmanship. Not even railwaymen, let alone laymen, always avoid this injustice. On the other side of the fence listening to some manufacturers, one feels that they have visualised their products as serving Utopian, not British Railways, which are staffed by average, fallible human beings coping with the most rapid traction change in world railway history and whose equipment generally is no more immune than any other railway’s to a wide range of operational stresses. Some manufacturers seem to design for, and optimistically expect, immaculate operation and maintenance from the first day a depot is dieselised with their products. This attitude instinctively blames B.R. when anything goes wrong. What is fair criticism, in our recent experience, is that there is still lacking between the British locomotive industry and British Railways the high degree of co-operation and productive liaison at all levels - such as exists, for example, in Western Germany - that is essential to achieve the optimum result from B.R. diesels and thereby to win the export trade in traction equipment that this country needs.