PRACTICE & PERFORMANCE
The Famous Five
John Heaton FCILT marks our 125th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of five famous railway climbs – high tea and lashings of ginger beer optional.
World Record Officially the world’s longest-running railway series, established in 1901
A STEAM-hauled train approaches a station at the foot of a gradient – let us say Tebay, in Cumbria – with a Class 7 loco, going well. What is its load? Will it stop to accept the attentions of the waiting ‘banker’, or will it rise to the challenge of continuing unaided? If we were not lucky enough to have savoured such scenes live, the wealth of recorded footage on digital media now lets us experience them vicariously from our armchairs, instead of an often windswept lineside.
Surmounting railway gradients has been the staple diet of performance articles in The Railway Magazine throughout its history, so this topic was a natural choice for the 125th anniversary edition, meeting the remit to reflect the geographical and chronological scope of ‘our’ magazine. I have arbitrarily selected one major climb from each of the British Rail Regions, perhaps perversely deciding to ignore prime candidates such as the Lickey (covered recently) and Drumochter (of which more next month).
By necessity of space, this survey can form no more than a series of glimpses over the decades. Wherever possible, I have tried to avoid parroting familiar logs from past RMs, but it has been occasionally unavoidable as there are very few undiscovered pre-First World War unpublished private collections to be raided. Most of the runs used have been kindly made available from the Railway Performance Society (RPS) electronic archive.
Two of the chosen gradients are in Devon, which is perhaps counter-intuitive as one might expect a bias to the North. However, one of the most evocative phrases in the lexicon of railway jargon is ‘the Devon Banks’ – aseries of fierce ascents in the 32 miles between Newton Abbot and Plymouth, skirting the foothills of Dartmoor, and sometimes erroneously including Somerset’s westbound 1-in-80 to Whiteball tunnel.
Up from Plymouth
The eastbound challenges start with 2.83 miles to Hemerdon, of which 2.05 miles are at 1-in-42 on straight track – so no ‘compensating’ extra gradient from curves, but more exposed to gales than the Dainton climbs.
Over Hemerdon, there is a wide disparity between the very quickest runs and the top edge of ‘normal’. D Halton’s exceptional 37m18s 1957 Plymouth (then still known as North Road) to Newton Abbot run with Great Western ‘King’ No. 6010 King Charles I is a case in point (see TRM February 2007). Instead, I have used a more typical 52m43s affair by classmate No. 6012 King Edward VI in 1950, recorded in detail by that doyen of technical timers R INelson, much of whose collection is digitally housed with the RPS (see Table 1).
Hemerdon was taken at 17mph with just seven coaches, and it took 37m58 before the train passed Totnes – but this was a loss of only 1min on the working time, despite having suffered a 15mph temporary speed restriction. Another example shown is a faster run by Laira driver Hammett aboard No. 6009 King Charles II with a similar load, taking the summit at 20mph and only 32m22s to pass Totnes unchecked. In 2002, preserved No. 6024 King Edward I reached Hemerdon at a minimum speed of 28mph with a 340 ton gross load and ran to Exeter in just 58m06s (53.7mph); a remarkable feat for a (then) 72-year-old locomotive.