Anti-railway conspiracies

If you've ever suspected Dr Beeching wasn't playing fair read this.

Although partial to steam engines, it's internal combustion that I really like. It seems that much more accessible to me and oil based fuels still seem to pack the most bang-per-buck-by volume, which is critical for automotive transport.

But sometimes I come across stories where petrol and diesel powered machines were promoted for political reasons. One collection of these was The Great Railway Conspiracy, in which David Henshaw gathers evidence on deliberate policies to make railways unusable before citing lack of use as a reason for closing lines down.

But I recently came across a reference to another anti-steam engine conspiracy.

It was in A E Durrant's book on The Mallet Locomotive. It would appear that in the USA diesel engines were promoted by the oil companies, whose political might was sufficient to ensure that the operating companies remained fragmented and offer a united challenge to the premise that diesel was more modern and simply better.

Durrant describes this as a diesel confidence trick that spread to other countries. I could paraphrase his argument but in the following - albeit long - paragraph I think he puts his point across better than I can so I quote directly from The Mallet Locomotive.

 "In that brief decade of the fifties, American railroads went from being a predominantly steam-operated institution to almost full dieselisation, and numerous powerful and modern steam locomotives were laid aside and scrapped almost before they had been run in. With them, of course, went the big modern Mallets, and the whole story is a sad one of how the large, powerful oil companies and diesel manufacturers either persuaded the railroads to buy diesels, using dubious comparisons between the best results of new diesels and average results from over-age steam, or by virtual blackmail in threatening to divert traffic from railroads not investing in their diesels. Thus administrations which had rejected a three-cylinder, or poppet-valved steam as ‘too complicated’ found themselves saddled with highly complex diesel power, plus expensive equipment service and repair it. What is more, they did not last. By the time a good steam engine would have been decently run in the diesel needed a new engine, or even completely renewing, and the initial few cents saving on fuel became a constant drain on capital for costly new components, assemblies, or complete diesel locomotives. The result was as planned –  railroads made less profit on their main lines, and losses on the secondary services which they had close. Eventually, even the main lines may disappear and this is just what the oil and diesel interests want. The hundred-car freight hauled by a Mallet offers no profit to the diesel builder, nor to the oil purveyor. A three- or four-unit diesel to do the same work reverses the situation, but what the manufacturers really want to see is the train replaced by a hundred road leviathans – a hundred road diesels each of the 250 hp represent more profit very fact that the 8000 hp set diesel locomotives needed to perform the same transportation job. And, of course, for the oil supplier 25,000 horsepower’s worth of oil to cart the load is better than 8000 hp worth by diesel locomotive, and infinitely superior (to them) than 8000 hp steam locomotive burning coal or low-grade (and low profit!) residual oil. To speed the change-over, railroad mergers were opposed (as large, strong railroads might prove less tractable than smaller concerns frightened by cut-throat competition), and pressures maintained at Federal and State Government levels to subsidise the roads  and tax the railroads. One man in the USA, just too late, saw what was happening and wrote a learned paper on the subject. He was not allowed to read it in America, nor to the Institute of Locomotive Engineers in Britain although Britain's Institute of Mechanical Engineers did permit him to read this paper in 1958. Unfortunately, the lessons were not learnt and the same commercial pressures which killed the American Mallets were allowed to swarm across the Atlantic and decimate  Britain's railway system, together with its rolling stock and coal industries, thus reducing exports, increasing imports and throwing people out of work – all to enable more diesel lorries to wreck the roads and improve the atmosphere."

Durrant knew his subject and that final sentence seems particularly far-sighted when you realise he was writing in 1974. 

In mitigation, I think inner-city air pollution problems contributed to killing off the steam locomotive but maybe one fully loaded train really is cleaner to run than the equivalent in road diesel engines. There is the argument that one big source of pollution is easier to ameliorate than lots of little ones - especially if the little ones are mobile.

I'm sorry to think the noble Mallet locomotive was cut off in its prime and suspect similar conspiracies are in train as I write this today. Public transport diverts money away from the government whereas highly taxed road transport brings in the dosh. We haven't learnt anything it seems and my generation is making all the same mistakes as the previous ones without aren't being so nice about it. 

I doubt there's a future for the human race. 

So lets celebrate and vaporise (as Heaven 17 once sang on Let's all make a bomb) - the internal combustion engine is still a thing of beauty and wonder to me - and leave the world to a species more worthy.