Development of railcars in Britain
In October 1952 authority was given for the construction of the first lightweight, bogie diesel multiple units. All were two-car sets to be assembled at Derby Carriage and Wagon Works. Eight were destined for local workings between Bradford, Leeds and Harrogate, thirteen to follow for Cumberland timetables radiating from Carlisle. When introduced into traffic from June 1954 they were the first delivery of a British Railways order. Yet the superiority of railcars to provide many secondary level services was already obvious. Operating costs turned out at about 50% of comparable steam provision while diesel engines were four times more efficient. Importantly they also supplanted drawbacks of steam working like cleanliness, air pollution, rolling stock utilisation and quotas, speed of journeys and, especially in the 1950s, working conditions for rail staff. Recruitment and retention in the larger cities were challenging.
Early petrol and diesel railcars
Reliable diesel engines were manufactured from the 1920s, some early petrol-engined railcars from the turn of the century as alternatives to then developing suburban electrification. ‘Oil engines’ did not need continuous line electricity supply or infrastructure and could be applied to specific duties for just the outlay of the vehicle. The North Eastern Railway, for example, introduced two bogie autocars in 1903 for branch passenger work, three small four-wheel ‘bugs’ for track inspection and a pair of railbuses directly adapted from road vehicles in 1922/3.1 The general success of urban tramway electrification led to transfer of the technology to rail roles. Westinghouse supplied petrol-electrics from the Trafford Park plant, two of them bogie railcars to the Great Central/London & North Western in 1912/3.2
Sulzer produced the first European diesel-electric locomotive in 1912 and British companies, starved of orders after 1925, saw the opportunity to produce diesel railcars. Beardmore’s refitted four former Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway electric cars with a diesel engine and generator in 1927 which were trialled by the LMS to Blackpool.3 Attitudes then are revealed by conclusions from comparative tests with a steam-worked push-pull set. Compartment stock loaded crowds more rapidly, yet the ‘underpowered’ diesel-electric set proved much cheaper to run in a climate of reduced working class trip traffic to the Fylde coast. Three Armstrong Whitworth-built bogie railcars with Sulzer engines emerged in 1931-2 and were later purchased after trials by the London & North Eastern Railway.4 English Electric also produced, at the then owned former Dick, Kerr Preston tramcar factory, a comparable bogie car, the ‘Bluebird’. The stage of technical advance dictated heavy equipment, literally a mobile ‘power station’ to feed DC current to the motors. ‘Double conversion’, one contemporary term, produced electricity through a generator/ dynamo activated by the engine traction. Size forced above floor equipment, reducing available capacity. Depressed rail group traffic income meant manufacturer-funded prototypes were the only course.
Arguably the first ‘modern’ British railcar was built for the London Midland & Scottish Railway at Derby in 1938. Evident acknowledgement of design and technical advances during the
