'The Toss of a Coin', Chapter 10 / 1
By David Maidment
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Chief Operating Manager, London Midland Region, Crewe
Jim O’Brien, London Midland General Manager, sent for me in the summer of 1982 and offered me the post of Chief Operating Manager of his Region. I was astonished, as I think were many others, but he had known me when he was Assistant General Manager of the Western Region and I was the Region’s Management Services Manager. We had maintained contact during my higher profile time at the BRB when I led the Board’s Productivity team during critical negotiations with the top Trade Union officials.
My High Wycombe neighbours were similarly impressed until they heard that I was to be based at Crewe amid what they imagined were the North’s dark satanic mills. I had to point out that outside the immediate confines of the town there were cows and grass and trees and that generally Cheshire was acceptable as an abode, even for those who had never ventured north of the Watford Gap M1 service station.
It was acknowledged that my ‘Rules & Regs’ knowledge might be a little rusty and even out of date, so I was sent secretly to spend a couple of days with a friendly opposite number on the Western, Fred Walmsley, who spent time bringing my knowledge of Track Circuit Block Signalling up to scratch. Thus equipped I ventured to appear at Rail House at Crewe and was promptly taken under the wing of Peggy, my new secretary, who had doubtless mothered my predecessors. Then began the process of acquainting myself with the Region’s geography and my 25,000 staff – at least as a railway enthusiast I was not ignorant of the former, although the railway geography of northern Manchester including the network of services radiating from Manchester Victoria was a bit of a mystery to me. I now had to curb my outings and pay close attention to the responsibility I had for train running on the West Coast and Midland Main Lines.
The Region’s management was dispersed – Operations in Crewe, Mechanical Engineering at Derby and General Management at Euston, so the GM’s Monday morning ‘Prayers’ were essential for regular communication between all of his team. After my first meeting I returned to Crewe on the 18.05 Euston – Preston and Blackpool and noted electric loco 86.259 'Peter Pan' at the head end. We got only as far as Wembley before we came to a halt and an ominous silence reigned. Eventually after a delay of 70 minutes another electric, 87.028, appeared from Willesden Depot only a mile away, coupled on ahead of the failed locomotive and we continued north. Leaving Rugby, we suddenly ground to a halt again and it transpired that 87.028 had now expired, and worse, had experienced brake problems that proved impossible to release. Eventually we were hauled back into Rugby by an 86/3, leaving the two disabled electrics on the Down Main just beyond the Birmingham line flyover and the new loco ran round and got us to Crewe just before midnight.
Enthusiastic in my new duties, I offered help to the guard and went through the front half of the train explaining what had happened and offering to take messages – it was before the days of mobile phones. By the time I alighted at Crewe I had 58 messages to pass on from the Crewe booking office phone – the front coach was full of French children going for exchange visits to families all over Cumbria and two gentlemen implored me to advise their wives of the reason for their delay, as they would not otherwise be believed!
The next Monday evening I caught the 18.05 again and 86.259 was once more the loco – and it failed en route yet again. Crewe Control realised that this loco was my bête noir and started warning me (and my wife) when that loco was in danger of appearing on a train I was due to take. When, a couple of years later, the Anglia Region demanded four electric locos for crew training to Norwich, Crewe Control with some irony, selected 86.259 and 86.416 'Wigan Pier' and I gather one of them pulled the wires down in Liverpool Street station the first time the loco set foot in it. I subsequently had a number of perfectly adequate runs behind 86.259, including cab rides as I made it my principle to ride with drivers as much as possible – they used to complain that they only saw management when they were ‘on the ‘carpet’. 'Peter Pan' has since metamorphosed into the preserved heritage locomotive, 'Les Ross', after the Birmingham DJ who now owns it, via some ridiculous interim name, and I had the pleasure recently of supplying Les with the details of its nefarious past.
The unreliability of my first two return journeys from the LM management conference caused me to consider the risks of missing the starts of key meetings held in London and I was informed of the availability of a flat on the top floor of Euston House, then the LMR headquarters – later to become the Board headquarters when 222, Marylebone Road was sold. Although this accommodation was primarily for the General Manager’s use, it was frequently used by myself and Doug Power, the Regional Mechanical Engineer, as we were both outbased at Crewe and Derby respectively. There were of course early morning trains from Crewe including the overnight sleepers from Scotland, but they were not as frequent or as fast as the current early morning Pendolino services now. Once the decision had been taken to sell 222 and move the BRB to Euston, the Regional team moved to Birmingham and I had no alternative but to take an early morning service.
My first cab ride in my new post was on a London – Liverpool train, non-stop to Crewe scheduled in an hour and three quarters and I was surprised to find one of the 1959 series electrics, 85.030, in command. We ran hell for leather and kept time, but I kept looking at the driver to see if he showed any signs of alarm, for I had never experienced such a rough ride before. I saw that the driver seemed unperturbed, so I jammed my knees under the second man’s desk and held on tight. The track south of Rugby was in poor condition with many wet spots and the loco seemed to bury itself in these, then bounce violently. The Civil Engineer eventually got budget funds to address the state of this stretch of track although the number of p-way speed restrictions while this was done was very damaging to punctuality in my first year in the post.
I was responsible for train and passenger safety on the Region and it was not long before I was tested with my first serious emergency. Despite the gap of over ten years since I’d last been ‘on call’ it appeared that my capacity to act as ‘Jonah’ was undiminished. A night sleeper had derailed in Linslade tunnel near Leighton Buzzard and on emerging from the tunnel in a derailed state at about 50 mph, its class 81 electric had hit the abutment of the overbridge just outside and killed the driver.
Although most of the train was derailed, we were fortunate that no passengers suffered serious injury and I took charge of the site and diversionary arrangements for the next day’s business. The LMR had a series of ‘contingency plans’ already timed and diagrammed that could be swiftly put into effect and I decided to implement CP1, covering a total line blockage south of Rugby, necessitating Birmingham services starting from Paddington, Scottish services from Kings Cross and other services diverted to St Pancras and back onto the West Coast Main Line at Nuneaton.
The reason for the derailment was obvious. A piece of new switch and crossing trackwork being transported to site had come loose from its wagon during transit of the tunnel on the Up Slow Line and had fallen, being picked up by the bogie of the 81. It was more difficult at the internal inquiry, which I took, to establish the root cause and culpability for the slack loading and inspection before the freight left the private sidings at Long Eaton between Derby and Nottingham – whether the load had ever been properly secured, or whether it had suffered a rough shunt loosening the ropes and straps before it was marshalled into the service from which the crossing work fell and whether the guard of the freight had been lax in not observing the risk before train departure. As so often, it was a case of conflicting evidence between the individuals involved each seeking to lay the blame elsewhere.
In my first summer we ran a couple of interesting tests for the InterCity business. The Passenger Manager wanted to accelerate trains to Scotland so we ran a high speed test with 87.005, 'City of London', the Royal Train engine at that time, and a ten coach train. We sought to climb Shap without falling below 100 mph, but there was a slight drizzle on the fells and try as we might we could not get it above 92 mph as every time we opened out further wheelslip began.
Another more successful trial was carried out with a motley collection of Mark 1 stock to test the ride when exceeding the speed limit on certain curves between Euston and Manchester via Stoke, as most restrictions were unnecessary for safety, but were for passenger comfort only. Volunteers agreed to ride in various vehicles at the critical points and report on their experience. One poor soul was consigned to the toilet – presumably someone kept up a suitable supply of liquid to him to make the test realistic! I had a more congenial task of drinking interminable cups of coffee in the buffet car. The only point at which we were severely discomforted by the ride was passing the Weedon ground frame, ten miles south of Rugby, at 100 instead of the normally allowed 80 mph. Other restrictions were raised although the Weedon slowing stayed until track renewal many years later.
I mentioned that after the first failure on the 18.05 Euston, our train was rescued by a class 86/3. These twenty AL6 locomotives were from the 1965 built group of electrics that had not had their springs modified although allowed 100 mph – a further nineteen, the 86/0s, were restricted to 80 mph and were used almost exclusively on freight. The rough riding of the 86/3s at speed was notorious among drivers and it became pretty obvious to me quite quickly that they were called upon for top link passenger work too often.
I struck a deal with Bert Jones, the Board Director of Operations’ Resources Manager, that we would offset other cost savings to invest in the modification of all the 86/0s and 86/3s and they became 86.401-439 and worked turn and turn about with the 86/2s until the advent of the class 90s when some were further modified for the Freightliner business and became 86/5s and 86/6s.
I often rode the 86/4s, which I considered ‘my’ engines and remember one particular journey from Crewe to Glasgow in the cab of 86.434 'University of London' (my college). All was normal as far as Preston where we changed crews and the London man gave way to a Polmadie driver. The latter was a cheery soul who chatted to me all the way to Glasgow. Unfortunately his Glaswegian accent was so thick that I hardly understood a word and kept nodding or grunting at appropriate places hoping that I was causing no offence. I kept my eyes skinned on the signals in case I was a distraction to him – I didn’t want to be the first Chief Operating Manager served a Disciplinary Form 1 for incurring a SPAD (Signal Passed at Danger).
In the early 1980s we were testing the three tilt Advanced Passenger Train (APT) sets – one based at Crewe for crew training and tests and one at Glasgow which, with the London set, initiated passenger trials. I travelled in the cab of the Crewe train with members of the ASLEF Trade Union and we had an excellent run – in fact comfort in the cab seemed superior to that in the train. At least we were not subject there to any of the signs of nausea that some early passengers complained of.
Cyril Bleasdale, the Director InterCity, asked us to run a non-stop high speed run to Glasgow to demonstrate what the unit could do and I was the Operator in charge of the run, saddled with the responsibility of ensuring no signal delays. All was going well until we approached Stafford when we came to a halt before a red signal protecting the line from Birmingham. I was about to be subjected to a barrage of banter from the engineers present when Ken Burrage, the Regional Signal Engineer discovered that the stop was caused by a track circuit failure and I was let off the hook.
Despite this, we raced north in a record time of 3 hours 52 minutes from London to Glasgow, a time still to be beaten by a Pendolino unit. Unfortunately the Glasgow unit, which seemed more prone to failure than the others, broke an axle at high speed during a Board high profile test run and shortly afterwards the tilt train system was abandoned in the UK until the Italians picked up where we had stopped.
I found myself in charge of a different sort of special in 1984 when the CEGB commissioned us to carry out a ‘test to destruction’ - a high speed collision involving a rail-mounted nuclear flask. There had been public and media concern about the safety of movement of nuclear materials by rail and so with engineers at Derby research, we set up a demonstration on their Old Dalby test track. The CEGB purchased two redundant class 46 2,500 hp diesel locomotives for the project and they were wired to accelerate three Mark I coaches to 100 mph at the point of impact with a derailed nuclear flask wagon, tilted so that its theoretically weakest point would take the main impact.
The train would be set off by a driver who would then dismount leaving the engine in full throttle. If the train had not reached 60 mph by a specified point, the trial could be aborted through application of some sort of track based trip mechanism. After initial tests, a public demonstration was arranged and grandstand seats were set up in an adjoining field to the impact point for the CEGB and BR officials, media and the CEGB’s critics. 46009 duly collided with the nuclear flask at 98 mph, was itself destroyed (although the Mark I coaches were remarkably undamaged externally) and the flask itself was completely intact.
Even despite this, critics were unsatisfied. Some people will only see what they want to see. As far as BR was concerned, it was a highly successful and profitable event. I understand the CEGB paid a substantial sum for the test and I calculated our costs, suggesting that this was much more profitable than many of our activities then under financial scrutiny. I mooted that expansion of this was a more profitable line of business for BR!
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