Has the UK lost the ability to do large engineering projects post WW2?

[quantinghome]

I have heard it put differently- Britains problem is, it won the second word war!

moderator note - split from here.

Yes - although the problem is largely psychological. The whole "Germany was bombed to smithereens which enabled them to start with a fresh slate" argument seems philosophically unsound to me.

Winning the war (or more accurately being the junior partner on the winning team) made us think we were still top dog. Our industrial and transport infrastructure was in dire need of modernisation, but it was at least functioning and that should have given us a head start. If industry and government had invested properly, we would have been at the forefront of the post-war economic boom. Unfortunately the British make-do approach to investment, combined with a hubristic view of our performance in the war, meant we were complacent and failed to modernise. Instead we poured resources into holding onto the empire in a vain attempt to maintain our status as a 'world power' and kept our factories chugging away - in many places virtually unchanged from the Victorian era.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Exactly- Marshall Plan money spent on electrifying the Midland Main Line for example to get us back on topic!

 

[quantinghome]

Though on a purely practical level, every bombed overbridge that needed to be rebuilt was an immediate opportunity to build in electrification clearances (applies to countries like the Netherlands as well). Are we also suffering (so far) from having chosen 25kV over (say) 15kV - which presumably requires lower clearances?

There was nothing to stop us replacing bridges. I guess it might have forced us out of our 'make do with what we've got' mentality.

We are suffering from constant loss of institutional knowledge and experience due to the stop-start funding of electrification projects. Engineering solutions to problematic clearance issues get forgotten about, or the technical research underpinning them gets lost and we have to learn the lessons over again.

 

[Flying Phil]

I feel that quantinghome is forgetting the reality of Britain's economy after the second WW. We were broke....no way could we afford to replace existing bridges with higher ones just in the hope that the line would be electrified with OHLE.
I do totally agree that the stop start nature of the electrification programme has/ is wasting a huge amount of money and resources both human and material.

 

[stuu]

I feel that quantinghome is forgetting the reality of Britain's economy after the second WW. We were broke....no way could we afford to replace existing bridges with higher ones just in the hope that the line would be electrified with OHLE.

The reality is the UK recieved $2.7bn in Marshall Aid and spent the vast majority on the military and trying to sustain the empire. We deliberately chose to be broke and not invest in the future of the country.. and for the mods, doing something else might have led to the MML being electrified earlier. Or not

 

[GRALISTAIR]

We are suffering from constant loss of institutional knowledge and experience due to the stop-start funding of electrification projects. Engineering solutions to problematic clearance issues get forgotten about, or the technical research underpinning them gets lost and we have to learn the lessons over again.

hear hear.

 

[Mikw]

This is probably the most interesting thread on the forum, i learn something new everytime i read it.

 

[quantinghome]

I feel that quantinghome is forgetting the reality of Britain's economy after the second WW. We were broke....no way could we afford to replace existing bridges with higher ones just in the hope that the line would be electrified with OHLE.
I do totally agree that the stop start nature of the electrification programme has/ is wasting a huge amount of money and resources both human and material.

More broke than Germany or Japan or France? You are right that we were in a very difficult financial situation, but we still had money to make investments, but we had to choose carefully what to invest in.

We were still spending big post-war, courtesy of American loans and a bit later Marshall Aid.

Military spending was around 10% of GDP, money thrown at a futile attempt to maintain the empire, rather than making a hard-headed decision to wind the thing down, based on incontrovertible evidence that its day had passed.

Britain also made substantial investments after the war - falling into three categories:

1. Prestige projects linked to Britain's self-perception as a major player on the world stage - the nuclear weapons programme, civilian airliners etc.
2. Investment in outdated technology - e.g. the new BR steam engine programme. The French went straight for electrification. Imagine getting the MML and other main lines wired up in the 1950s.
3. Major investment in housing and health. An understandable priority, but at the expense of industrial investment.

 

[adamedwards]

Off topic, but if you go to the Isle of Wight and the Needles, you will see the rocket testing site. The story I was told was the rockets were cancelled as the then minister could not see the need for satelittes, but could see the need for Concorde to enable him to fly fast to Australia. So the whole programme was shut down after 5 test launches from Australia. Concorde of course never actually got to fly there in regular service. Poor decision making by people who don't understand science and engineering.

 

[liam456]

Off topic, but if you go to the Isle of Wight and the Needles, you will see the rocket testing site. The story I was told was the rockets were cancelled as the then minister could not see the need for satelittes, but could see the need for Concorde to enable him to fly fast to Australia. So the whole programme was shut down after 5 test launches from Australia. Concorde of course never actually got to fly there in regular service. Poor decision making by people who don't understand science and engineering.

An excellent story available here: (fewer than 5 launches!)

https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/an-empire-of-stars-d6b24f92cbc7

Yet another example of the UK being rather like the opposite of Top Gear's description of itself; ambitious but rubbish. We've got all the right people but can't see things through sometimes.

More on topic: Will Sheffield get wired first from the Hope Valley line or the Midland Main line?

 

[Arkeeos]

The reality is the UK recieved $2.7bn in Marshall Aid and spent the vast majority on the military and trying to sustain the empire. We deliberately chose to be broke and not invest in the future of the country.. and for the mods, doing something else might have led to the MML being electrified earlier. Or not

The UK made lots of mistakes post war, how we spent the Marshall Aid money was not one of them. Given that war with the USSR was looking imminent. Hindsight is 2020.

 

[edwin_m]

The UK made lots of mistakes post war, how we spent the Marshall Aid money was not one of them. Given that war with the USSR was looking imminent. Hindsight is 2020.

Not sure that maintaining a load of colonial outposts would have helped much if WW3 had broken out in the 1940s.

 

[yorksrob]

Off topic, but if you go to the Isle of Wight and the Needles, you will see the rocket testing site. The story I was told was the rockets were cancelled as the then minister could not see the need for satelittes, but could see the need for Concorde to enable him to fly fast to Australia. So the whole programme was shut down after 5 test launches from Australia. Concorde of course never actually got to fly there in regular service. Poor decision making by people who don't understand science and engineering.

Concorde wasn't a bad idea - infact it worked very well.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

We were still spending big post-war, courtesy of American loans and a bit later Marshall Aid.

Military spending was around 10% of GDP, money thrown at a futile attempt to maintain the empire, rather than making a hard-headed decision to wind the thing down, based on incontrovertible evidence that its day had passed.

Was it all spent on the empire? Remember, in the late 1940s, we, along with the whole of Western Europe, were facing what looked like a plausible imminent threat of invasion by Stalin's USSR. Now that most of Eastern Europe is democratic and pro-Western, it's easy to forget just how close and how big the threat would've seemed, with the West/Communist border running through the middle of what is now Germany - an awful lot closer to home than today's democracy/autocracy border.

I don't know the details of UK military expenditure in the 1940s and 1950s, but I would imagine that threat would've been the main thing worrying military minds.

 

[Yew]

An excellent story available here: (fewer than 5 launches!)

https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/an-empire-of-stars-d6b24f92cbc7

Yet another example of the UK being rather like the opposite of Top Gear's description of itself; ambitious but rubbish. We've got all the right people but can't see things through sometimes.

More on topic: Will Sheffield get wired first from the Hope Valley line or the Midland Main line?

My understanding is that the US offered us space on some of their rockets at a cheaper price - which then actually turned out to be more expensive, whilst delivering none of the economic benefits in the UK from such a programme. For context, it's widely accepted that the US Apollo programme returned between 7 and 40 dollars into the economy for every dollar invested.

Overall, the last 80 years have seen far too many situations where penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions have been made.

 

[DarloRich]

Has the UK lost the ability to do large engineering projects post WW2?

No.

 

[WAO]

My view: We were on a hiding to nothing after WW2, with the USA (our economic and political enemy) calling the shots, requiring us to lose markets, pay vast debts and to concede premature independence to "democratic" post-colonial governments, causing mayhem in the third world. (eg Sri Lanka today)

Winners actually lose wars in that they have to pay off their loans (losers are bankrupt) and have also incurred greater debts in order to "win". Also the "winners" have to bale out the losers - I've read that 20% of our Marshall Aid went on feeding starving Germans whose debts were forgiven in 1953 and were merrily exempt from defence spending. They continued their protectionist policies as a predatory economy like Japan.

We did plenty of harm to ourselves of course. Railways were "Nationalised" but in reality were given a conflicting structure with a two headed structure of BTC and RE. Hence no decision possible for Diesel and Electric traction, as wished for by Sir E J Missenden after returning from the USA and Riddles ruled. Concorde was a failure before it was built, as warned by Prof Kucheman - only an all wing 400 seat supersonic jumbo being viable. Our space program was a technical success - our rocket control worked without crashes but we didn't have the will to sustain it. Nuclear power was a relative success in that we could force the USA to let us have the bomb again but we stupidly tried to invent about six parallel types of nuclear power station, each of which almost worked, instead of, like France, one, which actually did work.

I could go on (and often do) but I think our electrification has been a success with 2/3 of our services now being electric, mostly on the most modern 25kV system, not 1500Vdc, even if that's still only a minority of route mileage. The contracting failures have been down to DfT's damage to the industry in Major and Blair/Brown's time.

On the original topic, UK Engineering Companies (and Engineers) do run big contracts around the world and are highly respected for competence, integrity and creativity. A bigger home market would help them as it does their government supported competitors.

A jaundiced view.

WAO

 

[dosxuk]

More on topic: Will Sheffield get wired first from the Hope Valley line or the Midland Main line?

Woodhead

 

[NoRoute]

Concorde wasn't a bad idea - infact it worked very well.

How do you define "worked very well"? It was a technological masterpiece but it was an economic disaster, it sold in very small numbers and only then to the UK and French national airlines, it wasn't the export success that had been hoped for and it never recovered its costs, by all accounts the UK virtually gave away the planes to BA.

It was a major misjudgement of the way the market was heading, a low capacity, high cost, ultra-premium plane at a time when air travel was being opened up to people on middle to average incomes, where the future was high capacity, more fuel efficient planes.

The UK made a similar misjudgement with Nuclear, it was expected that reactors and parts would be a big export success but while much of the world was standardising around pressurised water reactors, the UK went with a uniquely British design of the Advanced Gas cooled Reactor (AGR), we never exported a single one.

Probably the most dangerous words for a British engineering project are when politicians talk up how it will be a great export success, world beating (!) it's like a commercial curse.

 

[birchesgreen]

I think you are being a bit unfair, it was a misjudgement quite a few made. Boeing were also working on an SST as were the Russians. In the late 60s supersonic airliners was the logical next step.

 

[yorksrob]

How do you define "worked very well"? It was a technological masterpiece but it was an economic disaster, it sold in very small numbers and only then to the UK and French national airlines, it wasn't the export success that had been hoped for and it never recovered its costs, by all accounts the UK virtually gave away the planes to BA.

It was a major misjudgement of the way the market was heading, a low capacity, high cost, ultra-premium plane at a time when air travel was being opened up to people on middle to average incomes, where the future was high capacity, more fuel efficient planes.

The UK made a similar misjudgement with Nuclear, it was expected that reactors and parts would be a big export success but while much of the world was standardising around pressurised water reactors, the UK went with a uniquely British design of the Advanced Gas cooled Reactor (AGR), we never exported a single one.

Probably the most dangerous words for a British engineering project are when politicians talk up how it will be a great export success, world beating (!) it's like a commercial curse.

You don't get many people holidaying on the moon, but it's generally accepted that the landings were a great achievement.

 

[najaB]

How do you define "worked very well"? It was a technological masterpiece but it was an economic disaster, it sold in very small numbers and only then to the UK and French national airlines, it wasn't the export success that had been hoped for and it never recovered its costs, by all accounts the UK virtually gave away the planes to BA.

It worked very well in that it did exactly what it was designed to do, and did it quite effectively. And it had every chance to be a big export success - they received orders for 100+ frames from several airlines globally - it was just bad timing that the fuel embargo hit when it did.

The B model would have eliminated the need for reheat on take-off, and was also slightly longer with a higher fuel capacity - this would have considerably increased the fuel efficiency to the point that the CASM would've been comparable to that of a sub-sonic narrow body and increased the range enough to allow trans-Pacific operations.

 

[Sm5]

Our problem is no different to many similar sized countries,..

we lack economy of scale, and are too afraid to upfront invest in it.
we also dont take risk and outsource manufacturing.

We make lots of concepts and prototypes, but when it comes to selling it, we sell the technology, not the product.

APT is a perfect example of this.
Today we could be in version 3/4 instead we are buying Japanese and when it comes to China its an open market for German technology.

Look at things like Deltic, or the class 58.. made with export in mind… how much effort was made ? And even if Deltic had landed 100 orders from the US, there would be no way to produce it in a short timescale and so it would have been a technology licence sale to a US manufacturer. (and the US would have never have understood a highly complex power unit either).

We will never compete against the US with a high spend market of 300mn people, who view the rest of the world as a bonus to its domestic market.

Then look at Finland, Nokia, Sweden, Ericsson.. took a risk that could have sunk the country…. Yet they were forefront of mobile tech globally, including the US for a decade…where was BT in this game ?

When the Ukraine war is over, UA will see more investment in the shortest timescale than any other European country has seen since ww2. Everything will be needed new from the ground up.

Those contracts of course goto the winners, with influence.

The Americans are spending big now, because in the long term US companies will have a huge 30-50 year stake in the outcome. US business will deliver overnight whatever Ukraine need. The USD will finance it in long term loans.

Next comes the EU, whilst they will invest light, they will buy cheaply using the carrot of EU membership. A lot of Ukrainian businesses will end up owned by EU companies, and its probably Polish and Romanian manufacturing will lose out to cheaper sources of production in Ukraine.

Turkey, they will get a say in this, the route out of the black sea is Istanbul. UA and Turkey collaborate well. Turkey offers tech that Ukraine can produce cheaply, and Ukraine can feed Turkey from farming.

Then there is us.. we dont have a US budget, we dont have EU influence, so whats in it aside of the moral victory for the bn’s sunk ? .. a few Tescos and some prestigious English schools ?

 

[yorksrob]

Then look at Finland, Nokia, Sweden, Ericsson.. took a risk that could have sunk the country…. Yet they were forefront of mobile tech globally, including the US for a decade…where was BT in this game ?

Of course, that would be "picking winners" which is against the prevailing ideology.

 

[Yew]

We make lots of concepts and prototypes, but when it comes to selling it, we sell the technology, not the product.

APT is a perfect example of this.
Today we could be in version 3/4 instead we are buying Japanese and when it comes to China its an open market for German technology.

Such projects are often hyper scrutinised by politicians, hoping to score political points for a "white elephant" at the slightest sign of any difficulty.

 

[Falcon1200]

I feel that quantinghome is forgetting the reality of Britain's economy after the second WW. We were broke....

Britain was not just broke but utterly exhausted too. It took a long time to recover from WW2, food rationing for example lasted well into the 1950s.

the then minister could not see the need for satelittes, but could see the need for Concorde to enable him to fly fast to Australia.

As Concorde was a joint project with the French, presumably they had a say in it too ?

Hindsight is 2020.

Absolutely !

 

[GS250]

The cancellation of TSR2 being a great example of a politically inspired failure. Didn't the USA wave some F1-11s in our face only for us to continue with Buccaneers and eventually collaborate to build the Tornado?

 

[najaB]

We will never compete against the US with a high spend market of 300mn people, who view the rest of the world as a bonus to its domestic market.

No, if only we were part of a high-spend single market of over 300M. Oh, wait.

 

[GS250]

No, if only we were part of a high-spend single market of over 300M. Oh, wait.

That was never an intention of the EU though was it? Probably better discussed on another thread of course!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Look at things like Deltic, or the class 58.. made with export in mind… how much effort was made ? And even if Deltic had landed 100 orders from the US, there would be no way to produce it in a short timescale and so it would have been a technology licence sale to a US manufacturer. (and the US would have never have understood a highly complex power unit either).

We will never compete against the US with a high spend market of 300mn people, who view the rest of the world as a bonus to its domestic market.

On the specific issue of rail and rail rolling stock, I don't see why we shouldn't be able to compete with the US on equal terms? After all our rail network and therefore our own domestic market must surely be as big as the domestic market in America (based on numbers of scheduled passenger services, maybe not on length of track). And in terms of rail investment.... Comparing progress on our own HS2 with California's planned high speed railway suggests we possibly have the edge in being able to deliver those kinds of projects )