How many steam locos were there?

[DPQ]

Hi peeps

At the height of Steam how many Steam Engines were there and why did they all have names?

 

[JonathanH]

why did they all have names?

They didn't all have names. The prime main line classes were named as a way of giving each engine some form of character. The lesser engines were not (and indeed today are not) named.

At the height of Steam how many Steam Engines were there

This thread may be helpful. It indicates that British Railways had 18,420 steam locomotives at 31 December 1954, but there will have been other locomotives in industrial use.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-1955-modernisation-plan.197351/#post-4353270

 

[Irascible]

This thread may be helpful. It indicates that British Railways had 18,420 steam locomotives at 31 December 1954, but there will have been other locomotives in industrial use.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-1955-modernisation-plan.197351/#post-4353270

I wonder when the heyday is - back in say, 1900, the locomotives themselves were generally smaller and probably less reliable, but I suspect there were more services in 1954. Were there fewer locomotive changes in 1954?

 

[ac6000cw]

Hi peeps

At the height of Steam how many Steam Engines were there and why did they all have names?

The 'height of Steam' in terms of maximum railway traffic and route mileage was around 1920 (before serious road competition and the economic Depression started to cut badly into traffic and revenue, which decline continued pretty steadily - with an upward blip during WW2 - until around 1995 when passenger traffic started to increase again). See pages 5 & 6 in this government document - The history of transport systems in the UK

At that time, a lot of rail traffic - particularly local freight and passenger trains - would have been hauled by thousands of relatively small tender and tank locos e.g. 0-6-0s, which toiled away all over the country in nameless obscurity. The named/large/well-known/celebrated front-rank passenger locos were comparatively small in number because most long-distance express passenger services were thin on the ground compared to today.

 

[JonathanH]

I wonder when the heyday is - back in say, 1900, the locomotives themselves were generally smaller and probably less reliable, but I suspect there were more services in 1954. Were there fewer locomotive changes in 1954?

Yes, the link I posted notes five postings on that there were around 5,500 more locomotives in 1922 than in 1954.

 

[Irascible]

Yes, the link I posted notes five postings on that there were around 5,500 more locomotives in 1922 than in 1954.

And by 1922 there were a lot more large designs than 1900. But even in the 50s I think London-Glasgow trains used to change engines at least once ( was it Crewe or Preston or somewhere else? ), I'm not sure that would have been the only time 50 years earlier.

 

[etr221]

Looking at the RCTS Locomotive Stock Book for 1948, it gives a total aquisition figure for the Big Four of 24217 (at grouping and subsequently); and acquired by British Railways at 1948-1-1 of 20106 - these both include small numbers of non-steam; and exclude non-mainline locomotives (London Transport and other)

Railway Handbook for 1915 gives a total for Railways having more than 100 miles of line of 23547 for the UK (including Ireland).

So no easily findable total: my guesstimate for overall maximum (whenever) would be about 25000 for railway companies, and perhaps 5000 industrials (i.e. owned by mines, works, other enterprises,...)

And for an all time total - even more a guesstimate - perhaps 75000 for UK (give or take c 25000), and globally perhaps 500000.

 

[Harvester]

And by 1922 there were a lot more large designs than 1900. But even in the 50s I think London-Glasgow trains used to change engines at least once ( was it Crewe or Preston or somewhere else? ), I'm not sure that would have been the only time 50 years earlier.

A few (Royal Scot and Caledonian) ran throughout without a loco change in the fifties, and some changed locos at Carlisle.

 

[ac6000cw]

Yes, the link I posted notes five postings on that there were around 5,500 more locomotives in 1922 than in 1954.

Given the fall in passenger and freight traffic between the early 1920s and 1954 (see below, from the document I linked to in post #4), I would have expected a corresponding cull of older steam locos used to haul some of it, which ties in with that - note passenger journeys more than halved during that period (the blue line).

 

[Bevan Price]

You could probably work out the totals up to 1923 if you can obtain Volume One of British Locomotive Catalogue 1825-1923 by Baxter & Baxter. This includes the totals of all locos known to have been owned by the "Main Line" constituents of "the Big 4". There is far too much detail for me to post everything here, but as one example, the LNWR had 5680 locos between 1846 and 1923. Of those, 48 came from the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which needed to be omitted from the grand total (to avoid counting them twice), but the L&MR had a total of 105 locos, so the 57 (105-48) that failed to last until the LNWR had to be added to the grand total.

Now consider that the LMSR, LNER, SR & GWR all were formed for several constituents, each of which took over one or more local railways, and it all becomes a rather complicated calculation.

 

[randyrippley]

Don't forget that any attempt to count total numbers ever built is going to be impossible due to the "is that loco new or a rebuild" confusion