Shortest-lived rolling stock

[norbitonflyer]

That was pretty standard for 50s and 60s diesel classes, of the 40 or so classes built in that period, probably 75-85% of classes had seen the first (non-accident related) withdrawal of a loco prior to it's 20th birthday.

I've already covered sub-10 year lifespans. Slightly different, as we're talking about first withdrawal rather than extinction, but those which were still intact after 20 years
The various pre-war LMS shunter classes (12xxx) existed for more than 20 years, the last variant (later Class 11) being introduced in 1945 and the first withdrawals being in 1967. However, as they were still being built in 1952, many of them had much shorter lives)

Shunters do tend to be long lived, but main line classes which were still intact twenty years after introduction are harder to find. Even Class 20, introduced in 1957 and still going today, had lost six members by the beginning of 1977. Class 31, also introduced in 1957, came close with only 31150 and eight of the non-standard pilot-scheme subclass gone by the beginning of 1977. The Deltics also came close, introduced in 1961, the class was still intact at the beginning of 1980, but three of them had been withdrawn by the end of that year.

Class 37 - Introduced 1960. With the exception of D6983 which was written off in an accident in 1966, the class remained intact until 1987
Class 43 (HST) Introduced 1976. The first withdrawal (43173) was in 1998, although that particular vehicle was only 17 years old)
Class 45 - Introduced 1960 - all except 45067 (withdrawn 1977) still in service in 1980
Class 47 - Introduced 1963 - Three examples - D1671, D1734 and D1908 scrapped in the 1960s but otherwise intact well into the 1980s
Class 50 - Introduced 1967 - first withdrawals (50006, 50011, 50014) in 1987
Class 70 - (SR Booster electric locos) Built between 1941 and 1948, withdrawn in 1968
Class 73 Introduced 1962 - E6027, 73115 and 73111 were scrapped after accidents in 1972, 1982 and 1991 respectively, but withdrawals only really started in 1998.
Class 76 - Leaving aside the 1941 prototype, the class was introduced in 1950. The first withdrawls (including the prototype) were in 1970, when the only iine on which they could operate lost its passenger services.
Class 81 - Introduced 1959. Two scrapped in 1968 following accidents, otherwise intact until 1984
Class 82 - Introduced 1961, one scrapped in 1971, otherwise intact until 1983
Class 85 - Introduced 1961, first withdrawal 1983
Class 86 - Introduced 1965, first withdrawals 1986
Class 87 - Introduced 1973, first withdrawals 2003



Post 1985, locos seem to be longer lived - I don't think there have been wholesale withdrawals of any of classes 57,59,60, 66 or 67, all of which have been around for over twenty years now. (35 for the Class 59s), and classes 90 and 91, both introduced in 1988, were still intact after thirty years. all

An exceptional case is the Class EB1 electric locos built for the North Eastern Railway in 1915. These were not withdrawn until 1950, although they did not operate in normal service after the line they were built for was de-electrified in the 1930s.

 

[gg1]

An exceptional case is the Class EB1 electric locos built for the North Eastern Railway in 1915. These were not withdrawn until 1950, although they did not operate in normal service after the line they were built for was de-electrified in the 1930s.

The NER electric locos are an interesting case, the LNER really weren't keen on scrapping them at all despite having no real use for them. The sole EE1 was built in the final months of the NER and also survived into BR days having never been used for more than a few test runs, the EF1/EB1s did at least see 15-20 years of revenue earning service.

 

[delt1c]

What a out the Leanders

 

[Grumpy Git]

What a out the Leanders

I presume you mean the Oliver Bulleid Leader class?

 

[Taunton]

The 1957 Euston-Watford Class 501 units suffered a substantial reduction in their services through the 1960s, and there were quite a number stored which didn't work again 10 years later, and they were progressively further run down. A notably smaller number lasted into the mid-1980s.

 

[gg1]

I presume you mean the Oliver Bulleid Leader class?

Might have been referring to these :

 

[alangla]

What about the original railbuses, very short lives. Then there were the Cravens units with Hydraulic transmission.

I was thinking about Modernisation Plan DMUs earlier on. Seems some of the Rolls Royce ones in particular didn't appear to last very long. I've not looked through all of them, but from a quick pass through Wikipedia:
Class 109 - 5 of each type of car, exported early on. Wiki reckons in use 1957-1971, but how much of that is departmental isn't clear. These were BUT rather than RR engines
Class 112 & 113 - 25 of each type of car, so 100 in total, built 1959, all scrapped by 1969 apart from one at Shotton steelworks apparently
Class 125 - 20 of each, 60 in total, 1959 - 1977, each line they operated on was then electrified. The ECML Royston electrification seems to have been the one that finished them off.
Class 129 - 3 of, Cravens/BUT parcel units, 1958-73, but apparently built in 1955.

 

[delt1c]

What about the Bullied Leaders, only one completed and steamed

I presume you mean the Oliver Bulleid Leader class?

dam spell check , hic

 

[nw1]

Could be a winner. The 484 will probably last though.



An interesting one. Certainly potentially a winner in terms of units - I make it 12 years. Though of course if one considers them as a common fleet with the 458s then it's more debateable.

So from a units point of view it seems we have 332, 365 and 460 being under 25 years. I think the 312 fleet managed just over 25 years. Any other units fleets where most or all of the fleet hasn't made 25 years?

Interesting about the 312s, they 'seem' much older than they actually are. probably because of the slam-doors. Yet they are approximately the same age as the 313s which are still around and seem much newer.

Before I looked up the age of the 312s I'd have estimated them at around 1970, yet they were 1975-78. So the newest 312s are only a few years older than the oldest 455s, incredibly.

Did travel on a 312 once, in April 2001 on a fast from Liverpool St - Colchester, which was an interesting ride; it was pretty fast but you could feel the junctions as it passed over them. Was an unusual service, I think most fasts at that time were 321s or IC stock but this was a shoulder-peak extra. I think it was the 1612 to Colchester Town, IIRC. This remains my only journey on the GEML.

If 312s had survived their full life expectancy, we'd still be seeing them up to around 2013.
I guess slam-doors were seen as a no-no. The early end to the 365s is rather hard to understand, though. Hard to understand why money has been spent (wasted?) on new EMUs recently when the 365s really aren't that old.

 

[gg1]

If 312s had survived their full life expectancy, we'd still be seeing them up to around 2013.
I guess slam-doors were seen as a no-no. The early end to the 365s is rather hard to understand, though. Hard to understand why money has been spent (wasted?) on new EMUs recently when the 365s really aren't that old.

Although by 2014, 10 years after the final class 312 withdrawal, there were still large numbers of slam door Mk3 coaches in service.

Maybe it wasn't felt economically viable to fit central door locking to units with only 10 or so years of life left

 

[AM9]

Interesting about the 312s, they 'seem' much older than they actually are. probably because of the slam-doors. Yet they are approximately the same age as the 313s which are still around and seem much newer.

Before I looked up the age of the 312s I'd have estimated them at around 1970, yet they were 1975-78. So the newest 312s are only a few years older than the oldest 455s, incredibly.

Did travel on a 312 once, in April 2001 on a fast from Liverpool St - Colchester, which was an interesting ride; it was pretty fast but you could feel the junctions as it passed over them. Was an unusual service, I think most fasts at that time were 321s or IC stock but this was a shoulder-peak extra. I think it was the 1612 to Colchester Town, IIRC. This remains my only journey on the GEML.

If 312s had survived their full life expectancy, we'd still be seeing them up to around 2013.
I guess slam-doors were seen as a no-no. The early end to the 365s is rather hard to understand, though. Hard to understand why money has been spent (wasted?) on new EMUs recently when the 365s really aren't that old.

The 312s were based on the 310s introduced in 1965 which were visually very similar. So the MKII EMU design was fully up and running around 1970. BR SR was putting new slam door trains into service well into the '70s (4CIG 1972, 4VEP 1974).

 

[prod_pep]

Interesting about the 312s, they 'seem' much older than they actually are. probably because of the slam-doors. Yet they are approximately the same age as the 313s which are still around and seem much newer.

Before I looked up the age of the 312s I'd have estimated them at around 1970, yet they were 1975-78. So the newest 312s are only a few years older than the oldest 455s, incredibly.

Remarkably, a batch of 312s were actually built after the 313s in 1977-78, bridging the gap in construction at BREL York between the 313s and the 507s. I found this difficult to comprehend at first as the 313s feel enormously more modern than the 312s.

 

[gg1]

Another oddity with 312s is they retained functional headcode boxes (with working blinds, not just blanked off with marker lights), despite entering production a few years after the HST and class 87 which both omitted them.

 

[reddragon]

Although by 2014, 10 years after the final class 312 withdrawal, there were still large numbers of slam door Mk3 coaches in service.

Maybe it wasn't felt economically viable to fit central door locking to units with only 10 or so years of life left

The issue was 3 fold.

1 - the ends of a mk3 coach was designed as a crumple zone whereas suburban coaches 312s fell apart.
2 - The mk3 is a monocoque body whereas the 312 was a body on chassis like a mk1
3 - 4 doors on a mk3 loads on a 310/312.

 

[Wolfie]

I've already covered sub-10 year lifespans. Slightly different, as we're talking about first withdrawal rather than extinction, but those which were still intact after 20 years
The various pre-war LMS shunter classes (12xxx) existed for more than 20 years, the last variant (later Class 11) being introduced in 1945 and the first withdrawals being in 1967. However, as they were still being built in 1952, many of them had much shorter lives)

Shunters do tend to be long lived, but main line classes which were still intact twenty years after introduction are harder to find. Even Class 20, introduced in 1957 and still going today, had lost six members by the beginning of 1977. Class 31, also introduced in 1957, came close with only 31150 and eight of the non-standard pilot-scheme subclass gone by the beginning of 1977. The Deltics also came close, introduced in 1961, the class was still intact at the beginning of 1980, but three of them had been withdrawn by the end of that year.

Class 37 - Introduced 1960. With the exception of D6983 which was written off in an accident in 1966, the class remained intact until 1987
Class 43 (HST) Introduced 1976. The first withdrawal (43173) was in 1998, although that particular vehicle was only 17 years old)
Class 45 - Introduced 1960 - all except 45067 (withdrawn 1977) still in service in 1980
Class 47 - Introduced 1963 - Three examples - D1671, D1734 and D1908 scrapped in the 1960s but otherwise intact well into the 1980s
Class 50 - Introduced 1967 - first withdrawals (50006, 50011, 50014) in 1987
Class 70 - (SR Booster electric locos) Built between 1941 and 1948, withdrawn in 1968
Class 73 Introduced 1962 - E6027, 73115 and 73111 were scrapped after accidents in 1972, 1982 and 1991 respectively, but withdrawals only really started in 1998.
Class 76 - Leaving aside the 1941 prototype, the class was introduced in 1950. The first withdrawls (including the prototype) were in 1970, when the only iine on which they could operate lost its passenger services.
Class 81 - Introduced 1959. Two scrapped in 1968 following accidents, otherwise intact until 1984
Class 82 - Introduced 1961, one scrapped in 1971, otherwise intact until 1983
Class 85 - Introduced 1961, first withdrawal 1983
Class 86 - Introduced 1965, first withdrawals 1986
Class 87 - Introduced 1973, first withdrawals 2003



Post 1985, locos seem to be longer lived - I don't think there have been wholesale withdrawals of any of classes 57,59,60, 66 or 67, all of which have been around for over twenty years now. (35 for the Class 59s), and classes 90 and 91, both introduced in 1988, were still intact after thirty years. all

An exceptional case is the Class EB1 electric locos built for the North Eastern Railway in 1915. These were not withdrawn until 1950, although they did not operate in normal service after the line they were built for was de-electrified in the 1930s.

Re your penultimate para: class 58?

 

[Mat17]

I was thinking about class 58 as well. Odd looking things, but I kinda liked them.

 

[pne508]

No one has mentioned the DLR P89s yet. In service 1989 to 95.

 

[mlambeuk]

District line D78 stock (ok i know some have been converteted). Jubilee 83 stock had short lives on the tube.

 

[reddragon]

District line D78 stock (ok i know some have been converteted). Jubilee 83 stock had short lives on the tube.

1986 stock wins on LUL

 

[norbitonflyer]

Re your penultimate para: "Post 1985, locos seem to be longer lived " class 58?

I chose 1985 with the 58s in mind, as they were introduced in 1983 and some did not survive long enough to see the century out.

 

[mlambeuk]

T68a trams on the Metrolink

 

[norbitonflyer]

Interesting about the 312s, they 'seem' much older than they actually are. probably because of the slam-doors. Yet they are approximately the same age as the 313s which are still around and seem much newer.

In the mid 1970s British Rail was still only using sliding doors where there were underground stations, hence the "Blue Trains" in Glasgow (303, 311) and the 313s for the Moorgate line. Indeed, with the exception of the 315s, which replaced sliding door units designed before nationalisation, all the PEP-type units were used on underground lines (314 in Glasgow, 507 and 508 on Merseyside) . It was only with the intention to go to DOO on the "BedPan" electrification that power-operated doors eventually appeared on a fleet not intended to work underground (and not even then, if you include their use on the Widened Lines")

 

[D365]

Wouldn't class 92 get a look in here (even though many/most have been exported and are still in service?)

No; members of the class remain in service.

 

[Whistler40145]

How about Class 210 DEMUs?

 

[delt1c]

How about Class 210 DEMUs?

A prototype of which there have been many

 

[norbitonflyer]

I was thinking about Modernisation Plan DMUs earlier on. Seems some of the Rolls Royce ones in particular didn't appear to last very long. I've not looked through all of them, but from a quick pass through Wikipedia:
Class 109 - 5 of each type of car, exported early on. Wiki reckons in use 1957-1971, but how much of that is departmental isn't clear. These were BUT rather than RR engines
Class 112 & 113 - 25 of each type of car, so 100 in total, built 1959, all scrapped by 1969 apart from one at Shotton steelworks apparently
Class 125 - 20 of each, 60 in total, 1959 - 1977, each line they operated on was then electrified. The ECML Royston electrification seems to have been the one that finished them off.
Class 129 - 3 of, Cravens/BUT parcel units, 1958-73, but apparently built in 1955.

Classes 113, 125 and 129 had non-standard coupling arrangements, which contributed to their relatively early demises. Other non-standard coupling types were classes 126 and 127 - although the latter were compatible with the 113s. Originally classes 113 and 127 were also supposed to have been compatible with standard "blue star" units, but as they had hydraulic transmissions, which do not require gear changes, it was too easy for a driver to forget, if he was driving a combination of such units with a hydraulic car at the front, that he still needed to control the gears of the rear unit. Driving a unit at full speed in bottom gear could lead to a severely damaged engine.

There were also the pre-Modernisation Plan DMUs, given numbers in the 79xxx series. These non-standard dmus were the most vulnerable to the redundancies caused by the Beeching cuts,
There were three basic types, First were eight power-twin units built by Derby in 1954. These had torque convertor transmission and were incompatible with everything that came later. All eight were withdrawn in 1964.
The rest comprised 46 2-car units built by Metro Cammell in 1956, 96 units built by Derby also from1956 - (five 4-car, two single units, and 89 twins), and three parcels cars built by Cravens in 1958, all with the "yellow diamond" coupling code. The Cravens and M-C units looked very similar to later units of classes 105 and 101 respectively, but the very large vertical windscreens of the early Derby units were not repeated on the later units of classes 108, 116 etc, which had raked windscreens instead. The Metro Cammell and Derby units were introduced in 1956, and all gone by 1969.

The Cravens parcel cars remained useful even when they could not work with anything else and so survived long enough to get a TOPS class (129), eventually being withdrawn in 1973.

The 126s were built in 1959 to be compatible with earlier units (numbered in the 79xxx series),which had been built in 1956 for the Edinburgh/Glasgow route. Most of the earlier 79xxx vehicles were withdrawn when the Class 27-operated push-pull services started in 1972, the younger batch being sufficient to operate the Ayrshire services to which they were transferred, but because of vehicle swaps between units handful of the older ones survived until the class was withdrawn in the early 1980s.

Class 109 - Two units were bought back by the builder in 1961 to fulfil an export order to Trinidad, another was converted to Departmental use in 1967 (and survives in preservation),the other two were withdrawn in 1971.

The Blue Pullmans had a relatively short life -introduced in 1959, and withdrawn in 1973. They were built to try to keep business users away from the airlines during the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, by providing a luxury service on the Paddington-Birmingham and St Pancras-Manchester routes. Effectively redundant when the electrification project was complete in 1966, they spent a few years on the Western Region until the all-conquering HSTs provided a faster and more comfortable service without having to pay a Pullman supplement!

 

[43096]

The Blue Pullmans had a relatively short life -introduced in 1959, and withdrawn in 1973. They were built to try to keep business users away from the airlines during the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, by providing a luxury service on the Paddington-Birmingham and St Pancras-Manchester routes. Effectively redundant when the electrification project was complete in 1966, they spent a few years on the Western Region until the all-conquering HSTs provided a faster and more comfortable service without having to pay a Pullman supplement!

Although the Pullmans were withdrawn over three years before the production HSTs entered service.

 

[nw1]

The 312s were based on the 310s introduced in 1965 which were visually very similar. So the MKII EMU design was fully up and running around 1970. BR SR was putting new slam door trains into service well into the '70s (4CIG 1972, 4VEP 1974).

Yes, was aware the newest VEPs were mid-70s, though the oldest were something like 1966 (?)

Funny to think the newest VEPs were just 8 years old when I first started using SR in 1982; the VEPs, as well as the CIGs, seemed to be 'well-bedded-in' or 'mature' stock rather than less-than-10-years old. (However as you say the design was older - and admittedly, the South Western VEPs I used were rather older examples from, I think, the mid-late sixties; the new batch were all on the South Eastern).

I'm aware locos are OT but 87s also seemed well-bedded in by the time I saw them in 1983; yet they were just 10 years old. These days, a 10-year-old unit or loco would seem very new indeed, given my current 'local' units, the 444s and 450s, are now 17 years old and they still seem relatively ''new' to me. Yet they're already mid-life, incredibly.

 

[Joshua_Harman]

London Underground 1986 Stock

 

[bramling]

How about Class 210 DEMUs?

Both 86 tube stock and class 210 are excluded on the grounds of being prototypes. Same would apply to the class 151.

Though not all prototypes are guaranteed to have a short life - the 150/0s being such an example.

So far, the DLR P89 stock seems to take the dubious honour of being shortest-lived production fleet.