The Tale of the Blue Pullman (Reworked)
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
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This is a reworked and reuploaded version of the original video.
Hello! :D
Once one of Britain's most luxurious express trains, the Blue Pullman comprised a series of fixed rake sets that operated across the Midland and Western Regions of the British Railway network, and were, at the time, one of the most opulent forms of travel for commuters journeying between Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and London.
Sadly, for everything the Blue Pullman did right, it did two things wrong, not through any fault of the trains themselves, but instead poor management, timetabling and rostering for these lavish trainsets, seeing their working lives cut short after only 13 years.
Special thanks to BobBishopDiagonal for allowing me the use of their footage as part of this video, which can be found at the following link:
• WR Blue Pullman
All video content and images in this production have been provided with permission wherever possible. While I endeavour to ensure that all accreditations properly name the original creator, some of my sources do not list them as they are usually provided by other, unrelated RUclipsrs. Therefore, if I have mistakenly put the accreditation of 'Unknown', and you are aware of the original creator, please send me a personal message at my Gmail (this is more effective than comments as I am often unable to read all of them): rorymacveigh@gmail.com
The views and opinions expressed in this video are my personal appraisal and are not the views and opinions of any of these individuals or bodies who have kindly supplied me with footage and images.
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References:
- Railcar.co.uk (and their respective sources)
- Wikipedia (and its respective references)
In about 1970. I was asked to cover work in Croydon for my employer. I lived in Bristol. I managed to persuade my employer that the only feasible train to use was the Pullman.Consequently, I was privileged to travel on the morning Pullman from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington. It was a very rewarding experience. The service was excellent and I felt very privileged the time. I did not notice The poor riding qualities of the cars. I have never forgotten it.
Hmm. Have you used the class 80x trains yet? If so, was the old Pullman set even worse?
@@johnkeepin7527 i dont know if the blue pullman would be worse than the land hornet trains my god i went on one for the first time from reading to bristol temple meads last week on my way to my old man's home to celebrate his 71st birthday and i did not like the journey nor did my back which is sensitive to rough rides due to a car accident back in 2005 still the Class 80x i was on rocked and rolled at high speed the seats were as confortable as sitting on a lumpy block of jagged rock shaped like a seat.
I was an HST driver on 'The Midland' and every time I eased the brakes off while watching the amps provide traction power as I edged out of St. Pancras I knew how lucky I was.
We weren’t all puffed up businessmen. I was an engineer and the fast service coupled with a decent meal on the train saved an overnight stay and allowed me to do three days work in two!
Same as my dad, he often used the Pullman from Cardiff to Paddington and then back.
As a boy in the 60s these trains were a must have for my train set. :D
I remember using the Pullman services as a young graduate engineer working in the aviation industry in the 1960s.
At the time I had a sense of optimism and felt railway modernisation and British industry was really going somewhere.
How wrong I was!
You were right until the cancellation of the APT (after getting it virtually all right, absurdly) and then BR privatisation that was done in a way that appeared to sell off our expertise to foreign companies. The seperation of rail infrastructure from the trains was forced on us by EU Directive 91/440 in 1991 of course. The Government could have argued for BR to be exempt due to their efficiency but the Tories disliked BR and it was a golden opportunity for them to get rid of it. Thankfully we still have some outstanding companies to be proud of, notably Rolls-Royce the engineering company.
@@Martindyna Exactly!
After leaving the aviation industry, I worked on the APT test trains in the mid 1970s.
If it wanted to the UK government could have argued exemptions from EN 91/440 but it chose to ratify the Directive instead to the detriment of BR.
So many opportunities lost through political dogma. 😡
So typical of British projects in the 50's - 70's "Unfortunately middle and upper management had new and bold ideas." Great vid as alwasy!
to say nothing of the attitude of the NUM. Nothing ever changes.... 😀
@@stevem-h3562NUR
@@stevem-h3562 What has the National Union of Mineworkers got to do with this?
@@thomasfrancis5747 My apologies, should have read NUR.
I saw one of these in Cardiff when I was very little, I was with my dad on the station waiting for a train to go home to Pontypridd>Llwynipia. I of course didn't know it was a Blue Pullman, but I never forgot it's shape, the front of which struck me as looking like a sad face with white glasses, the blue colour and the crest on the front stayed with me too, and I never forgot this train when I wanted a train set either, it was treasured for years and years until it was passed on to my younger brother. I still have my Brooke Bond tea card book - Transport I think it is called (along with many others) which has the Blue Pullman painting as one of the cards.
Not old enough to have travelled on these, but 20 years ago I was a regular commuter in GNER 1st Class on York-KX. 7am out, 5pm back, Yorkshire Grill breakfast 'at seat' , 3 course dinner in the restaurant car.
The evening dinner was the best, sitting with three random people for 1hr45mins BEFORE the introduction of smartphones ruined social interaction. As a GNER Gold Card holder I was entitled to 2for1 G&Ts and a free small bottle of red wine.
Best of all was Albert who ran the carpark at York. He always coned off a space for me next to platform 1 so I didn't have far to walk after consuming all that alcohol. The cost? A Christmas bottle of whisky for him and a bottle of advocaat his wife. #goodolddays
While most of this story sounds like the good old days, if you weren't able to walk across a car park "after consuming all that alcohol", then I don't think you should have been driving.
@@chrisbailiss7309 it was 20+ years ago when people still enjoyed themselves. Albert kept my space as close as possible to the platform which meant it was the shortest possible walk to my car. Planning is everything. Cheers!!
@IndaloMan sounds like luck was everything for anyone including yourself on your drive home. Even 50 years ago, most folk knew better.
...😮never thought I'd end up this sanctimonious.
Even the train crew received a Pullman service. Note the milkman delivering to the driving cab at 09:55!
16:21 High speed trains have got that livery of the midland Pullman as of today for railtour duty
I was in my last year as a schoolboy trainspotter and my last year wearing short trousers when I had the privilege of seeing those striking Blue Pullman sets, rolling into Birmingham Snow Hill. My mates and I lived for steam but we soon acquired an affection for those long lost trains.
Oh my God. I am not able to mock this. Look at it. It's beautiful. Fabulous.
Apparently one of the issues with the ride on these (so I was once told by a retired railwayman who was involved with them during their stint on the great western main line in south wales) was that the couplings allowed enough movement so the carriages bounced back and forth against each others buffers when travelling at speed making some people feel a bit queasy.
I was sat at Stroud station waiting for my train to Gloucester a couple of years ago when a blue Pullman train stopped at platform 2. A man in a white tail coat stepped onto the platform, took a look around him, stepped back onto the train, and off it went. No passengers got on or off. It was just a courtesy stop I suppose.
The Blue Pullman was on the cover of my Eagle Book of Trains in the '60's - very impressive to a schoolboy.
One of my first memories of owning a model railway (which my dad spent more time on than I did) was having a Blue Pullman set. My dad used to go on about how 'exclusive' the blue pullman was. Also it was the train that seemingly smashed Pitkin's milk cart in "The Early Bird" (1965) with Norman Wisdom.
Amazing level of research and detail - well done 🙂
I'm so glad this is back. The Blue Pullmans are one of my two favorites covered.
Slightly before my time, but it's basically the 125 concept, so we owe it that! In hindsight, what a wonderful train and experience. It's by no way the only BR experience without problem's. I commend it.
My father took me to Manchester on it in, I think, 1961. If I have the date right I would have been 4 at the time. The only things I can remember about it are the handle to wind the window blind up and down, and the similar design of the stations at either end, London St. Pancras and Manchester Central.
These videos are so cool with all their vintage films. Sadly you can actually always wait to about two thirds when BR starts to cock it up biblically.
Unions and poor management were just as snobbish as each other. Both seemed to do their best to damage the Pullman, APT and HS2.
I had the honor to see the blue Pullman in Edinburgh last Sunday. Even though it’s a HST it was still a beautiful train
It's that Nanking blue, I think.
I saw the Locomotive Services unit going into Kings Cross thursday, It looed great. I also think I saw a couple of hte original cars in their latter livery at Old Oak COmmon depot in the mid 1970's. I've always thought of them as an advance on the Southern Region Hastings Diesel Electric Multiple Units These has two power cars with English Electric 500hp SRKT4 engines that also carried passengers and 4 passenger only cars between them. Limited to 75mph on that run they did mange 90mph on a railtour!!!! Though with 3 extra power cars 6 to 8 passenger only cars.
You did not mention the Liverpool Pullman. I travelled on this in 1970, on business, on a couple of occasions as it was the earliest scheduled train from London to Liverpool.
Your videos are so informative and for the future generations, thank you.
Today is the 64th anniversary of the Blue Pullman’s debut on the Western Region. Say what you want about this train but that Nanking Blue is so cool.
Fascinating as always, thank you again.
Fantastic video I could watch your content 24/7 very informative and interesting
Ruairidh MacVeigh, nice video keep up the amazing content
Footage surfaced some years ago of a set being scrapped in a siding outside Newport, in 1975 via a cine camera from a passing train.
Plenty of blue asbestos in these carriages too
@@highpath4776 Asbestos is not dangerous until you start handling it. For years people rode in trains loaded with asbestos without a care in the world. It's only when the trains were to be scrapped that problems arose because it had to be handled but in a very specific way. Think of all those people who made the asbestos in the factories where their bosses knew it was very hazardous to their health but took no action to protect their workers for that action would have cut into their profit margin. In the end it really cut into their profits as they were sued by their workers for considerably shortening their lives.
I hope Hornby release their TT120 HST's in the Blue Pullman railtour livery....
Six hundred pounds equivalent for a ticket? Wow.
If you're charging it to expenses then why not...
That's what I thought and commented on. But now that I've enjoyed going through most of the comments, I'm beginning to realise that it's quite likely that such an enormous amount should be the equivalent of not only a first class return fare, but include the price of a breakfast and an evening meal and indeed an overnight stay in an hotel.
All on expenses of course, but nevertheless, somewhat expensive still.
Love your content, man! Been subscribed for a few years now.
Here's some trains I would like to see a video on. Stanier Coronations, Castle Class, Gresley A1/3s, Southern Railway Lord Nelson and Schools class, and a video on the BR Standard class steam locos.
Could endlessly watch this fabulous train - I wonder how much it was wasted on those puffed up business passengers.
In its experimentation with diesels and electrics BR really came up with some great pieces of rail engineering I think. Some of it pure genius like the Midland Pullman. Thanks for this informed insight into these halcyon days. 👍
The commentary said it made money.
The Blue Pullman proved the concept of a mainline diesel unit with two power cars, which evolved into the Inter City 125 units, one of which has morphed back into a Blue Pullman. Hmmm.
Have seen the Pullman in and around Stirling a number of times over last few years, never truly realising / appreciating what it was.
That’s not the one featured in this video (they were all scrapped). What you saw is an ordinary HST repainted in Pullman colours. See 16:18
@@AtheistOrphan perhaps I should have expanded on what I meant.... but yeah... I saw the HST in Pullman colours not knowing the history of the Pullman train.
@AtheistOrphan I wouldn't call it "ordinary". The sets have been fully refurbished, and the intent is to re-create the experience as it was 50-odd years ago.
Yes, the refurbed HST/Inter-City 125 sets that have been painted in the old Blue Pullman livery look amazing, and don't suffer from the poor riding problems of the originals. They re-create the experience extremely well.
My understanding is that at least one full train was briefly earmarked for preservation but removing asbestos used in constructing the carriages made it too expensive.
In Germany, we had the technically very similar TEE sets introduced in 1958, which lasted until 1988 (Class VT 11.5), one of which was saved for preservation. The DB stopped all work on it after the cost had risen to € 5 Million with no end in sight and it was never completed. There are other, unrestored sets still in existence.
I wonder if this kind of service is something we might see in the future nationalised BR?
A few years ago I took a train from Glasgow to London, I bought first class tickets, and I had the most enjoyable experience.
I’m sure there is a market for stress (and asbo) free travel on the railways.
Having a first-class section is against the ethos of a socialist government.
I remember seeing some of these in silver paint, from a vantage point overlooking the Paddington to Bristol line. Was this introduced across all sets, and when?
I so hate that I was born too late for this fabulous train. I was still in diapers when they were pretty much gone.
Lovely video
They really were beautiful trains, especially in their original blue livery, they really were revolutionary for the time. Whats that you say!!, 2 power cars with 5 coaches sandwiched in between!!. Itll never work you know , as was said at the time but there you have it ,very successful. And years later the h s t ,s came along with the same consists and they were very successful.
Cool. Thanks for sharing.
I saw a class 43 Midland pullman at Burton-on-trent
HST.
@@AtheistOrphan yes
It’s ashamed that none of the Blue Pullman sets were preserved
Would you love to make a new Blue Pullman train from the ground up?
At London blue Pullman was designed in 1960
There's a wider issue in early post war Britain that you touch on in several videos but don't always fully acknowledge - they very class based nature of British transport technology planning in the post war period. like the SARO Princess, Comet, the Brabazon and Concorde, these train sets were designed for the use of a narrow elite whose influence was on the wane. In none of these cases was it imagined that the "mass market" might want to use these services, and therefore they served a small market that became a shrinking market with matching shrinking profits.
Eventoday, the class ridden nature of British society still hinders improvements - our obsessive focus on things class related mean we miss the bigger picture and often the moment for doing something right.
In the olden days very rich people went resorting where they travelled on the best trains and stayed in the best hotels. But the trains didn't pay their way and neither did the hotels and they found that unless you got all classes of people down to these places then they went bankrupt. To a certain extent that exclusivity thinking still holds sway in British society today. The HST Blue Pullman is not an everyday train but a train to be used by the financially well off in society and definitely not the "lowly ordinary people".
Mismanaged and poor planning
and once again, miserable British taxpayers are left to hold empty bag.
Makes one wonder how in earth the UK was a world superpower 100 years ago?
It was a different time and age. It was an age where there was limited information and where people didn't usually aspire to be outside the class they were born into. If you were working class then you stayed working class and had no aspirations to become middle class.
11:40 are these daily numbers or annual
Think before you leap...
@@JP_TaVeryMuch ?
The bogies, so these were continental, hence the problem is not on the bogie but on the shoddy British rail tracks.
Not in those days. The track in those days was maintained to a much higher standard than today.
@@tulyar1043 Has anything ever been well maintained in Britain, besides the imperial attitude.
@@drstevenrey
Why don't you try leaping off your bandwagon at the next 'station stop '?
11:22 _HOW MUCH?_
Gender specific bathrooms!
Why did the designers choose the "European devised" bogies exactly as mentioned in the video? Was it because the Europeans had good experince of these designs? Equally why did they choose the MAN engine when in Germany this type of application, which they had devised in 1930s, did not use MAN engines? According to the video these were the main issues considered to be the train's achilles heal right?
Can't answer on the bogies, but you're wrong about the engines - the DB had developed the constructionally very similar VT 11.5 in 1958 (later BR 601) with very similar engines sourced from different manufacturers, some even being sourced from MAN (the Type L12V 18/21), built for the Blue Pullman by NBL under licence in Glasgow (as also for some of the WR Warships). The VT 11.5 (commonly known as the TEE sets) had two power cars top & tail plus seven carriages, weighed 230 t and had an installed power of 2 x 1100 hp main + 2 x 232 hp auxiliary engines. The Pullmans had two power cars plus six carriages, weighed 299 long tons and had an installed power of 2 x 1000 hp main + 2 x 190 hp auxiliary engines. Top speed VT 11.5: 140 km/h; Pullman: 90 mph.
@@1258-Eckhart I am sure that some of the engines used in Germany were as you mentioned but it is my contention that the “go to” engine in Germany (Class 218) at the time were those manufactured by MTU. They too were used in the Western regions diesel-hydraulics and ended up consolidating the HST longevity in the UK.
The blue HST were stunning!
@@BJHolloway1 MTU didn't exist until 1969. It arose out of an amalgamation of Mercedes and Maybach, both of which independently supplied diesel engines to DB in the 50's and 60's, as did MAN (for the TEE, 19 power cars). These MAN engines were the same units as in the Blue Pullman, only built under licence in GB as said above. MTU is now Rolls Royce BTW.
@@1258-Eckhart Your chronology of the company and factories in the Freidrichshafen area now known as MTU (Rolls Royce Power Systems) by the way is correct. The company has been though many ownership changes some of which you never mentioned but the fact remains the factories have stayed the same (lately they did close one in Uberlingen) and there is an repair centre in Magdeburg and a Genset Operation in Augsburg. Is there more inforomation you want to impart or are we both on the same page now.
Ah, the joys of nationalised rail, problematic rail unions and challenging management. Thank heavens those days are behind us 😮 Good video though.
9:44 I'm sure that there would have been no reduction in takers for a BTM to LON PAD 0645 service arriving at 0835 rather than the actual hour later one, in fact maybe more as it would allow for on time commuting.
So what's the reason that it was scheduled to arrive half an hour after you should have been at your desk? Anything to do with disgruntled diehards in various unionised bubbles? Your earlier mention of the unions acting upon totally erroneous information about Pullman in the UK beggars belief!
Might such agitprop inertia have anything to do with the wrong headed timing of the evening return service too?
Scheduling it at five to five is little short of thumbing their noses at the commuters who'd have to justify leaving work that much earlier than their compatriots, sorry blinkered bolshies, their comrades. Ahem.
Barf not bath
Lester.
Are you using an AI clone of your voice reading text, by any chance? It kind of sounds like you are....
It’s so weird isn’t it?
@@mholiday I actually have software that has this feature where it can clone your voice. It's his voice from previous videos, but it feels to me like there is just enough roboticness for it not to actually be him
Awful voice over.
Have been based in the Manchester area for 50 years but so wish I'd gone round discovering many of the then recently ceased infrastructure such as
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddish_Electric_Depot#/map/0 the location of which I must have passed daily during the 70's. Only now have I realised that the recently demolished pinchpoint bridge on the Hyde Road had been part of the Blue Pullman route.