What Really Happened to Steam
For more than 20 years, book authors and magazine writers
have unwittingly perpetuated errors with regard to the withdrawal
and scrapping of many BR steam locomotives.
A major project was launched in 2009 to set the record straight.
So.. What Really did Happen to Steam?
Firstly, my thanks to Peter Hall for taking on the responsibility from October 2024 for the WRHTS website. It is my hope, and expectation, that a reinvigorated website will help the WRHTS project to achieve its aims. That is to publish a series of books that detail as accurately as possible (for the period 1957 to 1968) what really happened to a British Railways steam locomotive from the date of its withdrawal from service to its final disposal.
Background
Whilst the background to the WRHTS project, and the challenges it has faced, are fully detailed in the accompanying downloadable PDFs of articles that have been published in The Railway Magazine and Link, the quarterly magazine of the Engine Shed Society (ESS), it is appropriate to give a brief overview on this website.
Although 15 years have now passed since the WRHTS project was launched, I can still vividly recall Peter Trushell, who for many years was the editorial representative for withdrawn locomotives for the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society (RCTS), warning me in 2009 to leave the subject of the disposal of withdrawn locomotives well alone as I would be opening ‘a can of worms’. How right he turned out to be. And some!
‘Mr Bates v The Post Office’
We have all watched in disbelief in recent months as the evidence of a corporate cover-up by the Post Office is laid out on our television screens, both in an ITV drama and the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Whilst very obviously the consequences of the alleged Post Office cover-up are infinitely more serious than the RCTS attempt to cover up the fabricated entries on locomotive disposals that were published both in The Railway Observer and, for example, the society’s book on 9Fs (reprinted in 2021), some of the accusations referenced in the Horizon IT Inquiry, such as ‘a cloud of denial’ and ‘that’s just word soup’ resonate with those of us who had to deal with the responses to the questions we posed to the self-styled ‘Britain’s leading railway society’.
More positively
More positively, the overall response to our research has been very pleasing and I am most grateful to the hundreds of enthusiasts who have contributed to the enormous database of information we have built up in the last one and half decades. The key to our database is the use of primary sources only as, unfortunately, the majority of secondary sources are generally heavily reliant on the discredited What Happened To Steam (WHTS) booklets.
The final phase of our work is to publish our findings. A complete picture is – some sixty years (or so) after the event – quite impossible but what you will see published will be a complete contrast to the web of deceit and misinformation that has gone before us. The levels of information we have obtained so far varies dramatically between regions. For example, our Western Region book will be able to detail for the majority of locomotives its withdrawal date, where it was stored and the time it spent there, its transit to the scrapyard and the staging points if known/applicable, its arrival at the scrapyard and the last known date it was seen at the scrapyard.
Going Forward
In a final attempt to fill in as many gaps in our information as we can, the latter part of 2024 will involve contacting as many other railway societies as possible to see if their members can help us in any way. Similarly, there will be an initiative to liaise with local newspapers that had a scrapyard that disposed of steam locomotives in its readership area.
A big task that will start with a focus on the Southern Region as that is the book that is most well-advanced at the time of writing this introduction.
Thank you for your interest in what we are trying to achieve. In particular we are looking for details of personal visits to scrapyards, shed visits where withdrawn steam locomotives were present, Special Traffic Notices (STNs) that contained movements of locomotives en route to a scrapyard and locomotive sales documentation.
What Really Happened to some Diesels
Although the project is focused on steam locomotive disposals, it has become apparent that a significant number of published diesel locomotive disposals are not correct. Articles on this topic have appeared in The Railway Magazine and Link. Downloadable copies of these articles are now included on our website.
It is not the intention to publish any books on the subject of diesel disposals. However, once the true disposal of locomotives that have previously had incorrect disposals published is established, it will be included on this website.
Details of these can be found on our Diesel & Electric Locomotive Disposals page.
Get in touch
If you can help us in any way, or have a specific query on an individual locomotive, please use the details below.
Steam locomotive disposals
steam@whatreallyhappenedtosteam.co.uk
Diesel locomotive disposals
diesels@whatreallyhappenedtosteam.co.uk
Site administration
peter@whatreallyhappenedtosteam.co.uk
Roger Butcher
Chairman, Engine Shed Society.