****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
In late 2021 this is the latest in a series of books by Anthony P Sayer, covering the histories of British Railways’ least successful diesel locomotives. The book is in the author’s usual format, recounting the story of the Clayton Type 1 locomotives in immense detail. The amount of work he has done in drawing all the information together, then putting it into order, must have been enormous. As with his other books, the story is made all the more interesting because of the subject matter’s short working life, its many problems providing fascinating reading. There is an individual history of each one of the locomotives built, and this is crammed with detail, although it’s probably fair to say that much of it won’t be of special interest to the reader. On the other hand, the behind-the-scenes story, covering the locomotives’ design, ordering, manufacture, working life, liveries, serious problems, storage and withdrawal from service, makes for quite absorbing reading. He goes into great detail about the reasons for the design being as it was, with its unusual (for the UK) centre cab twin-engine format, the hope and intention that the Claytons would become a BR standard design lasting for many years to come, and the entire rationale of adding a non-standard type to a fleet which was already well served by the ubiquitous and very successful EE Class 20. In the process the author obtained and studied many official BR documents and reports, and his extracts from them add so much to the authenticity of this work. It is astonishing that so many problems arose with what ought to have been a straightforward design, but the type was let down by engine problems which should never have arisen, ranging from broken crankcases to cylinder heads, by way of turbochargers – all things which should have been quickly addressed and rectified. Add to their unreliability a shift in traffic patterns, and the Claytons were doomed – especially when the best things that can be said about them are that they had two engines so could usually limp home when one of them had failed, and that they were well-liked by their crews. The Claytons might have been expected to have working lives of fifteen to thirty years, but some examples did not even manage to last four – an extraordinary waste of taxpayers’ money. There’s everything in this profusely illustrated, well laid-out volume, right up to the type’s eventual demise and scrapping, and this will almost certainly be the definitive work on these locomotives. I read it avidly, cover to cover, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It now stands on my bookshelves alongside the authors’ works on the NBL Type 2s, the Metrovicks and the BTH and NBL Type 1s; I’m looking forward to his next work, whatever that may be. To sum up, this book is a must-have for anybody who wants to know the truth about the disastrous Claytons.
