The Westerns and Hymeks were withdrawn early as the other regions were using Desiel-Electrics and the the great locos were Desiel-Hydrolics! No other reason. They were powerfull and reliable .
Yes they are deemed nonstandard in a Diesel Electric world as early as 1967, and were frittered away as a result. In short, it was all one big monumental waste and it might have been better if they had never existed in the first place!
Nowadays I imagine operators would snap them up and no mistake, but at the time, BR didn't want to sell enough of them so that a rival could potentially use them (quite who I don't know as this was a long time before privatisation!! The only exception were the class 14s, but they never ran in competition with BR anyway, working as they did for The Coal Board) a policy that BR kept up into the '80s, meaning that many things were just scrapped despite people offering to buy them (a few 1st generation DMUs went that way for example, and actually, D1015 Western Champion, the Western that is on the mainline now almost suffered the same fate - It was the very last Western to be scrapped in 1979, and it was only saved after the preservation group made a rather impassioned plea to the then Head of BR, Sir Peter Parker..... Outside his office..... As he left for the day..... And even then, D1015 had actually been started to be cut, so the orders to stop came just in time!!). As a result, almost all of the early preserved examples we now have had been given officially by BR to preservation groups, regardless of what people really wanted to preserve (there was even the story of the class 22 that had been bought for preservation in 1970 but was 'accidentally' scrapped, so BR gave a Warship <Greyhound I think>) as compensation!!).
Anyway, yes, they had a criminally short career, but be fair though, both the Warships and Westerns needed a major overhaul as all that high speed running had taken its toll on them, (they were just a bit trashed), so at least they went out after having fulfilled one service cycle as it were, it would have been different if they had still been in reasonably good condition like the <Cough cough!!> The class 14s...... Or probably the Hymeks.
1062 on Mainline would be fantastic.
When I used to work in Bristol I worked not far from Days Road, where they keep the weekend Specials locos in holding . Saw Bittern, Duke of Gloucester , king Edward I , Nunney Castle there to name a few
Sounds brilliant!!
By the way
@classic33, you need to give the Bittern people some slack - They were fixing the nose back on in readiness for a mainline run!!
