Why do British steam locomotives have small headlights, or none at all?

pdkoester

DoubleYouPea & Espee fan!
Since I have always lived in the United States, I never really gave much thought to the reason why there are no headlights or tiny lights on British steam engines. I did a simple AI search from Google. This is what it generated:

British steam engines often had small headlights, or even lacked them entirely, because the majority of British railway tracks were fenced off, meaning there was less need for a powerful headlight to warn pedestrians or road traffic as people couldn't readily access the tracks; this practice was established early on in railway development when effective headlights were not widely available, and the noise of the steam engine itself provided sufficient warning.

Seems like a lot of problems would be avoided if they would fence off the majority of railway tracks here. Probably will never happen in my lifetime, since it hasn't been a big thing brought over here.

I was just curious why the British steamers were so dim on headlight power, which I noticed thanks to Trainz.

The Flying Scotsman looked so different when it toured over here:

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I always wondered that as well. Big american steamers here had large bulky headlights whilst britain had small ones. A good chunk being walled/fenced off now explains the fence in rosworth wale.
 
The same thing applies to bells as another warning communication signal that is rarely used and seen on them as again, as someone else pointed out, the railroad on their side of the pond has the tracks fenced off, American, Canadian built steam engines carried both the headlight and bell since there is a operating rule under US Law that requires them, which is quite different to the rest of the world and their operating practices, although if I were to point out one thing that has not changed is the use of whistles but the codes depending on where you are, varies, the flying Scotsman is a fine example of that when she visited the USA from England on tour, you can clearly see the other whistle which happens to be a Southern railroad 3-chime and the warning bell, those were added prior.
 
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I am guessing that is also why the whistle on steam engines are so different between the two areas, too.
 
The Flying Scotsman looked so different when it toured over here:
The 'Flying Scotsman' was specially modified with a head lamp and a bell to conform to American regulations.

I was just curious why the British steamers were so dim on headlight power
Because they aren't headlights. They are marker lamps to identify the class and type of train coupled behind the locomotive. Round while discs were used by some lines during daylight hours for the same purpose. For suburban passenger trains there were often special lamp and disc codes to denote the train's destination.
 
I am always puzzled by why locos bother with having headlights (real ones). From the drivers point of view they would only illuminate a very limited distance ahead of the train (and none at all on a curve). Far too short a distance to be able to stop a speeding train if the driver spots a broken rail, or an obstruction on the track.

The only practical application that I can think of is to potentially warn others of the approaching train. But when you consider the number of cars that are hit by trains on crossings in broad daylight, even protected crossings, then one wonders if anything would be effective.
 
I think in North America, it was less about the engineer being able to see and more about the train being seen by people and more importantly by animals. Much the same reason why North American locomotives had cow catchers and British locomotives did not. As cited above, British tracks were properly fenced off from the surrounding fields and level crossings while they existed, seem to be rarer with bridges being a more common way to get road traffic over tracks and for that matter over canals. Here outside of the bigger cities, tracks met roads at level crossings sometimes protected with gates, flashing lights and clanking bells but often with nothing more than a sign urging the driver to "Stop, Look and Listen". My childhood was filled with scary tales of ghost trains and fire breathing monsters that instilled a respect for the dangers surrounding trains that survives to this day.
 
The reason for the discrepenacy between the UK and the US (and other countries) as to why the UK fenced their railway lines off completely where as the US and elsewhere didn't was simple pragmatism. The UK is a relatively small island nation that had rather large population centres reasonably close to each other and little in the way of true 'wild open spaces' (at least by the time the railways came), where as the US had a lot of ground to cover, that was mostly open plains with relatively few people scattered. It simply wasn't cost effective to fence in large stretches of track that might see a train once a week if that. So US locomotives had to protect those that might stray onto the track instead in the form of not only large headlights, but marker lights, loud deep whistles and bells, and the distinctive cowcatchers/pilot covers at the front.

The UK's obsessiveness with fencing off their railways entirelly might have also come about due to a notorious incident in the early history of railways - aka, the death of William Huskisson during the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway where he innocently strode onto the track right into the path of the Rocket and had his leg crushed. Although it was his own fault, given Huskisson was a politician and a Member of Parliament, the UK government of the time probably sought to avoid any further tragedies and thus mandated the entire fencing off of all railway lines. The US probably decided on a more pragmatic solution and so insisted instead of adding cowcatchers to locomotives to reduce the risk of being dragged under the train if a person happened to stray into a train's path, and permenantly mounted headlights and bells and loud whistles as warning devices.
 
UK loco lights weren't for illuminating the track ahead, but indicated the type of train. Ordinarily there would be three lamps on the solebar and one above the smokebox. Depending which ones were lit, would identify the type of train to railway staff, particularly signalling staff so they knew the right train was passing. As an example, the left and right lamp illuminated on the solebar would denote an express passenger train, whereas the lamp above the smokebox illuminated denotes a stopping passenger train.

Drivers navigated the lines using route knowledge, they'd know exactly where they were using visual indicators, something that would be far easier on the shorter distance travelled in the UK than it would be on US railroads.
 
I think in North America, it was less about the engineer being able to see and more about the train being seen by people and more importantly by animals. Much the same reason why North American locomotives had cow catchers and British locomotives did not. As cited above, British tracks were properly fenced off from the surrounding fields and level crossings while they existed, seem to be rarer with bridges being a more common way to get road traffic over tracks and for that matter over canals. Here outside of the bigger cities, tracks met roads at level crossings sometimes protected with gates, flashing lights and clanking bells but often with nothing more than a sign urging the driver to "Stop, Look and Listen". My childhood was filled with scary tales of ghost trains and fire breathing monsters that instilled a respect for the dangers surrounding trains that survives to this day.
Yes, the Gyralite on the Southern Pacific railroad for trains that are coming, and a red one for emergency indications:

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