Noble (?) failures

grahame

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Noble (?) failures

« on: September 04, 2026, 05:31:50 »

Quote

Key Facts

Name Origin: Named after Edsel Ford, the son of founder Henry Ford and former president of the company.

The Launch: Debuted on September 4, 1957 (known as "E-Day"), following a massive, highly publicized hype and teaser campaign.

Unique Features: Famous for its polarizing vertical "horse-collar" grille, rolling-dome speedometer, and the Teletouch push-button automatic transmission located right in the center of the steering wheel.

Models Offered: Included upscale models like the Citation and Corsair, as well as lower-priced choices like the Pacer and Ranger.

The Failure: Became a legendary corporate failure due to poor timing during an economic recession, quality control issues on shared assembly lines, and a design that public consumers largely disliked. Ford lost hundreds of millions of dollars before discontinuing the brand in November 1959

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

There have been some noble (and nit so noble) failures in the railway world, and some of them are associated with great engineers who had other magnificnent successes but these cases results were not as planned:

Leader
Drumm Electric Train
Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore
4DD trains
Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway
Advanced Passenger Train
Waterloo and Whitehall Railway
Class 769 trains
Brill Branch
Cardiff Railway (Treforest)


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CyclingSid

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Hockley viaduct

Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2026, 09:51:38 »

Should this be titled like the recent awards; Ignoble failures?


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Mark A

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2026, 10:07:19 »

OK, I'll bite. The APT^▸ was failed by a country that was in fundamentally unserious mode concerning the train and I suspect that many other aspects of railway travel benefitted from the research that produced it. Also, to engineer that tilt mechanism in a purely analogue way. If the trains running on the GWML^▸ now were a descendent of the ATP^▸ I suspect that everyone would be rather happier with the ambience of the passenger compartments than they are.

Mark


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grahame

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2026, 05:30:16 »

Quote from: Mark A on September 04, 2026, 10:07:19

Indeed - some of the "failures" mentioned may have been bleeding edge technology - ahead of their time and smoothing the way for leading edge stuff.

The Brill branch may have been lost in 1935, but that region of the countryside is ripe for housing growth, and - who knows - by 2035, there may well be another railhead with a passenger service running just a dozen miles away at Winslow.


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Mark A

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2026, 08:22:04 »

On a canal trip in one of the skiffs, 1971(?), it was a morning, we saw an APT^▸ at speed, I think just north of Leighton Buzzard, the train looking suitably futuristic, really shifting - and for good measure, leaning into a curve.


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Chris from Nailsea

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2026, 21:14:17 »

Should we perhaps also include one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's notable (rather than 'noble' or 'ignoble') failures here?

The Atmospheric Railway, in South Devon: see http://www.ikbrunel.org.uk/index.php?n=Atmospheric-Railway

Roll Eyes


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JayMac

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2026, 21:48:45 »

Quote from: Mark A on September 05, 2026, 08:22:04

Unlikely to have been 1971. The APT-E (Experimental gas turbine) didn't begin testing until 1972. APT-P (Prototype 25kV electric Class 370) First ran in 1978.


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Mark A

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2026, 07:51:57 »

Thanks for this - that's pinned it down a bit. Note to former self: did you notice your friends keeping diaries? Yes. So do the same yourself.


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grahame

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Re: Noble (?) failures

« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2026, 08:10:18 »

On dates - I, too, find it very hard to pin things down to years or even groups of years.

On Brunel's pneumatic railway and whether it was a "noble failure" it probably was - but I had already listed the Waterloo and Whitehall railway which would have been pneumatic, and I considered the Crystal Palace [upper] experiments and the mail rail (I think it was) link to Euston. There was no real science to the things on the list, except to have a bit of variety. Only one battery train, ignoring the Aberdeen to Braemar, for example.


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