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Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by S.A.C. Martin, May 2, 2012.

  1. Steve

    Steve Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    The Woottten firebox was conceived in an attempt to burn poor quality fuel. However the quality of coal is a red herring. It has never been a problem in a country which they say is built on the stuff. The ability of a loco to produce steam is largely related to grate area and the width of a conventional firebox is constrained by the distance between the frames so, if you want more grate area you have to go longer. This produces problems, not the least of which is the ability of the fireman to feed it. The solution is to go wide. This has other advantages, too and is a logical step but generally requires a trailing truck or relatively small coupled wheels.
     
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  2. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    More to do with the title of the thread than anything. I hope that Simon has, through the challenges of this thread been able to refine his arguments and contextualise the counter arguments. 120 Pages is a lot of to and fro for essentially 'That Thompson wasnt actually a deranged anti Gresley fanatic and actually kept a sinking ship afloat in a difficult period' , and if there isnt enough material i am confident that Mr Martin could apply his erudition to Messrs Peppercorn and Harrison to close off the Post Gresley LNER story.
     
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  3. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Simon, you mention the "emergency board" in a number of posts. How was that different from the "normal" board?
    Do many people really ask? According to Locos of the LNER, only the first 10 had fabricated drag box, saddles and frame stretchers etc.
     
  4. Eightpot

    Eightpot Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Simon, I think you will find that there was railway pressure on Government around 1942/3 to get munitions work out of railway workshops to concentrate on their prime work. The wartime building of Stanier 8Fs by the LNER, Southern and GWR were a result of this.
     
  5. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    How successful was that pressure in relation to reducing LNER work for armament production?

    Just because there was pressure to reduce it does not mean the existing work for the war dept wasn’t putting pressure on the workshops involved.
     
  6. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    The emergency board was drawn up to call other senior members of staff to discuss matters arising outside of the usual directors - this included finance, engineering, loco dept, etc, and was a monthly board reporting on the full matters of the LNER.

    This was called on specifically for the purposes of WW2 and the LNERs response to the conflict and for reporting purposes to the war dept.

    I don’t believe I specified which B1s (I assumed you’d also assume the wartime built ones?) - I was making a response to the point made.
     
  7. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Thanks. Do you have a source for the emergency board constitution? I don't really understand it based on your description.

    Re the B1s, I took your comment at face value (as one would assume that if you meant the first 10 you would say so!;)).

    Re the point Eightpot mentions, I too wondered about that rather sweeping comment. In fact, the article on the WD 2-8-0s in the Railway Gazette for 10 September 1943, is similarly broad in scope and agrees with this - extract attached.
     

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  8. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I am currently away for work and away from my notes accordingly. I beg a little patience: I will be happy to see what I can furnish you with from my Kew Garden notes. The broad understanding I have is that the aim was largely to be able to report back on the full workings of the railway to the war dept by speaking across the company to various depts.

    Instead of normal board operation, whereby reports/etc would be provided to the directors and the directors would then sign off approval on any reports or requests for funding.

    It is effectively the difference between having the board alone, and with other interested parties including the CME in the room.

    Fair - my apologies.

    From my point of view (and working from potentially a position of more information than others) the LNER appear to have had very little foundry capacity for the locomotive dept throughout WW2. The WD engines were simplified heavily in construction and Thompson's designs were similar in their approach.
     
  9. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I agree entirely.

    I love them. They have something of the Stanier Princess about them, and not many people complain they are ungainly (identical cylinder/connecting rod/bogie relationship).

    A casual repair may not have attended to the "leakiness" around the cylinders - we don't know for certain where that is coming from.

    The light engine movement is likely what we would call now a positioning move for its next duty of work - bearing in mind they usually did fast fitted freight down from York towards London. Couldn't possibly say. Can only speculate.

    Thompson retired from the LNER in 1946.

    The first B1s appeared in 1942 - 10 of them, built to the fabricated axle box standard. The rest appeared from 1946, built by outside firms (Vulcan/NBL, etc).

    The L1 prototype first appeared in 1945 and the production run from 1948-50.

    The issues with the axle boxes emerged in the mid to late 1950s for the B1s and from the early 1950s for the L1s. By then, Peppercorn had taken over at the LNER and had overseen the production runs signed off by Thompson, and his tenure ended in 1948 when British Railways was formed.

    Thompson died in 1954. How could he have been aware of these issues when he was CME - they hadn't happened yet under his tenure - the majority of the engines weren't built under after he had retired - and he was also not around to comment from 1954.

    The production Peppercorn K1s came in British Railways days and some minor alterations to the valve gear was made, and to the running plate. The design was otherwise largely as per the Thompson K1/1 design.
     
  10. pete2hogs

    pete2hogs Member

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    It needs to be remembered that the LNER was the company hardest hit by the Depression, and was not a wealthy company at the best of times. Case in point - Gresley didn't by choice build the J38's J39's - they came about because his more advanced design for something along the lines of a K4 was rejected as too expensive. It is relatively cheap to build a prestige express train to gain publicity compared to effectively restocking the whole loco stud as Stanier did on the LMS. When a bit of government money did become available it was spent on V2's, which turned out to be invaluable in WW2.

    When looking at Thompson's career, I think people fail to consider the impact of his time at Stratford. Stratford since GER days had been an enthusiastic and systematic rebuilder of engines to upgrade them - take the history of the T19's and Clauds for example. The GER were also good at standardisation, having relatively few classes of locos and a great deal of component level standardisation. This would be a contrast to the Gresley philosophy of designing engines for particular jobs.

    Any fair judgement of Thompson's legacy must surely take in to account that he left the LNER with a perfectly suitable set of standard designs, only the Pacifics needing modification by Peppercorn to make them more reliable. B1. K1, O1, L1 were all perfectly effective designs and cheap to build and were continued by Peppercorn. Some of the other rebuildings were of questionable worth, but we are talking maybe 50 engines in all, none of which were rendered useless, in fact in most cases they lived out normal lives. (The rebuilt B4 and Morpeth being exceptions)
     
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  11. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Thanks Simon, no urgency.
    At the risk of irritating you again, 1010-39 were built at Darlington (as were 61350-9 and 61400-9, plus 61340-9 at Gorton). When you say "fabricated axlebox" do you mean a cast steel box with pressed in brasses (which was pretty well standard everywhere apart from the LNER)?
     
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  12. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    No - extensive use of welding was used on the Thompson engines. Castings could not be done, there wasn’t the capacity. The casting you refer to was substituted with a fabricated, made up and welded version.
     
  13. 30567

    30567 Part of the furniture Friend

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    Were the L1s 'perfectly effective design'? I thought they were problematic.
     
  14. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    Dont want to speak out of turn as i am not the expert, but as irecall As a 'design'the L1 was a perfectly effective one for its envisaged duties, - certain shortcomings in detail and a couple of cut corners hobbled their performance... and in practice they we're problematic, bit like the B17.
     
  15. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    They worked until the modernisation plan kicked in from 1948-1960 and were ultimately replaced by diesels. Issues with the axleboxes were resolved at various times. There's no doubt they became rough when run down (but what two cylinder locomotive design doesn't?) but they seemed adequate for what was needed. Adequate, not perfect. There is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence for their pros/cons and to be fair there is enough from ex-drivers/maintenance staff to reasonably assume they did suffer in the axlebox area more than other classes.

    I don't have the availability figures for the production L1s, but I do for the prototype. The prototype seems a perfectly good locomotive. The production locomotives were built when austerity was still in full swing and had been modified by Peppercorn's design department midway through the production run (hence why there are two different types of boiler, two different types of front running plate arrangement, the cab layout was also modified including the doors. The basic details remained the same).
     
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  16. Kylchap

    Kylchap Member

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    Apologies if this has already been covered somewhere in the last 122 pages (!), but I was wondering if anyone is still alive who worked with and remembers Thompson. A lucid nonagenarian somewhere?
     
  17. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Thanks, I was not aware of that. I think however that the standard LNER box was solid bronze so that is what they were substituting for.
     
  18. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Thank you for your kind words Fred (and my apologies that this is tardy).

    Part of me feels that I have made so many changes to the structure, what I have written, how I have done it, that the book is nothing more than a long list of chronological quotations, interspersed with fact checks, my own inane witterings, etc, that it's unlikely to be of any real value as a good read...but taken at face value, a collection of evidence, placed in context of the time, might just help to widen the debate and talk about Edward Thompson as more than just a man who followed Sir Nigel Gresley.

    Over the years writing on this thread my views have changed, some have hardened, some are more pliable, there's a few aspects that I feel I will always be in two minds about (because there's not enough evidence either way) - but, categorically, the thing which has come out of this thread is this: don't take it all at face value and don't just listen to one side of the story. Seek out the truth.
     
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  19. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    There's too much material, I have condensed much of it (and removed much of my own thoughts - the evidence speaks for itself far more). The overall story of the LNER's WW2 availability woes will have to wait for another book but I am plugging away at producing the figures as an e-document for those interested. It's been a fascinating exercise and, IMO, does much on its own to prove that Thompson's approach to the LNER's locomotive stock was entirely correct (yes - even to Gresley's P2s).
     
  20. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    I don't think you can "prove" that Thompson was entirely correct or even correct, only that what he did was rational in the circumstances. It is difficult to know if your postings on here reflect what is in the book but I think you need to be careful of using hyperbole as it tends to detract from the more measured arguments.
     
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