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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. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Hi Noel,

    My response to Julian covers the points you made too.

    You may be right - but I suspect not.

    I’ve spent a year reading the board minutes. I have eight folders of around 200 pages per folder. It was a long, tough read.

    There were moments I was reading and would be struck by the incredibly human responses to some of most awful things that happened in WW2.

    There’s some moments like noting the deaths of railway staff by enemy action, and how to care for their families financially.

    There’s - in the same meeting as Gresleys obituary and Thompson’s appointment - a note of thanks to lord stamp.

    I feel the cynicism of today’s politicians and businesses isn’t quite so parallel to that of the past.

    Call me naive, but though railway companies were there to make money, it is clear from my research that the men and women of the LNER at every level were going about their business everyday for each other and for the country.

    When all’s said and done - it’s a shame this isn’t made more of when we consider just how tough the war was on the railway.
     
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  2. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    Right, which is why I am more taken with things like the availability numbers, which are less subjective (and thus affectable by bias). The loco is either available, or it wasn't; or, in other equally powerful numbers, how many of which classes were retained.

    In terms of the goal of turning around an unfair appraisal of Thompson, I think it's better to focus on the cast-iron stuff like availability numbers, etc; it leaves fewer places to mount a counter-attack. Whether or not other alternatives as CME were considered is potentially murky, and people who want to discount the whole fresh look will focus on the potential issues with that point, trying to cast a pall over the whole effort. Best, IMO, to focus on the numbers, etc, which tell a pretty unstoppable tale.

    Noel
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2019
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  3. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    This very worth covering in the book - not just because it's a incredibly worthy tale in its own right, but also because (as you've previously pointed out) it illuminates some of Thompson's decisions - the operational environment he was working in.

    Noel
     
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  4. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Having listened to the podcast I wonder if Thompson was aware of his own brief time in post - knowing that LNER policy was for retirement at 65 - and what effect that had on the choices he made - or was forced to make given the ongoing war situation and its effect on resources.
     
  5. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    Given the situation, I am surprised that the LNER would enforce retirement at 65, both because of the manpower situation & to give some continuity
     
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  6. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I think he was - very much so. He is quoted directly as saying at his first meeting as CME:

    “I have much to do gentlemen, and little time in which to do it”.
     
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  7. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    It was a different era.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     
  8. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Had a lot of feedback on the podcast and more requests for sources/information which I have been happy to provide. Thank you to everyone who has listened and made comments. I welcome all feedback.

    I had a few queries on the the availability figures; I am still working on the overall spreadsheet of data.

    However I am pleased to showcase a new dashboard as part of the spreadsheet:

    upload_2019-7-24_14-31-37.png

    As the spreadsheet gets further populated, these will increase. The magic number for 1942 is around 6500 locomotives (which shows you I still have many classes to go!) and hopefully this will help give a better idea as to the full makeup of the LNER fleet and its performance.

    I have been debating with myself the inclusion of locomotives whose availability skews the stats somewhat - e.g. D17 where its availability in 1942 was 9% (!!!) Including it gives the most accurate picture of the fleet. Equally it does change the overall stats. This loco (for it was just the one of two locomotives in this class) was preserved.

    Your thoughts on this as ever, appreciated.

    Lastly: I can confirm am doing two talks this coming October. One in London at the Model Railway Club of London, and the second in York with the Gresley Society.

    I'd like to thank Ian McCabe and Mark Allatt for their support in allowing me to give my talk. All are welcome, once I have the poster I will share it here. I intend to have copies of my research notes and possibly the book too on the evening for people to examine.

    Oh - and obviously I have taken advantage of the opportunity to travel behind one of Thompson's finest recently. It's not quite a Bulleid Pacific with a rake of Pullmans, but it has its own charm...

    IMG_9050.JPG
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2019
  9. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Mainly a check with current progress; is there any news of publication of the book yet ?
     
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  10. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Hi Fred,

    I’m still working on the bibliography and the associated availability reports. It’s been a long summer with exams so this has taken priority a bit.

    Whatever happens, I’ll have a version of it available to look at when I give my Gresley society talk in October. At the moment I don’t have a set publisher - I may still yet self publish (as originally planned).

    If anyone is in York this Saturday, I’ll be in search engine and am happy to talk shop whilst I look at archive material.

    Best wishes

    Simon
     
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  11. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    {Just saw this query.}

    It seems to me that if including/not-including one loco changes overall availability numbers significantly, then whatever method you're using to calculate overall availability has to have an issue. In a fleet of ~6500 locos (to take your number), one loco just shouldn't have that much of an impact. However, without knowing the details on how you're calculating overall availability, it's hard to say more.

    Noel
     
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  12. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Hi Noel,

    All loco classes calculated the same way (happy to send you a locked copy of the spreadsheet if you want to analyse?)

    D17 is a unique case as it’s so monumentally low that it changes the overall fleet availability (!!!) - 9% off the top of my head!

    Best wishes

    Simon
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2019
  13. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    Ah, it sounds like you're calculating the availability of each class, and then taking the simple average of the per-class numbers? If so, I don't think that's a useful number; to put it another way, the availability of an entire fleet of thousands of locos just doesn't drop ~9% because one loco is having issues! I would suggest instead weighting the contribution of each class by its size; i.e. take that list of per-class numbers, multiply each by the size of that class, add those products together, and then divide the sum. I think that's an entirely defensible process, as in real life, the contribution of each class to overall loco availability will depend on the size of the class.

    I have no suggestion as to whether to divide by the number of classes, or the number of locos, as long as it's the same choice in all years. Each of the two will say something interesting about the evolution of availability across the period. On thinking about it, using the total number of locos is probably the more reflective of overall availability, although it might be interesting to do both, and see how they compare over time.

    Noel
     
  14. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Thank you Noel - food for thought! And you can see the overall conundrum.

    I am trying not to twist the figures I have too much for fear of “massaging the Thompson figures” as I was recently accused of online (!) but I think your approaches you’ve suggested may have some merit for a more holistic overview of the LNER in those years.
     
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  15. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    The trouble is if you want to evaluate the relative maintenance overhead of different classes then you have little choice but to calculate by class. which does leave you awfully vulnerable to statistical anomalies where there are very small classes. There can be other issues too. Cook notes that overhauls of the nine 47xxs had to be very carefully scheduled because they only had ten standard 7 boilers, and they didn't want to bring a loco in into the works without an exchange boiler ready.
     
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  16. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    The 47xx story sounds familiar...

    #A2/2
     
  17. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Thanks for the update; I look forward to reading it.
     
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  18. jnc

    jnc Well-Known Member

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    If you want to compare classes, absolutely, you have to do each class separately. But if one wants to compare whole organizations (e.g. LNER vs LMS or GWR), or if one wants too see how the readiness of a single company changed over time, then one has, I think, to pick a metric which doesn't give very small classes un-due weight - which simply averaging the per-class readiness numbers does.

    Noel
     
  19. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Its fair comment, but even then...

    To an extent just have to live with it. Say, for instance, you form a hypothesis that 2cyl better than 3. In 1939 2cyl fleet on LNER was aging, in 1948 it had many v new locos. Ought to look much better. You have to find controls in your data. Very hard to do really well.

    And selection bias comes in so much too. Very hard to defeat preconceptions with stats, but ultimately the only way.
     
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  20. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Hi Jim - completely agree. Which is why one of my current lines of thought is that it is difficult to take away any solid conclusions - including any claims to Thompson and his locos being particularly poor - when the LNER, more than any other railway, hadn't kept the pace of renewing their locomotive stock at the rate required to replace the oldest engines working.

    (That’s not a reflection on Gresley - who was doing his best with what he was allowed to do as much as Thompson was).

    One of the things I can show with the stats I have is average age of locomotive stock by taking a reasonable mean from each class - a “typical loco” of class A10 for example was at least twenty years old in 1945 - and comparing this overall to other railways.

    It’s all fascinating stuff (to me anyway!) and it raises so many questions on LNER writers past and present that they haven’t ever really considered stuff like this.
     
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