Sir Nigel Gresley - The L.N.E.R.’s First C.M.E.

I think that is a slightly reductionist view. I would argue that all sources of evidence whether primary or secondary need to be screened for evidence of bias. Minutes of meetings can be written or edited for a purpose.

Where I agree with you is that in all walks of life there are people who for whatever reason are out to make a case which may or may not stack up. But there are also people who are doing their best to tell the story as they assemble and analyse it and others telling the story from their perspective. The null hypothesis is that they are honest witnesses. To take an example, Gourvish's three books combine primary and secondary sources and his judgements. I think that is the only way to write a history of BR and its successors.

Sometimes the consensus is essentially valid. Then eighty years on we are left asking questions such as --- what mileage did the W1 actually run in its original form and why was it 'rebuilt'? Why does an apparently straight commentator, FAS Brown, describe Chapelon's contributions as a 'climacteric' in loco engineering? Is that OTT or fair commentary? And so on. Challenge and reconsideration is all part of the process.

 

I don’t disagree, although my experience in the LNER’s board minutes was that they were very good at recording decisions with explanations. Decisions almost always had reports submitted ahead of any kind of vote or agreement.

Much of the archives between the NRM and Kew gives letters and reports between different members of the railway company and crucially most of the major players including Gresley, Bulleid, Thom, Thompson and more.

 

I would challenge that, we have had in this country pretty robust laws in place whereby board minutes must be accurate records of events. Some companies are better at this than others. I would suggest screening for bias in terms of the LNER board minutes is a hiding to nothing, the board directors could be pretty brutal with Gresley, Thompson and Peppercorn at times asking for evidence towards decision making.

I agree, but I’m not the one making claims without evidence; I have been consistent in challenging assertions

I think part of the problem with the perception of the W1 has been secondary sources, with respect. Where Chapelon is concerned, attributing “climacteric” to him seems a significant overstatement. I have still to be convinced of his influence being so wide ranging.

 

Its complicated I think. As I said above, if we take the mentions in ILocE discussions as being an indicator then Chapelon's influence can only really have started in the mid 30s, and most particularly post war. We may also note his book was published in 1938. So the opportunities for his work to influence major designs must be limited, because only a limited number were designed after that. Its recorded that both GWR valve chest and LNER steam passage design was modified with ideas from Chapelon. It seems unlikely that Bulleid was uninfluenced by his work. But bearing in mind that for some years subsequently the GWR drawing office, for example, was as much preoccupied with landing craft and tanks as new design, the opportunities were limited. And then most post WW2 designs came from what many would regard as a somewhat uninspired design school. The only really innovative work, it could be argued, came from Ell. I know pathetically little about Ell and his influences, but it would bear study. At the moment though I'm mired in the mid 19thC for my projects.

A number of posts here, mine for instance, that would be better in the Chapelon thread.

 

Perhaps Chapelon's influence was limited, particularly in the UK, by language. All his writings were in French. Both Gresley and Bulleid were fluent in French.

 

Surely that's a little late? Both Gresley and Bulleid visited Tours in 1925. Marc de Caso had adopted Chapelon's methods in the early 30s - just look at the valve chests of his 150Ps.

 

The law may require minutes to be accurate but it certainly doesn't require a verbatim record of everything that everyone says, so there is plenty of scope for being selective in what is recorded and even for being "economical with the truth". I am not claiming that any particular sets of minutes are misleading, but the possibility does exist.

You do seem to dismiss any claim that lacks solid primary evidence, regardless of the weight of secondary evidence and of plausibility.

Turning to the W1 in particular (and ignoring how far if at all Chapelon influenced it) should we regard it as "a nice idea but" or was it only that the work that would have been needed to perfect it was not economically justified? (Or do I need to read the book for the answer?)

 

That’s a pretty conspiratorial approach and not one I really think is actually applicable to the railway companies we discuss on a daily basis. If I may hazard a comment, having read the LNER board minutes from 1923 through to 1948, I am in a probably unique position in being able to give an informed view on them.

No, I don’t think whoever was taking the board minutes down was being selective - at all - if anything the opposite applies and the leather bound and heavy volumes of the LNER board minutes are a robust record of events to a level of exacting detail that puts other public records to shame.

Where there are proper citations, primary evidence and perhaps even recorded or photographic records, then I’m more in favour of that than much of how railway history has been written to date, which is largely not academically driven in terms of the quality of the writing and far more conversational and supposition than required.

Yes, I am for an evidence based approach and if a secondary piece of evidence says something that is contradicted by the existing primary evidence, I have the ability to recognise that and treat it on its own merit, and then say if it has any.

That’s how we approached the Thompson debate and frankly that approach has been shown to work to the extent that we recognised a good amount of the secondary evidence was in fact prejudicial writing, which needs to be identified and called out in favour of genuine evidence based approaches.

I am happy to give my view: I think the high pressure version of the W1 was actually not a million miles away from an entirely workable locomotive class and as a prototype it actually did some pretty remarkable things.

However, far too much emphasis is placed on the water tube boiler and not its streamlined casing, which is in fact the far more interesting engineering marvel, which directly led to the A4 Pacifics and changed Gresley’s understanding of scientific development to a great extent. The W1 as a chapter in Gresley’s life is something remarkable and the secondary sources writing on it to date (with the exception of William Brown) haven’t truly understood how important the W1 is in the history of high speed rail.

 

My inner historian is grateful for this rigour. Repeatedly asking "why is this true" is a necessary corrective to received wisdom, where that weight of secondary evidence is very strongly based on received wisdom that, surprisingly often (see Thompson) withers on contact with robust scrutiny.

 

Although the rebuilding of No 3566 took place in 1929, it was then subject to prolonged and extensive testing. It was 1932 before the first "production batch" of 20 more locos was rebuilt (with the whole class of 89 engines being rebuilt by 1938, supplemented by 28 new-builds for the Nord).

The first of the 4-8-0 rebuilds was in 1932, again followed by extensive testing before a further 11 of the smaller-wheeled 4500 class Pacifics were rebuilt to 4-8-0 in 1934.

So it would have been mid 1930s before Chapelon's rebuilds were operating in substantial numbers. It may well have been only then that his achievements became widespread knowledge across the international engineering community and his name starts to get frequent mentions in journals and institution discussions. Gresley was probably "ahead of the curve" if he incorporated Chapelon lessons in his P2s in 1934.

 

I have no quarrel with any of that, but what do you do if there is no primary evidence to be found but it seems plausible that something happened and lots of secondary sources claim that it did happen?

 

You would treat it on its own merit, as I have always tried to. If something is plausible, but only secondary sources stated it happened, then that’s what you would say.

We saw this with the speed record conversation thread. Lots of secondary sources stating something happened, but there’s no official record and some of it is plausible to a degree. Do you then take it as read an actual speed record did, in fact happen?

I think it’s pretty clear that we treat secondary sources with caution and treat them on their own merit. No, you shouldn’t rule anything out unless you have superior primary evidence that contradicts it.

 

I think it must vary by company as to how detailed the minutes are.

For example - and this seems to be much closer to @Jimc’s experience - I've been reading the locomotive committee minutes of the SE&CR. A large part of each meeting must have been taken up reading an extensive statistical report prepared by the Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent (i.e. Wainwright) which goes into considerable detail (significant parts of which are copied out long-hand in the minutes; the report doesn't survive, or at least aren't held by the SE&CR Society). The report covers items such as

• the numbers of locomotives between the two sections (South Eastern and Chatham - they were reported separately, reflecting the fact that the two companies were still legally separate);
• numbers of duplicate locos; numbers of staff in the running (drivers, firemen, cleaners, coalmen etc) and workshop (fitters, boilersmiths, foremen etc) departments and their salaries;
• the running costs for the department;
• the maximum and average numbers of locos in steam on any one day over the period reported
• the number of locos to be renewed in the period, their general type and the proposed fate of those withdrawn (generally scrapping)

etc.; similar numbers are also given for carriages and wagons.

But there is no minuted discussion – at the end you get a minute note along the lines “It was resolved: To approve the Locomotive & Carriage and Wagon Superintendent’s report and recommend the Managing Committee to confirm the method of renewal of old Engines, Carriages & Wagons”.

Sometimes you get other things discussed, but again no discussion as to why. For example, from June 1904, you start getting a statistical return headed “No. of Chatham Section engines fitted for working vacuum braked trains” followed by numbers (the LCDR having been an air-braked line and SER vacuum braked). But there is no previous minute recording a decision as to the rationale. Presumably somewhere there must have been a decision that the company would standardise on vacuum rather than air brakes, and would therefore gradually re-equip air-braked stock – certainly locos – to conform, but there was no discussion in the minutes as to the rationale behind the decision. Maybe it was agreed by the main Managing Committee (i.e. in effect the company board) rather than by the subsidiary Locomotive Committee, but in essence the Loco Committee minutes have no discussion as to the rationale of the policy, merely statistical reports on its implementation.

Tom

 

The kind of minute you describe 'A report by x was received and it was resolved that xxx' is certainly the norm in all company minutes I've seen/ been involved with. In fact, in writing papers for boards, it was standard practice to set out the words that were to be copied into the minutes setting out exactly what you were looking for approval for.

I expect we have all seen minutes of societies and associations that go into considerable depriving recording who said what, but my experience is that is not the norm for commercial operations, so it's interesting that the LNER appears to have varied from this.

 

I would say that the LNER board minutes are very much as described by Tom above for the SECR: however, and part of why I find them fascinating, you do get this additional commentary on particularly important events (e.g. agreeing funding for the high speed trains, Edward Thompson being appointed, P2 rebuilds, etc).

There is very much a crossover between the main board/emergency board and locomotive committee minutes frequently. I suspect, though I cannot prove this, it is down to Gresley/Thompson/Peppercorn/Harrison/Spencer being present at mostly both over the years when acting as CME/assistant to the CME/etc.

The LNER is an outlier in that regard, I feel.

 

I've just rechecked the minutes of a meeting I was at, and support the view that the LNER was an outlier. In qualitative discussions, the minutes record the key issues discussed, followed by the decision; there is very little on the content of the paper which is taken as read. As a meeting secretary, I record no more than is necessary to give context to a reader at a subsequent meeting, and always assume that they will have access to the papers submitted to the meeting.

 

A very few of what are called Guard Books survive for the GWR locomotive committee. Look out for these, because they are a great source. A Guard book was a sort of scrapbook into which copies of all the supporting papers etc for the meeting were pasted.

 

But before rebuilding, 3566, along with other members of the 4500 and 3500 classes (4528 & 4597 amongst them), together with a simple expansion Pacific of the 3591 Class (3638), were modified with Kylchap exhausts and tested. These tests showed a reduction in exhaust back pressure of about 40%. It was these tests that Gresley and Bulleid travelled to Tours to witness. Modification of the steam circuit would have required rebuilding 3566 and the decision to rebuild it was taken in November 1926. Gresley was indeed way ahead of the curve!

A Kylchap exhaust was applied to D49 No. 322 in 1928.

 

It was a Kylala exhaust, not a kylchap.

I mean, you said this before and you quoted the LNER Encyclopaedia - which says this:

 

Other sources state that Chapelon supplied drawings of a Kyala exhaust with modifications made by Chapelon. Chapelon subsequently rode on one of the locomotives concerned and noticed that the installation was not according to his drawing. This information likely came from Chapelon himself.

When I use LNER.info as a source, you tell me that it's secondary!