Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

I wonder how fast it would have gone going down the Lickey rather than Stoke?

 

Even a Saint could have done 130mph going down the Lickey instead of up it...!

 

Please fell free to start an "I hate Sir Nigel Gresley" thread elsewhere on the forum. In the meantime please refrain from cluttering this thread with your ill informed nonsense.
And for your info, conjugated gear existed before Gresley adopted and adapted it. Research Holcroft.

 

I disagree with Hermod, but I am mindful that English is not his first language. Let's not be hostile on that point.

 

I'm aware of that but only certain allowances can be made in those circumstances. I'm on a German forum and post in German, far from my first language, but nevertheless I manage to avoid provocative posts regarding their loco engineers and their designs.

 

Can I have that framed please?

 

Not sure what the point is that Hermod is trying to make. Through development the Gresley Pacifics were better and more reliable performers towards the end of their lives (particularly from the late 1950s) than in their early days. From the writings of Peter Townend (Shedmaster at Kings Cross in the 1950s) such things as the 2 : 1 gear and inside big-ends were the least of his problems. Anything that receives little or no maintenance will suffer under those circumstances. Examination of inside big-ends became the norm at around 12,000 miles, and I gather that the LMS/LMR did the same on their 3-cylinder locos at that figure, also the Deutsche Bundesbahn with their Class 10 Pacifics. The only reason for LNER Pacifics being withdrawn from service was that they were superseded by other forms of locos, the Deltics in particular.

 

Quite so, and even then, a number went on for a further three years in Scotland, where they were drafted in to replace diesels not up to the job!

 

Only the other day I was idly speculating as to what a shame it is that whilst there are many millions of words devoted to British railway history, there are very few books on the technical aspects of railways that are themselves useful as history. Most technical railway history books - with a few notable exceptions - don't note their sources, so it is difficult to judge the extent to which their content can be trusted.

Whether or not you agree with Simon's thesis, he is clearly committing a serious act of writing history, and for that he should be applauded! My only hopes are that firstly his sources are properly footnoted, and secondly that he has an editor. There have been a few excellent books in recent years which could have been substantially improved by better editing.

 

What about - affordable Economic History's as well, the economics of the S&D sound fascinating, its just that nobody has written it all down

 

Liking this post is not enough, I have to second your comment on Harold Holcroft. He was really was the inventor of the so called Gresley conjugated gear and of course he came up with the idea when he was at Swindon.

 

If you like that sort of thing, Adrian Gray's twin histories of the LCDR and SER concentrate quite heavily on the financial history of those two companies - though for those two, and particularly the LCDR, it's a rich field!

Amongst loco histories, an awful lot tend to be a bit top trumps: "Following the success of his 17 inch goods locos, Mr RH Cotterpin followed it up with his celebrated 17 1/16" class goods engines, which did such stirling work on the Much Meddling and Little Snoring line during the 1897 mangel-wurzel harvest crisis." Or else you get the Nockian "pressure was steadily maintained at 163 psi with water level 3/32" above half glass with regulator 7/19 open and cut off set to 27.46%, until a change in gradient while approaching the Much Binding avoiding line flyover saw cut off eased to 27.91%, leading to a pressure drop to 162 psi before a recovery once over [cont. in similar vein for about three books per year for half a century]..."

In that regard, Langridge's books are important, in that they show, perhaps for the first time, the design process by which locomotives arrived, rather than assuming they came, as it were, by immaculate conception. By-the-by, they also demonstrate not just that in many cases, such things are a continuum, but also the relatively small role, at least in design terms, played by the notional CME, at least on the LMS. (The CME, of course, had far more important things to do than sweating over the niceties of whether an extra six inches between the trailing two axles in the following year's series of 2-6-4 tanks might give room for a couple of square feet more grate area, and then following through the detail of how that would effect the weight distribution...)

Given that, I hope @S.A.C. Martin's book turns out well, since I think trying to set the design process into the context of the real world operational issues being faces - specifically around maintenance costs - could be a way of saying something genuinely new about the evolution of Thompson's locos.

Tom

 

Indeed, though there was a pair of interesting articles on the closure in Backtrack a couple of years which touched on that.


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When talking about the SER & the LCDR from a financial point isnt 'poor' more commonly used than rich?

 

Very much so ... in fact I hummed and haa'ed over that phrase before leaving it in. I'd go so far as to suggest that you cannot really write a meaningful history of the LCDR without delving deep into financial and legal matters of 1860s England; and you cannot write a meaningful history of the SER without effectively writing extensively about the LCDR. But we digress...

Tom

 

Presumably Gresley preferred the 3 cylinder / conjugated valve gear combination in the same way that modern motorists prefer either petrol or diesel-fuelled motor cars. It was something he preferred, was willing to accept the stricter maintenance requirements and felt that in the right hands the locomotives so fitted were "better" machines.

I noted earlier in this discussion that Haymarket depot actually undertook maintenance of conjugated valve gears at shorter intervals than recommended by Doncaster and this was reflected in their better performance figures. You ask if Gresley's action were an ego thing; may I ask if your continued diatribes are also an ego thing as you seek to demolish the reputation of one of the UK's finest CMEs ?

 

I would go a step further and suggest that, while discussion of the merits of the work of different CME's and expressing views about their competence is fair comment, it is unlikely that many of us on this forum are equipped to psychoanalyse people who died many years ago, including both Gresley and Thompson.

 

There are two things which strike me about the discussion over the last few days.

The first regards the treatment of one member - from abroad - who with no particular emotional baggage or attachment to Gresley has been critical of him.

The immediate response from some quarters has been to fire shots at the member in question and to try to defend Gresleys honour, as it were.

No CME is beyond reproach. Criticism may or may not be valid. But the name of Gresley does produce this strange rush to defend - unnecessary and not entirely a good look.

It’s an echo of precisely the same way the Thompson Vs Gresley debate often happens.

The second thing is the question surrounding my work - the thing that has taken the longest is the referencing - more or less done. Difficult when you have to add stuff, renumber it all and see that it all lines up properly...

This book has been a big part of my life for the last seven years. It’s taken many forms. Some of it was good, some of it turned out to be utter claptrap. When the facts change, so must I...

It’s been a hell of a long slog. Hopefully on the downward stretch now.

 

You mention the German Class 23 2-6-2. I do not think that Edward Thompson liked 2-6-2 and 2-8-2 engines. If he had liked them, then perhaps he would have produced 2-cylinder 2-6-2 and 2-8-2 designs.

Mr Martin kindly posted some fine pictures of the Thompson B1 4-6-0. It seems to me that, among the many British 4-6-0 designs, the B1 is the one most similar to the Prussian P8 - the world's most numerous class of 4-6-0. The two classes are of about the same size and weight, both have parallel boilers with round-topped fireboxes, both have 2 outside cylinders and outside valve gear, both have a long gap between the second and third coupled axles with the rear axle set well back under the cab. It seems like an example of what biologists call "convergent evolution", where a similar solution evolves from different ancestries, in different places and at different times.

In the English Wikipedia article on the P8, there is a good photo of a P8 in Prussian green livery. In that colour, it looks almost like an LNER locomotive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_P_8

 

The two desiderata may not be altogether compatible. Extensive footnoting of sources adds a good quantity of material which may not be approved by an editor or match the publisher's house style.