Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Nobody is suggesting they were perfect, though.

 

Good luck with that. Accuracy is not the top priority in wikipedia land. If significant number s of people have repeated arrAnt nonsense wikipedia policy is to keep repeating...

 

I think our Danish friend has a high opinion of them.

 

I'm not sure the Kitson-Still was a failure in the same sense that the others were. Being one of a kind was obviously a disadvantage, and back in the day the relative cost of coal and oil didn't favour it, but after the inevitable teething troubles were sorted out I think it did its work well enough.

 

I'd not read much about the Thompson L1's before. I'm struck by the extensive testing and appraisal that the prototype was subject, and the ringing success it appears to have been. It is unclear whether the leaking welded side tanks were down to a design failing, or poor materials/execution. Certainly the necessity for repairs only 6 months after entering service indicates a significant issue. Whether Thompson would have addressed this before ordering the production series of locomotives we can never know (until Simon's history spade uncovers something), but British Railways didn't change the design.
The shortcomings of the bearings are also peculiar. If it were such an obvious mistake in the design, there ought , surely, to have been a correspondingly obvious solution-but so far as I have read, none of the commentators have been able to point to an obvious flaw.

 

They look pleasing with their roundtopped boilers.
It would have been more facts for this thread if they had been tested against Gresley V1/V3.
Should Thomson/Peppercorn/Bulleid/Riddles have conjugated?
I have read that some of the conjugated 2-6-0 were very unpleasant riders as well.

 

Bill Harvey had a number of L1s in his charge when he was shedmaster at Neasden. They were suffering a large number of failures and causing a lot of problems in dealing with the traffic. He states that the coupled wheel bearings were inadequate. The B1s also suffered from this problem but it was worse on the L1s were worse due to the small size of the wheels. There is quite a lot of detail in pages 154 to 160 of the book Bill Harvey's 60 years in Steam. There were other issues which contributed to the problem. The K1 moguls had the same size driving wheel and the same tractive effort but did not seem to suffer the same problems. Were the axle boxes modified or were the K1s not subject to the same axlebox loads because the ran at slowr speeds

 

Not denying that. Railway history is full of rough riding locos. Some became rough when due for overhaul, others became so much quicker.

 

I do not know if March or any other home sheds had any passenger diagrams for these locos, but on summer Saturdays they were common on the Cambridge main line on Passenger trains, presumably Stratford had "borrowed" them for specials before returning to March on their normal duties.

 

I am not sure if this is of any interest. I was reading about George Ivatt (Raven’s other son-in-law?) and there is a reference to a book by Bonavia entitled ‘the birth of British Rail’. Why I thought I would mention it is that there is apparently a photo of: Bulleid, Peppercorn, Thompson, Stanier and Ivatt at the opening of the Rugby testing station in Oct 1948

http://www.steamindex.com/people/ivatt.htm#son

It appears that no one had a bad word to say about George Ivatt.

 

I am not 100% certain that the K1s didn't suffer with this problem tbh. However all three - B1, K1 and L1 were given modified axleboxes and shims to try and alleviate the problems. We must remember that all three classes were built as austerity designs, and their much simplified design included a number of work arounds, including fabricated axleboxes where castings were not able to be obtained (during the war, and immediately post war, foundry work in all of the major LNER works was given over to the war effort).

 

Thompson retired in 1946 and the production batches were built from 1948. He therefore had no input on the production batch building of his standard tank engine design.

No.9000 - the prototype - built in 1945, and was on test for nearly three years as the lone Thompson L1 tank engine before approval to build the production batches occurred. Almost every magazine report I have found from the railway press around that time is incredibly positive about no.9000. Like the B1, which was praised for its good looks and simplicity of build, no,9000 really impressed enthusiasts and railwaymen alike.

What is most astonishing about no.9000 is the sheer amount of comparative testing they did with it. It literally hauled every type of train you could conceive, was recorded for results, and compared with other locomotives. It was the most extensive set of a trials with an LNER locomotive bar the W1, I think it would be fair to say.

By the time the production batches were being built, Peppercorn had also retired by virtue of nationalisation of the railways.

There is an argument, I feel, that neither Thompson nor Peppercorn can be blamed particularly for the shortcomings of the production L1s. They were not in a position to influence the building of the locomotives, whose shortcomings were down as much to post-war austerity measures as it was deviating from Thompson's prototype L1 (both sets of production batches incorporated some changes from no.9000 including the style of the doors on the cabs, cylinder linings, change in boiler pressure at one point).

There seems to be - from LNER writers anyway - a weird belief that the changes applied in the mid 50s to some of the L1s where their cylinders and boiler pressure was concerned, was to do with axle box overheating. From that I have read, I cannot see how this would be so, when the issue was mostly resolved on the B1s and some L1s with axlebox shims, and making sure the tanks (which were welded) were watertight (if they leaked, this caused water ingress to the frames and axleboxes and thus overheating).

 

Which is his right, and he is not wrong to hold that.

From my point of view, I have always found them (and just like the Gresley V3s which preceded them) to be handsome locomotives. Particularly in apple green. Their shortcomings are highlighted but I do not believe them to be any less reliable than the locomotives they replaced, nor were they (as has been suggested) designed to directly replace the V3s.

They were always designed as an additional standard class to supplement the existing Gresley V3s (which were placed firmly in the "non-standard, to be maintained" category) and to form the basis for the LNER's standard classes going forward.

 

Did I say otherwise?

 

Not in so many words: I sense scepticism that he should hold that view mind.

The one thing this thread has shown in spades is that we're debating on a subject which, if we have someone who comes from outside of the British influence, gives a very different point of view. We might not agree with it, but we can see it as more impartial, to an extent, as it doesn't come with the baggage we all share (myself included - and possibly more so - than others).

 

You sense wrong. I was simply stating a fact. Anyway, somebody who views ET as the best thing since sliced bread is certainly going to be right up your street.

 

But I disagree with him on several of his points particularly the Gresley ones. Which you have seen me respond to.

Honestly, I’ve never asked for acolytes or a deification of Thompson.

But if someone else sees Thompson differently, surely we should ask? And try to understand? And if we disagree, challenge constructively?

You seem obsessed with the idea that I somehow think Thompson was perfect. I’ve never said that. I’ve always pointed out his shortcomings.

But he’s not the most evil man of the 1940s and so much written about him is wrong. That record has to be corrected where we have evidence.

 

I am not in a position to agree or disagree but I think you need to be circumspect in placing too much value on contemporary magazine reports. The Locomotive magazine for instance was inevitably gushing about any new locomotive, partly as (being new when it was reported on) there would be no experience of it, and more importantly, they wanted to retain good relationships with the railway companies. so their descriptions are largely factual. Also, it was a more deferential age and they were not trying to sell magazines by being controversial.

 

The motoring press particularly, was terrible in the 40's and 50's for a sycophantic enthusiasm for anything the British motor industry produced. Warmed up leftovers from 1939 were trumpeted as fantastic new cars, ignoring the vast leaps in technology that had taken place. Advances which were largely ignored by the industry. Find a contemporary report about the MG-TC for example.
I remember reading an article about the wonderful, new, luxurious, Avro Lancastrian airliner , which would whisk its (wealthy) passengers off to far flung shores, and tactfully ignoring the fact that it was a Lanc with some windows and cramped seating where the bombs used to go.