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Francis Webb,good or bad?

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Hermod, Mar 22, 2020.

  1. sir gilbert claughton

    sir gilbert claughton Well-Known Member

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    the persistance of the chain brake had more to do with Richard Moon than Frank Webb .Webb of course supported it but Moon could have said no at any time and his will would have been done.

    Webb was a brilliant engineer . he is unfairly criticised for his compounds even tho' they produced work that no other UK company could match .

    he did much more than shape Crewe as a workshop. under Webb just about every item used by the NW was produced at Crewe . plus he installed the first Bessemer plant in the world.

    as a boss ? no worse than any other of the time , but he gave the Company a motivated work force and the best practice in the world.

    as a person ? one man i would have loved to meet .- and like another maligned man - Thompson - capable of great kindness .

    as a teacher ? Aspinall , Gresley ? say no more .

    an involved member of the community ? Mayor twice , benefactor to the town - Webb Park , works hospital for workers and families .played cricket !

    he was a great man and Hermod's bias is unworthy
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2020
  2. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    We need an “amen brother” button. I think across his collected works, he gives a massively distorted view of actual real world loco performance, firstly by selection bias (i.e. selecting only interesting or notable runs); secondly by concentrating only on the performance of the loco, he misses any human factors etc. (For example, two runs might have identical times, but the one with awful coal and a loco due a washout would be better than the one with good coal). Not to mention that the driver who consistently departs on time and arrives on time with the minimum of fuss has done the best possible job for his employer.

    Sorry - Nock on loco performance - personal bugbear! He is better on signalling.

    Tom
     
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  3. sir gilbert claughton

    sir gilbert claughton Well-Known Member

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    the first line was allegedly uttered by Churchward .- and not in that form or context .

    i will ignore the rest of your post .it doesn't warrant serious comment
     
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  4. Aberdare

    Aberdare New Member

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    Hermod,

    Not quite so bad as you believe, here are the figures for the 3 classes of GWR 4 cylinder locomotives. Dividing the drive may have increased hammer blow but it helped in other ways.

    Andy. Hammer blow tables copy.jpg
     
  5. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    That is a post Bridge stress repport calculation
    Before 1927 the Star class combined hammerblow was worse than a Saint.
    It was changed very fast after publication by Collet.
    Stannier made it even better on a Pacific with nil hammerblow.
    It could be done
    Cox has written a paper on it but I cannot find the link
     
  6. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Before publication I believe. And isn't that Collett all over? When required to produce a new class he'd get his team to deliver a mechanically updated version of the old one, but present him with a engineering issue, be it weight distribution, springing or bearing reliability he'd get a fix brought in and distributed round the fleet, old and new.
     
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  7. andrewshimmin

    andrewshimmin Well-Known Member

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    Webb articles in Backtrack (there may be more):
    * Vol.7, No 3, May-June 1993 (Bob Essery)
    * Vol 9, No 11, Nov 1995 (Michael Rutherford)
    * Vol 32, No 6, June 2018 (L.A.Summers, part 1)
    * Vol 32, No 7, July 2018 (L.A.Summers, part 2)
    There are probably others.

    The later ones are available as digital downloads.

    Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2020
  8. andrewshimmin

    andrewshimmin Well-Known Member

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  9. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    God save us from the timers with their stop watches. 'Ooooh no, he didn't exceed 45 on the climb up Ais Gill, it must be a terrible design and driver.'

    Needless to say, is much like in the thread on Thompson, no CME is an island. Nor are they quite the God that they are often portrayed in the literature. They are all products of their times and they are all constrained by the demands and circumstances in which they are working. I can't think of any CME ever who had a blank canvas, no urgent demands, lots of cash and no technical constraints.

    Perhaps, Webb, like Thompson, and others was a useful scapegoat for wider issues and personality conflicts, internal organisational frustrations. 30 years is a long time to be in post.
     
  10. andrewtoplis

    andrewtoplis Well-Known Member

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    Is there something to be said about support staff? Remember that the LNWR CME would have been a vast job with thousands of staff across scores of roles. As much as we look at the top job their team would have done a huge amount of the more detailed work. Did Webb have such support?
     
  11. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Yes, he did. I think Tommy Sackville was one, and J.N. Jackson rings a bell, but these men continued in the Loco Drawing Office after Webb's retirement and carried across many design features and details, and the 'Webb look', of course.
     
  12. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    The interesting thing about Webb is that he really does act as a bridge between the generations.

    He is a pupil under Francis (son of Richard) Trevithick and his pupils include as noted Gresley, Ivatt and Aspinall.

    At the same time as turning out 2-4-0's he is also turning out 0-8-0s almost a decade before they appeared on the GNR, NER etc and the Midland is turning Singles and nothing bigger than a 2-6-0 for freight.

    I think attention has tended to focus on his failures rather than his successes. No one focusses on Gresley, Churchwood or Stanier's less successful designs and the flip side is that there is far more focus on say Bulleid or Thompson's less successful designs than their successful designs.

    It seems that once a narrative is established about a designer, there is very little way to challenge it.

    I read somewhere but I can't remember where that his chosen successor was in charge of Crewe but died aged 34.
     
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  13. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    Crewe Works Manager, Thomas Stubbs.
     
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  14. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    Thanks. Sorry I got that wrong. Stubbs was Ramsbottom's supposed successor not Webb's.
     
  15. huochemi

    huochemi Part of the furniture

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    Possibly from Locomotive Engineers of the LMS etc, by Griffiths p51 (i.e. Stubbs as a possible replacement for Ramsbottom). This however is slightly contradictory as in the [same] section dealing with Webb's move to the Bolton Iron & Steel Co in 1866, it speculates why he should have chosen to leave the LNWR when he had been singled out to take over from Ramsbottom. Incidentally, Ramsbottom is praised very highly in this work.

    Another useful primer on Webb is Spinks' Bibliography published by the LNWR Society.
     
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  16. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    Maybe like some football managers, politicians, etc he hung on too long. Aging and declining powers confronted with increased demands.

    With regard to the criticism of Webb for compounding, I think almost all designers are wedded to certain ideas or practices, so whether that is types of valve gear, compounding, wheel arrangements. I struggle to think of any designer who was in post long enough to see that one of their babies was a bad design choice and then abandon it in favour of something else.

    Also, the criticism of Webb as a person, there was someone worse whose name I have forgotten but I recall that they were worse than the Drummonds, and no one liked them.
     
  17. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    The GCR's Robinson spring to mind. His 'Director' class were a reversion to a four coupled layout, following the less than stellar performance of his six coupled beasties.
     
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  18. LMS2968

    LMS2968 Part of the furniture

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    John Chester Craven of the LBSCR?
     
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  19. Dunfanaghy Road

    Dunfanaghy Road Well-Known Member

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    Dugald Drummond must have been aware that his first 4-6-0s were duds, as he tinkered with the dimensions (to no good effect) more than once. He then returned to his comfort zone, the 4-4-0, with the D15 class.
    Pat
     
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  20. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    Critisism of Webb for being too long in love with faulty own ideas is unjust.
    The time from Greater Brittain,John Hick 2-4-2 to Jubilee Alfreds 4-4-0 was short and can only (as I see it) have been ordered and guided by himself.
    It became full time cottage industry to denigrate Webb compounds based on measurements from boys with stopwatches.
    Webb was a giant like Ramsbottom that invented piston rings and Lanchester that discovered how birds and aircraft flew before Prandtl in Germany.
    Superheating was not realistic in Webbs time and if there had been so much care and talent around him as around von Borries in Germany Alfreds would have been Worlds best for quite some years.
    Am I, by the way,still the only one one seing Whale Precursors and Experiments as not very good extrapolations from Alfreds and Bill Baileys?
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2020
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