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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. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    Could it be that the LNER works suffered from greater skills shortages than the LMS works? Was there more of a maintenance backlog, greater demands on the LNER than on the LMS? I am just wondering about other factors that might have impacted on quality of work if quality of materials can be discounted.
     
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  2. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Is there comparable evidence for or against all the rest of the class?

    Surely Bill Harvey's recollections and objective records of availability etc are both primary evidence, of different kinds. You have yourself suggested one reason for the disagreement.

     
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  3. Hermod

    Hermod Member

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    Was the nick name Concrete mixer given due to noise or footplate uncomfort.?
    The B1 was only allowed 30% balance from Civil engineer.As one had to go to testing plant at Rugby it was modified to be 60% .
    If it had not been rebalanced it would have harmed rollers and the stationary coal weighing arrangement.
    It received special permission to do normal work afterwards but should be put back to original at first reasonable opportunity.
    Cox and his merry men was allowed 50% balancing for the standard class five.
    Balancing of LNER or LMS 2-6-4 cannot be used to judge technical merrit. Neither can 4-6-0s
     
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  4. bluetrain

    bluetrain Well-Known Member

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    Presumably the N15X retained their original short-travel valves, so the closest comparison would be with the Urie N15 rather than the later Maunsell version? I believe that the Urie N15s were still classified as 5P, but they were withdrawn in the mid 1950s at about the same time as the N15Xs.
    If you look at tables of dimensions of the N15 and N15X, they were remarkably similar in boiler size, cylinder size, etc, but the Urie & Maunsell engines were several tons heavier than the N15X. Eastleigh engines really were built like battleships - all that steel of extra-high specific gravity!

    Returning to Edward Thompson and the L1, it is noticeable that Thompson's standardization plan did not provide for any passenger tanks smaller than the L1 and V1/3. It was not made explicit what would be used for lighter local and branch trains, for which these tanks seem over-powered (and given the 20 ton axle-load of the L1 and V3, they would be barred from some lines). Possibly Thompson anticipated that suburban electrification would displace many of the older tanks, including the 1920s-built N2s and N7s, which would then suffice for the lighter trains, so he didn't need to make any specific provision. And that is very much what actually happened in the 1950s, until DMUs arrived to take over the country services.
     
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  5. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Yes. That's why Bill Harvey's recollections need to be treated with caution.

    Yes, and no. I have had to treat his recollections with some caution because of the length of time the L1s were at Neasden, their age (less than a year) and the statistics which we can cross reference from.

    People are fallible. It happens sometimes that one's recollections can be blurred, issues seem greater than they were. I remain sceptical that the newest tank locomotives on the railway were entirely awful from their build date.

    Were there teething troubles? Yes, possibly. Did modifications need to be made? Again, yes, and we have evidence of that.

    We're trying to establish if a design is wholly unsuitable, adequate, or better than its reputation. Nobody is claiming that the Thompson L1s were perfect. I am questioning if their reputation is fair. Part of that is looking at all of the evidence and asking if what we are reading is reasonable.

    If we went by Bill Harvey's account alone, then we risk making the same error again in judging Thompson, and his designs, on just the railwayman's account and not looking at the wider evidence.
     
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  6. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I think this is a fair point. Traffic needs on the railway were changing. However, it is notable that it was intended that the 2-6-0, 4-6-0 and 2-6-4T would displace most of the oldest locomotives. Having reliable locomotives of ample power to do the work and thus maintain a more tightly organised schedule could be more efficient.
     
  7. 30567

    30567 Part of the furniture Friend

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    I've greatly enjoyed both this thread and the one in the LNER Encyclopedia Forum 'Edward Thompson Good or Bad?' to which Simon also contributed, and which may have started him off on his journey.

    I don't know whether conditions at Derby and Darlington were any different in the post-war years. But re-reading those threads and some bits of books (Townend, Harvey, Beavor) I was left thinking that the story of the L1s needs to be told in terms of Concept ; Design ; Production ; Operation.

    In terms of Concept, I started off by thinking--- wouldn't it have been a far lower risk strategy to just build a hundred more V3s? But then there's a lot I don't know--were the V3s a successful design, were they ever tried in London and were they fit for purpose in London? I presume the pressing issue was the interface between the tracks and the trains. On the GN, GE and GC, you have essentially a two track layout shared between suburban trains and expresses. So they all have to travel at line speed. And on the GN, they have to get across the throat at KX at 8mph and through the tunnels. So even though it looks as though the starting point for the concept was the V3, it's easy to see why the Board decided that wasn't going to be good enough, and the proof of need hurdle was jumped.

    In terms of Design, I'm not an engineer so don't fully understand what I'm reading, but it seems as though (possibly a bit like the SR light pacifics) adhesion may have been sacrificed for power. But also I was struck by some posts suggesting that the prototype was treated with kid gloves rather than being sent to Stratford shed or wherever to work in normal conditions for a year. Did some issues fail to emerge until the production series? And were those exacerbated by production defects?

    In terms of Operation, I think Simon's evidence is very relevant but has to be weighed alongside that of the operators. The Neasden experience is both 1950 and 1955. Maybe the labour problems were so acute that the shed simply could not cope with its allocation. But it looks like the L1s needed quite a bit of tlc compared with the Staniers and the GW 61xx locos, and even the old GC 4-6-2Ts. I think Beavor does say that provided his team could keep them in condition he could get three round trips/day to Aylesbury out of them which I guess is 70,000 a year.

    In some ways the most interesting witness is Townend, because he doesn't seem to have an agenda. One of the problems he relates was that of dispatching the overnight sleeper trains to the carriage sidings. Problem -- the people needed to stay in the cars till say 7am ; there were several trains ; the operators needed the platforms for the morning peak. Solution-- shunt the sleeping car portions into two or three 15 coach trains. But then the L1s had to pull 500 tonnes from a start up the 1 in 105 through the tunnels, and then up the 1 in 50 bridge over the main line at Wood Green. They couldn't reliably do it, but then nor could anything else, and were they designed for that? He tried to get some 2-8-0 tanks from the GW but failed, and in the end they used two L1s on the job. But he does also say that the L1s could be shy of steam which did not endear them to the footplate staff.

    I wonder how they did on the GE up to Hertford and Bishops Stortford. Were they better liked over there?
     
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  8. Big Al

    Big Al Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator

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    Whilst not wishing to seem to be the referee in this can I say that 'acceptable weaknesses' and 'unacceptable weaknesses' often drop into one or the other of these categories simply off the back of personal opinion.

    If you were a shedmaster one of the issues for you would be getting stick from loco crews about whatever they were working. That could simply be personal preferences over, for example, the convenience of footplate controls.

    My point is that all you can do in hindsight is look at data that is 'opinion neutral'. But I recognise that this in itself would ignore the personal preferences of users.

    My uncle once owned a Lada Riva. It was a terrible car but actually it was a cheap car and never broke down. For him those were two critically positive factors.
     
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  9. Eightpot

    Eightpot Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Simon - I'm wondering if the LNER documentation is giving you the full picture. Willy Yeadon's series gives details of Works visits by locos, but does your documentation take into account Bill Harvey in 1950 and E. S. Beavor in 1954/1955 sending many L1s from Neasden to Kings Cross to attend to axle boxes in need serious attention?
     
  10. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    No kid gloves used on no.9000 - as the chapter on the prototype in my book will confirm.

    The documentation I have (which includes those sources too) does take those individual's reports into account and much of the issues of the axleboxes are on specific locomotives that were built by one specific manufacturer.

    Something that has been overlooked in the Thompson L1 story is that they were built, ultimately, by a range of manufacturers (NBL, Darlington, Doncaster, Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns).

    My personal standpoint - which I stand by - is that on balance, the accounts of Bill Harvey and E.S. Beavor overplay the issues of the L1s quite significantly.
     
  11. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    Are your opinions regarding the reports by Harvey and Beavor not influenced by the fact they don’t agree with your narrative? Bill Harvey would not have been influenced by official documents and statistics, he would have been influenced by what was happening on the front line. I doubt very much that he exaggerated regarding the problems he faced at Neasden.
     
  12. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I wonder if there is statistically significant difference in mileages between batches? Maybe (for example) Bill Harvey is right in his anecdotal assessment, but he had a disproportionate number of NBL locos (or whatever)?

    Tom
     
  13. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I think you are misinterpreting what I am saying. Exaggeration? No. Hazy recollection of the events, perhaps influenced by decades of the anti-Thompson writings of other authors? Maybe, but that's not what I am talking about here.

    There are significant differences between the accounts of those two men, and the official record. Therefore we do have to treat their viewpoints with caution - and taking opinions at face value is exactly what started this whole thread to begin with. I am reviewing history, with (hopefully) an impartial historian's hat on.

    It is interesting that you play the line that I might be discounting them because it doesn't fit with "my narrative". It's not my narrative. It's the L.N.E.R.'s then B.R. Eastern Region's narrative. They're not my figures on availability and mileages. I am only reporting on them. I am highlighting a discrepancy in what is reported, against what is recorded.

    If there's a significant difference between that recorded and that reported, it's my job as a historian to point that out, surely? Otherwise we might as well just throw the whole thread in the bin, right now, because what you're advocating is taking opinions over evidence: which was the original problem with the history on Edward Thompson and his designs all along.
     
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  14. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    I apologise if I haven't made this clearer - but that is exactly what I am suggesting.
     
  15. Cartman

    Cartman Well-Known Member Account Suspended

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    NBL locos were usually good, steam, that is. They lost their way badly when they tried building diesels, class 22 anyone?
     
  16. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    So now you’re accusing Harvey et al of having a “hazy recollection of events”. You keep on about prime evidence but when some comes along that doesn’t agree with your narrative, it gets dismissed.
     
  17. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Please stop being over dramatic and re-read what I actually said - not what you think I said.

     
  18. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    I have read what you have written, it seems that any source that paints Thompson or any of his designs in anything other than a good light is dismissed for whatever reason you have at the time.
     
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  19. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    Or that the two different types of primary source we have tell very different stories?
     
  20. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    :Woot: God it's like Groundhog day and I've gone back to 2012.

    No, it's just that we should tread carefully where there's a significant difference between two men's accounts of two different time frames, and that we have on record. No more, no less.
     

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