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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. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    Quite so. It is easy to criticise the designs of yesterday when armed with the technology of today.
     
  2. John Stewart

    John Stewart Part of the furniture

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    British railway engineers were just typical of an entrenched British attitude of "Not invented here". It's still around as other threads show!
     
  3. Bulleid Pacific

    Bulleid Pacific Part of the furniture

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    That's a bit of an exaggeration in this case, as much of British locomotive design was an amalgam of research undertaken globally, as Bulleid's willingness to adopt the Lemaitre blastpipe testifies. Equally, if we stuck with British wheel arrangements, we'd have still been churning out 2-2-2s and 2-4-0s in the 1930s.

    Where there was a 'stickiness', it was in the follow-up in terms of testing and modifying to improve efficiency, but this needed the right facilities and funding; both of which were not entirely forthcoming pre-computer modelling once a project had shown itself to work without much more than tinkering.

    As such, with the exception of Bulleid, Gresley and Churchward, this situation led to risk-aversion and the pursuit of 'safe and sound' solutions rather than try something different. The desire to play things safe might thus be confused with a 'not invented here' outlook.
     
  4. 8126

    8126 Member

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    Funnily enough, I'd say that draughting is one area where British railway engineers were reasonably open minded. Everyone was willing to try the Kylchap, just nobody was willing to pay the patent licencing fees on a large scale, which is hardly unusual. Bulleid applied the Lemaitre on a larger scale than the Kylchap ever was in the UK, I'd suggest precisely because it was more cost effective. Since there was never a really theoretically sound basis for locomotive draughting until after the end of steam, I hardly think it fair to single him out for criticism of his poor theoretical understanding when his implementation of the Lemaitre improved most of the classes it was applied to.

    I always wonder what the SR would have done if all the Light Pacifics had been rebuilt, since they were vital to Exmouth Junction in their original form. In fact, after an initial allocation of rebuilds, Exmouth Junction mostly returned to original Light Pacifics. This may partly have been that, far from London, they had the facilities and plentiful fitters to manage them better, but it was also because with the diagrams in place the inability of the rebuilds to go to Padstow and Ilfracombe reduced flexibility, and the Merchants had priority on the London turns. The next-largest class ever to visit those lines was the Standard 4 4-6-0; I suspect crews might have considered those a bit of a step down.

    I'll leave the thread for this evening with the words of R.H.N. Hardy, who was more than familiar with the full experience of operating the original Pacifics at Stewarts Lane: "I think that, without a shadow of doubt, Bulleid was a genius."
     
  5. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Yet Thompson applied to all of his Pacifics and Peppercorn to all of his A1s and the vast majority of his A2s, so there must have been a tipping point between the initial costs and the savings the kylchap, properly used, could create.

    I have a lot of admiration for what Bulleid achieved from a purely enthusiast point of view. His Pacifics were superb performers, a point of view borne out by their work in preservation today. Modern materials and design analysis would probably also eradicate many of their issues.

    Did he do a comparatively good job for the Southern at the time, and is he a better engineer than Thompson? I think those are questions which might have answers which would surprise his acolytes.

    One thing is certain: without Bulleid, or Thompson, the railway scene would have been less fun to discuss.
     
  6. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Whatever the theoretical failing of the valve gear, no-one in 1940 was criticising the Q class because of poor valve events. The very obvious failing was that it was under-boilered, which meant that it couldn't sustain the levels of power output that the cylinders ought to have been able to develop. So Bulleid did what any intelligent, practical, CME would have done: put on a boiler that gave the steaming rate commensurate with the cylinders, and then stripped off everything superfluous to get the weight back down to an acceptable level. (Even the name - Q1 - following Ashford tradition, clearly indicates what the loco was considered to be: simply a reboilered class Q). The result was that, in very short order, the Southern got forty class 5 freight engines into service and helping with the war effort.

    Could they have redesigned the valve gear? Maybe. But a different valve gear layout would probably have required changes to cylinder design and the motion bracket. A change to the motion bracket would have required redesigned frames; changing the frames would have meant tinkering around with the brake rigging. Before you know it, you are drawing up an entirely new loco. That would have taken longer to get into service; consumed more drawing office time; more workshop time setting up new tooling, and all for a result that may at best have been a marginal improvement on what they did actually build.

    The SR was in the front line of a major war, with huge demand for both freight haulage but also additional troop and other movements, so they needed a decent freight engine but which, in typical Southern style, could be turned to passenger use on occasion. And so they took a basically competent design, and transformed it by solving the one known significant problem, which was the steaming rate. And by doing so, they got it out quickly to help the war effort.

    You are very much in danger of doing the thing that @S.A.C. Martin has noted that people do about Thompson: criticising his designs without understanding the context under which they were produced. There are lots of things you can criticise Bulleid for, but choosing to leave the valve gear of the Q / Q1 alone in the middle of a total war while the workshop and design staff were stretched to near breaking point is clearly not one of them.

    Tom
     
  7. paullad1984

    paullad1984 Member

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    Gwr had a stationery testing plant since churchwards days....
     
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  8. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think that does a disservice to the historic railway companies. They were after all capitalist enterprises, so one assumes that had there been real cost savings to be had by implementing more sophisticated design practice from elsewhere, they would have done so. But you are up against the age old conundrum of the balance between higher capital and lower revenue cost, and sometimes the business case just does not stack up.

    A lot of enthusiast complaints about "not invented here" seem to originate in a yearning for following French designs. But coal was relatively expensive in France and relatively cheap in Britain. So producing sophisticated designs (compounding, feedwater heaters etc.) and - importantly - then training the men to get the best out of those designs, made financial sense. It is entirely consistent to say that, given the economic conditions of the age, the technically sophisticated French designs were the correct solution in France while at the same time, our own relatively simple - and maybe less thermally efficient - designs were the correct solution for here.

    Tom
     
  9. John Stewart

    John Stewart Part of the furniture

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    I knew that my phrasing would be a little provocative. I had in mind things like the adherence to the vacuum brake, bull head rail and short-wheelbase unfitted wagons. All of these eventually had damaging commercial consequences. In relation to locomotives the one that is always brought out is the perpetuation of the Midland's "Small engine policy". That was indeed a product of the economic circumstances of the times carried on way past its sensible date. Worse in a Midland context was the perpetuation of inadequate bearings, even to the point of putting them under a Beyer-Garratt with the obvious results.
     
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  10. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    C0al in France was not merely "relatively expensive" but "extremely expensive". I recall a relative who knew pre-war France telling me that the expense of coal generated electricity led directly to the 10 watt hotel corridor light bulb of legend. However French engineers were always seeking less complicated solutions. For instance De Caso's 2-3-2 U1 had but two sets of valve gear for four cylinders. It could produce considerable power at high efficiency, whilst mechanical oilers plus grease lubrication reduced the driver's chores with the oil can to the four big ends.

    It is a rather unusual position for me to find myself considerably in agreement with John Stewart, namely about a British addiction to "not invented here" which is not confined to railways.

    Paul H
     
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  11. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    Indeed. One of the key challenges, which Britain's railways singularly failed to deal with until very late in the day, is to know when it is time to lead into new technology and accept that the old is obsolescent. For example, there are instances of recognisably modern styles of hopper wagon pre-WWII - I have the iron ore wagons for Consett and the limestone wagons for Peak Forest/Northwich flows in mind. Yet they were the exceptions, and the railways were left with more expensive, lower capacity workings until they'd got no way to compete with the upsurge in road traffic.
     
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  12. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    Tell me, which is better - chalk or cheese?

    As someone with no real view of Thompson, but who has a love of Bulleid's work, I would not like to say either was "better" than the other. It is perfectly possible to take the evidence and show that Bulleid was a misunderstood genius who showed the way forward for steam, and Thompson a crotchety old so & so who tinkered with perfectly good locomotives to no great effect while designing one good class and a load of mediocre engines. It is equally possible to suggest that Bulleid was a flighty wastrel who was so obsessed with novelty that he forgot what he was there to do, while Thompson was a solid incrementalist who did a good job of readying the LNER for the post-war era.

    Personally, I don't think either verdict stands much scrutiny, and that the truth lies very boringly somewhere in between.

    However, if we change the question to "who was the most historically interesting", then Bulleid wins hands down because he was the innovator, and trying to do new things, in a way that most of his peers (Thompson included) were not. Plenty of CMEs produced decent sized fleets of, for their period, solid performers - and don't particularly bother the history books. A few have a more major impact because they changed things. Whether you are looking at a pioneer of proper industrialisation of design like Churchward, a consolidator able to change the face of a railway like Stanier, or simply a genius like Gresley, they stick in the history books. Bulleid is of that category, but subject to two great might have beens - what would have happened without nationalisation, and what would have happened without the end of steam. We can't know how, as a CME, he would have responded to the weaknesses in Leader, or the challenges of keeping his pacifics running.

    The record is more complete for Thompson, which allows us to place him with the majority of his peers. Capable without being inspired, someone who produced products of contemporary engineering without taking the form forward.
     
  13. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Which is an interesting thought, since Bulleid was in office for twice as long as Thompson, including Thompson's entire reign and a few years each side of it. But perhaps its the usual enthusiast's problem in that locomotive designing was only a small part of the CME's job, and doubly so on the Southern.
     
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  14. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    It is interesting, but reflects the different arcs of their careers.
     
  15. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Twice as long? And arguably Thompson got a lot done in his time. Perhaps one could argue he was the more complete CME, bar the obvious DE and Electric side of things to Bulleid?

    I must say the comparison discussion has been very refreshing and very informative. Thank you all.
     
  16. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    H.G. Ivatt? All his productions worked and he seems to have been liked on a personal level. Frankly, much of this debate has been akin to discussions about the merits or otherwise of various football teams!

    PH
     
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  17. Bulleid Pacific

    Bulleid Pacific Part of the furniture

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    So now we are forgetting Bulleid's loco-hauled carriage and wagon designs, which were squeezed into a four year period. If, taken in the round, this doesn't make him as complete a CME as Thompson, then your bar for success has been set impossibly high. The number of locomotives of a particular type built or converted is not an adequate indicator of success if the railway the CME is employed with doesn't need them. Its whether the designs themselves delivered.
     
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  18. Jimc

    Jimc Part of the furniture

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    Don't think you can argue that at all. We are just looking at a tiny part of their job. Bit like evaluating the performance of successive MDs of Cadbury's on how much you like the chocolate bars introduced under each one's watch.
     
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  19. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Points made gents - agree what that. I would say the debate has been much more than a football debate at times though - some very in depth discussions have taken place.
     
  20. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    We will just have to disagree politely I fear therefore. For a long time I have thought there to be a similarity between football supporters and many railway enthusiasts, not least in a propensity towards "wouldn't it be nice".

    PH
     

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