Sir Nigel Gresley - The L.N.E.R.’s First C.M.E.

I did but it was a long time ago and I can't find them or the spreadsheet. I'll have to re-do them but not tonight.

 

A minor comment is that the German class 45 were 2-10-2s.
A previous post has suggested that three-cylinder locomotives went out of fashion during the 1930s. Not in Germany, as in addition to the class 45, streamlined three cylinder pacifics, 4-6-4s, 4-8-4s and a 4-6-6 tank were introduced between 1935 and 1940 (and the class 10 pacific in West Germany after the war). Also in Czechoslovakia three-cylinder pacifics and 4-8-2s were introduced during the 1930s, carried on with more 4-8-2s and 4-8-4 tanks after the war.

 

I keep asking the question "how many locomotives did Chapelon build/rebuild" and it never gets answered satisfactorily.

At least with Gresley we have some real idea of what he did at a locomotive level:



He added just under 1200 locomotives to the L.N.E.R.'s fleet.

He inherited this in 1923:



With the NER numbering significantly more locomotives than the other railways.

 

JOOI, do you know what percentage of GNR engines were Gresley?
And of them, how many were continuation Ivatt designs, and how many "pure" Gresley (I'm guessing it's quite hard to put a definitive distinction in the line of 0-6-0s, but the moguls would be "pure Gresley")?

 

I couldn’t tell you straight away Mike but I can find out by way of my spreadsheet. I’ll come back to you.

 

One thing that is both frustrating and interesting about architects is their general desire to write a manifesto at the drop of a hat. Would that CMEs had done the same...

 

I know you give short shrift to Colonel Rogers, but surely the starting point in answering that question has to be his book (£8.99). I don't have a copy but I do have his 'Express Steam'.

From that, Chapelon was appointed to the R and D dept of the Paris-Orleans Railway in 1925 under Paul Billet. His proposed improvements to the exhaust and steam circuit led to the rebuilding of one of the 3500 class Pacifics. This led to rebuilding of 20 similar locos and 28 new build from private industry. Eventually there were 102 of these engines, 31 for the PO (an additional ten), 23 rebuilds for the Est, and 48 rebuilds and new builds for the Nord, which were the 4-6-2s on the Fleche d'Or etc. Rogers then says ' Many locos of other French railways were rebuilt between 1932 and 1936 on the lines advocated by Chapelon. Even the mighty PLM which did not follow lightly in the steps of other French railways rebuilt many of its Pacifics on Chapelon lines.'

Coming to the 4-8-0s, he designed 12 new locos for the PO, and the new SNCF (1938) built a further 25 for the PLM.

I don't know what smaller classes Chapelon worked on, maybe that is in Rogers' other book, but my conclusions stripping out Rogers' purple prose are as follows :

Chapelon was a design engineer, not a CME. So, arguably he built none.

As a designer, he was hugely influential way beyond the bounds of his own railway in France and around the world.

He was perhaps unlucky that electrification was commenced so speedily on the main lines in France, rather as if Bulleid's fleet had been redundant by 1955.

Comparing him with Gresley is like comparing chalk and cheese.

 

That's interesting, thank you for sharing that information. So officially it looks like he affected less than 250 locomotives total, directly, as per his job role, and he was more influential in terms of his design traits and ethos at home and abroad.

 

I think that might be faint praise. Rogers says

' A very modest man, Chapelon maintained that he had only followed in the footsteps of eminent predecessors : Anatole Mallet, Henry of the PLM, du Bousquet of the Nord, Churchward of the GWR, Nadal of the Etat and Wilhelm Schmidt the superheater pioneer. Yet perhaps no other locomotive engineer since George Stephenson had produced such a revolutionary doctrine in steam locomotive design.'

I don't know whether that is gilding the lily, not being equipped to judge, but in design terms (as opposed to CME terms) he must rate very high in the firmament.

 

Interesting to see almost equal numbers of GNR/GER/GCR loco's

 

In answer to your question:





This is what I appear to have recorded in my spreadsheet. I have only included the locomotives that are directly attributed to Gresley as a new design under the G.N.R. and not, for example, locomotives that were rebuilt under his tenure but not reclassified (e.g. some Ivatt Atlantics).

Please note that the above numbers are just the ones built under G.N.R. auspices and do not include any further locomotives built after the grouping in 1923.

 

No room for De Glehn? Really?

This is such a bold statement and I really do think it's gilding the lily, sorry. Locomotive engineers ultimately are providing motive power for railways and outside of high performance and efficiency statistics their locomotives should be demonstrably doing something. Gresley is a giant - his influence is obvious and well evidenced.

Chapelon appears very capable at design but having achieved relatively little in reality when it comes to the fundamental basic principle of providing locomotives to do work. This is down to France wanting to electrify and appear modern, ultimately, and I am not sure we can disagree with that sentiment.

In design terms 242A1 has much to admire but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if it had been a locomotive in daily service for twenty plus years like Gresley's rebuilt W1 ended up being.

Ultimately I think Jamessquared (Tom) got it about right - how much credit do we give someone developing the ultimate steam locomotive design at the time that diesel and electric traction were obviously the way to go? I don't necessarily agree with Chapelon's treatment at the hands of his superiors, but I understand the point being made about being progressive, and building locomotives of 4000HP is admirable but ultimately out of place in a country looking to rebuild and to what they perceived (correctly) to be necessary new traction and future.

 

I don't have an axe to grind but I think he should probably be judged primarily on his working out in practice of applied thermodynamics as evidenced in the Pacific and Mountain classes which did provide many years of service, particularly the Nord Pacifics which I recall on the Calais-Amiens run from my first trip to Paris in 1963. His heyday was around the decade 1925 to 1935. Plus, as you say, his world influence.

 

Isn’t it a fairly pointless exercise to try and compare engineers on the number of locomotives that were produced under their tenure of office? They were senior employees of the company tasked to produce what the directors agreed to. That would depend on all sorts of different factors; the LMS was in urgent need for a large number of modern locomotives in the 30s owing to the curious motive power policy of one of its constituents in particular and it was a prosperous company so could afford it. The LNER was cash strapped and invested it it’s intercity services at the expense of those further down the pecking order which had to make do with pre grouping locos, patched up and rebuilt when boilers came to the end of their life. The LNER had to wait to after the war before they got a mass produced equivalent of the Black Five.
I’m certain the way continental railways management worked was entirely different and I’m not sure that Chapelon would have been directly involved in what the drawing office produced

 

It is more interesting to evaluate how much good engineering Gresley delivered.

Double swing link pony truck whereever possible?
Threecylinder drive with conjugation
Nice footplates and cabs

Not so good
J39
B17

Comparing that to the influence of Chapelon will be difficult I think.

 

I’ll go along with that apart from the nice footplate, LNER footplates got very dirty and the vertical reversing screw could be very stiff to work, the exception was the nice bucket seats for the crew. I understand that Gresley had a habit coming down from his office and talking to his senior drivers at Kings Cross which may have had something to do with provision some creature comforts, GW and the LMS men had nothing better than a wooden plank to sit on.

 

I've kept on meaning to comment on this ongoing discussion for weeks, but either it's moved on or I haven't had the time, so I've just decided to jump in and cover a few different things in one go anyway.

Firstly, if you want a Chapelon reference, then what about La Locomotive a Vapeur? The George Carpenter translation is very good, Carpenter not exactly being ignorant of steam locomotives himself, so while it's not quite reading the man in his own words, it's as close as you'll get. It's not a manual on his design philosophy, and of course it could hardly be described as objective, but there's a wealth of information there to illustrate his view of steam locomotive design (he covers an awful lot of designs) and on what he would have done given the chance. The evolution in thinking from the 6-cylinder monsters he was conceiving pre-war (160A1 being the demonstrator) to the 3-cylinder, simplified, Americanised engines of his post-war proposals (242A1 being the nearest they got to being built) is quite stark. I wouldn't call him a design engineer, in the modern parlance. He was a technically knowledgeable engineer with a strong theoretical grounding, to a degree which I suspect most of his UK contemporaries did not have, which enabled him to know that there were gains to be had from opening up the steam circuit beyond what was then accepted as perfectly good practice.

I will argue that 3566 and the PO Pacific rebuilds in general were immensely influential. The Nord, who I think were generally reckoned to have the best Pacifics in France up to that point (and Chapelon admired their boiler enough to use a variant in his 4-8-0s), not only bought rebuilds but then had them built new. The changes in the steam circuit of an A4 from an A3 are arguably of the Chapelon school, in a way that the A1 to A3 changes were of the Churchward school. It does Gresley no discredit to note that he appears to have enthusiastically incoporated the work of others into his vision, when it was viable and practically demonstrated to be of value. So an A3 is an A1 with valve gear and boiler pressure to GWR specs, but also high degree superheat, in which Gresley was arguably the leader in the UK. No, superheat wasn't new and yes, the SR and the pre-Stanier LMS were ahead of the Great Western in this department too, but Gresley really went for it; 32 element superheaters in Ivatt Atlantics!

An A4 has the useful mechanical improvements in the frame construction, plus the streamlining, plus the boiler pressure allowing for smaller cylinders, which then allowed for bigger steam chests and valves (a change which was not made in the A1-A3 evolution). Then you've got the bigger steam pipes (fitted to Flying Scotsman in preservation, then undone in the reversion to A3 spec to protect those fragile frames). The A4s appeared after 3566, after 2001 had gone to Vitry, after Gresley and Bulleid would both have got to know Chapelon. Again, it does them no disservice to suggest that they adopted his ideas within the constraints of the fundamental Gresley Pacific design. The A1 certainly provided a very good platform for development, while being a perfectly capable machine as introduced.

On the question of American 3-cylinder classes, I think they arguably lost out from two directions. The development of the high-power 2-cylinder engine was pushed harder in America than anywhere else; 300 psi boiler pressure to get the power from manageable (by US standards) cylinder sizes, focus on lightening the reciprocating masses, engine-tender couplings designed to maximise the longitudinal stiffness so as to use all that mass to reduce oscillations, roller bearings and manganese steel liners to enhance the mechanical robustness. But then from the other direction, the railroads realised that the fast 6-coupled Mallet was a viable proposition. The UP 9000 series weren't superseded by 2-cylinder engines, they were superseded by 4-6-6-4s with 4 cylinders and more flexible wheelbases. That said, I do think that the T1 Duplex was an awful lot of compromise to not build a 3-cylinder 4-8-4.

 

The LNER 2001 was tested in France 1934 under Chapelon and used around 25% more steam than the best French Pacific at 1910 horsepower and 68mph.
Professor Nordman of germany tested a very good norwegian 2-8-4 fourcylinder compound 1942 agaist best german three cylinders and found a difference of 18%.
The capability of Gresley as steam engine designer 1934 can therefore estimated to 118/125 equal to 0.94.

 

How obviously and when? Raven was already looking at electrifying the NER's section of the ECML before Grouping, and Norway and Switzerland were early electrifiers, but how much did France electrify before WWII when Chapelon was doing most of his work? As for diesels, did anyone outside the USA do much with them before the 1950s?

 

France's pre SNCF companies electrified a few of the main lines, at least Paris-Brive and Paris-Orleans, in the thirties on the 1500v DC system. But the big leap forward came post war, mainly from 1952 onwards.