Who should have been in the BR design team?

Jimc said:

You could make a good argument that Churchward was still better at standardisation after his death than Riddles was when alive...


On that basis they should have got in touch with a medium and consulted Sir John Aspinall. He was establishing thorough standardisation on the L&YR while the GW was still fiddling with sandwich frames and broad gauge

 

Thanks, edited

 

Peter Smith, in his book Mendips Engineman, says the Standard 5 was preferred to the LMS 5 on the Somerset & Dorset. I don't recall his reasons, though - time to re-read...

 

Even Cox wonders if the class 3 locos were necessary in the light of improvements to route capabilities. As to two class 4s, the 2-6-0 did have a lower axle loading of less than 17 tons and smaller wheels and it was also based on the Ivatt 2-6-0 so easier to design.

 

Personally i'd of put some engineers from other disciplines. People able to look at the problems from a different perspective. Of that era there were several great engineering genius' in a variety of fields. As to whether they were available given the surge in British aircraft and vehicle engineering post war is another matter, and also there is a risk that their ideas would of been similar to bulleids leader, requiring more work to perfect and not the reliability and low capital cost that the standards offered.

 

That would have resulted in similar disagreements to those that were partly the cause of the failure of the APT prototype project.