Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

That is one option: but I would prefer to think better of Nock than that and give him the benefit of the doubt. You must accept that what the report says, and what Nock says, are two different things - it is an area you have to ask "why?" We'll probably never know but it is curious all the same.

So - taking your point on board - don't you think it would be fair for the vitriol to stop, and more consideration given - if not a "balanced" account as I would understand it, or someone outside of the LNER fraternity might - then perhaps a little more respectful to someone who has passed?

You see, the manner in which much of the criticism is made and who it comes from interests me. Peter Townend says the Thompson Pacifics were not awful locomotives - he worked with them. Cecil J. Allen says they were awful - he was a time keeper and not involved with the running of a the railway directly. Colonel Rogers puts them in the same bracket as the Glasgow and South Western tank engines (!) and again his views are somehow more relevant than Peter Townend's? That's just one example and there are many more besides.

I've no doubt Thompson rubbed a number of people up the wrong way and in his standardisation scheme upset more than a few people with regards rebuilding Gresley engines. But Ivatt "was" the GNR; and nobody aims the level of vitriol at Gresley for rebuilding a vast number of his engines, nor does anyone aim the same level of vitriol or half truths at Collett for rebuilding Churchward designs.

There's a difference between constructive criticism - whereby we all agree Thompson wasn't perfect and he could do better - and the point of view which argues that Thompson could do no good and (in some very extreme cases!) actually hampered the LNER during the second world war, which simply is not the case.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, because the report more or less recommends the LNER doing what Thompson then summarily carried out, and I am not sure how you can argue that Thompson wasn't simply just carrying out the report - and I do not understand how Stanier, of all people, and Cox, could be accused either of bias or of some anti-Gresley agenda? They were engineers and they disagreed with the engineering, and did so with a report that Sir William Stanier was happy to put his name to.

Absolutely - I do agree with you on this point. Pre-wartime conditions should have been taken into account more, and as such the report should have qualified this more. I do feel there are shades of this, but agreeably not enough.

However - and I think if I accept your point happily, you must also accept this point - it was mid war and there was at that time no end in sight to hostilities.

How can one plan for a post war world when one does not envisage a post war world happening? Wartime was the present, the problems were immediate, and the problems of supplies and maintenance were immediate. I don't think you can blame Stanier and Cox for their circumstances.

Why would you bother investigating the causes - at all? You would make do and mend on the current range of locomotives (pretty much what happened) and eliminate any possibilities of the issues the report outlined by removing the conjugated valve gear altogether. When I say this, I accept the point that the report states the big end was more at fault; equally the report does state outright that "a good case can be made for not perpetuating this on any future design".

I think it was the right decision to do this for all small and medium sized locomotives - the B1, O1, K1 and to a much lesser extent L1, as the new build locomotives proved this beyond reasonable doubt. All of these new standard locomotives gave good service and were intrinsically easier to maintain than of their peers with cylinders.

Now, a separate issue to that is whether they were as good performing and that is a fair debate we need to have.

Whether this was the right decision for the larger mixed traffic Pacific designs and the sole Express Passenger design is another matter, but - for me - it does not seem unfair to suggest that this was also the right decision.

My qualification for that being: if the conjugated valve gear offered any advantage post-war to the three sets of walschaerts, then the LNER would have returned to this design with the Peppercorn A2 and then A1. They did not, and it is extremely telling to me that a number of people assure us that the A2 and A1 were "in Gresley's mould" but neither engine was equipped with his trademark, the valve gear.

They did however return to the "Gresley outline" and the longer outside connecting rods and I 100% agree that this was Thompson's biggest flaw - equal length connecting rods were, in the LNER scheme of things, unnecessary and he probably could have avoided a lot of criticism. However he was his own man and he was free as CME to make a choice - he was clearly influenced by engineering outside of the LNER.

In retaining three sets of valve gear and reverting to a more Gresley outline, Peppercorn and Harrison created what I consider to be Britain's best Pacific locomotive class - his A1.

 

It's an interesting debate because as far as I can work out from the limited information I have (but I am researching further), Thompson Pacifics were in works more, but took less time (as a generalisation) to fix and return to service (bar the period 1945-50 for the A2/2s which were limited to their choice of boiler - the A2/1s used V2 boilers and the A2/3s used their own and Peppercorn types, whereas the A1/1 used an A4 boiler so none of these were hampered so much) than Gresleys, which were in less, and in for longer.

However I am told there is some fair amount of evidence that in BR days, full overhauls probably took similar amounts of time. I need to do some more research in this area and would agree there is a debate to be had - and that it is likely the Thompson Pacifics are not going to come out looking perfect by any means.

However there seems to be a difference in approach to the in works/in service balance from the LNER to the LMS, for example, and one wonders if there was some idea at play that having more frequent but less involved visits to works was potentially more economical than less frequent and longer involved visits to works, but this is supposition on my part and more work is required to form a view that is fair and balanced.

 

Pedant mode - perhaps but surely Britain's finest Pacific was the unique 71000 - specified by Riddles and designed by (LNER-trained) Harrison and which combined LNER practice with the new "Standard" tradition required by British Railways. Perhaps this tangent might justify a new thread but - in the frame of the Thompson discussion - it is fair to consider the reality that Peppercorn and Harrison reverted to Gresley practice as improved by the replacement of conjugated by separate valve gear that had been signalled by Thompson but diverted by the latter into a siding by his design concepts of placing the outside cylinders between the driving wheels and the bogie.
Whilst outside this remit but part of the Harrison tangent, did the application of Caprotti valve gear by Harrison ( see note below) in the design of 71000 have any connection with Gresley's use of Lentz rotary valve gear in his early D49 designs - and may have been an option disregarded by Thompson due to the circumstances of the on-gpoing war ?

Note from LNER notes on P2 at http://www.lner.info/article/tech/valvegear/lentz.shtml

The main competitor with Lentz in the locomotive poppet valve market was Caprotti. An undated handbook 'for Shed and Running Staff', which appears to have been written c.1936/37, entiled 'The Caprotti Valve Gear for Locomotives' was published by Caprotti Valve Gears Ltd whose address is also given as 66 Victoria Street, London SW1. The identical addresses suggest the possibility that Caprotti acquired the Lentz locomotive valve business, the future of which was looking decidedly uncertain by the mid-1930s as will become evident below. The links between Paxman, Lentz Patents Ltd, Associated Locomotive Equipment Ltd and Caprotti Valve Gears Ltd merit further investigation.

 

hi simon,

i can assure you i have no bias towards Gresley or Thompson. neither interest me much apart from an academic viewpoint. my own leanings are towards Brighton and the GWR.

what interests me is the way various primary source documents get interpreted. this is an analytical approach from an engineering perspective. i am no LNER expert, but do know a bit about loco valve gears. Holcroft is unique in being one of the very few who wrote down what happened at the time, in perhaps rather a too dispassionate and objective way, being extremely fair and playing down his own achievements.

as you have quite rightly commented Lplus is far better than me at putting forward reasoned arguments, and i wish i had his skills! i fall into the mistake of playing 'devils advocate' with you.

i cannot agree more with Lplus that the Stanier/Cox report is flawed. Lplus has quite rightly (as have others) pointed out that the Gresley conjugated gear produced or was used on some of the most famous locos ever and with record breaking performances both before and after WW2. as a result, Cox's statement in the report that

"I find there is an inherent defect which will prevent any such a gear from giving correct steam distribution in the inside cylinder under any circumstances"

and

"

1. The '2 to 1' valve gear although theoretically correct is, in practice, incapable of being made into a sound mechanical job, and rapid wear of the pins, and incorrect steam distribution, are the inevitable results of its use. In view of the inherent defects and the discontinuance of its use throughout the world, a case can be made for not perpetuating it in any future design."

is neither borne out by pre war performance (which Cox would have been fully aware of!) or post war performance.

"a case can be made"... that isnt quite as it may at first appear and isnt clear cut. a lawyer would drive a coach and horses through that statement!

"It is a matter of consideration, therefore, as to whether certain of the classes should not be fitted with an independent inside valve gear."

this is conclusion 2 in the summary of the report.

which classes?!

"should not" if read in one way imparts a quite different interpretation. perhaps very clever/careful choice of words at the time, and perhaps ambiguous?

however in respect of the middle big end Cox is damning of the Gresley design and makes it quite clear that the (ex-GWR) big end used by the LMS has no such problems and specifies the way to deal with this and adds (earlier) that

"I cannot say that the poor distribution in the L.N.E inside cylinder is likely to contribute other than in a minor way to the overheating which has been experienced."

another bit of very clever/careful wording and capable of different interpretations and ambiguous.

what Thompson should have done is quite clear to me. he should have given firm instructions to the running sheds to maintain the pre-war greasing of the conjugated motion joints (this was a running shed fitter's job and required the locos being over a pit - exactly as required for oiling an inside valve gear on a daily basis - though in the case of the conjugated gear not on a daily basis). he should have tightened up on the tolerances of assembly at Doncaster. he should have immediately replaced the Gresley big end with the GWR big end. he should have immediately carried out an investigation as to why WW2 wear on the conjugated valve gear pins was occuring far more than pre-war and then might have came to the same conclusions Bill Harvey did some years later ie the simple expedient of preventing smoke box ash getting at the pin joints.

what did Thompson do? bugger all, apart from use the report as justification for producing a handful of rebuilds and new builds that we will argue the merits of! the B1 and L1 have nothing to do with the Stanier/Cox report so i wont comment on them though ive stated my own views previously on the B1s.

cheers,
julian

 

Interestingly, NZR ordered those locomotives on the recommendation of a mid-1920s Royal Commission into the needs of New Zealand railways: the consultants were - Sir Sam Fay and Sir Vincent Raven! Their recommendation was for Garratts for the North Island Main Trunk (Fay was chairman of Beyer Peacock!) and three-cylinder express engines for wider use. That in itself is interesting in NZ terms, since the railway is narrow gauge, so space between the frames was restricted: traditionally, the kinds of Victorian and Edwardian locos that would have had two inside cylinders in Britain tended to be two outside cylinders in NZ. The NZR CME at the time, GS Lynde, was Sam Fay's son-in-law.

Sean Millar, in his definitive work on NZ steam, writes:

"On NZR's Garratts, small amounts of excess play in the joints had a disproportionately large negative influence on valve events, Costly ongoing maintenance was required to keep tolerances within the narrow range necessary for satisfactory performance. For a few years, a great deal of effort and expense went into solving this and many other problems that plagued the class, alas to no effect.

(snip - talking about other operational problems of the locos)

Eventually, NZR became unwilling to persist any longer. The new K class, designed [...] to the requirements of Lynde's successor, proved to be exactly what was required for the NIMT. As additional K class entered service, use of the Garratts petered out. They last worked in 1935 and were officially withdrawn two years later. Over their brief working lives they average a mere 12,000 miles per annum. their replacements were soon recording mileages on average three to four times greater."

The G class pacifics they were rebuilt into fared not much better.

Interestingly (and this can't have helped), while when initially built there was a "piano lid" over the conjugating levers, most of the photos I have seen of them in pacific form seem to show the levers exposed. This photo shows one slowly slipping into dereliction, probably in the 1950s, but photos I have seen in service mostly show them with the motion similarly exposed.



Tom

 

It certainly is, I recall pointing it out almost as soon as you had posted the report, so no argument there.

If by respectful, you mean overlooking what one feels were his faults, no. If you mean simply not cursing him as the devil incarnate who couldn't design a loco to save his life, then yes. Not my view, I would point out.

I tend to believe the reports of those who used the locos, Townend in particular, so I think I would agree with this view.

The report itself certainly does recommend what Thompson did, and I haven't disagreed that Thompson did it - it coincided with his view perfectly. My own concern is that the recommendations condemned the gear out of hand, rather than take into account the fact of prewar success and wartime lack of maintenance, which would have produced a more shaded or qualified assessment. I have trouble understanding how Cox and Stanier could have omitted to consider peacetime performance and including it, but Cox states he had no idea what the prewar situation was, so all we can do is guess. If someone asked you to investigate the frequent failures of a fleet of trucks, which had previously been running well, wouldn't you first ask about maintenance requirements and whether they had been followed during the period of failures? And if they hadn't been followed, would you then say the trucks would always continue to fail frequently, and had never been any good anyway, and no one uses that type of truck now, so scrap them asap? - or would you see what could be done to sort out the maintenance? I'm surprised at both Cox and Stanier.

fair enough

True there was no end in sight for the hostilities - all the more reason to get a quick fix in on the parts that were wearing out quickly! That's sort of the reason I'm so surprised at Cox, Stanier and Thompson. Building new takes time and resources, sorting maintenance takes far less time and produces instant results. If the gear had been the reason for the big ends failing, it would have stopped that - even if it wasn't, the time and costs of frequent renovation of the gear would have been saved and much needed locos would have been available for work. If Bill Harvey could do it in 1945/46, he could have done it in 1942, why wasn't he told to?

I don't disagree - the LNER was certainly crying out for a simple mixed traffic loco at the time.

Thompson wanted to use three sets of gear, irrespective of the failures or not of the conjugated gear. I don't actually have a problem with that - my beef is that he used the temporary wartime problems with the Gresley gear and a report that seems to me to be biased against the Gresley gear (whether deliberately or not) to force the Directors to let him rebuild/build new engines with three sets of gear. It feels - opportunistic - at best.

Again, Peppercorn was free to continue with whatever gear he wanted - the point here is that the Gresley gear wasn't intrinsically better that the three sets, but it wasn't worse either. It traded ease of day to day maintenance, particularly removing oiling round the inner valve gear, for precise steam distribution.

Hmm, whilst writing this, I've been sort of ninja'd by jma1009, I don't think it contradicts him anywhere...

 

But - and I will say this with some weariness - there simply was not the manpower to sustain the levels of maintenance required for the conjugated valve gear and the situation did get worse as the war went on.

You seem to be under the impression that the railways had the same level of staffing in 1938 when Mallard broke the speed record, compared to 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944 and 1945.

They absolutely didn't and this more than anything hampered the ability of the locomotives to give the best service, and those that were left to give the best service for the locomotives. Given the number of staff recruited to go to war, recruited to help with munitions manufacturing, and of those left, their positions were taken up as best they could by younger and older generations (potentially without the experience of the LNER men who had left) and women - all who did admirable jobs but it was not the same, it is perhaps reasonable to understand that a more complicated valve gear arrangement in the small and medium class locomotives is not as welcome for its advantages in wartime as it was in pre-war. There is, I hope, no argument that reverting to two cylinders for all small and medium locomotives was a fair and reasonable step by Thompson?

Record breaking performances for the premier class of express locomotives, prior to wartime, and reliability and maintenance pre-war are all very well and good but the LNER was in the middle of a world war and finding itself effectively on the front line of the war front with coal trains, munitions trains, evacuations, troop transport and ambulance trains.

The point in any event is that this was not a report which centred on just the A3s, A4s and A10s. This report was reporting across the board of around 600+ locomotives. I feel on a number of times in this thread people have focused specifically on the 70+ A3s and 35 A4s when we are talking across a range of locomotives.

How these figures were arrived at or broken down, I don't know - I am trying to get the figures. Once I have them I'll report back on them and we can discuss them happily.

Which as far as I'm aware he didn't have access to Swindon drawings of any kind: so I assume you mean a GWR like big end?

But he had a report stating he should simply abandon it on new designs - so why continue to develop it or investigate and simply try to maintain the existing fleet?

Thompson himself looked to retain the vast majority of Gresley's conjugated valve gear fleet completely unaltered - they were the "non standard retained fleet" to be maintained and reboilered as necessary. All other classes - almost exclusively GNR, GCR, NER and GER locomotives - were considered to be non-standard and for scrapping when major components wore out (this didn't happen as quickly as anticipated and BR also retained a number so things are flexible and plans do change).

When we argue about the pros and cons of rebuilding conjugated valve gear fitted Gresley locomotives, we are talking specifically about 10 B2s, 6 P2s, 1 A10, 1 D49, 1 K4, 1 K3, off the top of my head. I make that 20 locomotives total out of nearly 600 Gresley locomotives that were not rebuilt.

So are we in fact talking about a storm in a teacup - I just don't understand why 20 locomotives (accepting Great Northern is potentially a special case and the P2s as well but less so) generate so much more heat than light in terms of the supposed controversy of Thompson rebuilding them to his format.

When you put it in that context, you have to wonder.

 

hi simon,

you have just completely demolished your interpretation of the report!

if all Thompson did in 5 years was to alter/rebuild 20 locos, he effectively failed to carry out your conclusion of the report that you base so much importance on!

neither did he deal with the middle big end problem!

if instead he had carried out a wholesale 'conversion' programme replacing on a large number of Gresley locos conjugated gear with 3 sets of independant valve gear then i think there might be more credence to your hypothesis.

however Thompson didnt do this!

i dont think that going under a pit every 2 weeks on each 3 cylinder Gresley loco with a grease gun would have stretched running shed fitters too much! even in WW2! railway fitters were in any event a 'reserve occupation' in WW2. there were considerable difficulties post war in recruiting railway workers, yet under this later era the Gresley gear resumed it's pre war standards.

cheers,
julian

 

Have you forgotten my reference to the RCTS book where it says of the Haymarket based ones, that in spite of labour and material shortages, their performance remained at a satisfactory level and failures were very rare indeed? If Haymarket could do it, why not other sheds? Why didn't ET look into why Haymarket was fairing better than other sheds and apply their methods?

 

Are we reading the same report?

No new conjugated valve gear locomotive designs were built. Thompson proceeded with this part of the report and the LNER did not ever build a new locomotive design with conjugated valve gear. So this part of the conclusion followed to the letter.

Nor did Peppercorn, or British Railways either. I don't defend Thompson on that but my view - as above - is why would you bother if you are simply going to maintain the vast majority of the fleet at a status quo?

I think you have completely misunderstood the point I am making. He carried out point 2 almost to the letter:

And again, Thompson did carry out this part of the report and tried a number of prototypes doing exactly this.

For example, Class K4 became K1/1 - over the back of this locomotive design came the Peppercorn K1. Other rebuilds such as the O1 became a standard class, class B2 numbered 10 examples and A2/2 was the only whole scale rebuilding of a class (numbering just six examples). And as already related above, 20 locomotives in total experimented with, and one of those became with minor details a class of seventy production locomotives (K1).

I'm not a qualified engineer either: but I don't think you can attribute "maintenance" to just going over some specific components with a grease gun every two weeks - and in light of the change in operational requirements for many steam locomotive classes during the war, it could in theory be longer times between planned maintenance and heavy duty maintenance.

 

I had yes - and for what it is worth I agree in principle - HOWEVER - would you not agree that at Haymarket the risk of bombing was a little different to that suffered at the sheds across England, particularly in industrial areas and in those areas along the coast and in London?

There is every possibility there that things were different because pressures of wartime were different.

I am, I accept, hypothesising that but we are talking about the whole of Thompson's tenure as CME being conducted in the middle of the second world war.

 

hi simon,

re your statement "No new conjugated valve gear locomotives were built. Thompson proceeded with this part of the report and the LNER did not ever build a new locomotive with conjugated valve gear. So this part of the conclusion followed to the letter."

erm... werent more conjugated gear V2s built after 1941 when Thompson became CME? they carried on being built up to and including 1944!?

cheers,
julian

 

I should qualify that with "no new locomotive design" - fair cop Julian, I will edit that part of my statement. I think they kept building O2s too possibly (or my tired brain has misremembered that).

 

That forgets the minor point that Rosyth and Leith were important ports (Rosyth for naval and Leith for commercial) within the area, that North British Rubber Co was based less than a mile (as the crow flies) from Haymarket Depot and that the fighter base at Turnhouse was geared to the protection of the Forth Bridge which would have been a major propaganda triumph had it been damaged during the war.

I think that Haymarket's better record was down to 2 major factors - (1) the fitters' experience of the gear and their ability to cope with its problems and (2) the use of the same crews on the locomotives so that they were quickly able to recognise problems and the willingness of the fitters to attend to them.

Reference to Harry Knox's book (Haymarket Motive Power Depot Edinburgh - A History of the Depot, its Work and Locomotives 1842 - 2010) notes at Page 110 that "In 1941, in keeping with the policy being adopted throughout the L&NER, all Scottish A1/A3 locomotives were transferred to Haymarket in order to concentrate the maintenance regime required by the Gresleys at a single location where the expertise and modern maintenance facilities existed."

On the same page it is noted that only the A4s were operated on the dedicated crew principle during the war period whilst all other Haymarket locomotives became common user during that period and dedicated crews were not resumed until 1946/47.

Chapter 28 of this book also discusses the question of Haymarket locomotive maintenance regimes and discusses the Gresley conjugated valve gears in some detail that may be worth a look at; his note that Haymarket instituted exams at lesser mileages and the results from that change make interesting reading in the context of the reliability factor.

 

Fred, thank you for the correction - I will seek that book out.

I think for the time being I need a little break, but may I say thank you to everyone for their debate, views and sources given up freely when asked. It has been gratifying to debate this and though we're not all going to agree all of the time, it has been stimulating to discuss and debate at length. Sincerely, thank you all.

 

Why do I get the feeling that we've become unwitting research assistants for Simon?

 

What's wrong with that, if the end result is a more thorough and balanced book? Or are you angling for a Royalty?

Tom

 

And how else is a possible author to research/gain information of any nature for a book or magazine article?

 

Reading through the thread I would suggest that Simon has been alerted to sources that he had neither been aware of or thought had value in the context of his initial researches. I recall that he had noted that, following comments on this thread, he had reviewed his researches and looked more closely at the life of Vincent Raven (his father-in-law) and had hinted that he was a factor in the development of Thompson's expertise that had been more important than previously thought. I, for one, was intrigued by this and am looking forward to see how important a factor he was - and what were the consequences for Thompson as a person and Thompson as a locomotive designer.

 

Unwitting - perhaps! I'd like to think I have been upfront in all that has happened on this thread. I am grateful for all of the help - and equally this thread might be of interest to other enthusiasts.

I had originally dismissed the Raven connection altogether but reading two of the biographies on Raven and seeing how much Thompson comes back took me by surprise. I think however it's not the engineering which is similar but other things.

Further, the war years. Thompson was involved in building the standard and narrow gauge railways at the various parts of the front in 1914-19. His service record includes time spent at the Somme and Ypres, from the documents handed to me a couple of months ago. It is frustrating that the exact details of his mentions in dispatches are simply at this point, unknown.

Them of course, Gresley. There's a lot of evidence that as colleagues they clashed, but outside of work they socialised and were friends.

That trust appears to have been damaged in particular by the D20 incident, but after the death of Gresleys wife, several different sources indicate Mr and Mrs Thompson had time spent with Gresley socialising.

There's a sad parallel between both men as their wives died before their time.

In Gresleys case he had his children to call in and other friends, Thompson had never had children - Graftons book indicates Guen could not have children but one of the Raven books hints it was Thompson. I don't think we will ever truly know the facts behind that but we do know it was something both Thompson and Guen Raven wanted.

Reading Graftons later chapters gives a very sad side to the whole tale and it's one which makes me acutely aware of how human we all can be in the worst of times. Thompson in just a few years lost an esteemed colleague, his mother, his wife, and then his home to bombing. He was aged 61 when he took over the LNER CME position and pressures were mounting in wartime.

Who here thinks in the same circumstances they could have done as good a job? I don't believe I would have had the strength of character. Thompson certainly had that.