Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

I have no idea if this will work if one doesn't have Facebook but this popped up this morning and thought it might interest some...

https://www.facebook.com/livesteamworkshop/videos/952835838110903/?fref=nf

 

Just like to offer my apologies for those who've asked for a copy of the finished article. I've added everyone in the thread up to today onto a list. I am currently preparing a submission to a publisher who has shown interest - watch this space. If not a free ePub or PDF copy, you never know what might be round the corner.

 

It brings me some comfort to see so many Thompson Pacifics - albeit miniature ones - in steam in the 21st Century. LBSC's Hielan Lassie has proved a very popular design and I owned one for a brief time, doing some work on it before being made redundant a few years ago and being forced to sell it. Such is life, one day I will have more time and money and will try again.

 

The link obviously works then - good stuff.

 

Of course, the interesting question is how many of those Hielan Lassie were built with all three cylinders. Mine had three cylinders, and I did the centre valve gear myself so I know it did! But many of them are actually built with two cylinder propulsion. I have heard a few that sound distinctly "Britannia" in sound, yet the three cylinders seem to whizz along, and sound like, sewing machines.

There was a chap building a miniature railway Thompson Pacific in a larger scale but using LBSC's design as a template - I wonder how he got on with it?

 

Sorry to drag this up again, but I received an intriguing email from a fellow enthusiast today who said the following in a critical email of my research and work:

I would be interested to hear from all camps what they make of the above quote and if they think it is true - and to what extent.

 

I would want to know what the evidence actually supports, and then why the two have to be seen as either/or. Unless your correspondent is absolutely correct in his assertion about Thompson's aims, there can be no logical problem with the idea that Thompson and Gresley could both have been right on some things. Opinions may of course differ on individual actions of Thompson.

 

I'd ask him for written evidence to support his last statement.

Most likely, he would be revealed for the silly troll he is. But on the very outside chance he could actually substantiate his statement (for example, some previously unknown letter or other ephemera from Thompson laying out that case) then at the very least you would have a dramatic new piece of evidence of relevance to the serious historian.

I've said before, but worth repeating: the historiography (as opposed to the history) of the Gresley / Thompson debate would make an interesting study. All enthusiasts have their favourites, often supported as much by anecdote as evidence; and a certain amount of joshing between rival camps is both natural and in part makes an enjoyable way to pass the time, whether online or in the pub - witness the fact that diehard Southern aficionados can rarely let an opportunity pass to do down the copper-capped brigade.

But the Gresley-Thompson thing (and I speak as a neutral in that field) strikes me as something very different: the disdain that a few Gresley acolytes seem to have for Thompson seems to go way beyond a level of banter into some very profound feeling of historic wrong, and which no amount of evidence would be sufficient to change minds. It almost has a quasi-religious undertone, in which groups continue to argue decades (and who knows, maybe centuries) later about a dispute in which neither side can any more remember why, but simply that a dispute exists and has to be maintained.

Tom

 

Surely this is a question of different personalities and - more importantly - the environment of the time as defined by how the individuals concerned were viewed.

Whilst Gresley was afforded the luxury of creating "horses for courses" that freedom wasn't available to Thompson whose operating environment of wartime was more receptive to a policy of standardisation that both the GWR and Stanier on the LMS had shown to be both economic and effective. Sadly his conversion of Gresley locomotives as they became due for major overhaul in pursuit of the standardisation policy was misconstrued by (a) his mistake in converting the 1st Pacific Great Northern - the iconic Pacific of the LNER fleet and (b) his personality which saw many of his colleagues take a poor view of the man and an even poorer view of his work.

Compare in that context the work of Peppercorn who continued with standardisation but retained much of Gresley's designs and had a friendly personality which saw his colleagues respect both the man and his work as he retained many Gresley principles.

I disagree with the view that to respect Thompson is to disrespect Gresley but it is hard to show that what Thompson began was necessary for LNER finances and that whoever followed Gresley would have needed to take similar decisions in the wartime environment of WWII.

 

The difficulty lies in proving the negative. JF Harrison was quoted on several occasions by different authors as stating that Thompson had at the back of his mind, a genuine desire to undermine Gresley.

Other sources dispute this but there is nothing from Thompson himself regarding this other than his engineering decisions, many of which are taken out of context and one in particular very much underlines the Thompson/Gresley debate. 4470 Great Northern - and I have it from someone who was there in the drawing office at the time that Thompson had absolutely no say in the choice of the locomotive to be converted. So perhaps much of it when examined is still acrophyal?

I just find it interesting how entrenched it is. Anyone who knows me personally knows I am an LNER man through and through - replica nameplates, model trains, posters and similar. I'm a member of a number of LNER preservation societies (though not the Gresley or LNER society, the latter I intend to join when funds are better) and my love of Gresley's machines must be obvious.

Yet by writing on Thompson I have put a lot of noses out of joint and the perception is that because I - in some ways - defend what they say as "indefensible" I am pro Thompson and anti Gresley. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The gentleman in question is a good friend and normally quite calm on railway matters. He feels strongly that I do Gresley a disservice by supporting Thompson, which I don't see at all from my point of view.

 

Thompson's dislike of Gresley was down to the fact that Gresley got the LNER CME's job rather than Thompson's father in law, Sir Vincent Raven.

 

Could it have started earlier - didn't they both go to Marlborough, though different ages of course?

 

I've looked into this a number of times and there just doesn't seem to be the evidence to support this at all. It's one bandied about by those I would say are in the pro-Gresley camp, but looking into Raven's side of the story he doesn't ever appear unduly bothered by not having the top job and he went on to work for other companies.

Thompson's like or dislike of Gresley on that basis is entirely anecdotal with nothing from Thompson or Gresley themselves regarding this. There is nothing concrete about this: and from that I've read there just isn't any evidence to suggest this was true. I'd like to think if there were this animosity it would be covered in Sir Vincent Raven's biography or anything written on him - of which I've studied extensively as many other parts of Thompson's life are mentioned by association - but it isn't.

We have details about Gresley's role at Thompson's wedding to Guen Raven, and that his daughter Violet was her flower girl, and we have lots of information regarding Raven and Gresley socialising and working together, but still no indication that not getting the CME role made Raven particularly bitter (and if it didn't bother him, why would it bother Thompson?)

To me this is one of those stories that gets bandied around a lot but when broken down into "did he really think like that?" it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Thompson and Gresley were a few years apart at Marlborough - how likely is it that they associated at school on this basis? To me this is something that both camps would have snatched on for differing purposes if they had socialised at school. And in any event, isn't this something which would have drawn them together rather than pushed them apart?

But again, there's no evidence this came up other than Hardy's comments RE Marlborough and Thompson in Steam in the Blood, which shows Thompson was found of the school and also had affinity for anyone else associated with it.

 

And yet, and yet: C J Allen talks of Thompson's "aversion to Gresley and all his works". What contemporaries seem to suggest is Thompson's resentment of the older man. A resentment that just might have taken root at an early age. Speculation, I know.

 

Ignoring the first part of the original quote, which is silly, one can see why the second part has traction in the all important world of perception. We have already spoken of this, but Bonavia in his section on Thompson quotes "...so much so that Sir Ronald Matthews was once heard to say. "We really cannot build a locomotive policy for the LNER on the basis that everything Gresley did was wrong."" Now no doubt this was said somewhat for effect and possibly tongue in cheek, but even if it wasn't Sir Ronald and it wasn't a verbatim quote, the fact that Bonavia, who was in the corridors of power, quotes it does illustrate what presumably was a commonly held perception.

 

According to FAS Brown, in his biography of Nigel Gresley, Thompson's attitude to Gresley was based on 2 factors - (a) Thompson's predilection for 2-cylinder locomotives being constantly ignored by Gresley and (b) the continued "disagreement" between Doncaster and Darlington (similar to that between Crewe and Derby) following the 1923 Grouping whereby Thompson (a Darlington man) had to follow Doncaster policies even whilst based at Darlington. A simple but illustrative example of this was the different shades of "apple green" used by Doncaster and Darlington because neither would accept a common shade.

 

Yes, I remember those comments. No doubt equally valid and should go into the mix. But don't they tend to reinforce the notion of resentment?

 

Then why is it mentioned in "Bulleid Last Giant of Steam" by Sean Day Lewis.
"But his son in law Edward Thompson never quite got over it and worked off some of his vengeance when he took over from Gresley in 1941"
Now, is that from Bulleid's own mouth? After all, he was there.

 

I wasn't aware of that quote - do you know what page it's from? I have a copy of that book on order as it happens (unrelated to my current writing project!)

That's a very interesting quote.

 

Well, there you go.
It is on page 79.