Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

While that may be a fair assessment of his later LSWR designs, his earlier designs in Scotland for the NBR and CR were very successful - so much so that those railways continued to build classes based on Drummond's earlier designs for most of the rest of their existence.
That's the thing with CMEs as well: many great engineers built superb designs and rubbish ones (plus, as you say, other factors such as workshops). Coming up with an 'overall' assessment is rather meaningless - e.g. F W Webb.
And how does one assess the carriage designs of Bulleid, Thompson, etc.?
Nevertheless, I expect that I'm the eyes of most enthusiasts, aesthetics and performance of a relatively small number of top link locos is all that counts! As you say, company shareholders no doubt had a different view - especially since shifting goods was what generated moat of their revenue.

 

That's an interesting quote. Bulleid undoubtedly gave the operating department locos that could pull whatever was required of them, albeit at higher than desirable operating and maintenance cost. His carriages were excellent, and he put in place numerous EMUs and started the process of building mainline diesels and electrics on his watch. No doubt as well, there was also an element of "lifting the spirits" in intangible ways, for example the modernity of design and livery, lettering etc, he bought to the department, giving a feeling of uplift. I suspect that gets to the core of "[he] cost us a lot of money but we got our money's worth out of him".

But it still begs the question about why a nuanced appreciation of OVSB seems possible, yet Thompson seems more or less universally vilified? You get the sense that he could have single-handedly ended the war, cured cancer and developed safe reliable nuclear fusion, but people would still be saying "yes, we know he did all that - but 4470 Great Northern ..."

Tom

 

Considering the widespread strength of feeling about what was done to Great Northern, I can't help wondering if, at some time in the future, there might be sufficient support to fund the construction of a new Gresley A1 to original specification (after the P2?). This might go some way towards putting right a historical wrong and enabling us to feel less bitterness towards Thompson.

On the other hand, considering that the A3s in their late BR form were the final development of the A1, I wonder how good an original A1 might seem today. I'm prepared to put a few grand in. Anybody else?

 

I'd love to see GNR no.1470 recreated in her original form but short travel valves and single chimney would not be ideal for use on the main line.

 

One of the most telling points in this whole thread is how this report is interpreted and how people interpret how it was used. When it appeared that Stanier had written it, and was not as critical (as per OS Nock's writings), Thompson was the villain who somehow persuaded the LNER to move away from Gresley's conjugated valve gear.

When it emerged ES Cox wrote it, and the actual report was published, so many people rushed to tell us that Cox wasn't actually that good an engineer - undermining the paper and thereby undermining Thompson.

You're quite right: they're not relevant to how we should be objectively looking at his designs. But how many times have we seen his personality used to explain his decision making in engineering?

They are relevant as they give the whole story and to simply state (as I've seen a number of times) that Thompson was bitter, therefore he rebuilt Great Northern, isn't good enough either.

Thompson's character is constantly called into question in a way no one else is in railway history. For the purposes of my book, I've looked at the man and his machines, and his role during the war. Context and history is key to knowing the whole story.

I agree with you Julian - but unlike Thompson, Holcroft doesn't suffer seemingly partisan criticism because of his character and known history at every turn. That's been the point of this thread, to ask if Thompson had been treated fairly.

If we're at the stage where you recognise that we should be constructively discussing his locomotives separate to his personal life and to his engineering decisions and credentials, that's a win for me because I have never read an account from any railway historian bar Grafton and Hardy who attempted to do so in the first place.

 

As an 'outsider' to LNER affairs I find it incredible that this thread has reached 1065 posts just going round in circles only seeming to conclude that this particular CME built a small number of less than perfect locos while a large number of his better designed locos (and, incidentally, coaches) were built ... as can be said about most others.

As regards Great Northern it seems that with the constraints of the time he would only be allowed to 'rebuild' rather than build new true express locos so, if he expected to rebuild all the A1s in due course it doesn't seem to me to be particularely deprecating of Gresley to choose Great Northern as the class leader, at he didn't even renumber it to further subdue its identity. Perhaps it is just unfortunate for his reputation (though not of course for future generations) that further renewals of the rest of the A10s didn't take place.

Churchward is criticised for allowing Gooch's North Star and Lord of the Isles to be scrapped while he was in office, yet not villified to any extent. Collett treated Churchward's 'North Star' in a similar way to Great Northern, although I don't suppose there was the expectation that it would be preserved when its useful life finished, while I belelieve that (although he had himself been somewhat disparaging of it) Churchward was shocked when Collett dismantled the Great Bear.

So all in all I am puzzled why emotions run so high re Thompson.

Oh dear, I've now made it at least 1066 posts!

 

I was pretty sure that Thompson was responsible for the Stratford rebuilding but I didn't have sources to hand when I wrote the previous message so was cautious in my attribution. I guess that would include the J19's and J20's as well - and maybe the long valve travel on the later N7's?

I can't imagine that Gresley would have let Thompson loose on engine redesign as 'something to keep him busy' unless he did trust his engineering instincts. After all, the result would be Gresley's responsibility.

Having said which, it is remarkable how biographical writings on Gresley (and Bulleid) manage to not mention , or barely mention, Thompson when they must have met frequently. You'd almost believe Thompson was on an entirely different railway.

 

As we used to say back in the day: you don't have to like the people you do business with but it helps. Thompson's 'absence' is surely significant.

 

Probably make a hell of a racket!

 

Indeed. Worth firing up the sound recorder for that.

 

I seem to remember one of the writings on Thompson mentioning him going to Paddington and noting the distinctly separate exhaust beats produced by the long travel valve gear used by the GWR and this having some influence on the B12 rebuilds' gear.

Dave

 

Since we seem to be getting nowhere with "Thompson - OK or dreadful?" I am going to make a blatant thread swerve...
Someone mentioned many posts ago about the how the Peppercorn pacifics had a "Stanier" 3-cylinder front end. Now Stanier's 3-cylinder 4-6-0s were of course only Stanier from the waist up: the rebuilt Scots and Patriots kept their "Fowler" motor while the Jubilee was a Pat with a Swindonised boiler.
The Patriots in turn were a Crewe boiler (Capt Beames for the Claughtons I seem to remember) on a Scot chassis and front end.
The Scot front end was developed by North British Loco to a Fowler specification, so where did they get the inspiration for this arrangement from?
We are told the LMS was looking for something like a Castle, but no help on 3-cylinder from there. They had the Lord Nelson drawings, but again, not 3-cylinder. Neither the LNER or Holcroft on the SR had 3-cylinder designs with independent valve gear (not yet, anyway).
Fowler and Derby of course had Johnson's 3-cylinder compound (originally by W M Smith of the NER), but there seems little resemblance.
I don't know of any 3-cylinder designs from other LMS constituents, although perhaps St Rollox had something?
Elsewhere the NER had lots of 3-cyl locos, but the Raven arrangement doesn't seem to have had much bearing on the Scots'.
So where did NBL get their arrangement?
It so happens that in 1924 NBL built a batch of 3-cylinder 2-6-4T for the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railway (Ferrocarril Sud) of the Argentine. These were to a design by Mr P Saccaggio, CME of the BAGS/FCS. They were, incidentally, extremely successful, operating the most intensive steam-worked suburban services in the world (after the first stage of electrification at Liverpool St) and remaining in operation into the 1970s.
Could the origin of the "Stanier" 3-cyl front end be this Italian-born Argentine engineer?
All the above is supposition, and am happy to be proved wrong, but interesting thought!

 

Hi Andrew,

The SR had quite a few 3 cylinder locos before the Schools were introduced, though only 2 of them had the Holcroft gear. Holcroft was a firm advocate of 3-cylinder locos per se, as against 2 cylinders. All the SR 3 cylinder locos show Holcroft's influence and work on the drawing board until Bullied came along, as Bullied was very much a hands on person in the drawing office, and Holcroft decided to take a back seat and avoid confrontation with his new boss.

The reason why we are still debating Thompson is that some of us are very interested in what happened all those years ago. What we have left in preservation is the product of the drawing offices in days gone by. How certain decisions were arrived at, and how details were decided upon will always fascinate some of us.

Personally I would much rather have a debate about Churchard than Thompson, but that is for another thread, and I dont have Simon's perseverance to maintain such a thread!

Cheers,
Julian

 

Julian
Very interesting - which other 3 cylinder locos did the SR have (pre-1926)?
I remembered that the Caledonian had a small class of 3-cylinder 4-6-0s, described by Jenkinson as "the most feeble in the country"!

 

I don't agree that the Peppercorn Pacifics had a 'Stanier' front end. I doubt that there was any Stanier influence at all - if anything it was the Thompson Pacifics which had more of a resemblance to the Stanier Princesses in the front end layout, albeit three cylinders instead of four. The Princesses also had separate valve gear for every cylinder.

It seems to be overlooked that everything about both the Peppercorn and Thompson Pacific's behind the leading drivers was in the pure Gresley / Doncaster tradition, (Except for the A1/1's cab!) and there was no reason why it shouldn't have been. Both later designers were trying to remedy faults that had become apparent during the war, and these faults were perceived to be caused by the valve gear. Apart from that the Gresley engines were accepted as entirely satisfactory. The alternate approach of accepting that the valvegear was technically imperfect and beefing up the big end to cope does not seem to have been considered until Cook came on the scheme.

'Technically imperfect' is not a disqualification. There is no evidence that Gresley engines in general used more coal or water than comparable non-conjugated machines. Only the first Pacifics had a problem with coal consumption due to the mistake of limiting the valve travel, and that was corrected years before the period under discussion. So, if by whatever means the maintenance issues could be resolved, the conjugated gear was fine. GWR men can of course take comfort that it took a GWR man to come up with the solution. Would have been even better if he'd fitted the Kylchap exhaust at the same time instead of writing it off as a 'gadget'.

The Peppercorn A1's were undoubtedly, in terms of efficiency and maintenance cost, the best Pacifics that ever ran in the UK, although probably not quite as powerful as a Duchess. They didn't need to be, in fact with the changing patterns of express trains during the 50's they probably came to be too powerful for the work available, which moved towards shorter faster and more frequent trains at which the A3's and A4's shone.

The problems with Thompson Pacifics were entirely down to the front end layout which caused maintenance and reliability problems, they were otherwise fast , powerful and economical. Appearance - well, that's just individual taste.

Why is Thompson so vilified? I suggest two separate reasons, one important and one frankly unimportant. The important one is that he was unable to achieve a good working relationship with his drawing office and some other team members, to the unusual extent that loyalty to the boss broke down and the dissent was later revealed publicly. Second, enthusiasts felt he had 'spoiled' a handful of Gresley engines. Exactly what 'spoiled' means in this context is hard to pin down. If people cared so much about Great Northern being rebuilt why was no attempt made to preserve its 'twin', Sir Frederick Banbury? Was Great Northern less efficient after its rebuild? Apparently not. Were the P2's any use as originally designed? Not really. They existed to pull one exceptionally heavy train - it would have been better and probably cheaper overall to have double-headed or split that train. Could they have been used in the South unaltered? Probably not - the trackwork around Kings Cross would have given them even more problems than they encountered in Scotland.

The A4's and the V2's are Gresley's masterpieces, not the P2's, and not the A1/A3's in original condition.

(Edited for spelling)

 

There were three cylinder variants of N, K and U, i.e. N1, K1 and U1. As I recall, there was only one K1 2-6-4T (built 1925), which had the Holcroft gear; when it was rebuilt into the prototype U1 (in 1928), it kept the gear. Subsequent production U1 locos had three independent sets of valve gear right from the start, and the prototype was subsequently converted, as were the N1 locos.

There was also the W class 2-6-4T (1932) built for freight work, which had three independent sets of valve gear from the start, though in the interests of standardisation, they retained the "sloping" cylinder design from the other mogul-family locos that was necessary to allow space for the conjugating levers.

The Z class 0-80T (1929) built for shunting also had three cylinders, but again, three independent sets of gear.

Tom

 

The LNER had a large number of three cylinder locos that in the main worked very well, and were kinder to the track than two cylinder equivalents. There are only two questions about them - at what point is a loco small enough that a third cylinder is an extravagance, and what is the best layout of three cylinders to achieve minimum maintenance costs. The balance on both those questions changed in the 1940's and again in the 1950's.

The LMS also had some excellent 3 cylinder designs, the best of them probably being the Patriots. No-one has ever revealed quite what went wrong with the Pickersgill Caley jobs, but they seem to have been the nearest thing to total failures that ever took to British rails in the 20th century.

The LNER also had a number of four cylinder engines that were not particularly efficient, and probably would militate against using four cylinders for the largest engines. Gresley did of course use four in the hush-hush loco, so it wasn't a fixed rule to use three cylinders, it was what he felt appropriate for the size of engine he produced.

It's not the number of cylinders that are the issue, its the ability of the designer to produce a loco that can do its required work at the minimum all round cost - a large two-cylinder loco that batters the track is expensive in a way different to the maintenance issues with the conjugated gear, but it is still a cost that should be accounted for.

 

I am very grateful to Tom and Pete2hogs for their replies.

In order to assess Thompson one needs to have an appreciation of the benefits of 3 cylinders, and hence assess what also Gresley did. 3 cylinders have significant advantages. You can aviod large outside cylinders. You can avoid hammer blow. You can produce a loco that has a far better turning moment, and the more frequent and less sharp exhaust blasts help the fire and general combustion. In carefully designed locos the middle cylinder acts as a frame stay.

The SR Schools are perhaps the best examples. And yes they had 3 sets of valve gear unlike the Gresley locos.

Cheers,
Julian

 

I think two of the finest 3-cylinder classes in these islands were the GNR(I) VS Class 4-4-0 and the GSR 800 Class 4-6-0. Both had three sets of independent valve gear. The former had some Derby genes (and some from Doncaster and St Rollox) and was a BP product. The latter (built Inchicore) seems to have emerged from nowhere, although recent authors have tended to detect some Maunsell/Holcroft influence. Both were superb designs which never managed to fulfil their potential in the difficult economic and political climate of post-war Ireland (N and S).

Picking of on a rather topic, I have always been fascinated that, out of all the 4-cylinder 4-6-0 designs in Britain, only Swindon's (courtesy of the Nord and SACL) was successful. All the others - from otherwise highly successful engineers such as Hughes, Robinson, Maunsell, Bowen-Cooke - were essentially slightly disappointing.
There seems to have been some common reasons: longer boilers with the wrong aspect ratios, narrow grates, constricted steam passages, short-travel valves, the lubrication problems of early superheated designs, piston rings...
Although I have also heard that, with the right crews, the Lanky dreadnaughts, Lord Nelsons and GCR 9N and 9Q gave very good performances (and weren't as coal-hungry as sometimes reported).

 

The main problem with the Dreadnoughts (as rebuilt) was apparently the design of the piston rings. It is said that very late in their life they were fitted with 'modern' multiple narrow rings and their performance improved out of all recognition. But most of the designs you mention suffered from inadequate grates, constricted ash-pans, and inaccessible maintenance items. (not just valve gear but glands and the like on the inside cylinders) .

The GWR designs at least made some allowance for maintaining all the gear between the frames. Churchward and Stanier also were aware of the ashpan problem after, paradoxically, problems with steaming with the Churchward Atlantics.

I've certainly read one book on the Robinson designs which suggests they were not as coal-hungry as alleged - in fact that they were better than the B16's which were generally considered acceptable and lasted much longer.

The Schools seems to have been one of the best designs ever produced, although even it has features (such as the smokebox design) that are again less than the ideal. Being a 4-4-0 the inside valve gear would have been relatively accessible. No-one ever built an engine that had all the most desirable features embodied in it, and of course in some areas it was never decided what the best solution was.

I'd still suggest the A1 - in particular the roller bearing examples - were the most efficient (cheapest per ton-mile on the duties required to be performed) of the designs that were actually built and analyses of its performance attributes and maintenance costs are available to back that up.