Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

I'll respond in full more this evening when I am back from work - but I rather like this post. Just wanted to throw that in there (whatever may be said of me - it doesn't matter who a fair point comes from, if it's a fair point it's a fair point).

 

Just in case the pigeons need another cat among them....

As a GWR partisan whose previous almost only opinion about the LNER was that Gresley had gone there as a sort of mission to the heathen, I've enjoyed reading through the 56 pages of this thread immensely (and I have done it over the last couple of months in bits and pieces to cover the entirety). Having been born in 1980, I missed out on steam the first time around, so the controversies of who said/did what to whom 70 years ago had in this case passed me by.

However, I have to say as someone that spends far more of their time in dusty archives than is good for them (with a background in economic and military history), and who deals with this sort of thing on a regular basis that coming to this story cold, and following the ebb/flow of the discussion with no preconceptions or partisanship whatsoever (and reading around the subject with the books recommended at various points), personally I am currently coming down on the "Thompson was hard done to/by" side....

Cock up is usually the answer rather than conspiracy, and I just can't make the "Thompson did it and orchestrated everything to fit with his agenda" side stack up. It's certainly not the more "probable" view in my opinion anyway.

Just a view from someone who now feels they know more about the 1940s LNER CME office than they ever wanted to, largely thanks to a NatPres thread!

 

I'm certainly of the opinion that Thompson was not the complete disaster that some have painted him, but also that he was capable of using situations (such as the wartime maintenace of the gear) to his advantage where he could. It makes him human, not a monster or a saint.

 

I suppose the thing that gets me is that people are being too binary, as if a design were right or wrong.

Design wasn't right or wrong. At any given date the whole British Locomotive fleet of all companies was full of examples of things that were not (or no longer) best practice, but the severity of the fault and other factors meant that the appropriate action varied.
It is of course a scale, not distinct categories, but just for the sake of the concept I've worked up 5 categories which might be considered, with examples (some more trivial than others) from GWR design, since I've studied that more than other companies. But the same will be true of all the fleets. Locomotives had a 40 year life and best practice changed enormously over that period. They couldn't scrap or rebuild every time best practice changed in the light of experience.

1) Best practice at present state of the art.

2) Not best practice, but other advantages mean it will still be used on new builds.
- example: end suspension stephenson link valve gear on GWR 0-6-0 and 0-6-0PT classes, which was still being used on the 9400 class, even though all ab initio valve gear design from the Saints onward used technically superior offset central suspension.

3) Adequate for continued use, but should not be repeated on new builds.
- Churchward era small cabs on GWR locomotives

4) Inadequate, should be replaced when convenient.
- example, inside steam pipes on GWR outside cylinder classes

5) Faulty, should be replaced at earliest opportunity
- example, original design big ends on King Class

Enthusiasts are very prone to thinking everything is either in category 1 or category 5, but it ain't like that.
Stanier's report clearly puts the big ends in my category 5 but the conjugated valve gear in my category 3, with the suggestion it might be worth considering changing it on some classes.

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And you know chaps, the Stanier/Cox report was probably confidential. Such things usually are. It would almost certainly not have been professional for Cox or Stanier to say much about it to a journalist/author like Nock without the permission of the LNER board or its successors.
You can all imagine, I'm sure, what the Daily M**l would make of a report like that about today's fleet. And probably there are such things.

 

It should be pointed out as well that it was not the conjugated gear that failed. Several LNER engineers are on record as saying that it never failed on the road.

The chain of events is something like :

a) the simple (two lever) conjugated gear is in essence an empirical design.
b) As a result it is technically (kinematically) imperfect.
c) The technical imperfections produced strains on other components that were only quantified over time.
d) The Gresley big end and driving axlebox design were (slightly) less than optimal, and in the most powerful engines were only satisfactory if pre-war standards of maintenance existed and were rigorously applied and the engines were not pushed to more than say 15% greater effort than their normal duties.
e) After 1939, the above conditions no longer existed and big end and axlebox problems became a severe overhead.
f) The report into the conjugated gear actually misdirected the search for a practical and economical solution - furthermore, the solutions actually adopted created problems of their own, including failures of the middle eccentric which were not a problem on the Gresley locos because they didn't exist.
g) The arrival of Cook stimulated a fresh look at the problem, and eventually big end and axlebox designs which were a 'best of both' using both Doncaster and Swindon practice were evolved, and these cured the problem.

Gresley could have reacted earlier, the big end and axlebox problems were known pre-war, but in the prevailing conditions were seen more as minor annoyances than major issues. He did take note of the frame weakness issue in the A3's, and the A4's did not suffer from it. He probably did nothing about the A3's because Doncaster had evolved repair methods that dealt with the problem more cheaply than a redesign. (That the various private owners of FS did not know how to maintain and repair it properly is not Gresley or Doncaster's problem).

Thompson's B1 and K1 (and O1, had the WD's not become available) were cheap, effective and desperately needed locos. More would undoubtedly have been built earlier had it not been for wartime restrictions. But it is reasonably clear that he did not help the situation far as the existing or new three cylinder engines were concerned - none of his like for like replacements were either as reliable or as cheap to maintain as the Gresley equivalents. (A1 for A3, A2/1 for V2, L1 for V3)

This latter failure in no way justifies the vilification - especially the personal vilification - he has been subjected to. Many other designers made similar - or even worse - mistakes - Drummond's various 4-6-0's, Whitelegg's interference with GSWR engines, Webb's compounds etc. etc. None of these designers - some of whom by modern standards would be regarded as very unpleasant people indeed - have been execrated in the same way as Thompson.

 

Fair enough, but the report was actually used to condemn the gear so Thompson could rebuild locos with three sets of gear. The big end didn't get get significantly changed until well after the war. Thompson asked for the report on the basis that he considered that the gear he didn't like anyway was damaging the big ends. Even though it was shown this wasn't the main cause, he didn't change his priorities.

It was Thompson who spoke to Nock of the report but I've no doubt that the conclusions of the report would have been quite incendiary at the time. That doesn't explain Cox's reticence in detailing the conclusions when he wrote his memoirs many years later.

Going back to this post - cock up is usually the answer once, but the more times the question has to be asked, the more it's likely to be conspiracy, or at least intention. If you ask " isn't it just possible that" once, then yes it's possible but unlikely, but each time you have to ask the same question of a sequence of actions, the less likely it becomes. Think of the WSRA thread - there were many calls of cock up early on, but I don't think you'll see any now.

 

I don't think all the evidence has been presented, because most of us are trying to be 'balanced'. Even if not achieving it! But if one takes the views of those who worked closely with Thompson in the design process, it seems he did have an agenda, and quite possibly that agenda hardened when he met with doubters. If you look at some of the early designs for Thompson engines, (I'm thinking particularly of the A2 and the L1) they have considerably more Gresley in them than the designs actually produced. We don't know everything anyway - we really don't know whether he deliberately chose Great Northern to rebuild, for example.

I would certainly not exonerate Thompson from all hints of vindictiveness, but I would stress that is an entirely human failing which Gresley himself seems not to have been totally free from. Few humans are. Especially those undertaking highly responsible and stressful jobs.

 

Just to add to Lplus's comment about what Cox thought about the infamous report in later years, we do know exactly what he thought because he stated in Locomotive Panorama Vol1 of Thompson

"he no doubt used the final report over Stanier's signature to full effect with his directors in the Machiavellian campaign he was conducting against all things Gresley"

Cheers,
Julian

 

Mmm, but it wasn't Thompson's job to design a new big end, it was his job to tell the drawing office to design a new big end. Maybe they did, and it wasn't good enough. After all it seems the big end still wasn't good enough on the Peppercorn, and that wasn't down to Thompson.

Something I've found frustrating trying to research GWR design is that the records are so incomplete. The Locomotive committee minutes tell you that "under circumstances represented it was agreed to...". A guard book *might* include a formal report from the CME detailing advantages and disadvantages, but there aren't many, and those non statutory records are often incomplete, but nowhere do we have records of the real discussions between the engineers as the pros and cons. So in this case I don't suppose we have Thompson's instructions to the drawing office about what to work on - at least the equivalent doesn't seem to exist for the GWR at National Archives and possibly not at NRM. Not sure about Swindon. So all we can do is speculate. Did the drawing office come back and say the big end is fine, its just fitting?" or say "Its the best we can do, you can't make one any stronger without causing these other problems". As far as I can tell we only have the occasional window on these things. Cook has a couple of pages where he talks about the big end problems on the GWR that influenced the BR (NE) redesign. He says that the running sheds blames the big end problems on poor fitting at the works, but that he is now (ie when writing the book) convinced it was fundamentally the inadequate design they eventually resolved. It would only be human for the drawing office to say "nothing wrong with the design, must be the fitting/maintenance"

It was certainly successively Gresley, Thompson and Peppercorn's responsibility that the big ends should have been redesigned until satisfactory. As to how much effort each had put into getting the design resolved, well I don't think we can know that. I suppose a careful study of the drawings register, if it exists, might show how many drawings were prepared and when. There's also the question of timescale. A new drawing lands on the CME's desk labelled "improved big end to resolve problems". How long is it before there are have been sufficient of them in service for long enough for the CME to say "actually it hasn't resolved the problems, try again." Its evident from Cook that it took the GWR several years and at least a couple of iterations in the 1930s to get a fully satisfactory big end design.

 

Right - but as the man who wrote the report and didn't pull his punches, surely rather than it being a Machiavellian campaign it was Cox agreeing with Thompson's overall conclusions and giving him the mandate to make the changes he wanted!

You can't have it both ways! If we agree Cox's report helped change the LNER going forward, and that was down to its content and language used, that is down to Cox - not Thompson, he didn't write it. He had already made his views clear to the LNER board.

He asked Stanier to act as an independent advisor, not Cox. Stanier then deputised Cox. Cox writes the report. Thompson presents the report together with evidence he's collated.

If it's an agenda, at a base level there is some truth in the idea that Edward Thompson was an engineer, and disagreed as an engineer, with Gresley on the merits or otherwise of using three cylinders in virtually all locomotive designs. Why is it a crime to disagree as an engineer?

And I have to point out that this "Machiavellian campaign" was limited to 26 rebuilds or developments of Gresley designs, with almost all of the Gresley 3 cylinder locomotives retained as "non standard locomotives" and only new builds affected by Thompson's standardisation plans going forward.

 

No one has said it's crime - why do you insist on using such emotive terms? To disagree as an engineer is fine, to "shade" evidence to ensure one can get one's own way might be less so.

The description of the campaign is not necessarily ameliorated by the lack of effect of the campaign. Who knows how much more would have been changed if Thompson had had more time.

 

To bring this tangent back to reality it is worth noting that in the period 1923 - 5 NBL built 20 Class A1 Pacifics incorporating the "standard" Gresley 3-cylinder layout hence the possibility that NBL adopted this as the basis for other 3-cylinder orders. Whilst Fowler inherited the post of CME in 1909 on the Midland Railway, on his ascendency to the role of CME in 1925 in succession to George Hughes, he would have gained access to the limited experience of the 3-cylinder designs from the pre-Grouping CMEs such as Pickersgill (CR) although LMS constituent companies mainly favoured 2-cylinder simple or 3/4-cylinder compound designs. The MR (and later LMS) design team at Derby were regular customers of NBL hence the use of design elements from NBL's other customers.

 

It's relevant because Gresley designed all sorts of locos with three cylinders. All considerations of the pros and cons of conjugated valve gear disappear if you stick to two cylinders.

Where does guile come in? Thompson wanted to introduce some new designs. Maybe he wanted to eliminate Gresley conjugated valve gear out of resentment against Gresley, maybe he wanted to eliminate it for pure engineering reasons, or maybe both. Maybe he could have sold his idea to the Board without independent support or maybe he couldn't: anyway he got such support from independent respected engineers.

The aspect that most deserves further investigation is why neither he nor Peppercorn followed up the advice in the report about the inside big ends.
Edit: or if they did make some efforts in that direction as suggested by Jimc, why that was without success.

Some contributors to this thread are open to new evidence and wishing to get at the truth (insofar as that is possible so many years after the events concerned). Others made their minds up long ago and interpret all the evidence (old or new) so as to support their beliefs.

Who is in which category? It seems clear enough to me from their respective contributions.

If we want some more fun, we can think about which CMEs had those respective mindsets.

 

Ignoring the express locos, was the report used to justify the two cylinder locos over the three cylinder ones?
I'm sure I read that Gresley used three cylinders as they exhibited less cylinder wear allowing longer running between service intervals over two cylinder engines. Did improvements in lubricants reduce that advantage, much like the low superheat on the GWR?

 

I just had a quick look at the NRM drawings list for Doncaster. The trouble with these things is that you really need to understand the register well before interpreting it, but I *think* I see evidence of a new rod design in July 1941, big end strap redesign in 1942/3, another new rod design in 1947, and then a lot of work on rods and bearings in 1954.

 

Arguably - yes. The B17s became B2s off the back of this report. One K3 became a K5. One K4 became a K1/1. One D49 became a D Class. The common denominator is three cylinders down to two.

But all new build locomotives in the small and medium size categories were intended to be two cylinder. The argument for conjugated valve gear immediately eliminated by introducing two cylinder locomotives.

Many on the pro-conjugated valve gear side of the debate will continuously cite the advantages of three cylinders - hammer blow, etc - but nobody seems able to address the white elephant in the room in that Thompson was simply following the SR, GWR and LMS in developing a 4-6-0 with two cylinders, a 2-8-0 with two cylinders, a 2-6-0 with two cylinders, and a 2-6-4T with two cylinders as the main additions to the LNER's stock.

And as far as I can see nobody is arguing that any of the other three members of the big four should have adopted conjugated gear with three cylinders for all of their locomotives off the back of Gresley's work for these reasons when two cylinders were sufficient for almost all of the locomotives produced, bar the four cylinder large engines on the GWR and LMS and the 3 cylinder Pacifics on the SR.

Bulleid went out of his way to go away from the Gresley line, arguably - why is he not criticised for abandoning the conjugated gear when he was there throughout its development on the LNER?

 

Re new designs: as evidence of how the world changed and needed a new approach you just have to look at the V4 and B1. Can anyone seriously doubt that the V4 was not the right answer WWII and after? Circumstances alter cases.

 

There's enough straw men in there to build a haystack.

 

Then feel free to address them, and do so constructively.

 

I quite agree. The two non identical V4s did prove excellent machines however. But were they what was really required?

The success of the B1 probably answers that question alone, as you infer.