The LMS's pre-grouping express 4-6-0s - a question

As a fun aside, I wonder how the LMS constituents would have managed their loco matters into the 1930s had the grouping not happened?

I imagine that the smallest constituents might have been absorbed, but for the sake of argument lets say the L&Y and LNWR remained separate from one another.

Horwich in the early 1920s was struggling a bit with their four cylinder locos. But I think they would have been fine: they had a strong engineering tradition which learned from elsewhere: they would have cracked their valve, lubrication and smokebox vacuum issues. On actual L&Y lines their locos did well. Perhaps Hughes would have lasted longer in post without grouping politics, and might have built his 2-10-0? Or his Mallet? But about Horwich I don't think one need worry.

The Highland, too, had a good enough fleet by the grouping. Perhaps they would have built more of the Snaigow type 4-4-0 (to replace older types), and evolved their Superheated Goods and Clan types into something more powerful by the 1930s.

Derby, which gets so much flack, would have been just fine. Their locos were well suited to their lines, highly standardised, and ran well. Fowler would have developed something bigger - perhaps a four cylinder compound 4-6-0 - although they needed a much bigger freight loco. Perhaps Fowler could have developed something from his S&D 2-8-0 or the Lickey banker?

The Caledonian wasn't doing so well, just before grouping - Pickersgill's knew the Rivers were their best engines but couldn't apply that lesson to his own designs. But St Rollox also had a solid tradition of good practice, and was working on some interesting ideas at grouping, based on the River (one of which sort of inspired the Horwich Crab). So maybe they could have turned things round. Their older types were rugged and long lasting, so their main need was for a better express type.

Kilmarnock was in rather a state at grouping. Their problem was lack of money, principally, and a fleet of lots of numerically small classes which weren't standardised. At least if Drummond had lived longer he might have addressed the latter, although one can't think his proposed 4-cylinder 4-6-0 would have been a good prospect. Whitelegg's rebuild policy, if it had lasted longer, might also have made some economies and given a more manageable fleet, although perhaps not a good one unless he had finally learned to understand valve gear. One can't help despairing at what might have happened. If only someone who could have built on Manson's work could have been found!

Crewe, for all that I love it fiercely, gives me some concern. Beames doesn't seem to have been very forward thinking, to judge from his proposals of the 1930s (thank goodness we got the Black 5 and not his semi-modernised Tishy). And I'm father afraid that the Whale/Bowen Cooke school had rather run its course. What the LNWR needed was much more powerful express types, suburban types, etc. Was Crewe up to the job of making the big leap? There's little to suggest so. And they didn't like learning lessons from anyone else. But Crewe had weathered storms before, and pulled rabbits out of hats, so maybe something would have appeared....? Webb had suggested electrification fifty years before, when it was science fiction, but it's hard to see where the innovation and modernisation would have come from at Crewe...

 

the Lanky and the LNWR had already merged --in 1922

I kinda think Bowen Cooke missed a trick with the Claughton . If that had been built as a Pacific it would have avoided most of the Claughton problems
ash pan ,rear axle lube ,weightproblems (bridge stress committee) he would still likely have got the draughting wrong but that could have been sorted later
he would never have got it past the Board of course , but....wudda put the GWR back in its box!

does anyone fancy mocking up a pic of a Pacific Claughton ? with a large boiler of course , and a Great Bear firebox

 

Modernisation isn't the first word which leaps to mind with Furness loco policy either. Rutherford's oddly dated baltic was scarcely a show stopper.

 

What a very interesting notion ...... where's my "Buffering" gif?

 

I can't argue with what andrewshimmein says. I don't go in for conjecture: the Grouping happened, and that's it, but much of what he says gives the situation at the time anyway. But Crewe certainly was in a mess in the 1920s and into the 1930s, Stanier devolved the development of his new designs to Derby and Horwich only, having no faith in Crewe.

To be fair to Capt Beams, loco design wasn't all of his job, and in practice was only a small part of it. His biggest contribution was the reorganisation of Crewe Works, allowing it to come back to the fore.

 

"Crewe Locomotive Works and its Men" by Brian Reed is an excellent read in regard to the situation at Crewe up until Nationalisation. The Nationalisation period is covered more briefly, but the history right from the early 1860s to the modernisation in the late 1920s is fascinating. As LMS2968 says above, Hewitt Beames was responsible for a large-scale re-equipping of the works, and was an excellent Works Manager.
Reading the book did leave me wondering just what had happened between Frank Webb and George Whale though... Whale refused to allow a locomotive to be named after Webb, and more or less completely turned his back on all of Webb's designs.

Had the ball-valve piston rings been replaced by modern Stanier-era piston & valve rings, I also think the Ex-L&Y rebuilt Dreadnoughts would have been excellent machines. A great pity that 50455 didn't survive long enough to be put on one side by the BTC.

Richard.

 

But they probably only merged because Grouping was coming.

The Railways Act was passed in August '21 and said that the railway companies would be merged according to the plan given on 1st Jan '23, unless they did it of their own accord before then. Presumably the LNWR and L&Y boards thought their shareholders would get a better deal in terms of their LMS stockholding if they amalgamated as a single unit beforehand.

(Most of the GWR absorption was also settled some months before the deadline, too)

 

What evidence is there for a locomotive being good or not today?Cox,Nock etc.?
Caledonian railways built a class 60 that was more or less class 5 Lms dimensionwise.
They were very good frame non- crackers.
For the 23 where records existed 1n 1944 they had no cracks after nearly 30 years hard work.
Lms and standard class 5 were not that good.
By far.
It is bad luck that NRM do not harbour a frame class 60 complete

 

I thought they'd considered it pre-WWI, but not gone through because the politics were wrong? If so, there's questions of both cause and effect.

 

And in the 19th Century. Crewe's building several locos for the L&YR - and getting into legal trouble for it - was part of the preliminaries.

 

The Premier Line was supposed to have lost more staff in the First World War - if that was true that could have had an impact as well.

However change can be rapid and unexpected. Would anyone in 1895 have predicted that Swindon would have the most advanced locomotive designs by 1905?

 

True that. Swindon went, in the space of less than 10 years from joke locos like Dean's Kruger, to the 28xx and Saints, which were such a quantum leap that they never really changed their designs significantly again.

 

Very true. I'm not very up on Swindon matters (to the disgust of my late Grandpa) but I do know good engineering when I see it. What were the decisive factors on the GWR? Churchward seems to have had:
a. A very helpful "long handover" period with Dean
b. A supportive management who were happy for him to experiment, test and build prototypes
c. An open mind to developments elsewhere, not least in the US, France and Germany.
d. A talent for getting the mix right.

Compare to e.g. poor old George Hughes, the first man to fit long-travel valves and high degree superheat to a (sub)class of engines, but in his own later engines plagued by niggling problems with applying the 'right' answers.

 

The question of why some engineering organisations succeed and others do not is an important one. Obviously Churchward himself was important. However he must have had a good team around him, and for that Dean must have some responsibility. (Although Churchward had to look outside for ideas, he did not need to go headhunting for talent). One advantage that Churchward had was he was not under time pressure. The locomotives of Dean (and Armstrong) were at least competent and GJC did not have to deal with an immediate motive power crisis, rather he had several years to experiment. It was also a time when the Board was happy to invest for the long term - new lines as well as new locomotives.

 

Much has been written (and posted) on the reorganisation of workshops (William Stroudley being he who springs to my own mind). In what condition was Swindon, organisationally speaking, at the handover to GJC and what influences can be identified as formative in laying the foundations for his successful tenure?

 

Although much is made of Dean's reduced influence on locomotive design following personal tragedy and declining health, Churchward did state that as Dean encouraged Churchward to bring in and carry forward new locomotive design features he continued to play a key role in managing the modernisation of the works without which Churchwards later brand new designs would not have been possible.

It is true that Churchward's affection and sympathy for Dean may have led him to overstate, for instance, his role in the development of No 100 but much of the groundwork for the modernisation in the early 20th century took place in the 1890s.

 

I wonder how much of the undoubted success of GWR designs was down to their build accuracy?

I seem to recall reading that Swindon was a relatively early adopted of optical alignment when constructing their locos, whereas for example, Gresley up at Doncaster, still used a wing and a prayer, resulting in his locos (relatively speaking) running like a bag of spanners.

Admittedly, some were fast spanners

 

I think more generally the GWR had been run on a shoe string through at least the 1860s and 1870s, having a one stage nearly gone bust. In the 1890s though they had some money again, and they also had appointed new and very dynamic executives in many of their senior posts, and pursued a general policy of improving services and expanding the system. So it wasn't just Churchward, the whole company was going into a purple patch.

Although Churchward was greatly concerned with that sort of thing too, AIUI it was really the Collett/Hannington Cook era that saw the greatest advances in precision construction and maintenance. The other thing that comes across from the likes of Holcroft is that Churchward was a first class leader in the style of his day, and not only put together a very good design team, but also got the best out of them.

 

I was thinking when reading other posts about for instance Whale vs Webb and Thompson vs Gresley that part of the GWRs success was due to, in every case, the new Loco Supt. /CME having great respect for their predecessor and his designs (though of course Armstrong had no real choice given that his predecessor became Chairman!)

 

Of course if your predecessor wasn't worthy of the respect that would make things a tad tricky.