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Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by S.A.C. Martin, May 2, 2012.

  1. Lplus

    Lplus Well-Known Member

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    I already told you why
    we must be reading different commentators then
    Then I hope they got their sums right.
    I'd first ask how the hell it managed to survive so successfully before the war and ensure the situation was remedied. Of course if I wanted to remove the gear anyway, I might not pursue that course.
    The gear was greased not oiled. The oil was for the A4 bearings specifically for running the nonstop services, which had been cancelled for the duration. If I'm that shed foreman I make sure the grease gun is wielded more often. You talk as if they were incapable of instructing the staff they had in how to maintain the gear. I might agree that some small shed housing a couple of K3s and a few D49s might wel struggle, but the pacifics were housed in a few sheds along the main routes. Somewhere I recall that the Scottish pacifics were grouped at Haymarket to ensure the maintenance was done correctly. It seems the Scots had the right idea. As to other railways, since they had no conjugated gear it is irrelevant what they could or could not do.
    So are you saying Musgrave chose 4470 for rebuild to A1/1? Assuming not, and the loco was already being stripped to become an A3, it must have been Thiompson who issued the order to convert that loco to A1/1 and thus should have had the authority to cancel the instruction. Of course if Thompson had simply issued the order to convert the next loco and Musgrave had selected 4470, the onus is on Musgrave - though I find it hard to believe Thompson couldn't have stopped it if he had chosen to.
    Perhaps it was the old design team who made the request, so maybe I should rephrase that as "perhaps it just shows what he thought of the old Gresley team"
    And yet the many locos already affected weren't given that specific fix. Nor was the maintenance regime seemingly tightened, though quite how much skill you think is needed to wield a grease gun, I'm not sure. Rebuilding a few locos to three sets of gear and designing a new 2 cylinder is all very well, but in the timescale of a war it's nothing like immediate enough. More to the point, the gear itself wasn't the major cause of the bearing failures which really caused breakdowns on the road, so not only was the fix not implemented overall, it wouldn't make a major difference to failures if it were.
    And yet Thompson was determined to change to independent valve gear and build his own classes of locos. He used the wartime maintenance problems of the conjugated gear to get permission to start his changes but then didn't manage to change to actual reason for failure on the road which was the bearing.

    Still, at least he did his best.
     
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  2. andrewshimmin

    andrewshimmin Well-Known Member

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    I'm sorry, but saying "the conjugated valve gear worked fine before the war, so just do what we did before" is like someone in 1941 saying "well, I used to eat bananas and holiday on the Cote d'Azure in 1938, so you should just do it now..."
    Railway companies were commercial ventures - they would not have sanctioned (expensive) rebuilding if (affordable and practical in wartime) maintenance could have paid off.
    Remember, in 1941 no one knew if the war would be over quickly (probably because Britain had been defeated) or would last a decade. It was only Stalin's involvement which got out over by 1945.
     
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  3. Lplus

    Lplus Well-Known Member

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    Grease guns were not rationed.
    It doesn't seem as if Thompson even tried. Why did it take until after the war for an investigation to be made by Bill Harvey? Ah yes, he'd been banished by Thompson and returned by Peppercorn.
    I reckon the USA helped a bit - though none of that is relevant to whether an attempt was even made to improve maintenance.
     
  4. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    As, indeed, they did. There's a well known quote ascribed to a German officer: "When we opened fire, the British ducked. When the British opened fire, we ducked. When the Americans opened fire, we both ducked".
     
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  5. Smokestack Lightning

    Smokestack Lightning Member

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    That surely would have ranked as the worst locomotive name in railway history! :(

    Dave
     
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  6. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    If you are reacting to be accused of "whataboutery" as an insult I was using it as a descriptive term of the responses you are (still) making.

    I've been reading contemporary material, books thereafter, done interviews and spoken to people who worked on them. So clearly.

    You are being deliberately obtuse now. I have already explained this. But once more - and then no more.

    In 1939 there was a glut of railwaymen. In 1941 many of these men in the lower ranks (and particularly in maintenance) had gone to war.

    The LNER was in deficit of all areas and was doing the best it could to fill the gaps both with women and younger generations.

    Absolutely - and by removing a centre cylinder and the conjugated valve gear for small and medium locomotives, you make maintenance for fitters and for the overhaul facilities by definition and in practice easier.

    I don't believe I said that it wasn't, only that specialist lubricants (which contrary to your next statement, isn't just reserved for oils on bearings) were not as available. Which is true.

    Firstly - never mentioned oils. I referred to lubricants (of which grease is one).

    Secondly - no one is saying the foremen were incapable of instruction. Instruction is not the same as carrying out the job.

    What did happen was that inexperienced individuals were called up to do jobs they had not done before, were not familiar with, and consequently maintenance levels took a tumble. That was the experience across railways: on the LNER the conjugated valve gear fleet suffered more than most. That is factual.

    The Gresley conjugated valve gear fleet is NOT just the Pacifics and this is part of yours (and others) problems when looking objectively at the whole matter. Across the board - that's tank engines, small and medium tender engines, goods engines and the Pacifics, the conjugated valve gear fleet were suffering from the lack of manpower and overall maintenance.

    Except that Cox pointed out in his report that the three cylinder machines of comparable size and power on the LMS suffered six times less than their LNER counterparts - due mostly to the type of middle big end employed but that in any event he did not believe the conjugated valve gear itself was suitable (and gave conclusions to that effect).

    So looking at what other railways are doing is not irrelevant, at all. It is very relevant.

    Yes. Richard Hardy, who worked in the drawing office and on 4470 as it happens, has confirmed this, both twenty years ago in Steam World Magazine and more recently. This is fact.

    We can dispense with the rest of that quote because we have now established who chose 4470 to be rebuilt.

    The choice had been made, and the CME did not have the power to select a locomotive in this way.

    The only potential exception is in fact the Morpeth - which was a unique D49/2 with different valve gear to the rest, and which required replacement gear and cylinders when it was selected for rebuilding in any event.

    You may well do. And I think there is evidence to suggest that there was fault on Thompson's side most certainly for failing to show any tact.

    Some might accuse him of acting badly towards the Gresley team - I think it could go either way.

    Who is right: the design team who thinks the CME is wrong, or the CME who feels he is right and cannot get anything done with the current design team?

    Hence several of Gresley's team were removed and Thompson installed people to help him care out his vision.

    And here is where it gets bonkers.

    Thompson is vilified for this but this is literally what Gresley did at the GNR and then when the LNER was formed.

    Bulleid brought people with him to the Southern, Stanier asked for and got people to join him on the LMS.

    Almost every CME has placed people to support their vision around them and yet only Edward Thompson is castigated for it.

    That is because Edward Thompson had a number of the Gresley designs selected to be part of the LNER standard classes (as in, to be maintained, and reboilered, but not built new).

    Great Northern was to be a prototype for new builds, as were the P2 rebuilds - in fact every single Thompson rebuild that was done was arguably a prototype for new builds further down the line. Some made it, like the K1/1 (to K1) and similar, some didn't (A1/1). All except the Morpeth (written off after a heavy shunt at Starbeck) worked until the late 60s.

    But it is not as simple as that. It wasn't just who wields the gun. How many people do you have to devote to that? How much time available? Any air raids on? How much grease do we have and can we stretch it, given supplies? Can some locos survive a bit longer to carry out essential wartime traffic? We are not talking about pre-war standards, we are talking about a situation on the LNER where austerity permeated every single part of every single job, role and service.

    Agreed, but Thompson's hands were extensively tied by how much money the LNER had and what he was also allowed to do by the war office. He - unlike Gresley - did not have a free hand and a bigger budget. Almost everything Thompson did used standard LNER components and that is down to the difficult circumstances he was placed in.

    Not to mention that much of what he did was planning for the LNER to build new locomotives to standard designs as and when they were able to, and finding fixes for those immediate problems.

    Thompson was planning for a time when the LNER would not be in the dire situation they found themselves in and was doing the best with what he had. No one had any idea of the levels of maintenance post war (if such a thing happened - how can Thompson predict in 1941-5 when the war would end and when austerity would cease?).

    He was CME. That was his prerogative. Is it a god given right for Gresley locomotive designs to continue to be built when a new CME takes over?

    (As it happens, Edward Thompson did continue to build Gresley V2s, recognising an urgent need for them - conveniently overlooked by many).

    Well he did manage to make the big fundamental change - aside from the authorised V2 batch for which he accepted there was a need (and made a modification to them with their front pony truck layout - again something that has been ignored in history books) - no new LNER locomotives were ever built with conjugated valve gear again, and his divided drive layout for three cylinders was then used on the Peppercorn machines as well, albeit in a more compact way.

    So did Peppercorn and his team actually deviate much from Thompson's plans? The answer is no, they did not.

    The sarcasm is noted, but yes - he did.
     
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  7. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    But grease was. Almost everything was rationed. You do understand the austerity measures of the 1940s? You do understand the pressures the railways were put under by wartime traffic?

    Pray tell, what should he have done differently?

    I would argue, given the intention is to remove pre grouping and grouping conjugated valve gear machines from being built new and for some of them to not be replaced (those outside of the "non standard to be maintained" group) then it is fair to ask why would Thompson - or anyone - bother to investigate a problem that they are looking to eliminate altogether?
     
  8. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Thompson was not one for names on locomotives and this is born out by his desire to have all of his locomotive designs unnamed for the most part.

    He is quoted, however, as being touched by the naming of no.500 by the LNER board of directors - and that his late wife would have been delighted.
     
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  9. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    One point that I think is sometimes forgotten when considering standardisation (or lack thereof) on different railway companies is the relative size of those companies; in particular, how many of a particular class would be required to make a measurable degree of standardisation.

    As an example, there were "only" 80 Maunsell N Class locos. The total loco fleet of that railway started at about 2,200 in 1923 and had declined to just over 1,800 by nationalisation. By contrast, the LNER has about 6,300 steam locos as at nationalisation, and the LMS around 8,000. So in proportion, the 80 Maunsell N class locos were proportionately equivalent to a single class of about 280 locos on the LNER, or a class of about 350 on the LMS. The 110 Bulleid light pacifics are, proportionately, very similar to the 400 Thompson B1s in terms of the proportion of the total fleet they made up.

    Tom
     
  10. Lplus

    Lplus Well-Known Member

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    This is getting silly, I recognise we will never agree, but to answer this point - yes he did abandon Conjugated gear, but the bearing failures were not really caused by it, so the mention of 6 times the number of bearing failures the LMS becomes irrelevent unless you start to talk about bearing design.



    And this -
    So now it's the lack of grease? For heavens sake, why investigate a problem? Because a fix is needed for all the locos actually in service, that are needed NOW, not when a new series of locos can be built. Unless you know that it won't make a blind bit of difference to the bearing failures I suppose.
     
  11. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Let me point you in the direction of ES Cox's report again then.

    He gave an overview of the whole thing and pointed to specifics about the gear that made it in his view unsuitable. That includes the middle big end, the bearings, etc. It wasn't just one point then pulled out to the extremes as you intimate: ES Cox gave an overall conclusion.

    For clarity (if it was not already clear) it was not just one issue: it was all of them together. Many different factors leading to an overall difficult situation. Rationing of everything, lack of knowledge and manpower, lack of time, urgency of situation.
     
  12. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Picking up on the point made by @Jamessquared another facet of standardisation is that a change of CME (let alone mergers) often led to a new round of usually incompatible standards. Then there's the assumption that traffic levels would remain predictable, which had a hole blown beneath it's waterline by the Great Depression (long before the step change in traffic modes due to motorway and trunk road construction which caught BR's modernisation plan on the hop in the 1960's). The GW alone in the UK seems, for the most part, to have been partially immune to these upheavals - at least during the 20th century!

    The changes resulting from the demise of Gresley and accession of Thompson look insignificant when compared with those between Fowler and Stanier, let alone Maunsell and Bulleid!

    Leaving aside niche locos (such as yer actual Terriers or J70 trams) and departures like early diesels, were the target number of Big 4 'standard' classes (10 for Stamp's LMS, 4 for Bulleid's Southern and (how many?) for Thompsons LNER ever vaguely realistic? Even GJC's much vaunted "blueprint" left the GW with a large array of different 'standard' classes.
     
  13. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Thompson wanted to reduce the LNER to just 19 classes - a mixture of his new designs and the Gresley ones selected to be maintained.

    In the event the total number of inherited pre-grouping and grouping classes fell, due to the introduction of the B1s, but by the time the LNER would have been building more of the Thompson and Peppercorn locomotives as standard, the LNER had become BR and all future production of LNER classes was cancelled in favour of the forthcoming BR standard ranges. This meant, for example that only 409 B1s were built (410 but one withdrawn) where it is very likely up to a 1000 would have been built to replace the 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s of more elderly vintage that were left.

    So yes, it was entirely possible if it had been the LNER calling the shots: but it wasn't and it didn't happen. No one can deny that Thompson and Peppercorn helped supplement the LNER's locomotives with some excellent designs in good numbers - the B1 and the K1 will be forever remembered as the post war locomotives that perhaps reinvigorated the north east, and the A1 will be remembered as Britain's best Pacific design (I say that with clear bias).
     
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  14. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    In terms of the various arguments / counter arguments posted regarding the reliability of the Conjugated valve gear, it may be worth repeating a point that I made earlier which was the experience of haymarket staff and their maintenance standards for the gear. I refer to the writings of Harry Knox (Haymarket Motive Power Depot Edinburgh pub Lightmoor Press 2011 (ISBN 978 1 899889 58 7) in which the primary cause of the excessive wear on pin joints and knuckles was identified as the mix of smokebox char and grease. According to the standard maintenance procedure the valves and pistons were removed at 30 / 36000 miles but NOT the conjugated valve gear; Haymarket however included the conjugated valve gear which was dismantled and all pins and bearings being renewed as required (shades of Ian Riley perchance ?).
    It would be interesting to compare Haymarket's maintenance standards with those of other LNER depots allocated Gresley locomotives with conjugated valve gear to see how their maintenance standards / performance levels compare.
     
  15. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Thanks Simon. Compared with Stamp's target number for the larger LMS, that seems (to me!) unexpectedly high. Would that be 19 classes, absolute total? I ask as most such targets I've seen state a number of 'standards', but make clear there's 'wriggle room' for the wierd and wonderful (you've just got to love the IoW lines!) to be retained as 'special cases'.

    One by-the-by concerns diesels (and probably belongs on a different thread - so apologies in advance). Leaving aside UK Govt. policies on imported fuels for a moment, I wonder what effect modern traction in the immediate postwar period would have had on steam 'standards' totals, had nationalisation not supervened? I confess I know nowt about any IC proposals or tests on the LNER, but the Ivatt and Bulleid diesels certainly looked to be on the cusp of viable bulk production, or at least of directly spawning something which was, and the mechanicals of the pre-war AEC units (as used on the GW) were the progenitors of far larger postwar fleets across the Irish Sea.
     
  16. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    What do you think that the minimum number of types you might need in the UK pre 1960?
     
  17. Lplus

    Lplus Well-Known Member

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    I'm well aware of what the report says. I'm also well aware of the final point of Cox's conclusion which you just happen to omit;

    It is clear that Cox felt changing the big end "should bring about considerable improvement" so once again I say
    Sadly Cox was wrong that the changes would do the trick, but only because the changes then proposed were not adequate. So to blame the "6 times the number of failures" solely on the Conjugated gear is nonsense, as was finally proven when the bearing was modified in stages from 1947, without changing the gear. It should be noted that all the pacifics suffered from bearing failure, even the Peppercorn ones, until the bearing was fully modded.
     
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  18. Eightpot

    Eightpot Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Re S. A. C. Martin's post no. 1706. A quibble perhaps, but I think you will find that the modifications to V2 pony trucks took place following derailments at Hatfield in July 1946 and at Marshmoor in November that year. By the time the modifications started this would have been after Thompson had retired and succeeded by Peppercorn. Granted that pony truck spring control was initiated by Thompson in 1945 with the L1 2-6-4 tanks.
     
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  19. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Interesting - my notes say different. Happy to be corrected - I will make sure I get that right.

    Thank you for the heads up.
     
  20. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    You'd need to start with the 1955 modernisation plan and a hell of a lot of assumptions IMO. I'll give it a stab.....

    Let's assume the 1955 plan came down in favour of electrifying the core mainline network (yes ... I know it's a bold assumption, but bear with me), as part of a rolling plan to electrify all significant routes and diesel power will be confined to shunters. "Social Need" legislation to support marginal lines would have needed to come in over a decade before it did. Giving the "Restructuring" requirement to close all lines classed a duplicates the heave-ho would have saved many lines. The Borders and Okehampton routes spring to mind, though I doubt things would have turned oit differently for Callender & Oban (to name but one). Say, 3012 - 3512 steamers of 21 classes by the end of phase I electrification, plus a couple of hundred diesel shunters.

    Those branch lines (and many intermediate stations) which studiously avoided places which they nominally served would still have been toast, but many others would have survived, especially if conditions to keep more middle and long distance domestic containerised freight (outlined below) on rail were introduced.

    On the freight side, Beeching's policy of abandoning wagonload freight still represents an unarguable case, with the possible exception of container wagons and even here, with development of the motorway and trunk road network, a different taxation policy would be needed to save domestic milk and perishables traffic. The collapse of fish traffic was spurred on partially by changing tastes and partially by the collapse of stocks due to overfishing, so tax policy changes would have only limited impact in this instance. Carriage of domestic coal was always going to decline after the Clean Air Act and with completion of the National Grid, power stations were always going to be centralised where coal was produced. Virtually no coal traffic then. Note that, for economic operation of other than trainload freight, the only things loaded and unloaded would be containers. Other transhipment is simply too much hassle.

    So, start with the number of locos in existance in 1955, take away all those clapped out pre-war freight locos, then stick about 30% of high axle load mainline express locos displaced by electrification in store to cover diversionary workings until the diversionary routes were sparked up. More modern locos displaced from freight would be cascaded onto accelerated local passenger turns (stemming tbe drop in passenger numbers), with a clean sweep of anything pre-1930's. Fast fitted freight off the juice could be handled by Standard 5's or 9F's. For containerised wagonload freight (all that would be left of the old wagonload operations), assuming the requisite governemnt action came to pass, this could be handled by modern locos of moderate axle-load displaced by electrification of the core trunk. By 1975, the last pre-nationalisation classes would go as electrification spread, along with all but one class of standards over class 4 (retained for heavy freights off the juice). By now, electrification would leave about 2012 steam locos of 11 classes, plus a couple of hundred diesel shunters

    For those lines where electrification couldn't be justified at the end of the economic life of BR Standards (in about 1985-90) we'd be looking at a new generation of Porta-esque, but total adhesion steam locos,or railcars, all riding on bogies, single manned with a large degree of automation and MU capabilities, probably in only two power bands. The second generation of advanced steam would be hitting the rails about now. Odds on we'd still have the 3rd rail across most of the south east, but the Bounemouth line might have got OHLE at the same time as the Salisbury - Exeter line, around 1970. By now, probably about 1200 3rd gen steam of just 2 classes plus a couple of hundred diesel shunters ..... and a dozen Terriers!

    So for us lot, the good news is that there'd be BR Standards a-plenty to be had from the mid 80's onwards. The bad news is that pretty much all the choicer antiques saved in the early 60's would have gone to the engine shed in the sky a decade too early to save and there'd have been less choice over where to site heritage lines - coz many of the places we've got 'em would still be part of tbe 'big railway'. And there'd be no preserved Terriers, as they'd still be working the Hayling Island branch!

    Now if you'll excuse me, my pig needs it's airworthiness certificate renewed.
     
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