Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Rings a bell, cheers Tom. Do I also recall claims the design itself rendered them stronger? Strange that the 'Boxpok' and derivatives, a Stateside staple after WWI, never really caught on here. Like so much else in the 'UK School of Design', aesthetics and ingrained habit I suppose.

 

You have to be careful of looking at simple allocations - you need to look at allocated duties. Whilst the Peppercorn A2s were based north of Haymarket, IIRC these were allocated duties which required engine changes at Edinburgh hence they travelled little south of there whilst the Thompson A2/1s IIRC were allocated on duties to either Newcastle or Carlisle (i.e. rarely north of Edinburgh). Another factor to bear in mind that some depots had engines retained "standby" for the main ECML services whilst in early BR days loco changeover points were more than in final steam days (i.e. Grantham being a changeover point hence its allocation of A4 Pacifics). In August 1964 I recall travelling from Peterborough to Edinburgh when haulage was by D186 (Peterborough to Doncaster), A1 60157 Great Eastern (Doncaster to Newcastle) and finally 60062 (of 34E Peterborough working Newcastle to Edinburgh). Admittedly this was after steam had been banned from Kings Cross but I believe that most shed allocations were for specific (ranges of) duties hence the need to know these in order to understand the mileage / availability figures better.

 

Any thought on why that should have been, with those classes so similar in most respects?

 

All of this constant analysis seems to ignore the human factor.
It would probably seem safe to assume that crews on "top link" work would be masters of the work and on top of the job. A now deceased family member was a fireman at Monument Lane in the 1950's and a regular on the Jubilee-hauled two-hour expresses from Birmingham to London.
To relieve the boredom of the job he and his shed-mates had a competition going. They would fill the box right up at New Street and see how far they could get before they touched the fire again. One of them claimed to have reached Rugby before picking up the shovel!
Quite what this did to timekeeping, efficiency or the firebars is anyone's guess.

 

I heard a similar thing from the Western Region. Take the biggest lump of coal you could get through the firebox door, add to fire, close doors and put effort saved into tea making.

 

A complete stab in the dark - a smaller-wheeled loco does more wheel revs for a given mileage, so maybe anything in the maintenance that is cyclical in nature may show up as decreased mileage? (For example, requirement for p&v maintenance, frame problems, tyre turning - anything of that nature?

Tom

 

In short:

• There was a small pool of boilers between the 15 Peppercorn A2s, effectively split into sub classes by way of the boiler type.
• There were two types of boilers with two types of regulator setup.
• The more complicated regulator setup was one the Scottish region were unfamiliar with (multi-valve regulator) at the start
• The double chimney setup with the multi-valve regulator had poorer availability than single chimney locomotives as these locomotives were always waiting on a boiler to be available for general overhauls (exact same issue the original P2 rebuilds had as built, and when rebuilt, until fitted with the standard Peppercorn type boiler).
• Bronzino, the only class member with double chimney and conventional regulator/boiler type, had the best mileages and availability of the Peppercorn A2s and was closer to the A1s, A4s, A2/3s and Great Northern in that respect throughout its lifetime.

I personally do not believe that the 6in difference in the driving wheels between the 6ft 2in and 6ft 8in Pacifics makes any discernible difference to the availability or mileage figures. For example, the dataset we have for Thompson's time as CME for Thane of Fife in the war period pretty much shows that high mileages follow high availability in the first place.

If LNER writers were being honest with themselves, having a multi-valve regulator Peppercorn A2 but no Peppercorn A1 didn't reflect the best of Peppercorn, despite being a lovely locomotive (I love Blue Peter but her mileages and availability stats suggest she was not the best A2 out there).

 

Bulleid Firth-Brown wheels were said to be unfracturable. Can't remember where I read it now, it was many years ago.

Richard.

 

Something similar was fitted to the first DR 01.5 rebuilds. The crews complained bitterly about their effect on riding (!) and they were replaced by spoked wheels. One wonders what went on there.
Pat

 

That's what I was trying to get at. There were studs of the Thompson locos at New England, York (especially) and Gateshead in the mid to late fifties. What were their duties? How early in the fifties did the pattern settle down? And I guess the same could be asked of the Haymarket stud.

 

It's an interesting question that can be probably covered by a number of different published works. The trouble is, you need to cross reference their work with their availability and mileages to get the best idea of what they were doing, and whether they were doing it well in comparison to the other classes.

 

Was it that the staggered segments of diaphragm between the wheel centres and the rim gave a more even support under the tyre? I am sure I have known this mentioned but cannot recall any details - breaks in tyres corresponding to the ends of spokes?

 

I once met a former Nine Elms apprentice Who claimed to have learnt to weld by repairing Bulleid wheels, I think that He spoke of cracking at the crankpin boss, and that a preserved pacific had 'Recently' cracked (Probably 15- 20 years ago now)

 

Rant time: I have responded to The Railway Magazine a few times over the last year since Nicola Fox's article (which I was interviewed for, and all of my research was subsequently used under her name within her article) and this month yet another letter is published which makes a pretty audacious claim inferring things about Edward Thompson.

"...it was probably assumed that their rebuilding was uncontroversial, but an engineer was sent from the CME's office to Scotland to advise that further criticism of the decision to rebuild would be a career-limiting action".

So this statement is made without:

• a source for the claim
• any names
• and assumes there was criticism of the rebuilding

All of my evidence suggests:

• The "engineer [was] sent from the CME's Office" was Arthur Peppercorn - source? Board minutes in 1944 where he reported on Thane of Fife's rebuilding.
• Their building was uncontroversial - the controversy was their poor availability and mileages. If any more evidence of this is required over and above the board minutes, individual reports to the board, and the physical statistics showing their poor performances...!
• Nobody was clamouring to keep them as they were in 1944 once Thane of Fife had shown its paces and on test for a year in comparison.

So much of the Gresley/Thompson stuff is based on "he said/she said" levels of evidence. So little of it is primary. Why do we allow this trend to continue without challenging it?

 

Because we're humans, and hate to have the facts contradict our preconceptions.

 

Touché!

 

One of the things I notice is that Thompson is often subject in writings to what I would describe as 'drive by attacks'. A lot of it is passive aggressive with things left implicit but to build upon and re-enforce an image of Thompson as the bitter jealous successor. For example, I was reading a discussion by Freeman Allen in a book of Treacy photographs (I think it isn't entirely clear who wrote the text) about 'The Capitals Limited' and there is a comment that the train had an 'unnecessary full brake' but this was because there had been no Thompson brake firsts built and the train had to maintain an 'all Thompson appearance' and inferring that this was Thompson's doing.

Or even this article about Tornado from 2001 (I was actually looking for articles about Thompson's work designing coaches which is something that doesn't seem to get discussed quite so much). Dorothy Mather is quoted and what she says is quite benign but the writer then puts another spin on it as being about resentment.

This I think is how the negative image of Thompson builds up, you can be reading something and in the middle of a broader discussion there will be a negative comment about Thompson, and then you move on and there is another negative comment, and after the 10th time of reading something that infers that Thompson was x,y,z it is easy enough for people to conclude that if 8 different writers all say the same thing then it must be true (even if most of it is just repeating what other people have said previously with no evidence).

 

I hadn't read that article on Tornado before, but I am struck by the callousness of this section:

It's ridiculous that such things have been allowed to be written and not challenged for so long.

 

Whilst I agree with your anguish re falsehoods I find the following even more worthy of criticism :

Thompson was Raven's son-in-law [Sir Vincent Raven, CME of the North Eastern Railway, subsumed into the LNER in 1923]; Gresley got the job Raven wanted and Thompson held it against him ever after."

I believe your work will be debunking this myth BUT it shows the difficulties your thesis faces if such unfounded comments are continued to be perpetuated as "truths" when the reality is so much different.
My understanding is that Raven was actually keen to continue with the development of main-line electrification (from the pre-Grouping NER) and Gresley was content to allow him to continue this work on behalf of the nascent LNER thus retaining both his expertise and goodwill.

 

Simon,

Are you going to disagree with what Dorothy apparently was quoted as stating?

Cheers,
Julian