Sir Nigel Gresley - The L.N.E.R.’s First C.M.E.

https://www.national-preservation.c...lan-great-western-high-speed-railtour.880137/

 

An excellent way to sum Gresley's contributions up.

Absolutely - but why do we allow the Chapelon comparison to stand as a way of reducing Gresley's achievements? So he didn't achieve the level of thermal efficiency Chapelon did, or the power to weight ratio that Chapelon did - those two achievements are relatively meaningless when looking at railway history as neither changed railway engineering in France nor had the effect on worldwide development that other designers (Churchward or De Glehn, to name but two) did.

Gresley's achievements - the speed records by his locomotives, non-stop runs, and more - were in the name of running a railway and in this he achieved great things.

 

At the expense of putting Le Chat amongst Les Pigonne's surely the person that had really started to shake things up was Lord Stamp, chair of the LMS who was looking at costs, which amongst other things led to the LMS getting involved with Diesel Shunters.

Had WW2 not broken out and resulted in his death the results might have been interesting to say the least

 

No mention of the V2 winning WW2? Spin is nothing new! No mention of his conjugated valve gear? Don't be bashful! The GWR were running non-stop expresses to Plymouth and Penzance in 1903 - without a corridor tender!

 

So maybe I need to underline and bold some things (for you specifically):

Just because I didn't mention everything in one post, doesn't mean I was dismissing it.

No spin here.

I think on reflection that I am spending far too much time responding to your obvious baiting comments. I am therefore muting you.

 

Erm ... Stroudley? Billinton? Wainwright? Adams? Drummond? That's just from the south of England; I'm sure those knowledgeable about the rest of the country can fill in the gaps. 60 years wasn't exceptional by the twentieth century's and there were plenty of Edwardian (and some Victorian) locos that made it well into the 1960s. In fact Churchward's locos tended to last rather less time, in part because of the Swindon programme of locomotive renewal (43xx turned into 4-6-0s; Stars into Castles etc).

Churchward was undoubtedly a towering figure in British locomotive affairs, but his lustre isn't enhanced by claiming achievements for his locos as near unique that were actually rather commonplace.

Tom

 

Talking to an American friend of mine and after Chapelon visited Alco, UP at least went the double chimney route but stopped short of the full Chapelon treatment.

 

From the LMS side Webb, Ramsbottom, Park, Kirtley, Johnson, Aspinall, Dugald Drummond and McIntosh all had examples of their designs still working on British Railways 60 years or more after initially entering service.

Any award should surely go to Wilson Wordsell whose NER E1/ LNER J72 class was still being built by British Railways in 1951, 53 years after it was introduced and 31 years after the designers death! He started his career at Crewe ( as did Gresley ) and he went afterwards to the Altoona works of the Pennsylvania Railroad before coming back to the LNWR and later on to the North Eastern Railway.

 

Long service awards don’t always translate into being good for a railway company, though I concede the J72 is an excellent example of longevity, simplicity and rugged reliability.

 

If you are solely considering "the best locomotive engineer" on the creation of power I wonder where you would place Holden of the GER given his production of the Decapod which- at 38788 lb tractive effort - easily outpaced the electric traction of the day. To put this into context note the following tractive efforts for comparison :

GWR : (Churchward) Castle = 31625 lb; (Collet) King = 40285 lb.
SR : (Maunsell) Lord Nelson = 33510 lb; (Bulleid) BB/WC = 27717 lb; (Bulleid) MN = 33495 lb;
MR : (Fowler / Stanier) Royal Scot = 33150 lb; (Stanier) Princes Royal = 40285 lb; (Stanier) Coronation = 40000 lb;
LNER : (Peppercorn) A1 = 37400 lb; (Thompson / Peppercorn) A2 = 40430 lb; (Gresley) A3 = 32910 lb; (Gresley) V2 = 33730 lb;
BR : (Riddles) 70xxx = 32100 lb; (Harrison) 71xxx = 39080 lb; (Riddles) WD 2-8-0 = 34215 lb; (Riddles) WD 2-10-0 = 34215 lb; (Riddles) 9F 2-10-0 = 39670 lb;

To return to the original question; if power (as defined by tractive effort) is your basis for hierarchy where do you place Holden in the ranking of locomotive engineers - or do you simply note them as competent without ranking them ?

 

Power is not tractive effort. You need to multiply TE by speed to get a measure of power.

 

I am a frequent user of one French forum, among others. Your statement just doesn't ring true. It's also at odds with your lack of knowledge of French locomotives.

 

Until the end of steam?

I was thinking specifically of the 2800. The boilers fitted to the BR Standard Class 3s are essentially Swindon No. 2s. Other Standards have tapered boilers supposedly copied from LMS boilers but where did that design concept originate? These were modern locomotives, not relics from the 19th Century.

 

Agreed those two locos didn't achieve very much for the railway, but surely that was mainly because of external circumstances – particularly WWII and electrification – rather than their inherent virtues or vices.

Is anyone actually doing that? The last few days' discussion have made very clear that those two men were doing very different jobs. Gresley did apply some of Chapelon's principles for the sake of optimising power output, and in that he didn't get as far as Chapelon did, but that was only one aspect of what he was trying to do.
Possibly Gresley's designs (especially the P2, which reputedly performed worse than expected at Vitry) could have been further improved in thermal efficiency and/or power-to-weight ratio without degrading them in other respects, but it didn't happen. As assets for the LNER they were significantly suboptimal, but in two other respects: the conjugated valve gear and the middle big ends, but those weaknesses were addressed by Thompson, not by application of anything from Chapelon.

Edit: middle big end problem sorted under BR.

 

That was mentioned before. The Nelson touch.

One reason why 2007's cylinder block has been redesigned, so that the incoming steam does not heat the exhaust, before use! The middle big end problem was accentuated by the conjugated valve gear.

 

I wasn't.

 

To put it succinctly, Chapelon's prototypes could be considered unsuccessful because of factors beyond his control whereas Gresley's 10000 and the P2s could be considered unsuccessful because of factors within his control.

 

Maybe a bit strong. Its been said all design is at the mercy of the junior draughtsman. It was certainly Gresley's responsibility if his draughtsmen couldn't design an adequate big end, but considered literally, perhaps not his fault. There does seem to have been an acceptance of component failures in the steam era that's surprising to me from my perspectice, although as a professional in the IT industry where there seems a similar acceptance of second rate reliability perhaps I shouldn't be surprised!

 

When discussing Chapelon influences, we should focus on the period before Gresley's death in 1941, which effectively means Chapelon's work in the 1930s for the Paris-Orleans Railway, leading to rebuilds of substantial numbers of engines and not just one-off prototypes.

To get another viewpoint on this, I had a look back at the FAS Brown biography of Gresley, published in 1961. Brown has a half-page to outline Chapelon's rebuilding of the PO Pacifics, and notes that Gresley was very interested. He goes on to quote Gresley's own words from an address to the Institution of Locomotive Engineers:

"I did not hesitate to incorporate some of the outstanding features of the Paris-Orleans Railway's engines, such as the provision of extra-large steam passages and a double blastpipe. There was no real novelty in these features but the French engineers had worked out the design scientifically and had proved them by results obtained in actual service."

 

PO 4-8-0, French 240, Mastadon?