Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Fashion. Whatever next! Maunsell obviously never prepared engines with inside gear overmuch.

The conjugated gear is not perfect. No valve gear is. But if you design it with due attention and make sure that the lubrication is attended to it gives little trouble. Inside gear needs similar attention. Don't believe me? Try not oiling it or not making due expansion allowance.

As to the rebuild of 4470 there is a vast range of comment, observation, documentation et al to firmly confirm that ET's rebuild of this engine was deeply personal.

So, what good can be said of the man? Not much. He had some talent but this was in poor measure compared with that his predecessor. Was it sufficient to allow him to be credited with the ability to design a locomotive that was better than barely adequate? The answer has to be no.

Could it be said that he brimmed with the best of human qualities? Again, the answer has to be no.

So what was he? Did he suffer an experience at some stage of his early life that changed him very much for the worse? Could he be judged as being a sociopath?

Is he worth, as a locomotive engineer, taking an interest in? Probably yes, if only how to learn a great deal about what not to do.

 

Probably unlikely - there were a number of rebuilt locos at the time that weren't preserved on the grounds that they weren't original, and couldn't be cost-effectively rebuilt to original condition. Today we are probably more enlightened, but in the 1950s / 1960s, the ethos seemed to be original condition or don't bother.

Tom

 

With due respect to Holcroft and his original gear I was under the impression the Holcroft conjugated gear wasn't anything like as simple or elegant as Gresley's, involving as I think it did long rods down the sides of the cylinders and a rotated cross bar. Also, "during the thirties" the Gresley gear was being used on long distance high speed trains with complete success. Why would anyone want to change a system that was performing so well? Even Thompson? It was only during the forties that the gear began to give problems.

 

So now he's a sociopath. Do you not think that a pretty unreasonable term to apply to a locomotive engineer...?

However I should point out that there were several specific big things which could have affected his character.

Unlike Gresley, he was mobilised for the war effort and some new information has come to light regarding his services which I'm proud to say, has not appeared in print elsewhere.

Peter Grafton touches on this in his book, but Thompson left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, had been mentioned in dispatches twice, and was appointed an officer the order of the British empire. His role concerned the large scale mobilisation of troops. Given the scale of the first world war and the potential horrors he would have experienced, there's scope here for further examination and luckily I've been following up a few leads.

The second is the death of his wife - an extraordinary parallel with Gresley. Mrs Thompson was also unable to bear children, and this was of some pain to both of them, understandably.

There are other events too but they require further research and confirmation before committing to print.

So many people would you have believe that Thompson was a one dimensional, angry and bitter man. Both of these characteristics he probably did have for various reasons. But he was more than that and this has been hammered home to me in my research.

 

That had a complete set of Walschaerts between the frames that needed oiling round.

 

Wasn't it in the 40's when as you say the gear began to cause problems that Thompson was acting?

 

No one is perfect and people's character is formed from any number of sources as you rightly say.

I interpret that one of the issues is that Gresley appears to have become almost sanctified with no faults which is then compared to Thompson.

 

Yes, but Jamessquared mentioned Maunsell rebuilding locos in the 30's and seemed to imply that Thompson would have considered removing the Gresley gear because Maunsell was removing the Holcroft gear. My point was that the Gresley gear only began giving trouble in the 40's. I suppose Thompson might have remembered Maunsell removing the Holcroft gear several years previously, but I doubt Maunsell's actions would have affected Thompson's view at the time (even had he been in a position to act in the 30's) as the Gresley pacifics were performing so well.

 

Your reading that is rubbish matey! I said Ormonde was in the works at the same time as Great Northern. I did not say it was in for rebuilding to class A3!

 

To be fair, 242A1 only asked if he could be considered a sociopath, not that he definitely was one.

As to being an unreasonable way to describe a loco engineer? Why? It's no more or less unreasonable to describe anyone with sociopathic tendencies as a sociopath.

Leaving aside the question of being a sociopath or not, I suspect you have found a number of reasons which could explain ET's behaviour, but the reasons are not excuses for his behaviour, nor can they negate the fact that he acted as he did.

 

I wasn't implying that Thompson thought about removing the gear because Maunsell had done so a decade earlier; rather, that the SR had also independently found sufficient problems with conjugated gear that they had removed the gear from a large number of locos.

Tom

 

Whoa, easy boy, I'm the one who said it was for rebuilding. I did say it was somewhere back in the thread, but only actually checked the wording you used when it was questioned.

 

But the conjugated gear as applied by Holcroft was somewhat different to that as applied by Gresley so it's not comparing like for like.

 

The significant difference was that the combining levers were driven off the combination lever in the Holcroft system, rather than from the ends of the valve spindles in the Gresley system. That avoided one of the big problems of the Gresley gear - that the thermal expansion of the outside valve spindles caused variations in valve timing of the inside cylinder - but introduced another problem in that there was insufficient room to fit the linkage behind the cylinders (the wheels got in the way) so had to be carried forward by long linkages. Those linkages were subject to "whip" and had extra pivots that could wear, and thus also led to uneven valve events on the middle cylinder when worn.

Tom

 

It was a year or two ago I read Holcroft's book, so the details are somewhat hazy

 

Some engines did have the conjugated gear behind the cylinders and not in front. (D49) Rather negating the easy access aspect but removing the influence of valve spindle expansion. This allowance was included in the setting of the gear should this be necessary.

Interestingly you might think that the fitting of conventional inside valve gear removed the need to make a thermal expansion compensation allowance. When there was a significant difference between the centre of the outside cylinders and that of the inside the expansion of the length of frame between the two became a factor.

Not all the linkages suffered significant "whip" and it is not certain how much this happened. The fulcrum pin on the cross member/frame stay on which the 2 to 1 lever pivoted needed to be well secured (was it always?) and the lever itself would need refining in order to maximise rigidity and minimise weight and I would be interested to see details of how these components developed over the years. A modern analysis to design the optimum would give an interesting exercise in comparing what was done with what should be fitted now.

 

Regarding why an A3 wasn't included in locomotives to be preserved by the BTC -"Mallard" was guaranteed her place, thus you had not only the World Record holder but a Gresley 'Pacific' already, and to officially preserve 'Flying Scotsman' (first authenticated 100mph locomotive), 'Papyrus' (fastest A3) or, had she still been around as a recognisable Gresley locomotive, 'Great Northern' (as the doyen of the Gresley Pacifics) would have been, according to the 'rules' of the time, duplication.

The V2, on the other hand, differed, despite being another Gresley design, in that there weren't many 'Prairie' tender locomotive classes on British lines, & they were a very numerous and successful class.

 

Just the GWR getting its own way again.

 

But weren't the choices made by different teams at different times for different reasons ? IIRC the Swindon choice was show a line of 4-6-0 development from "Star" through to "King" thus were accepted by the BTC as representative of the WR portion of the British Transport collection, whilst the LNER choices were made by the BTC which felt that the A4 - obviously as world record holder BUT also as the officially described "Super A3" - was adequate to represent the Gresley era thus leaving room for other locomotives with an equally historic reason for collection in the ER portion of the British Transport collection.