Bulleid 'Leader'

Sorry for the delay, yes, correct, the resistance against movement away from centre starts immediately. I seem to recall that they also had to apply resistance material to the "spittoon pads" to presumably counteract a tendency to move too easily.

 

It is ironic that Bulleid's designs were failed because they were too innovative, while the LMS Garratts failed because they didn't innovative in something as straightforward as the axle boxes.

 

..... or decent valve events .....

 

There always seems to be a tipping-point in projects between "trying a new thing in an existing context" and "wahey! we're so far off-piste now we need to try everything new!" Also, there is that element of doubling down "this revolutionary new engine will work, but we need to get these new valves to make it so, and we won't realise the benefits until we do"

I suspect that with Bulleid, the austerities and Thompson/Peppercorn on the LNER were the writing on the wall - no-one else was going for the complex optimum solution to problems, so any BR builds would be conservative and using the closest approximation from simple solutions rather than an optimised one.

 

The period between the end of WW2 and nationalisation is an odd one because even if the writing is on the wall for the companies, they are still producing new and old designs. The GWR are producing Counties, 94xx, 15xx and modified halls, plus some Castles and 57xx, Ivatt and Fairburn are busy on the LMS producing new designs and carrying on building old designs as well, the LNER is maybe the outlier in that they are rebuilding more than pushing new designs.

It isn't as if any of the companies are adopting a holding pattern in terms of design and saying 'well nationalisation is round the corner so why bother to invest in a lot of design work'. Clearly, all felt that there were needs in the immediate post war that had to be fulfilled. Ivatt obviously took a very different approach to Bulleid, but you can see that they are both clearly trying to address challenges in the aftermath of the war.

I do wonder how many people in 1945-6 actually thought that nationalisation would last almost fifty years. I remember reading a pamphlet by a politician who had fled the Communists in Eastern Europe in 1946 and it was very clear that he thought that this was just a temporary thing and in 5 years time Communism would collapse and he would go home again. I wonder how many in the railway companies thought that well sure, Labour will nationalise the railways but when they lose power the Tories will reverse nationalisation, and didn't see the post-war consensus emerging.

 

That's an interesting thought. I also wonder how far those supporting and planning nationalisation actually thought through what a genuinely national railway company might look like, and therefore what that might mean in terms of consolidation of facilities.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of WWII, with a backlog of work and war damage to deal with, I suspect the railways were all desperate to recover and the thought of waiting until nationalisation had been completed and a new strategy implemented would have been absurd.

 

I read an interesting discussion about the nationalisation of the coal industry, to the effect that one of the big problems was that although the private companies were nationalised, the managers (and the tensions with the workers) remained the same. In short the structures of the coal industry remained untouched (and this is why nationalisation didn't resolve the problems of the industry). I wonder if some believed that nationalisation for the railways would essentially be just a transfer of ownership from the private companies to the state, but that the structures would be left untouched so there would be a 'Southern' CME designing locos for the nationalised Southern lines, and a 'Western' CME operating out of Swindon etc. While there were also those who would be much more in favour of centralised planning (which was post-war very popular) who would have dispensed with regions and had a single national network as say in France.

I don't know when a concrete vision of what the railways would look like, how they would be organised and run actually came out.

With regard to the aftermath, I can certainly see the need for locos and fast, and I guess you could say that the decision by the GWR to order more 57XX makes sense in that light because there is a short term need, but in many ways, that is a sticking plaster for a stab wound approach, a short term fix, whereas maybe Bulleid was looking more long term with the Leader.

 

Interestingly enough there have been references on Nat Pres in other threads to plans being drawn up for 'standard' loco's at the end if WW1 which clearly wasnt happening at the end of WW2

 

I am sure that I once read (a long time ago) that the Western Region managers were convinced that the new Conservative Government would privatise them alone. Probably more an expression of Western exceptionalism than anything else, but I wonder if anyone else has a similar recollection.
Pat

 

I think the LMS had a plan for a range of Standards post WWII, ok I know that's one company but I think they became the basis of what became the BR standards. I do think though their were so many different plans for the railways after the war, there didn't seemed to be a joined up plan between the big four as to what to do post war.

 

The principles of the LMS locos were carried through into the BR standards but there was a lot of new design work as well. The Ivatt class 4 and class 2s were continued with detail modifications as the BR class 4 2-6-0 and the class 2 tender and tank locos. The Black 5s were developed into the Standard 5s and the Fairburn tanks into the BR 2-6-4Ts. The other BR designs were more or less new. So the LMS designs did form the basis. This is not suprising as R A Riddles came from the LMS. Also the other companies did not have much to offer. The GWR had the widest range of loco types but they would have needed major surgery to fit the composite loading gauge.

The majority of loco types built between the end of WW2 and nationalisation had been designed before the Labour government came to power. So it is not suprising that these designs were built in 1945 to 47 as there was a real need for new locos.





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Away from Stanier's chance to show his mettle under Lord Stamp's 'scrap and build policy, I'd imagine financial retrenchment, following the 1929 crash played it's part in prolonging the life of several superannuated designs which would otherwise have been scrapped long before being worked to death during WWII.

 

In my experience that's the case with pretty much any reorganization. Some shuffling at the top, a few changes of lines of reporting, but at the coal face [sorry, couldn't resist!] the same folks carry on doing the same work. And after all who else is trained to do it?

 

Don't forget the new stationery!

 

Never mind locos being designed before the Labour Party came to power, the Eastern Region was building new locos designed before the Labour Party had been founded!

Tom

 

Are you suggesting Bulleid should have some more H class?

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Well, they would have been a significant improvement in coal and maintenance costs over the M7s certainly!

Tom

 

Isn't the 57xx a slightly updated 645 from 1872. Akin to the SR building another batch of Beattie Well Tanks. Let no one say that the GWR was not leading edge in their approach.

I wonder when post war planning on the railways began. The work on postwar reconstruction in Europe starts as early as 1941 but really kicks in c1942, only to dry up c1944. There are a lot of discussions about what the world will look like after the conflict and policies are being set out with that in mind. I wonder when Ivatt, Fairburn and also Stanier would have concluded that ease of maintenance/labour shortage etc was a key concern and that filtered into their thinking.

 

My guess'd be probably not before the cousins rocked up to join the party in Dec '41.

Possibly related, at some point, during the Blitz IIRC, the govenment decided on a moratorium on significant renewal of buildings destroyed by bomb damgage. The idea, I believe, was to keep options open for postwar reconstruction. Whatever the motive, one side effect of the decision was to drive home another nail in the coffin of the Welsh slate industry.

 

This discussion has moved on apace over the last few days, but I'm going back to this posting from Sunday. The Leader did of course have the virtue of 100% adhesion weight, but how much did that matter for the intended duties? How often did medium-sized tank engines get into difficulty from slipping?