Locomotive Superintendents

Billinton was in Romania as well. Frustratingly his memoirs have been used but are unavailable so we don't have a full account.

 

The Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, in its current form as the Engineer and Logistics Staff Corps, is, to quote Wikipedia, "intended to provide advisers on engineering and logistics to the British Army at a senior level. Following its work creating the NHS Nightingale Hospitals the Corps was described as 'probably the greatest military unit you've never heard of".
I don't think front line service is the idea. That said some of it's members did spend time in France in the First World War. in the 1919 Army List for instance is; Fowler, Sir H., K.B.E., (temp. Lt-Col. R.F.C., T.F.). Was Sir Henry Fowler a pilot?
As @Jamessquared has pointed out there was nothing to stop a member serving in a more mainstream formation as well.
Pat

 

At the time of the abolition of the broad gauge thre was a proposal to concentrate locomotive building at Wolverhampton with Swindon concentrating on carriage and wagon building and only repairing locos but suffocient additional land couldn't he acquired.

At the time Churchward took over the old S&B buildings at Wolverhampton could only really deal with six wheeled types and he was concentrating new construction on larger locos. Small standard 2-6-2Ts were built there but could only be moved around on temporary sharp radius tracks with sharp reverse radius curves as they couldn't use the traverser even with buffers removed. After that lot was completed Wolverhampton was enlarged but concentrated on repair work.

 

Bulleid:

• 1914 Volunteered for War Service.
• January 1915 Commissioned as Lieutenant and appointed as Railway Transport Officer, St Omer.
• September 1915 Promoted to Captain.
• November 1916 Promoted to Major, Deputy Assistant Director of Railway Traffic.
• 1918 Works Manager, Royal Engineers, Richborough, Kent. First introduction to welding.

https://www.bulleidsociety.org/OVS_Bulleid/OVSB_Biography.html

Peppercorn:

Peppercorn was commissioned in the Royal Engineers, served in France and became technical assistant to the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Directorate of Transportation

https://www.a1steam.com/arthur-peppercorn/

Ivatt and Riddles were both in France. Riddles was according to wiki badly wounded.

 

...who was Lt-Colonel Edward Thompson.

 

Fowler

During World War 1 he was seconded to the Ministry of Munitions, being Director of Production from 1915 to 1917 and then Assistant Director General of Aircraft Production. He was knighted in 1918 for his war work.

via Steamindex from Radford.

 

Well, that generation of loco. Engineers certainly gained experience rather more widely than would normally be expected. Shame about the cause of it.
Pat

 

While the 19th Century had it's share of takeovers and amalgamations of railways, they were nothing like the 'big bang' of 1922. Coupled with the creation of the Irish Free State the opportunities for advancement must have seemed poor in the 20's. (Many British CME's seem to have had service in Ireland in the past.) What happened to the chiefs from the smaller railways?
Pat

 

It also caused huge losses of knowledge as well. ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moseley

 

Well, on the SR, Maunsell (SECR) got the job. Urie (LSWR) was I believe 68 at the time of grouping and retired.

Billinton (LBSCR) was only 40 at the grouping, and conceivably could have become a deputy CME with a reasonable expectation of taking on the top job on Maunsell's retirement. Clearly Herbert Walker felt there wasn't the space for such a role, and the retirement terms were generous, so Billinton retired in mid 1923, and had something of a career change, running a fruit farm as a commercial business. He did apparently spend two years consulting for the LMS, but otherwise seems to have had no close connection with his former career; he lived on well into the BR era.

Tom

 

Aside from constructing a rather lovely 9in gauge K class mogul, built, according to legend, from the original drawings. I wonder whether that set of drawings still exist, perhaps along with the unpublished manuscript referred to earlier?

 

I think the ones who got squeezed were the Scottish and Welsh CMEs. If we take the LNER, Raven we know about, Hill and Robinson were too old. For example Riches of the Rhymney was:

'The amalgamation of that railway with the Great Western Railway took place at the close of 1922, and Riches was made divisional locomotive, carriage and wagon superintendent of the Cardiff Valleys Division of the G.W.R., occupying this position until his retirement in 1939. '

while Heywood of the GNSoR

'Heywood's post ceased to exist after Grouping (1923), and he became the LNER's Running Superintendent of the Northern Scottish Area.This post was initially based at Gorton, but he returned to Scotland in 1927. Heywood retired in June 1942,'

I wonder how many also went to India etc as that seems to have been quite a common career path.

 

Don't forget John Auld ex of the Barry Railway in South Wales who ended up close to Collett, and when they both retired sort of at the same time.

 

I was intrigued by your comment re the NER / S&D. The terms of the amalgamation between the two companies (which was effected by a private Act) are available on line. The Act uses the word amalgamation, and the effect of the Act was to transfer all of the undertaking, assets, liabilities, rights etc of the S&D Railway Company to the NER, in return for which the S&D shareholders became shareholders of the NER. Clause 35 of the Act et seq however provided that until 31 December 1873 (i.e. 10 years after the Act came into effect) the management of the former S&D was to be by a Committee (the Darlington Committee) which had a majority of former S&D directors and shareholders on it. Clause 44 says inter alia that the Committee's functions included inter alia maintenance and renewal of all the Rolling Stock (Rolling Stock is not obviously defined but it is possible that some definitions were imported from general railway acts, and I assume this includes locomotives), and it mentions also an Engineer of the Darlington Committee.

 

That is quite a typical amalgamation Act for that period but in most other cases the locomotives were indeed quickly integrated into the stock of the company taking over.

 

Yes, Auld was appointed to take charge of the docks, and was then promoted to Collett's assistant. A peculiar appointment really, since assistant CME was normally being groomed for the full job, and it meant, I think, that his eventual successor Hawksworth hadn't had a post out of the drawing office which must have made the responsibilities of the CME a huge transition.

 

This loco certainly exists, it was at the Midlands Model Engineering Exhibition a couple of years ago.

 

Tom

 

That ten year gap must explain why the S&D locos didn't get renumbered in the NER sequence until 1873 (they had 1000 added to their S&D number). What is interesting though is that a considerable autonomy continued after that, certainly while Edward Fletcher remained the NER Locomotive Superintendent. It was only really have his departure that you get a more consistent overall locomotive policy - hence the contrast with the SECR, which almost immediately on formation started turning out locos in a single livery, single number sequence and with new designs acting as renewals for both constituent fleets and designed to work on either section of the line.

Tom

 

I thought that I had seen it. So I wasn't imagining it. Lovely model.
Pat