LNWR locomotives

Yes, you're right, it was different draughtsmen in the same Derby D.O. The point is, the draughtsmen had to have their ideas sanctioned by someone higher up the ladder, Chief Draughtsman, CME or whoever. So did the same person sanction two opposing views in the same D.O? And why would he? Or was it two different people trying to impose their own and very different points of view?

The story is that one of the junior draughtsmen gave a presentation at one of the engineering societies. Fowler was in the audience (he was interested in the societies and supported his young men, one of his overlooked good points). He was sufficiently impressed to order modern valve events for the 2-6-4T, but had little involvement with the 2-6-2T, and the old order got its way.

 

Just picking up on that highlighted point: From reading Langridge, I do wonder how much in detail Stanier had to do with "designing" them. (Obviously he was accountable for their design). What seems to come across in that source very clearly is the iterative nature of loco design. So each year the building programme would require another twenty five 2-6-4T locos or whatever, and on the basis of the previous such locos, maybe the drawing office would make some tweak - another 6 inches of wheelbase to fit in a larger firebox, or a change to the tube layout, or a revised cab profile. But the move from Fowler to Stanier to Fairburn to Ivatt designs was more a continuum than discrete distinct designs. (In that light it is odd that, for example, enthusiasts seem to distinguish distinct Fowler, Stanier and Fairburn 2-6-4Ts, but call all class 5 4-6-0s "Stanier" Black 5s despite there probably being at least as much difference between a 1934 and 1950 Black 5, considered to be one class, as between a Fowler and a Fairburn 2-6-4T which enthusiasts consider to be distinct designs!)

The point being: how much did Stanier have to do with the "Stanier 2-6-2T", and how much was it just producing more of a series, with the drawing office tasked with making whatever design modifications they could to improve performance, but with limited resource available on the project? With unlimited resources no doubt the loco could have been completely reworked, but I suspect more likely was they took the Fowler design, spent most of the limited design effort they had mating the existing chassis to a new taper boiler, which didn't leave much design resource left to look in detail at the valve gear. Sorting that out would have meant considerable drawing office activity (and no doubt new workshop tooling, patterns etc) which wasn't worth expending on a fairly humble secondary design.

Tom

 

It pretty much was that on the 2-6-2 tank, the Stanier version was just a reboilered version of the existing, unsatisfactory Derby design. A few were later rebuilt with bigger boilers which didn't make much difference.

 

Yes, I've always found this quite entertaining.
Of course the LMS confused the issue very nicely by never having any proper classification system for loco types/designs, only for their power class.
This, of course, was inherited from the LNWR (to return briefly to the subject of this thread), who considered classification the sort of thing amateurish johnny-come-lately arriviste railways did (i.e. every other railway). Like having a coloured livery, numbering locomotives sequentially, or writing the company name on engines...

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And yes, before anyone corrects me, I know the LNW did all those things at some point, including classifying their 0-8-0s, although naturally no one used those classifications.

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In reality, the different designers' locos were very much their own, even those derived from a previous CME's work. We know this from the Stanier Crab at Bridgnorth, designed at Horwich and based on George Hughes' design of 1927 from the same D.O.. From the firebox back they even look very similar, but once you get deep into them, the differences are profound. There are almost no parts interchangeable between the two classes. The boilers, obviously, are different in all respects, likewise the cylinders, lower mounted and smaller because of the higher pressure, but no parts of the valve gear are the same either, the coupling rods are the same lengths but fluted on the Horwich version, plain on Stanier's, different wheels, axleboxes, brake gear, boiler mountings such as clack boxes, ejector, superheater header, but the whistle is the same. The frames are the same thickness, but the Horwich Crab uses horn blocks at leading and intermediate locations, Stanier's uses axlebox guides throughout and didn't get the excellent Horwich cross stays and horn clips bolted to the frames, on the later engine they bolt to the horn guides. And the layout of the cross stretchers is different. I imagine there are many differences between the Baby Scots and Stanier's 5Xs too, whereas although there are many differences between Stanier's first Black 'uns and those built later by George Ivatt, many components would interchange. St Rollox proved that at overhauls.

 

Possibly I misunderstand your comment, but the 2-6-4Ts were not as homogenous as you appear to be suggesting, with a progression from parallel to taper boilers, different bogies, and then different wheel spacing on the Fairburn locos. The LMS 2-6-4Ts provide an interesting series of developments, and one might add in the three cylinder locos and the BR 80xxx as part of that progession. With the benefit of hindsight, the Fairburn version would have immediately followed the Fowler locos, but it was only in Fairburn's time that they managed to shake off the Midland wheel spacing of 8' + 8'6", producing a more compact and lighter machine, and the Fairburn wheel spacing was then copied on the 80xxx (although the bogie was slightly shorter I think on the 80xxx). There were many detail developments as well (although it is true that they did not experiment with different valve gears, just the number of cylinders).

 

Things could have gone very differently on the Southern. Initially the directors retained all three General Managers from their constituent companies which would have been a recipe for chaos. Fortunately they quickly realised their mistake and put Sir Herbert Walker in some charge. For his part, he was far too professional to allow any residual loyalty to the LSWR cloud his judgement and set about building a team which combined the best talent of all three companies. I suspect that the relatively rapid moves to establish a new brand identity, e.g. the Southern Electric branding, new rolling stock liveries, new architecture, also helped to encourage staff to put old loyalties behind them relatively quickly (though of course there were still some who struggled).

I only say this to make the point that sometimes just a few decisions and a few individuals can have a big impact in a company. If Sir Herbert Walker had stayed with the LNWR rather than moving to the South Western, perhaps the early history of the LMS might have been a lot smoother - although the Southern probably would not have fared so well!

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The "triumvirate" structure didn't work especially well, though it is probably worth considering that in 1923, each of the constituents would have had major works programmes - whether civil engineering, loco construction, rolling stock or whatever - that were already laid out by the pre-group constituents, so allowing three General Managers to oversee probably helped things for a few months. What Sir Herbert Walker - as the LSWR man in the triumvirate - saw very early was that that structure couldn't last, and indeed as a group they were not progressing with what they had been asked to do, which was recommend a final management structure to the board. Walker threatened to resign, which was the catalyst needed for the Board to rationalise to a single General Manager; it no doubt helped that the Chairman of the Board, General Drummond, was ex-LSWR and trusted Walker's judgement from long experience. Indeed, the triumvirate structure may have initially been agreed because he didn't wish the formation of the SR to look like a LSWR takeover of the the other constituents. Sir William Forbes, representing LBSCR interests, was persuaded to retire - with a Golden Handshake - in June 1923. Percy Tempest, ex of the SECR, similarly went at the end of 1923, with a Knighthood in the New Year's Honours list of 1924 and a job as "consultant" to the SR for a year.

Once given his head, Walker was then able to appoint the chief officers he wanted, which he seemingly did based on talent rather than some system of "buggins turn". It is interesting how they grouped in a way that meant in key areas, the Chief Officers already knew each other well, without any one company being dominant:

• From the SE&CR, R.E.L. Maunsell (CME); E.C. Cox (Chief Operating Superintendent); A.D. Jones (Locomotive Running Superintendent).
• From the LSWR, A.W. Szlumper (Chief Engineer), Herbert Jones (Electrical Engineer), Gilbert Szlumper (Docks and Marine Manager)
• From the LBSCR, H.A. Sire (Chief Commercial Manager; he also had earlier experience on the SECR), Charles A. de Pury (Chief Accountant)

Thus to a large degree, all matters of Civil engineering ended up under a team led by ex-LSWR men; matters of mechanical engineering and operations were led by ex-SECR men, while to a lesser degree, Commercial and Financial matters had ex-Brighton men at the helm. Walker, however, also leavened those groups with deputies to prevent complete dominance by one constituent. For example, the Deputy Chief Engineer was George Ellson from the SECR; another SECR man - Alfred Raworth - was appointed "Electrical Engineer (New Works)" to oversee development of the system; a LSWR man - Surrey Warner - became Assistant Mechanical Engineer, in charge of carriages and wagons. On the Commercial side, the Indoor and Outdoor Commercial Managers - essentially deputies to Sire - came from the SECR and LSWR respectively.

My view is that Walker was the greatest railway manager of the twentieth century, bar none - as you say, things may have been very different had he remained on the LNWR and risen through the ranks there. Interestingly - and bringing this back on topic - it seems that in 1922, Sir Guy Granet, of the Midland Railway, informally offered Walker the sole General Managership of the LMS - quite an honour as Walker saw it for a Midland man to offer such a role to an ex-LNWR man. Supposedly, Walker declined with loyalty to the LSWR trumping the opportunities of the much larger job; in his words, "they gave me a chance which the North Western denied me".

Tom

 

Good posts the last two. I have a lot of railway history reading to do. Maybe we should open a different thread on great railway managers of the 20th century!

 

Agreed, fascinating stuff!

 

On the subject of LNW locomotives, I've always felt that, while Crewe in the Whale and Bowen-Cooke era produced some powerful locos which were adequate to their tasks, by the post-war period just before grouping they seemed to have run out of ideas and didn't have much to offer to the LMS anyway.
I'm a Crewe fan, by the way! I love a Claughton or a George the Fifth, but they didn't point to anything which could have been suitable for the late twenties let alone the thirties.
Horwich meanwhile had been pretty forward thinking in the Hughes years, an early adopter of superheating, for example. The problems with the dreadnoughts were out of character. But it seems Horwich struggled to adapt to the challenges of the ex-LNW main line.
Derby was in a similar position: looked efficient in 1923, but perhaps didn't have the ability to adapt to the bigger challenges.
St Rollox also seems to have been at a low ebb (although the Mogul which became the Crab was initially their concept). And Kilmarnock is best not spoken about!
There were good people in all these places, but I'm not sure any one of the organisations was up to the challenge.

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I agree with all that except the linking of the Caley 2-6-0 to the Horwich Crab. It is true that, at the start George Hughes searched the other constituents' D.Os. for a suitable design and thought he'd found the answer at St Rollox, where there was a 2-6-0 on the board at an advanced state of design. But its weight and width over cylinders would debar it from a lot of the LMS system, especially the Midland Division. Nor was he impressed with the short lap / short travel valve gear. He then ordered a new design to be started at Horwich; this naturally followed L&YR practice but with many outside, especially American, influences.

These diagrams show that, other than the wheel arrangement and boiler pressure, the two types had nothing in common.

 

Interesting to note how much less superheat the Caledonian proposal featured.

 

Thank you. Where is the Caley drawing from?

 

'Chronicles of Steam' by E. Stewart Cox, who did much of the scheming out for the eventual Crabs.

 

Thank you.

 

That's very interesting, I hadn't realised how thorough the changes were. Funny that a lot of the frame details dropped in transition made it back into the later versions of the Black Five. Did the Stanier Crabs have a reputation for being heavier on frame maintenance than the originals?

On the wider issue, I've always assumed that the acceptance of 'foreign' locos post grouping probably had a lot to do with whether they represented a notable, useful increase in capability. The LNER certainly managed this; on the North British Norman McKillop wrote about GCR-designed Directors wiping many minutes off the schedule of a 'tightly' timed train so effortlessly that the driver hadn't even realised, and a Gresley Pacific probably didn't use any more coal than the NB Atlantics, which were respected at best and feared at worst, while being a big step up in power for nearly any area.

On the Southern, a Maunsell Mogul was quite a step up from an Adams Jubilee or a Drummond L11 on mixed traffic work, while if you'd been having to extract racehorse performances from the (admittedly excellent) E1 and D1 4-4-0s on boat trains, imagine the relief of finally getting the capacity of a King Arthur.

Whereas on the LMS I'd expect that, no matter their faults, a Claughton or a Dreadnought going all out would eclipse a Midland compound for pure power output. Even with lighter, faster workings, I can't imagine taking a step back in power will have been welcome.

 

The Stanier Crabs don't seem to have suffered frame cracking to any great extent, but they had 1 1/16" plates rather than the early Black Fives' (and 8Fs') one inch frames. 2968's frames were thoroughly tested during the current overhaul, and the only problem area, which was already known, was the rear top corner of the RH driving horn; everywhere else was fine. But this bit caused major concerns as there were two previous cracks there repaired by BR, and attempts to weld up the current one simply reopened the other two. In the end, this was solved by cutting out and replacing that section of frame, see http://staniermogulfund.org.uk/?page_id=109&paged=6 onwards.

Agree about the Claughton and Dreadnoughts v Compounds. The Dreadnoughts were stronger than the Claughtons, being built to frequently restart trains against the Pennine gradients, but the Claughtons had the speed. This does not devalue the Compounds, which performed well once the driver got the hang of them, but they were a smaller engine to start with, and suffered from the usual Midland poor valve events and circuitous steam passages. The compounding made up for these rather than giving the superlative engine it might have done.

 

Thanks for the link to the overhaul site, most interesting. Looking at the latest reports, was the inner firebox doorplate (which is shown detached in one of the latest images) riveted in before they welded the new outer plate on? I am wondering how you could rivet it with the outer plate in situ?

Also looking at the site, I guess you could add the pony truck to the list of differences with the Horwich Crab, as they seem to have had swing links whereas the Stanier loco has side control springs.