Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Indeed - having looked up what a D17 is (ex- NER 4-4-0 from the 1890s), I suspect that if you look at the availability on the Southern of, say, Stirling B1 / F1 or Adams T3 / T6, you'd probably get a pretty similar picture in 1940 - 1945.

Tom

 

I think you're probably right Jim - just realised that one of those locos is the one preserved in the National Collection, to boot! Worsdell 4-4-0. Makes a lot of sense. The B1 was designed to replace a lot of these older 4-4-0s in reality so the 9% stat probably makes sense. Bit sobering the North Eastern region ones managed 63% availability though!

 

Also add the ex LB&SCR I2 4-4-2 tanks. A couple ended up being used as air-raid shelters at Bournemouth before being sold to the WD and sent to the Longmoor Military Railway - and still pretty useless there, too by all accounts!

 

I meant an extra set of outside gear on one side to drive the inside cylinder. Didn't make it clear.

 

It was made on many German and danish three-cylindered locomotives fathered by Borsig of Berlin.
The picture shows two rods from the left return crank.One goes to the left cylinder as usual and the other goes to the swing link of the inside cylinder via a shaft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_P_10

 

Ah - sorry for the misunderstanding!

 

Thinking on recent mutterings here, and observing an article in Steam Days regarding Cock O' The North most recently, I elected to examine my notes, and whilst going through them today, I found a memorandum I had photographed in the LNER Emergency Board's minutes (retyped here):

At the end of the day, ladies and gents, whatever I write now is immaterial to the man. He's long past. However it is clear that whatever we think, the depth of feeling towards this particular man from the board which hired him and supported him throughout WW2 warranted at the very least a heartfelt farewell on his retirement.

Recently on this thread I was accused of trying to "sanitise" the reputation of Edward Thompson, as if he was some sort of monster that should be left thus. Much of the language towards him is negative, heavy with anger at times, and most of that comes from those either outside the company or from those in the company, and outside of his direct influence.

Sanitise. If it is to sanitise a man and his reputation to try and understand him, so be it. I seek to sanitise Thompson by understanding him better.

 

Hi Simon,

That above quote from the LNER Board means nothing whatsoever. Collett was in office till 70 on the GWR. Nothing can be read into the above Board minutes other than that when Thompson reached ordinary retirement age the Board recorded the usual remarks, but nothing of particular note. I think you will find the LBSCR board did pretty much the same in 1911 when Douglas Earle Marsh left the LBSCR, and yet Marsh left early and under a bit of a cloud.

I think you will find that when Churchward retired on the GWR the GWR Board heaped praise upon him, and there were numerous testimonials and the famous presentation to Churchward. Significantly Churchward was not asked to leave his company (GWR) home 'Newbarn' that came with his post and was allowed to continue to reside there till his tragic death.

When Churchward, (and Stroudley on the LBSCR) died, there was a considerable outpouring of grief and considerable numbers of people lining the route and forming the cortege. I don't know what happened when Gresley died. Neither do I know what happened when Thompson died, and was probably similar to Collett as neither died in office, though significantly neither did Churchward.

My reading of the Board minutes when Thompson retired was that there was no indication of regret that Thompson would not continue in office longer, and the usual platitudes, but nothing more.

Cheers,

Julian

 

I agree with Julian, I would be careful using this to support any line of argument. Even if the board thought he was a complete jerk, they are likely to have put something complimentary in the official announcements etc, just out of good manners. You have a lot of good stuff and I don't think you need to clutch at straws to produce a worthwhile appraisal of the man and his work. Bonavia writes at some length about ET's time in office but there is no hint of warmth towards him. In the short section on Peppercorn, Bonavia refers to his "sadly" dying in March 1951, nothing for ET's passing. Another of Bonavia's anecdotes is that "ET was privately known in some top echelons of the LNER as "Dead Ned" - a nickname that was rather unfair to a very capable engineer."

 

I’m also with @huochemi and @jma1009 here - that minute reads as the usual board courtesy when a senior officer and long-standing servant leaves, but I wouldn’t read anything into the particular tone adopted to infer any hitherto unrecognised warmth towards Thompson.

I think you’ve got lots of good material, so don’t dilute the unarguable analytical stuff by trying to ascribe meaning that may or may not be there into words written 75 years ago.

I’d see the outline thesis of your book as:

• The LNER was suffering a growing crisis of availability that became acute at a critical point during World War II
• That availability issue was caused partly due to still having large numbers of small, elderly classes; and in the case of the large locos, problems with the three cylinder designs
• The latter problems were ascribed to a combination of inherent flaws in the valve gear design, coupled with declining maintenance standards to which the conjugated valve gear was particularly susceptible. (Some designs are more forgiving of minimal maintenance, but seemingly the conjugated valve gear relies on high maintenance standards to work efficiently).
• Thompson’s engineering response to the problems with which he was faced was to design a series of a small number of standard classes to be produced in large numbers, removing reliance on the wide variety of elderly pre-grouping designs.
• It is important therefore that Thompson’s tenure as CME is judged by his response to the problems he had, which were not the same problems that faced Gresley during the earlier pre-war era.
• Thompson’s designs were largely simple two-cylinder machines, using three cylinders only where it was unavoidable, i.e. the very largest locos. In those cases he went away from the Gresley valve gear to use three independent sets of valve gear.
• His output therefore represented a very large cultural change, imposed on a locomotive running department that by tradition tend to be conservative and moreover following an engineer held in high esteem by the men.
• Therefore, even though his engineering solutions to the problems he faced were sound, the cultural change in attitudes seems to have been harder to achieve. Few engineers following long-established and well-respected “chiefs” ever managed that level of change successfully. Some (such as Collett after Churchward, or Fairburn after Stanier) contented thrmselves with continued incremental change along the same design patterns. Others (such as McDonnell after Fletcher on the NER) were vilified.
• The one example of a significant cultural change by a newcomer following a well-respected predecessor being handled successfully was the arrival of OVSB on the Southern. In many ways his engineering output - at least in steam engines, he did many other worthwhile things for the SR - was markedly less successful as built than those of Thompson, yet he seems to have got on the right side of his men from the start, and that has gone on subsequently to set the tone for all later discussion of his work.

So there are two themes. The historical evidence is he was a competent engineer who served his company well. The historiography is that he has been vilified ever since. I wouldn’t try to pretend that hasn’t been the case by finding lukewarm board minutes, but rather, consider head on why he had been vilified. To my mind, that is because while his engineering was sound, he wasn’t able to do the cultural change to the same degree; that level of engineering change of direction coupled with cultural change in attitudes is something that has been very rarely achieved, though OVSB arguably achieved it, and I’d also say REL Maunsell did as well, both at the SECR and latterly the SR.

Tom

 

I can't disagree with most of that, although I'd stick with my theme that the inside big end was the actual weak point of the Gresley designs at that point in time, exacerbated by the characteristics of badly worn 2:1 gear and wartime levels of thrashing on heavy trains. The Pacifics and V2s lasted well into another period of declining maintenance standards, seemingly without the conjugated gear becoming a critical issue again.

On Bulleid taking over from Maunsell in 1938, I think Bulleid had an easier position. Even Holcroft writes about the '30s as the years of frustration on the Southern; everything built from 1932 onward was just a repeat order of that which went before, with the final exception of the Q class, which whatever its competency probably wasn't a particularly inspiring project to be involved with.

The last really exciting design under Maunsell was arguably the Schools, introduced in 1930, with only the W (1932) and Q coming after it. Between 1930 and 1938 the LNER introduced (cherry picking a little) the V1, P2, A4, V2 and K4, and to stretch it out a little, you get the V4 in 1941. If you were part of the LNER locomotive department, you could quite reasonably feel that there was a lot going on and the man at the top hadn't lost his touch. Whereas if you were on the Southern, provided you weren't one of the people Bulleid didn't see as part of his plans, it'd be a lot easier to get enthused by the new man coming in (who'd been part of all that work on the LNER) telling you that there were going to be new steam locomotives and they were going to be unlike anything you'd ever seen (and went like nothing you'd ever seen before when they turned up, whatever the problems).

 

Agreed about the Maunsell era in the 1930s onwards, and it does help explain why OVSB found it easier to draw people along with him on his cultural change. (In defence of Maunsell, I’d note that he was severely constrained in capital terms because of ongoing electrification projects; and a study of the locos built and locos scrapped between about 1925 and 1938 indicates that for much of his tenure he was essentially in a process of managed decline of steam: the SR was scrapping locos much quicker than it built them during that time, because electrification required fewer locos to haul growing traffic).

Coming back to Thompson, the key points seem to me (1) on the available evidence, did he provide good solutions to the requirements of the day? (I’d argue that he was at the very least a solid competent CME) and (2) given point 1, why has his reputation nonetheless suffered over the years? My contention is that he was on the back foot by following a long-serving and much respected chief (the Great Northern men would have known Gresley as boss for 30 years); on the back of that he found the necessary culture change too difficult - not helped by a relatively short tenure - and attitudes towards him that formed in that crucial period have only hardened and polarised ever since.

Tom

 

It's worth adding that culture leaves few imprints on history by comparison with craft. So we can see what Thompson did, and some of the ripples it caused, but we have much less evidence for how his influence was felt - but some very strong opinions against him from some.

 

A new thread comparing the deeds of peace time LNER Board and CME to WWll-board and mr Thompson?
Thompson went wrong with the needed P2 change .
His successor did not go back to the Gresley scheme but shortened the Thompson divided drive layout and made acces to mid cylinder more difficult.
Was Gresley worth his salary and did LNER really need all those big wheel pacifics?

 

good luck with that !

 

From what has been said, it seems to me that while the Pacifics & V2's hogged the limelight by comparison with the other 'Big 4' companies the bulk of the LNER loco fleet possibly wasnt 'developing' in the way the other companies were

 

The problem in one way was that the demand for "star services", such as those expresses the LNER Pacifics were built for, was coming to an end and the era of the mixed traffic locomotive was de rigeur. In that context Thomson provided the locomotives in the guise of the B1s, accepted the need for Pacifics (if only because of the LNER's need to recoup their investment in building them) but sought to change their running costs and sought to use what little finance was available to keep things running.

This simply replicated the experience of the other post-Grouping companies IMHO where the GWR was producing the "Halls", the SR was proclaiming the Bulleid Pacifics as "mixed traffic designs" and the LMS was producing the Black 5 as its mixed traffic design. In terms of design standards, it would be interesting to see how Thomson's designs compare with the other companies' "mixed traffic" designs and consider why Peppercorn promulgated a return to the (K1) 2-6-0 design rather than develop the 4-6-0 design further.

 

Just a bit of an aside - When Maunsell retired Clayton was already ill and Pearson retired very soon afterwards; only Holcroft remained and he was engaged in other 'outside jobs' and was getting on a bit though lacking none of his intellectual acumen and knowledge of valve gears. Bulleid chose not to draw on Holcroft's expertise, and instead relied on younger devotees such as C J Cocks.

What was the immediate result? Maunsell's Q class chassis with it's non Holcroft badly designed valve gear and outside admission piston valves was used on Bulleid's Q1 class. Bulleid criticised the Maunsell Q class as out dated, but then copied everything below the running plates on his Q1!

Perhaps Bulleid had some sort of complex with Holcroft's substantial involvement with Gresley dating back to the 1910's.

In respect of Simon's thread, Thompson inherited all the devotees of Gresley in his design team/drawing office (except Bulleid now on the SR). (In Maunsell's case the principle players were now getting on to retirement or facing retirement or ill).

The subsequent sidelining of Bert Spencer by Thompson must rank as one of the most important and significant mistakes Thompson made, and the reasons for same are quite inexplicable other Thompson being vindictive and spiteful.

Cheers,

Julian

 

I must challenge the last sentence. It is very common for newly appointed senior managers to create a new team around them rather than leave their predecessor’s team in place. It is frequently a wasteful process, and often owes little to the real merits of the individuals, but is part of creating the leadership team.

Given that, I regard the judgement regarding the motives for Spencer’s sidelining as being a good illustration of the historiographical trend that Simon is challenging, unless there is clear evidence of motive.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Hmm, that seems very speculative to me. Vindictive and spiteful needs a lot of justification. Its quite possible for someone to not fit in a team without involving emotive words like that. If you have a square hole and a round peg what do you do?