Francis Webb,good or bad?

You are on fire today.

 

One of the many books I am going to write (yeah, really...) will be to try to find the truth about Craven. My gut feeling is he has been poorly served by later writers.

Tom

 

In that case you're up against C. Hamilton Ellis. He was not a fan.

 

Indeed not. As to Craven's personality he quoted a letter he got from Maude ffoulkes who was Craven's granddaughter, which went something like "Dear Mr. Ellis, we must be related. You seem to know my dreadful grandfather so well" (C.H.E. had written a novel where Craven had a "walk on" part).

 

To be fair to Webb. He never flogged a child so much that they ran away into the snow where they then died. (As apparently Craven did to his first son).

 

Sorry to come back to locos ....... It's easy to forget that the end of Webb's tenure coincided with the substantial increase in train weights that came with the widespread introduction of corridor carriages and the LNW was scarcely the only line whose top link fleet rapidly proved unequal to that development. Have that many ever denigrated Stroudley, Dean and Johnson because their recently fashionable 'singles' were rendered prematurely obsolete by events?

 

This was my point about Dean not leaving the GWR in good shape. Webb at least seems to have tried to innovate to come up with a response, the MR for example just seemed to decide double heading was the way forward.

 

Without wishing to derail the thread too much, the Metros were actually an Armstrong design, while Dean's goods engines also owed a lot to Armstrong's own 'Standard Goods.' Dean produced a number of 2-4-0 designs, but again a number of these were based on Armstrong designs. Although I suppose there aren't really enough surviving drawings to do this, it would be interesting to see a critical analysis of just how much successful original design work was actually achieved under Dean; e.g. how much valve gear arrangements differed from the Armstrongs and Gooch. It may be that he was more of a nineteenth-century version of Collett. His centreless bogie certainly produced a smooth riding coach, at any rate!

 

I believe the valve gear arrangements on the 4-2-2s and 4-4-0s (including the Cities) were distinct from anything Armstrong produced. They had the valves below the cylinders driven directly, so the cylinders were inclined downwards and the valves upwards. The concept was used by others I believe, but I think not all of them managed as free flowing (for the time) steam passages as the Dean implementation.

 

Completely agree.

I got to a stage where I was researching the Thompson book where I wrote a good ten or so pages on Nock - and threw it all in the bin - can be summed up neatly as “partisan, focusing on only the exemplary performances and not the everyday necessities”.

He’s not alone mind - I put Cecil J Allen in the same category.

 

Which begs another question, if I may: Have you happened across any author(s) or source(s) you now regard as hitherto underrated during your research?

 

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about those. Was this used on any other class before the singles? I was wondering really about how much his versions of Armstrong designs actually differed from the originals, as often these comparisons are based largely on the leading dimensions. If they were pretty much direct copies, is there a cut-off point where this stops, and original design starts to take over? Or was there a more gradual flow of original design, that ultimately resulted in the likes of the singles and the 4-4-0s? On the face if it, his most successful 'original' work seems to date from the 1890s. But then his earlier designs may be more original than I give him credit for. Most of my books are in storage, so I may be missing something obvious. To me, the first time a new design concept really jumps out, one that isn't experimental, is with his standardisation scheme which encompassed the 2361's and three other classes, c.1885.

It seems odd that he could produce the singles, which were excellent, then produce the Armstrong 4-4-0s, which were allegedly mediocre, and then produce the Dukes, all in the space of about four years. I just wonder if there is a background story that provides a bit more logic to the developments; i.e. personnel changes. (Who was his Chief Assistant between Holden and Churchward?) Then again, there are so many different classes, that I may be hoping to find patterns where there simply aren't any!

 

Dean's arrangememt of the valves under the cylinders was first used on a one off 2-2-2 no 10.

With GWR standard gauge designs, apart from the revolution by Churchward it often seems easier to simply refer to Swindon (and in earlier days Wolverhampton) designs such was the sense of continuity. Each Loco Superintendent was quite content to continue with his predecessors designs when appropriate.

Dean continued building hundreds of double framed saddle tanks of Armstrong's "Buffalo" class. The 157 class singles simply continued the process of renewing Gooch's older sandwich frame express locos with new ones dimensionally identical to the latest new locos but visually corresponding to the original ones built by Gooch whose brooding presence as Chairman might have influenced that policy.

The few new express locos in that period were 2-4-0s of basically Armstrong design. The Dean Goods were basically a tender engine version of the tank engines being built at Wolverhampton (from whence Dean had unexpectedly been summoned following Joseph Armstrong's untimely death).

In the mid 1880s Dean produced several new original designs, first standardised double frame six wheeled tender and tank engines of unexceptional worth then a few designs with sandwich frames of very variable worth. Throughout this period the GWR was clearly stressed financially following the amalgamation with the broad gauge associated companies. Only following the final abolition did Dean really produce new original design of merit with the Dean singles, the Badmintons and the Duke of Cornwalls.

I don't think it's true to say that he left the Great Western in poor shape, after all even though Churchward had developed his excellent ten wheeled standard designs as soon as he took over for quite a few years the majority of his new passenger loco construction comprised continuations or developments of Dean's designs, i.e. Cities, Flowers, Bulldogs and Birds.

 

Supposedly over cylindered, which is something I have never quite understood, in that Churchwards smaller standard classes with std 2 and std 4 boilers don't seem to have been reckoned to suffer from the same vice, yet they obviously, as visible from TE or power class ratings, had far bigger cylinders in proportion than say BR standards of the same sort of size and weight.

I suppose the other thing to consider about Dean is that there was an awful lot of boiler experimentation under his watch, leading to the incredible variety which plagues modellers of those late 19thC types. It may well be valid to suggest that what was learned then was as important as the admixture of american boiler design that led to the tapered boilers. Especially if one looks at the parallel boiler development alongside the taper boilers. Easy to forget those boilers were developed too, and there was, for example, development work on Pannier/Dean Goods and Dukedog boilers into the 30s and later.

 

I put Nock along with Boyd in terms of books, don't trust everything at first sight

 

Slide valves being placed under the cylinders was quite common at one point (the GNRI certainly owned several long lived classes with this arragement). The benefit being that, with steam 'off', the valves would 'fall away' from their faces, reducing wear and tear.

 

More to the point - are there authors whose work - like Nock's - is sufficiently partisan to be worthless as a reference source ?

 

Anything by Jeffrey Archer....

 

Also allowed bigger inside cylinders because you didn’t need to allow for the width of the valve chests in a constricted space.

A number of Stroudley’s locos were laid out that way, including the Gladstone and the standard goods engines:

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im1872ev13-p92a.jpg

Tom

 

Yes, mostly those who actually worked in the engineering side of the railway. Dick Hardy much overlooked in the Thompson story, for example.

One name always springs to mind with my research. Colonel Rogers. His book on Thompson and Peppercorn is the greatest work of fiction since the Bible.