Francis Webb,good or bad?

Thoughts? the train had automatic brakes not simple brakes, soMr Vaughan is wrong to begin with and in that case any ice should have put the brakes on slowly. That said there doesn't seem to have been enough water in the pipe to have blocked it anyway. The driver admitted changing the actuation from automatic to simple, thus making his actions at odds with the braking system on the train. As to the other trains which failed - it is not clear whether they were simple vacuum or automatic, but if they happened to be simple vacuum, the presence of ice blocking the pipes on a simple vaccum brake would certainly have resulted in brake failure. As to the culpability of the LNWR then the fact of having two types of brake actuation on one engine that required completly different modes of operation was an accident waiting to happen.

 

The line of development leading to the Whale Precursor and Experiment classes needs further research I think.
My main source is Talbot:Illustrated LNWR engines,0-8-0,Crewe works.
I have them and read them more than my grandfather read his Bible.
In 1897 Jubile apears and is a boiler from Teutonics and worlds first four compound cylinder to one shaft,four cranks.
Valve gear is two inside Joys ,each driving the outside HP piston valves as well via rocking arms.
As far as I can se it is also first application of that strange mid crank bearing thing.
In 1901 comes Alfred the Great with sligthly bigger boiler but almost identical machinery.
In same year comes the B four-cylinder compounds 0-8-0 with identical machinery, smaller wheels and enlarged boiler from Greater Britain having grate over the aft driving axle.
Bill Baileys follows in 1903 with same machinery and boiler as the B,s.
As almost last act Webb orders two more Joys put on Alfreds and they become Benbows.
This is executed by Whale.
The accepted theory is that this was done to be able to regulate LP and HP valve events independtly.
This may be true but was later found to be not nessecary and the Teutonics had run quite well with a slip eccentric for LP.
If true it would have made as much sence on Jubiles ,B`s and Baileys.
I think that Webb realised ( Churchward,Gresley,Collet did not ) that acctuating valves through rockers at high speed is not conductive to better economy in fuel and maintenance.
Alfreds were used on the the fast trains and therefore got two extra Joys first.

 

I think these days we would also point to the incredibly poor training and that it seems to me from the report that the driver did ot really understand the systems. That I think we would call today a corporate failure.

 

A judgement that would, if applied to that incident, would require the application of considerable hindsight and hold the LNWR to standards and approaches that were not present at that time. Thankfully, despite some lapses, we have learned from tragedies like those so that they are very much less likely to happen now.

 

Is Webb ,my hero, to blame?
Was training and examination of drivers/firemen his responsibility?

 

I believe the answer is yes to both questions. To the first one, he tried to take the cheaper option: simple vacuum brakes, when the chain brake was no longer an option. This was part of his general outlook, and also that of Richard Moon. To the second, I believe he was responsible for the footplate staff, but training at the time for footplate duties was more or less non-existent on all railways.

 

While it is easy to judge through modern eyes* suggested earlier, one of the issues with the compounds was drivers not knowing how to drive them properly. Here we have a brake system where drivers do not know how to operate the system properly. The former just leads to poor performance, consumption and time keeping, the latter is dangerous. This to me, suggests that for all of his development of Crewe, the training of staff was not a priority and that reflects the culture of the LNWR under Webb.

As CME I would have thought that Webb would have been responsible for ensuring that drivers were well trained in using the equipment he designed.

Webb’s period as CME covers 1870 to 1903, so includes the Wigan crash of 1873, Carlisle 1890 and Preston 1896. Three significant accidents. Abergele just before and Shrewsbury a few years after his departure.

But this takes us onto another part of Webb and the development of coaching stock in this period. When you look at the Wigan crash the train is 25 coaches long most of which seem to be family saloons and of variable quality, whereas if you look at Shrewsbury in 1907, 15 coach train, all bogie and 6 wheel stock and nothing was older than 24 years old (and the older vehicles were brakes and post office vans).

* For example, many modern reports pay a lot of attention to psychology and how people react in stressful situations, none of which was available to people writing reports in 1880. Perhaps, we would be looking at very different reports and understanding about how and why certain accidents took place if those tools had been available 150 years ago.

 

Some very interesting thoughts there. But picking on what I've marked in bold, I ask the why this was an issue with Webb. More generally, was this really an LNWR issue, or actually something more endemic across the industry? I've seen comments in the past comparing British footplate training unfavourably with that in other countries, suggesting a desire to minimise technical knowledge in the UK compared to one of breeding expertise in other countries. And before anyone leaps to accuse me of denigrating British footplate skills; that's not my intention at all - the comments included quotes from training documents suggesting a matter of policy; I also note that the mutual improvement culture doesn't exactly suggest a corporate belief in training.

 

I think it was not uncommon in those days for the Locomotive Superintendent to be responsible for both the mechanical and operational side of locomotive affairs (and probably outdoor machinery, shipping and who knows what else). "Shops, shed and road" would sum up the job description.

On the LSWR, Drummond literally wrote the book that South Western engine men were supposed to follow in driving practice, and he was responsible for what to modern eyes would seem incredibly trivial disciplinary decisions over individual misdemeanours: a manager responsible for tens of thousands of annual capital expenditure making decisions over whether a driver should be docked a few shillings pay for running with the wrong engine head code.

That can hardly have been conducive to the physical health of the manager, but more importantly, neither to the effective management of the company. In the twentieth century, there was an increasing move to separate responsibility for construction from running: to separate "shops" from the "sheds and road".

Tom

 

The earlier CMEs tended to have responsibility for the Running side too. I don't know about the LNWR position, but on the LSWR it has been written* that Adams rather lost his grip on this in his later years, and that one of the things Drummond had to deal with on taking office was an unacceptable incidence of drunkeness on duty among the drivers. If that is in the CMEs remit then clearly driver education (or lack of) would also be. Coincidentally, it was also apparently Drummond who instilled a culture of short cut-off driving that remained on the Western section into SR days, in contrast to Eastern section practice at grouping.

*by Nock, I should disclaim, given comments up-thread.

Edit: Ah, Tom's beaten me to it.

 

Training not keeping up with technological developments? For the record I don’t think the LNWR is an outlier here.

But let me give you an example, there is an accident at Crewe in 1900 when a train hits the buffers. The driver involved had 43 years service ie joined in 1857 and had been a driver 36 years ie since 1864. I’d argue that there is a huge leap in complexity from 1864 to 1900.

While googling I came across this

http://www.lmssociety.org.uk/monologues/M07.pdf

 

I was looking forward to reading an entertaining monologue. Despite its being named as such, it is no such thing. It might properly be called a monograph.

 

Hence an accident waiting to happen. Even if the driver had been trained far better, the possibility of making a mistake under pressure is far higher where two conflicting systems are available for use. Human beings are fallible, however well trained they are.

 

Drivers not knowing how to drive compounds properly is only one part of the story. No one really knew at this time. The performance of Webb's compounds ought to be viewed in a more positive light with this in mind. Gresley, trained under Webb, was very close to working out how to use compounds but unfortunately he did not follow his instinct but was rather dissuaded by Professor Dalby. Strange to say W E Dalby moved from the Great Eastern in 1884 to take up the post of Chief Assistant in the Permanent Way Department, at Crewe on the LNWR. The end result of this dissuasion was that it was then Gresley's friend Chapelon who was to reveal to the world what was possible.

 

Is there a steam story here I can read somewhere?

 

To show the evolution from Webb to Whale there is a (very lousy due to Corona lock down) picture of plan view La France and Precursor

WP_20200409_012[1] by Hermod posted Apr 9, 2020 at 7:17 PM

 

Coming back to the uncoupled passenger compounds: what was the logic for that arrangement?

I appreciate that for a time there was desire to obtain the free running qualities of a single but harnessing the extra adhesion of a twin axle loco. Along those lines, Drummond built the "double singles" as four cylinder simples. However, it must surely have been clear that, with uncoupled wheels, the separate axles could easily get out of phase (for example from a slip); they might (or might not) eventually come back into phase from a resonance effect. That is probably not of major concern for a double simple; however, surely for a compound where the exhaust from one engine provides the inlet for the other, keeping the two engines in phase must have been of greater consequence?

Do I pick up that, amongst the compounds, the goods engines were rather more successful than the passenger locos? Was that at leats part on account of being coupled?

(I realise, the more I think about it, the less I realise I know about those locos...)

Tom

 

Freer running was a part of it, and it isn't always realised how much freer an engine with uncoupled wheels was compared with a similar coupled one. But another issue was coupling rod length and concerns about the centrifugal and inertia effects as length increased. The Compounds' wheelbase between drivers was longer than what was thought to be prudent at the time, at least on the later types.

Compounds are tot my specialty but I imagine that the receiver should, in theory at least, balance out the pressure pulses to the LP cylinder, although whether or not that on Webb's engines was big enough to allow this is doubtful.

 

Webb also made some surbuban 2-2-4-0 tanks that would be very interesting on a preserved railway

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/116473-lnwr-777-compound-tank/

 

Not really. The first of three tank engines, excluding the rebuilt Metro tank 3026, was 687, a 2-2-2-0T and was used on the Broad Street - Mansion House service. The surging from the big low pressure cylinder was transmitted to the train, and Ahrons describes that it "earned more unpopularity with the travelling public than probably any locomotive ever built.” “When leaving Victoria (Underground) a full carriage of passengers were surging backwards and forwards after the manner of a University ‘eight.’” The second was a larger 2-2-2-0T, No. 600, but only the third was a 2-2-4-0T, No. 777, and was used on passenger work between Manchester and Buxton. At this outpost it was known as 'Cold Dinners': it turned up at the lunch break and always needed the attention of the fitters.

Surprisingly, all three, ended up on the Buxton route, not a line you'd associate with problematic engines with a reputation for difficulties at starting.