Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

But that's why this specific bit of the book is in the appendices...

 

Trouble is without the numbers all you have is another bunch of assertions without evidence, which is where the trouble started.

 

Yep.

 

Just coming back to this - I reckon I can do this quite well with individual locos, but entire classes become more difficult. Been playing around with the stats between work, treasurer's reports and a few other odds and ends and I keep coming back to the "is the formula wrong, or my approach wrong". It would be easiest to not adjust - at all - and leave the stats as they, and create graphs. But I enjoy this voyage of discovery with the raw data.

 

Your problem is that however you present them, the statistics will still be sufficiently raw that some analysis - hence different opinions - will arise. The best that you can do is present the facts in the clearest form possible - whether by graph / pie chart / table etc - and let the discussions continue outside the book. Irrespective of the discussion IMHO it will at least lead to Thompson and his period of office being subject to the type of review that will lead to his reputation being established rather than being rubbished as it is at the moment.

 

I don't think that this is a bad thing. Simon's work is really the first to mine this kind of data in a systematic way. If someone wants to come along later and run alternative statistical analysis this is fine.

I would argue that the key thing with presenting statistical data is to present it in such a way that the lay person can get its meaning quickly and for it to not be left implicit. ie if the table shows that the B1s were 10% more available than the locos they were replacing, say so clearly and then say what this means.

Sentence 1 - loco more available. Sentence 2 micro impact - able to run more miles. Sentence 3 - macro impact - in wartime context this meant that more vital materials were able to be moved than before.

What it is, what does it mean, why should we care.

One of the problems when you are so involved with material is that it is explicit and self explanatory to you because you spend all your time with it so an occupational hazard is that writers do not always draw things out for the reader.

 

For me, I'm somewhat visual in outlook - so a graph will trump a table of numbers; and a trend tells you more than the absolute figures. I would be looking to see if you can show year-on-year that some key statistic - which I guess means availability or annual mileage - got worse over time, since that is a clear management stimulus that action has to be taken.

The key parts of the story to me are to show (1) Something had to be done and then (2) what was done improved the situation. Both are important. Just showing that Thompson's locos had better availability or whatever than their Gresley forebears doesn't counter the criticism of "why did he tinker with Gresley's locos" (even though as you have shown the extent to which he did that is overblown - but prejudices die hard). So finding a way to present the data to show the situation was deteriorating over time is the clearest way to show that Thompson was justified in a decision that things had to change.

Tom

 

I saw this

Thompson is no Nero, but the point stands about re-visiting critically the sources. And of course, naturally there is a reaction against this 'revisionism' which basically boils down to 'but Tacitus says'

I suspect there won't be any graphs in the British Museum exhibition.

 

An interesting comparison! Though, to be fair, I suspect the role of statistical data in understanding Nero is rather less...

 

But in context for the graphs above the B1 and B2 are fresh out of works yet the B17 locomotives go back to 1928, the B7's to 1921, B16's 1919 and the B12's to 1911 so it is hardly surprising the modern locomotives do better in comparison.

In addition there was the biggest war in history ongoing and resources were having to be directed to the major priorities and those maintaining the existing locomotive fleets at sheds were having to work under extremely arduous conditions and with limited resources. Not only is this supported by the memoirs of those who wrote about this time but the Companies themselves paid tribute to their staff and the burden of back maintenance then having to be met by British Railways became a massive financial burden to that organisation.

For instance: Cowlairs seems to have had a poor reputation for repairs during the war years and the Gresley P2 are said to have suffered from this poorer maintenance. This becomes understandable when it is taken into account that skilled men where in massive demand at the various Glasgow shipbuilding works and these took priority in war time with the Battle of the Atlantic ongoing.

 

All of which would reinforce the need to look robustly at how availability could be maintained and increased - if the machinery was being worked harder, and skilled labour was the critical bottleneck in providing the maintenance it required, common sense dictates that ways of reducing workload would be required.

 

I'd be interested to see the trends in annual violin production; perhaps used to see if there was a correlation with annual square miles of city ravaged by fire ...

Tom

 

And to look at a longer run of years. Was the B1 margin over the B16s and 17s maintained in the early 50s after several cycles of heavy repairs? Or did it narrow?

Also what did the 400 plus B1s actually displace? The same point @Jamessquared makes about the Bulleid light pacifics displacing a bunch of superannuated 4-4-0s. What options and constraints did Thompson and his design team actually face at the point of deciding on the class 5 design?

 

But isn't this the point

it wasn't a violin and he wasn't in the city when it caught fire, the city was badly designed and overcrowded and even his enemies admit he did a good job in rehousing the homeless.

it wasn't a campaign against Gresley, he didn't choose Great Northern, the P2s were poor designed and problematic and even his enemies admit that he did a good job with the B1s.

 

Your post is in fact doing the job of Thompson in arguing for new locomotives, with simplified components, standard parts, and simplified maintenance regimes.

• old fleet of varying types
• limited resources
• limited manpower and skills base

So if you understand all of that - how are you arguing against what Thompson ultimately set out to do? That's a contradiction.

 

I can answer this question - forgive me though, I am still running the additional data I have for the B1s (it won't appear in the book - it needs more reading time) - but generally, the B1s went into service, and the mileages/availability figures started to rise continuously, year on year, until plateauing in the mid 50s, but remaining at what I think (need to run the numbers more) was around 85% availability and over 55,000 miles per annum on average (that is higher than all of the Gresley Pacifics, most of the Thompson Pacifics, and all of the Peppercorn A2s for average mileages).

So my data suggests the B1s displaced:

• All the Robinson 4-6-0 classes, scrapped by early 50s.
• All the Atlantics, gone by early 50s
• Displaced mid-sized tank locomotives of varying heritages to secondary routes
• Displaced some V2s from specific duties (which freed up V2s to do work to supplement Pacifics more)
• Supplemented existing Gresley classes including the Pacifics on certain routes

409 locos at any one time with the highest route availability of a loco its size on the whole LNER network. It likely displaced at a rate of 2 to 1, so roughly 1000 locomotives, thus bringing the overall locomotives on the LNER then BR eastern region down by a sizeable amount. How can I say that? We have the data to show when classes where withdrawn and from what part of the LNER and BR (E) in what years, whilst also seeing where and when the B1s came into service.

Ultimately, Thompson - retiring in 1946 - wouldn't see the change straight away - but the LNER and BR (E) did, and had huge benefit from it.

 

I appreciate your response. My post doesn't argue for or against Thompson but queried the selection of old types against ones of new manufacture. I now appreciate what your point is with the explanation given and why you picked so. Thank you.

 

Sorry to butt in but it seems to me this goes to the issue of what options the LNER had back in 1941.

They identified the need for class five power, which seems relatively uncontroversial. They wanted one standard design for the GER,GN, NER,GC and NBR which presumably imposed axle load and other design constraints. Seems sensible.

Given that, what were their options? Could they have simply ordered batches of Black Fives off the peg? Heresy, I know, but why not?

Given they were going for their own design, what were the features which made the B1 a success? What's the evidence? Performance data of the kind you have comes in here.

I wonder what staff at depots like Neasden, Woodford, Leicester GC etc thought of the B1s relative to the Black Fives. Those must have been the places with experience of both, sequentially, for the same work.

 

No problem at all. I think the biggest issue with the whole Thompson debate is that miscommunication sometimes is easy - I know that I now get a bit defensive (I have been doing this for nearly a decade now).

 

That's a very good question - they had to build 8Fs to an LMS design after all. I suspect because that was pushed by the W.D. and were technically on loan, the LMS wouldn't have given all of their designs so comfortably in other areas.

In any event - the B1 used standard LNER parts throughout, including V2 wheels on the original batch of 10. So arguably as a locomotive born out of necessity, the LNER did the right thing in so many ways.

I think the railwayman is always going to have a degree of the personal viewpoint rather than the objective one where locomotives are concerned: but the B1s seem to fare well in their reputation overall. Sure - they were an austerity design - and they had their problems, like any locomotive. The stats are suggesting the B1 was far better than its reputation though in terms of its value to the railway company.