Bulleid Royal Navy Class light pacifics

Douglas Bader VC, Sir Barnes Wallace

Copied from Wikipedia, no acknowledgment of ownership,

 

Sir, you need your underpants set on fire, the man was a genius before his time.

 

I happened to be in Search Engine today and found the attached snippet in the Southern Railway Magazine for 1945 while waiting for some items. I imagine for more background on why certain names were chosen, you would need to have some input from someone who was in the publicity department (which may be out there).

 

Douglas Bader was many things but a VC holder he was not and I'm struggling to find a BoB connection for Barnes Wallis.

 

Not quite true that the SR didn’t scrap a great deal when the 140 Pacifics were introduced. There was a huge clear out of older pre-grouping locos around 1946 - 1951; almost everything that still survived from Stirling (SER); Kirtley (LCDR) and quite a lot of Billinton (LBSCR) went; more modern locos then cascaded down, creating the space at the top for the Bulleid locos. So the arrival of the Pacifics didn’t instantly cause scrapping of, say, an equivalent number of King Arthurs or Lord Nelsons, but caused a ripple effect as locos moved down to less important duties, and at the bottom the last remaining Stirling F1’s, and Billinton B4x’s and so on were scrapped.

Tom

 

Strange this interweb thingy, that was a draft that was deleted, yet when I sent the picture it re appeared.
Absolutely right about Wallis, he was in the senior service, whilst Bader was a crab with lots of distinction but no V.C.

 

As one of my old customers has told me on numerous occasions Mr Bader was not a popular gent in the RAF, according to my customers father, he was very much the big 'I am' and his transfer to Colditz was very well received by those whose had their carefully planned escape attempts thwarted by his 'I must get out at all costs' mentality. Also considering the hatchet job himself and Leigh-Mallory did on Dowding after 1940 lets just say their were more than few disgruntled faces of several ex veterans when he insisted on taking charge of Lord Dowdings wheelchair on a tour around Duxford during the filming of 'The Battle of Britain' in 1969.

 

Bader's courage is undoubted but as you say, he was deeply unpopular in some circles.

 

I visited Lundy a few years ago, dammed if I could find a railway track.

 

That suggests that "West Country" was a convenient label after those counties had been chosen, not the criterion for selecting names. Somerset is in the West Country but irrelevant because the Southern didn't go there (except as Somerset & Dorset).

 

Barnes Wallis wasn’t in any service, he was one of the greatest scientists and inventors of the 20th century with the Wellington Bomber, bouncing bomb and the later ‘earthquake’ bombs to his credit. It is shameful that he had to wait until he was in his 80s before being honoured with knighthood.

 

While we're talking of WC/BB names - there was one name that could at a stretch just about qualify as either - 10 points to the first correct answer.

 

Blenheim?

 

The old trackbed is on the east side of the island linking the granite quarries to the former stone dressing sheds.

 

I was thinking of an actual WC/BB name - have another crack!

 

34003?

 

Nothing to disagree with there, though other factors, unique to the Southern can't be ignored (even if they've previously been raised - once or twice - on other threads).

The biggie on the Southern of course, was the serious investment in electrification, on the busiest mainlines accounting for much of the passenger traffic. By WWII, this had already reached Gillingham (Kent), Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Eastbourne, Brighton, Guildford, Portsmouth, Reading, plus the south coast line.

Another big factor, I guess, was the lack of much by way of heavy bulk minerals traffic on the Southern, meaning a whole category of loco didn't get completely shagged out and need replacing every 20 years.

On the passenger side, Maunsell's development of the N15 ('King Arthur'), introduction of LN ('Lord Nelson') and V ('Schools') and his inspired rebuilding of Wainwright's 4-4-0s undoubtedly went a long way to explaining why the divisions weren't constantly howling for new passenger locos. Shame Maunsell didn't have a stab at fine tuning Billinton's rebuilt Brighton B4Xs, which could and should have been at least as good as the D1/E1 rebuilds ..... damn those restricted steam chests.

A final thought .... the downturn in traffic, following the Wall Street Crash, certainly put the kybosh on any more V ('Schools') class. Doubtless, other building / rebuilding programmes were curtailed around this time. I'm unaware of the effects (if any) of the crash on the pace of the electrification programme.