Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

Reading through the recent postings regarding Cook, whose evaluation was based on "hearsay", I suggest that it could also be the case that Harrison was so enamoured of Gresley principles that he would be critical of any deviation from them by Gresley's successor. It has been suggested that 71000, designed by Harrison to a Riddles specification, owes more to LNER standards than LMS standards despite being built at Crewe and if this is the case it would be interesting to see if (a) this was the case and (b) whether it was Gresley or Thomson practices that were followed.

 

71000 has:
divided drive, which you could attribute to either previous LMS practice or Thompson/Peppercorn on the LNER, certainly not Gresley.
6'2" driving wheels, despite being officially a replacement for a scrapped Stanier Pacific rather than officially mixed-traffic. Several precedents on the LNER and Bulleid's Pacifics. The latter were officially mixed-traffic, as were the B1s. What about the other LNER classes with that wheel size, V2, P2, various flavours of A2?
LNER-style slide bars, but didn't that apply to all the standards?
Riddles reverser handle? Again like other standards but unlike anything previous from anywhere?
I don't know about all the smaller components, but presumably they were much the same as the other standards.

 

Not all the Standards had LNER style slide bars.

 

Not much LNER in 71000:
Frames, back end frame extension and Delta truck - Britannia from SR/Bulleid
Bogie - BR Standard ex-LMS
Boiler - basically a larger Britannia, which was similar to but slightly smaller than a Duchess boiler save for the profile of the firebox water legs lower edge. LNER fireboxes were round topped of course.

Doncaster was assigned the design work for the coupling and connecting rods and cylinder details for the Standards (plus valve gear although may not be relevant to 71000).

 

Noting that Bulleid was assistant to Gresley, one presumes the following / development of Gresley principles in his SR designs.

 

Not sure I understand that comment. The frames of the Bulleid Pacifics were totally different to the Gresley locos - inset (i.e. frame plates near together), trailing frame extensions, different bogie, different trailing truck.

 

I believe Harrison wrote or was quoted saying that in 71000 they "tried to build the engine that Gresley would have built at the time." Not an exact quote, but that's roughly the spirit of it.

Obviously the boiler is very non-Gresley. The Bulleid frame arrangement is also non-Gresley; the most Gresley aspect of the Bulleids is the cylinder arrangement, which 71000 does not share. Perhaps the most common feature is the ideal of not having a set of inside valve gear to be lubricated, the Caprotti taking the place of the conjugated valve gear (and the outside sets).

 

Since Bulleid was an LNER Premium Apprentice and served under Gresley, being promoted to being one of his assistants, it would be fair to presume that Bulleid would follow Gresley principles in his work hence include that in his work undertaken for the Southern Railway. As I understand your post (at § 2084) you note that 71000 had frames, back end frame extension and Delta truck originally designed for Bulleid Pacifics hence confirming, if Bulleid followed Gresley principles, that LNER (Gresley) practice was followed by Harrison in the design of 71000.

 

So to clarify guys:

• The locos which used no standard LNER components, had no Gresley input or design in them at all are “the natural progression from Gresley”
• But locomotives which not only used his standard designs, including boilers, cartazzi, tender, slide bar, kylchap, etc, are part of “destroying all that was Gresley?”

I feel like there’s a complete disconnect between historical fact, railway engineering, and engineering connections to Gresley where none truly occur, and trying to eradicate the history of engineering which really did follow on from his work.

 

I'm not saying that but I am saying that LNER practice continued into BR days and some features were Gresley principles (or developments thereof) whilst other features were Gresley principles as modified by Thomson but modified as a consequence of the economic situation pertaining during his time as CME and NOT because of any desire to "eliminate" Gresley's standards. The actual contribution made by Thomson I hope to learn from your book once published but - until then - I like most posters can only argue on the basis in information available to date.

 

I don’t think you read the post you quoted! Bulleid may well have been Gresley’s assistant, but there is precious little of Gresley in his own work. If you compare a Bulleid Pacific with a Gresley one, then as @huochemi points out, the Bulleids have entirely different frame layout; a completely different trailing truck (which carried forward to the large BR Standards); Belpaire rather than round top firebox; independent rather than conjugated valve gear etc etc. Bulleid may well have learnt much from Gresley, but in design terms he decidedly set out on his own path. It’s certainly hard to see much continuation of a Gresley “design school” through Bulleid to Riddles in the way that you can clearly identify, say, an evolving Churchward “design school” through Stanier.

Tom

 

If you consider Bulleid's work bears no relationship to Gresley principles, then you have to ask whether that was because (a) he totally disagreed with Gresley (b) he modified the problems that he identified with Gresley principles or (c) he was ploughing his own furrow irrespective of previous experience. That said any further discussion detracts from the main core of considering Thomson's contribution to LNER practice hence my willingness to accept the view of others and let it pass.

 

Actually I think it’s very relevant Fred and my apologies for picking on you a little again, but it seems point A) is most likely.

In almost every respect Bulleid deviated from the principles Gresley had laid down, and one suspect the hand he was dealt with on the Southern was not extended to Thompson on the LNER.

If the LNER had received the Bulleids together with all of their known issues prior to an almost full rebuilding by BR, do we think Bulleid would receive criticism for deviating from Gresley?

Thompson lengthened the basic Gresley Pacific and fitted three sets of motion. Almost everything else chosen was pure Gresley design. Not a revolution, evolution.

Yet look at the stark difference in opinion and that said. He “looked to destroy all that was Gresley” - well known phrase. Does that look to be true?

 

I think you are stretching too far there. Cook spent, what, 7 or 8 years sitting in the same chair that Gresley and Thompson sat in before him. He had direct detailed practical experience of exactly how the system worked, what had changed, what hadn't, what cost money, what worked. He had much more than hearsay available to him. The full sentence is "Perhaps I was able to heal a little of the discord brought in by Edward Thompson's tragic desire to obliterate Gresley." As CME healing discord was part of his job, and its clear there were factions, and Cook must have listened to both of those factions. I'm sure they were keen to influence him! We might surmise, too, that, locomotive design being only a small part of the CMEs job, that he was talking about much more than locomotive design. Might we have enthusiast's blinkers on? Did Thompson make big organisational changes from Gresley's methods, and that was what really caused bad feeling?
[Later] Should we be looking for residual organisational stress left over from the grouping? All the senior staff had started their careers in pre group days, even the previous century: were old rivalries a factor?

In locomotive design, as you've pointed out, Thompson made one big change from Gresley policy, to abandon three cylinders for types that could be built with two cylinders. In the case of the classes that did need more than two cylinders he also abandoned the conjugated gear and changed the drive arrangement, but retained three cylinders. Other than those things though, many aspects of LNER design stayed much the same: there doesn't appear to have been a big wholesale change as say Stanier or Churchward implemented. Not even a lurch towards say GCR design principles. That's enough for enthusiast vitriol of course, as has been adequately demonstrated in past posts in this thread. I'm just not sure its enough to explain the internal bad feeling that Cook's words demonstrate existed.
[Later] As pointed out below there was also the policy change away from small classes.

In any book you can address a number of things. A re-evaluation of the enthusiast criticism of Thompson's engineering policy is one. Its interesting to see posts that violently criticise Thompson's equal length connecting rods and divided drive as being obviously wrong, when those were features of some very successful designs on other lines. Its also valid to explore the antipathy to Thompson that comes in the literature. What the basis was for that and how its arisen, how much if at all its justified and so on. But they are, arguably, separate issues, one being engineering, and the other being, really, sociology. No reason why both shouldn't be addressed in a single volume, and also no reason why they shouldn't be separated. But something we have seen repeatedly in this thread is that they get confused, and one masks the other. It will, I think, take some very careful and clever writing to separate Thompson's engineering legacy from the controversy in such a way that even a reader full of pre conceived notions will do the same. My book was a much simpler proposition!

 

I think Simon has made that case quite convincingly on this thread, to the extent that further repetition risks becoming tedious. Some may never be convinced, but repetition will make no difference there.

As for Bulleid; he and Gresley both designed 3-cylinder pacifics but that's about the extent of the resemblance.

Edit: Thompson did also depart radically from Gresley's loco design principles in one respect; simple designs to be built in large numbers instead of a specialist class for each kind of duty.

 

I think you make some excellent points there Jim.

I agree with what you say, and yes, it can (certainly from my point of view) become easy to confuse the issue.

But - I think it is fair to ask the question to what extent someone’s claims are true. Cooks claims tie in with specific peoples views on the LNER - but do the claims stand up to scrutiny in reality?

Perception is the issue. The perception of what Thompson wanted to achieve, how he appeared to peers and those below him, and to those outside the LNER.

I don’t believe I am a good enough writer - yet - to unpick all of it. But I have made a start and would hope this threads discussion, the material I’ve provided and will continue to provide, will help unpick it more in future.

I do also accept: there is a finite limit to all of this.

 

Yes, but Thompson is not criticised for this. This appears to be more or less accepted as the right thing to do. Thompson’s aim was to reduce the number of classes on the LNER to 19 from hundreds.

He made a good start by removing great swathes of pre grouping locomotives through introduction of the B1s L1s, and O1s, and Peppercorn continued this trend with the modified K1 design.

Standardisation was the right thing to do.

 

An example of hearsay and research going awry.

It was suggested to me that ET had won a VC in an interview I took.

That seemed a stretch, but I persisted in chasing his war record for WW1. Being mentioned in dispatches twice also revealed he won an OBE.

A friend kindly gave me a contact to see if there was any truth to the VC story - noting Thompson's position during the war, any award of the VC seems virtually nil.

So the final stage has been to email the VC association to confirm one way or another.

A bit of a wild goose chase, and perhaps I should have dismissed it out of hand when the original suggestion was put to me. However I have tried to follow up all suggestions and sources and to be fair and consistent in that. It wasn't entirely outwith the realms of fantasy that Thompson didn't speak about his WW1 experience.

I think appreciate much better now what goes into writing a historical piece and how much hard work historians put into their craft.

Lesson learned, however.

 

Mentions in despatches weren't exactly handed out like sweeties, most especially in wartime. I'd be interested to know ET's OBE citation, as British Empire awards aren't something I'd readily associate with military service.

Nowadays, fun is had with 'TLA's' and FLA's', though ribald humour based on the nomenclature of 'gongs' was common enough, at one time. Is it possible wires have got crossed down the years and the 'VC' in question might've been some form of colloquial 'shorthand' entirely unrelated to the military gallantry decoration?

 

There have always been 2 lists for awards of British Empire gongs, Military and Civil, right back to when it was invented in 1917. For reasons best known to themselves, the press tend not to bother with the military list when they publish their articles, although it's probably because there aren't any celebrities on it.