Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

No, work started on the schemes well before the lines were transferred. Roughly 25% of 1938 Tube Stock was originally owned by the LNER, not LT, because of the Northern Heights scheme - including some of the cars now on the Isle of Wight, making them the last LNER rolling stock in normal non-heritage service.

 

The old,old story
Gresley could have been promoted out of harm ways years before 1941.
LNER management could not just sack him as that would have pointed to incompetence making him CME.
Private railways follow same herd rules as other human undertakings

 

More rubbish. Stick to Danish railways my friend.

 

Not aware that the LNER management had any complaint. On the contrary, it would appear that they were quite happy with his work culminating with the A4s and a world speed record.

 

I know Gresley has his detractors but seriously??!! Was it your intention to imply Gresley was an actual liability to the LNER? Are you from an alternate timeline?

 

I think that's massively overstating the case.
His work was very good, it's just that the conjugated valve gear was "good enough to keep, not good enough to multiply" to quote myself (second sign of madness?!?!).

 

They were indeed probably happy with his work. Very happy indeed about the publicity, although perhaps they should have paid more attention to running costs in real life service, as LMS board did.
But the LNER management were similarly happy with Webb's output, until after he left. Retrospective assessments are also important.
(Webb, like Thompson, gets unfairly vilified, but like Gresley, he was too committed to a blind alley. And remember Compounds were a very small part of Webb's output, while conjugated gear was on almost all of Gresleys...)
(In the interests of full disclosure, I don't think compounding per se was a blind alley, just Webb's versions of it).

 

I think there are people taking this far, far too personally on this thread the last week or so.

FWIW I disagree with Hermod but can we please be civil in our discussion with him?

I would be interested to hear why exactly he feels that way.

In the meantime, here’s a small, fairly innocuous snippet of the documents I’ve been looking at this week.



Why is this significant?

I feel I have confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that ET was always the first - and only - choice for the LNER CME role, and I hope to put to bed the various rumours and myths perpetuated by railway writers in the last seventy years.

This puts a significantly different slant on the proceedings going forward.

As always, I’m happy to discuss the primary source material privately by PM and if anyone has any questions, do ask me.

A recent development is that I’ve accepted an offer to do an interview, to be available as a podcast, on Thompson. If you’ve any questions you want me to address (or would like to know where to mail the rotten tomatoes) please do ask here.

 

I - hesitate - to say this. But I feel that on review of the LNER emergency board minutes from that time, they were not happy - not aimed directly at Gresley - but with the circumstances they found themselves in.

For a variety of reasons including ill health it was not perhaps possible to be as straightforward with Gresley as the board was with Thompson and Peppercorn later.

By 1941/42 locomotive availability was at a crisis and the LNER were making do with anything they could get their hands on and into traffic.

I would say however that if not for the war, then there would be no issues: but the war happened, things changed, that is fact and well evidenced.

 

LNER did not pay much dividend in Gresley time.

Webb three cylinder compound was last chance for plus 2000 hp british steam locomotives.
The two outside high-pressure cylinders could be 22 inch and within gauge and a single big inside low pressure doing one third of the work is better than two smaller doing half.
Claugton,Duchesses and GWR Kings were not copied by BR Dukeing.
Neither was the basic Gresley idea of conjugation for three driving second axle.
Bulleid drove midle axle and was Crewkerned

 

Danish State Railway management was thanked by retreating Germans for having done a very god job ,
but same management decided in midle of war to build new swedish 1915 design compound pacifics.
Worse steamway design than any Webb.
I have owned 4 Allegros,3 Maxis 1 Princess and a Boxford lathe.
Should never have left factories.
Is british engineering sacrosant?

 

Off on a tangent, who were Gresley's private pupils I wonder?

 

Indeed.

Noel

 

Ah well, its the spirit of the age isn't it:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death my right to abuse you for saying it"

 

Maybe we should remember our British sense of humour and appreciate the subtleties of a gentle wind-up.

 

Don't forget that the LNER lost 92 Class 04 2-8-0s that were sent to the Middle East in 1941.

 

Dude, anyone who, having owned an allegro, chose to purchase another needs their head looking at. Same with the maxi.

 

How bad was the LNER situation in WW2 compared with the other Big Four companies?

 

Ah, yes, the Allegro - otherwise known as the Aggro ('Aggro' an abbreviation of 'aggravation) - not one of British Leylands best. But what was wrong with the Boxford lathe? Never had a problem with the one I used some years ago.

 

I assume that the LNER main and emergency boards would have been mainly composed of non-technical people who would have stared with blank incomprehension if you said "conjugated valve gear" to them. What they would have understood was if they were getting reports of increased train delays and cancellations due to an engine breaking-down or being unavailable. They would then have looked to Gresley, Thompson and other key players for professional advice on what was causing the problems.

As well as considering specific design features of LNER engines, it is important to note that LNER engine-building had collapsed to almost zero in the early 1930s, and did not fully recover until after WW2. So the first problem with the modern LNER engines was that there were relatively few of them. The total LNER fleet had reduced by about 900 engines during the 1930s - old engines (mostly small 4-4-0s and 0-6-0s) had been withdrawn without replacement (RCTS figures quote 7378 at end of 1929, reducing to 6476 at end of 1939). These old crocks would have been of little value in WW2, whereas the O4s requisitioned by the government would have been a loss keenly-felt.

So another issue for the wartime LNER was how well the older pre-grouping engines (especially the larger ones still used on heavy trains) stood up to the rigours of wartime conditions. Some had a reputation for robust construction and for being able to take punishment without suffering cracked frames or otherwise falling apart. Others maybe less so. It is certainly noticeable that many of the larger pre-grouping types disappeared very quickly in the late 1940s, replaced by new Pacifics and B1s.