Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

If I say yes - I will try - the caveat is that you must understand that this is what I do for a day job in the financial services sector and my approach will put both sides of the argument forward.

If there are further specific questions you would like me to answer (as per your questions above) please free free to relate them. I cannot promise to have answers - so much of this thread has opened up questions from questions. But I do promise to try.

Of course I also want to put my own view forward - but it would be wrong to do so presenting it in such a way that undermines the core material and evidence. I am still figuring out how best to present it all as some of that I have collected - when from secondary sources in particular - is dependent on chronology and context. That is why we are four years down the line from when I started writing and that's why I'm on the fifteenth (or is it more?) draft of the book.

One thing I do want to address before sleep:

This is the extraordinary thing for me.

I don't know the answer - but if I were a betting man: is it not easier to be vague and to blame Thompson, knowing his character is already in question, than to give the full report and defend have to defend your own reasoning for writing it?

Who wants to be implicated by association in a time of change which LNER fans have vociferously raged against?

I know we differ on the value of the report and its usefulness, but you must agree that its tone and form is accusatory; and since Cox was the one writing it, not Thompson, and Stanier signed off on it, surely Cox knew he had not minced his words?

In short it seems easier for Cox to blame Thompson and avoid the flack of the changes which happened after his report was made, than for Cox to take responsibility for his own report.

That's a personal and subjective view - but you must admit that what Cox wrote and what he then describes as "being used in a Machiavellian campaign" don't exactly match up!

 

Hi Simon,

In the Inst LE report of 1947 on Spencer's paper and the discussion, Stuart Cox advocated a few opinions but strangely kept silent about his part in the Stanier/Cox report 5 years earlier. I have suggested earlier that Cox was not the ideal person to provide this report. He was not a valve gear expert, and neither was Stanier for what it is worth.

Make of this what you will.

The only person who could give an impartial assessment of the Gresley gear and who was the only expert on it at the time was Holcroft. Holcroft had both helped Gresley in designing it, and criticised it in 1925 in the discussion following Gresley's presidential address to the Inst LE in 1925. Bert Spencer was also aware of the shortcomings that he expressed publically in his paper in 1947 and what he told Cox for his report in 1942, but he had also re-designed the valve gear following the GWR interchange with the LNER in 1925. However it remains a fact that the record for speed with steam was with the Gresley gear.

The Mallard record was with the loco being pressed to it's limit in certain respects and the middle end failed as a result. This was not normal service conditions re Jimc's post, and for many many years the Gresley gear provided the best routine high speed service on the LNER. It also highlighted the middle end bearing problem which Thompson failed to deal with adequately, and it was left to a GWR man (Cook) to resolve properly.

Cheers,
Julian

 

There's also the difference between evidence and interpretation of that evidence - particularly that report. yes you should put your view forward - the conclusions should be yours alone, but if you haven't put all the evidence out and included all the interpretations you've heard, you'll end up being accused of bias.

I certainly do agree about the tone of the report. That's why I'm so surprised that Cox was so vague. My view would be that he knew full well the report was couched in absolute terms as a favour to Thompson, who really needed such a report to put before the board. It also explains why Thompson didn't show Nock the report, why Thompson didn't broadcast it to the heavens once the arguments began, and why the Stanier biography version was edited ( I believe the " never be a sound job" bit was removed?) Still, that's the two sides of the argument which need to be given in your book. At least then people can make up their own minds. They may disagree with your final analysis, but they can't also accuse you of biased reporting.

Off to Ropley - I'll see if there's anything I need to add tonight.

 

I really don't understand the problem with accepting the disadvantages in the Gresley design highlighted by the report.

With hindsight we know these two things about all the express locomotives of the big 4 - that they were all good enough to run the services and that they all had design faults.

I don't pretend to be a steam engineer, but if I understand what I've read correctly then, just to pick some headline items:

The Kings had by far the best valve events, which was just as well because they were at best marginal at getting the exhaust away from the valves and inadequate in getting steam to them.

The Duchesses had the worst valve events of any of the big 4 express engines. It may have been well engineered mechanically, but, presented with Pearce's design on a plate as it were, the LMS designers utterly failed to understand the subtleties.

As for the Merchant Navies, the curate's egg nature of the design scarcely needs repeating by me.

But its easy to look back and think how things could have been done better. I spent 25 years basically running the IT networks of a large organisation, and I could make a list as long as your arm of things that could have been done better to make it all run more smoothly, better performance, less maintenance and so on. However at the time there were always higher priorities than doing those things, sometimes wise priorities, sometimes, I fear not so wise. But what was done was what seemed best at the time to the people making the decisions, and really that's all you can expect.

 

Or the Scots, or the Peppercorns.

Like most things, divided drive can be be done well or not so well.

 

I agree. In order to have a mandate for change,. Thompson needed evidence and backing from engineers independent of the LNER. The report - signed by an eminent CME of the day and written by one of his deputies - has that kind of sway. Whether we in hindsight believe Cox and Stanier were not the "experts" in terms of valve gear, nevertheless they were high profile engineers and crucially they were independent of the LNER.

I do not think you can accuse Cox or Stanier of bias or favouritism towards Edward Thompson. Neither showed so while they were alive and Cox hasn't minced his words on Thompson in his memoirs, so why would either of them grant Thompson a favour on the writing of the report? That seems an astonishing jump to me and suggests all three were in cahoots - ask yourself, given what you know of Cox's opinion of Thompson, and all three individuals behaviour, does this seem likely?

To me, all three seem to disagree with the conjugated valve gear, and Cox wrote the report as an engineer with an opinion of his own (and he was entitled to do this - he was asked for his views by Stanier). Nothing more and nothing less. What is written in the report isn't exactly inaccurate - these are all known faults and shortcomings. We're able to have the hindsight to know it could be dealt with differently - and to be fair to Cox he does make a suggestion in the report as to how to modify the middle big end bearing.

But I hope nobody here would disagree that changing the design ethos to two cylinders for medium and small sized locomotives was unfair to say: given the LMS, GWR and SR all had vast fleets of two cylinder locomotives, one of which the Black Five (or Hall, arguably) is the very locomotive the LNER needed at the time.

I don't believe that it does. The report was strictly for the board to read, and Nock wasn't anywhere near the seniority required. Thompson may have not even had permission to disclose its full contents - bear in mind the importance of the report: it was there to either change the LNER going forward or for things to change. When Thompson spoke to Nock, giving the interview at his bedside, the report's contents and his actions were only a few years old. Looking at the timeline he hadn't retired by then so some degree of confidentiality may have applied. Nock never went back to Thompson, as far as I can see, once he retired which is a shame as we might have had a different side of the story.

No, you've made that assumption. The two versions are virtually identical: the difference is in the formatting and my formatting more closely follows the original. The wording is certainly the same.

Again, this is quite a high level report, intended for the board and authorised by them and asked for by the CME. It is unlikely to be fully published during the second world war in any event, given what was going on around them.

There are very few mentions of the report in The Railway Magazine at the time and in the years immediately following Cox writing it. I only found in the course of my research a few references to the actual report being made and there were more reports about Thompson's standardisation plan and how it was being implemented than anything else.

Yes I completely agree.

 

I disagree. If ET wanted to to build locos sans Gresley's derived motion, he could and should have just got on with it. I don't recall Stanier seeking independent views on the Scots and Patriots before he rebuilt them, nor Bulleid when he modified the Nelsons, nor Gresley with his various rebuilds, nor any other engineer who rebuilt/modified the locomotives of predecessors. So did ET commission the report simply to justify to himself the changes he planned?

 

Actually he could't - he had explicit instructions from both the LNER board and from the government of the day as to what he could and could not build.

Bear in mind that a lot of the LNER works capacity was taken up with building munitions/tanks/aircraft/items for the war effort (as indeed, were all of the major railway works - it was WW2). All of the railways were restricted in what types of locomotives they could build brand new (though as you're aware, that did not stop Bulleid). Thompson wanted to make drastic changes and he did not have the mandate initially to make these.

Stanier working for the LMS during peacetime, for a different railway company, with a different mandate, budget, people, etc...

...because rebuilds were allowed under the various government decrees to the railways...

All done by Gresley mostly under peacetime conditions (and the same restrictions we saw during WW2 did not apply in the same way in WW1, when Gresley was CME for the GNR) with different people making the top decisions and Gresley with the best part of a decade's work at the GNR going into a thirty year reign on the LNER.

You can't compare all of their situations directly to Thompson's. He was much more restricted in what he was allowed to do and that's partly why so many of his locomotive designs are rebuilds or conversions, or developments of existing locomotives and/or parts.

I don't think he needed to justify to himself that changes needed to be made - but in order to have a mandate for change, he did have to persuade the board to allow him to make change. An independent report from engineers outside of the company gives him more or a mandate to make changes. If the report had come back and said "no, conjugated gear is fine but you should consider X and Y and Z in maintenance" then he's unlikely to have been able to make the changes he did.

 

The CME always had to get board approval for his program of construction. And its not exactly unusual for a board, after the retirement of a long standing and independent minded executive, to considerably cut back on the freedom enjoyed by his successor. I know nothing about the personalities on the LNER at the time, but it seems unlikely at that time the board would simply rubber stamp the proposals from the new CME. And Thompson is trying to tell the board who approved Gresley's programs that the great man had in fact in some respects led them down a blind alley, and they'd cheerfully followed.
Don't we all know that, if management don't like hearing something unpalatable from you, about the best way to get it through to them is to get someone they will listen to to tell them, and at the time Stanier was without doubt the biggest name in the business: certainly far more status than say Holcroft, even if Holcroft actually knew more about the subject. Usually, however, at least IME these days, consultants are much more equivocal. As Andrewshimmin said back in the thread "in the careful language of the trade, that report is pretty damning."

 

Hi Simon,

With the greatest respect you have failed to understand the Stanier/Cox report in possibly every conceivable way.

The Board of the LNER had great glory heaped on them by Gresley. There was no way the Board would agree to altering the Gresley policy without good reason. (This would include drastically altering/rebuilding the P2s)

So Thompson got the LMS to do a 'stitch up job' report on the Gresley locos. Cox knew nothing about conjugated gears, and was a die hard 2 cylinder man, and stated as much in the Bert Spencer Inst LE discussion in 1947. Did Thompson ask Holcroft to do the report? No!

Thompson then (as far as I can see) deliberately gave misinformation to O.S. Nock about the report. Ok he might not have been authorised to disclose the report itself to Nock, but he gave Nock a version that was very far from the truth as to what was actually contained in the report. Only now thanks to your research can we assess this and what Nock wrote at the time some 70 years later.

The report itself was fundamentally flawed. Poor Bert Spencer, the LNER valve gear expert, was immediately transfered away from Doncaster by Thompson and sidelined after the report evidence was compiled. Spencer gave Cox his frank views on the conjugated gear without knowing how they would be used. He alone was responsible for the gear's re-design after the GWR interchange trials in 1925.

I know a bit about Stuart Cox in retirement, plus have read all his volumes of Locomotive Panorama. I think he thoroughly regretted his part in discrediting the Gresley gear in 1942. As to how this reflects on Stanier who signed the report I cannot say. Stanier and Holcroft remained close friends after they both left the GWR. My personal view is that Stanier was so busy with war work in 1942 that he signed the report probably without even reading it or realising it's implications. But I have no evidence for this and it is just supposition on my part.

Cheers,
Julian

 

Damned by people with no experience of the gear. A gear that in truth wasn't the Achilles heel of the Gresley system, that was the big end design. Strange how these eminent engineers missed that. It took another engineer to sort that problem and the derived motion continued in front line service until 1966.

 

I think you need to read the report again. It said specifically "The excessive big end trouble experienced is in my opinion due mainly to the design of the big end."

 

Have to be honest Julian, your last post rather undid a lot of the good writing you've done in this thread the last week or so.

Well Julian, with the greatest of respect I rather think you have misunderstood me and my views.

I quite agree.

And this is where once again you fall into the trap of becoming completely partisan instead of objective.

How can it possibly be a "stitch up" job?

So the headline I get here is that Thompson picked someone who agreed with him to write a report.

Except he didn't, because Thompson asked Stanier to write the report, and Stanier deputised ES Cox to write it.

Both men however were invited to Doncaster and both of them were invited to look at the evidence presented by Thompson and the works.

(I presume at this point you will make the point that Thompson would do all he can to prove his point, and no doubt you will accuse him of falsifying his evidence next?)

Your logic is fundamentally flawed there because what you assumed to be the case didn't happen. Another big leap.

Thompson was at liberty to ask for someone outside of the company and someone who could be seen as impartial. That pool of people is very small in 1942 and Holcroft I would argue is too close to the conjugated gears development to be seen as impartial.

So Thompson turned to Stanier whose work he admired for an independent assessment of the situation. Which is exactly what the LNER received, unless you're now suggesting that Thompson influenced the report so greatly that the version we have isn't what Cox wrote (and there's no evidence for that whatsoever).

Where is your evidence for such a ludicrous statement?

Until this thread and my quotations you had no idea of what Thompson told Nock - and as I have pointed out repeatedly, Nocks version of events changes with every additional book he writes.

He only went into any real detail on his meeting once with Thompson and that meeting is related in "On the footplate" which I have posted a few pages ago almost verbatim.

I would like you to tell me how that Thompsons reporting of his engineering to Nock was untruthful. Because to me what you've said there is that Thompson lied and to be frank I cannot see that to be the case.

I have the description of that meeting in front of me and your description of it, and what Nock actually reports on them speaking about, is totally at odds!

One hopes that Peter Grafton and Dick Hardy would get some credit for their writings.

You have made a lot of statements Juliam without quantifying them.

Perhaps you can explain why you feel it is fundamentally flawed?

The headline I take away from the report is "engineer disagrees with another engineer and based on evidence given that he examined, writes a report where he disagrees with another engineer".

So you are saying that Cox and Stanier were both not their own men, both of them inadequate engineers, both of them puppets for Edward Thompson to manipulate for his own ends?

That to me seems a completely unreasonable interpretation of events - but you do not seem capable of accepting any criticism of the conjugated gear so I rather suspect being unreasonable is part of that.

One rather thinks that if Coxs report was completely unsubstantiated - that is to say it was based on totally flawed evidence, totally flawed reasoning, effectively a lie - then Spencer's movement away would be unjustified.

The report stated that six time as many LNER 3-cylinder engines suffered middle big end failure as LMS 3-cylinder engines in the same period. That's a pretty big statement and a very large number of locomotives.

If we follow this and accept this as being true, then Spencer's sidelining looks justified, does it not, strictly from the point of view of maintenance?

What I am getting from your views Julian is that no criticism of Gresley conjugated valve gear is possible without Thompson somehow orchestrating things in the background.

Does it really look likely that Cox was influenced by Thompson to do a "stitch up" based on what we know of them both? I think Edward Thompson could be difficult most certainly and Cox too, but I cannot see that Cox was not his own man.

But the choice to do so and to write in such a manner was his - unless you are suggesting Thompson chained him down and forced him to write such a damning report?

An incredible bit of supposition Julian.

But you have in your whole post managed to prove why it is so fundamentally important that I finish this book.

Because your entire post there makes very bold claims - most unsubstantiated - and in almost all instances is negative to Thompson with a massive amount of supposition on your part.

In short, I rather think you've proved my overall point. Sometimes the mind is made up by an unconscious bias and will do all it can to prove a negative - even to the extent of making wildly suggestive supposition with no evidence to prove a damn thing.

 

Going back to the question of why Cox was vague about the contents of the report in his memoirs: could that just be put down to him no longer having access to a copy of it when writing the memoir and having to rely on memory?

 

If I were to make what seems to me to be a rather obvious point, in the period during and after WW2 a lot of things that had worked perfectly well up to that point were found wanting in the much harsher conditions that prevailed from 1939 onwards. The fact that they were no longer 'as good as they were' does not necessarily reflect on those who had designed them, it was simply that times had changed

 

Except the Gresley gear continued to work satisfactorily until the end of LNER steam in 1966. Dick Hardy had a simple solution in the form of keeping smokebox ash out of the fulcrum pins. Haymarket had a maintenance regime that worked and when Cook redesigned the big end the problems went away. I'll say once again, it was the middle big end that was the Achille's heel of the set up, not the derived motion. Once Cook had sorted that, middle big end failures on the Gresley three cylinder locos were no longer a significant problem. The A4s in particular were in front line service right up to the end of passenger steam on the ECML - they even worked the accelerated diesel diagrams with success - and then found a second career on the accelerated Glasgow - Aberdeen trains until 1966.

 

Nobody is denying this is true. But unless you are suggesting Cox, Stanier and Thompson were able to predict the future, they couldn't possibly have seen those solutions.

Not to mention that it was the lining up of the frames better using optical equipment that Cook found helped most. This reduced failures across all of the Pacifics according to Peter Townend in East Coast Pacifics at Work.

Neither Gresley, Thompson nor Peppercorn had instigated any improvements in that area previously.

I'd be interested to find that Dick Hardy quote - as the closest I've found is what he states was the solution for getting Thompsons D class to work reliably with its Robinson valve gear.

 

So you agree with Stanier then? Because that's exactly what he said.

 

It seems far more possible to me than to you. Who knows what Cox thought in later years - perhaps he was embarrassed by his report when hindsight showed what Thompson did with the report and the locos produced. The later success of the A3/A4 can't have helped either.

That damns the report with faint praise - accuracy of the evidence isn't the issue, it's the completeness of the evidence available but not used and the conclusions drawn that are the problem, to me at least.

The number of cylinders for small and medium sized locos isn't relevant to this particular argument, you're just adding it as a plus point for Thompson.

Quite possibly, but the theory that Thompson knew the report was biased (intentionally or not) and he had used it is an equally valid explanation. Either way, Thompson didn't tell Nock the whole story, meaning jma1009 is correct that he did deliberately give "misinformation" to Nock -

Fair enough - I could swear I read the report had been amended in some publication, but obviously not the memoir

Yes, suspicious isn't it? Thompson didn't even publicise it after his retirement. Maybe even he realised he'd used it for his own purposes?

In the end, one can feel some sympathy for Thompson. He had his own views on design - some which were good and some of which might be called questionable (though held those views honestly) - he'd fallen out with his boss over something - he'd waited almost all his working life - and when he finally got the job after the demise of the famed "Speeder up of the LNER" (and after two others had been asked) it was wartime and he couldn't put his ideas into practice. If he used guile to get his ideas built, I don't blame him, but I wouldn't be prepared to deny his actions out of sympathy in the way you seem to.

As I'm sure you realise I could put together a sequence of events consistent with the evidence available which paints Thompson in very poor light indeed - and it would be at least as likely as the impression you are trying to produce of a much sinned against man. The difference is that I don't choose to do so, whereas you are committed to rehabilitating Thompson. You say you want others to make up their own minds, but I suspect you really want them to make up their minds to agree with you. Fair enough, you have a mission and I don't, but kindly refrain from accusing those who disagree with you of prejudice when it is evident to all but yourself that you are equally prejudiced by your mission. You will always take the best interpretation of Thompson's actions, however unlikely, whereas the rest of us are more likely to take the most probable interpretation. I don't blame you, but this thread has gone round in circles for months because of it.

To be honest I really don't think you're going to find your killer evidence to put us all in our places, so please sit back and review your intentions, produce a final version of your book, and publish it.

If everyone agree with you, you're a hero - if they don't you can blame it on those darn anti Thompson conspirators. Win - Win!

 

This seems to me like a pretty balanced overview.

Two non technical comments from me:

It's always seemed to me that the anti Thompson school (CJ Allen et al leading the charge) have over egged the pudding, presenting him as a kind of King Richard III of the CMEs. That said, it's doubtful if Thompson ever helped his own case by the way in which he went about things.

The Cox Report. I've always thought that this came straight out of page 1 of the management book. Turn to a third party to give the gloss of authority to something you've already decided to do. These days we hire in consultants (being cynical) to regurgitate our views and wishes in a nice long, well presented report. Back then the CME of another railway fitted the bill.

I guess this one will simply run and run without ever reaching a conclusion.