The LMS's pre-grouping express 4-6-0s - a question

It might be interesting (for a given value of interesting) to look at board minutes to find out what sort of things were on the agendas. I've looked at GWR locomotive committee minutes at Kew, and actual locomotive orders and policy seem to have been a very small part of their deliberations. Mostly they seem to be about buying coal, authorising repairs and improvements at sheds and new machine tools and facilities at the factories.

 

In full agreement with Tom's thoughtful post. The electrification issue is the one area where I confess I tend to agree with the hindsight view(!), whilst understanding the reasons for the SR board abandoning the technically superior LBSC 6.6Kvac in favour of 3rd rail.

Pointless speculation I know, but imagine had the overhead reached Brighton before WWI (question of scale of existing investment tipped pro OHLE). With the benefits of a whole mainline sparked up writ large, would the board's decision have been different? With that sort mileage under their belt, the domestic electrical engineering industry would surely have matched German expertise in fairly short order (question of public/political acceptability answered), just leaving the issue of costs .... and the Brighton system needed far less in the way of substations than the more suburban-suited 3rd rail, which would have gone some way to compensating for higher installation costs and opened the door for further mainline electrification.

How much less grief would the old SECR mainline have caused with it's operating restrictions? Would the Exeter line still be double track throughout? (how much time could've been knocked off the schedules of the ACE or profitable bulk milk traffic?). Would Bournemouth and Brighton Belles, plus the Golden Arrow have looked a tad more .... identical? Would an electrified Waterloo - Exeter line have forced the hand of the GW?

Just think .... the King Arthurs would probably have been the last steam express locos on the Southern and three steam workshops would've soon become overkill. The CME position would probably have morphed into CMEE and Ryde MPD would've looked quite a bit different! Perhaps the IoW would have proved too tempting as an ideal R&D location to have left it untouched? Even if it had, I doubt even that would have saved the Ventnor West branch. Somehow, I suspect even had all that happened, Stroudley's evergreen Terriers would still have managed to find some useful role for themselves!

Oh well, at least we've got the Bulleid pacifics to froth endlessly over .... and Mr Maunsell's 'Schools' class were about the best 4-4-0's anywhere .... ever! Plus the slight issue of all those lovely old survivors which grace our heritage lines, which would undoubtedly have bitten the dust, if not by 1940 then certainly by 1950.

 

mmmm

the schools probably were the best , but I wonder how they would have stacked up against the Georges, making allowances for the time interval between the two .
the Georges have power outputs on record very similar to the Schools with a lighter engine and 5000 lb less TE.

Not only that , the work that the LNWR expected from a loco was amazing . the jumbo , Charles Dickens put in 2000000 miles in 20 years .yep thats 2M .
I looked at the FW Webb link on this thread ,and that shows the Teutonic ,Jeanie Deans as completing 5M miles in 10 years . Don't think I believe that but those engines were double manned ,so could well have run 20 hours out of 24 daily , between repairs .maybe 500 m per day . 3000 pw x 52, 150000 pa 1.5 M in 10 years more like it , but still a phenomenal mileage.
I doubt many - if any Schools achieved that mileage . no doubt somebody will show me i'm wrong lol!

 

Bradley gives mileage for most but not all of the Schools; they are generally about 1 - 1.1 million miles, which doesn’t sound that great to me, though obviously diagramming plays a part, and they were withdrawn because there was no further use for them rather than because they were worn out so no doubt could have gone further had it been required.

5 million in ten years for Jeannie Deans is beyond plausible. It means 1,350 miles per day, 365 days per year, without a break. Actually, 1 million in ten years would be going it some, allowing for repairs etc.

I’ve slways thought Ashford got good value out of the H class - half the class went past 1.5 million; several went past 2 million, and all that from a humble 0-4-4T engaged in mostly stop-start work without the opportunity for knocking up big daily mileage’s.

Tom

 

Certainly interesting figures, although with the longest regular non-stop run on the Southern being the 108 miles to Bournemouth (and the other regular stamping ground of the 'Schools' to Hastings being a shade over 82 miles from London), I tend to view the lack of mileages on the (non-water trough equipped) Southern as forgivable! Once a loco was released to the mpd at any given terminal, times taken actually turning and servicing must've been much of a muchness pretty well any old where.

I daresay someone will have mileage figures for the 'Schools', but that someone sure ain't me!

Edit: I see that @Jamessquared has defended the honour of the Southern's 'Schools'! Just to add one random item of ever so slight relevance for your consideration ... 3ft gauge Ballymena & Larne BP 2-6-0st No.5 (NCC No.109) clocked up just shy of 900,000 miles in 54 years on it's home system, mostly on coal and freight trains. Not too shabby for a one-off NG loco, eh?

 

Basically, I suspect the reason for abandoning the overhead system was that the L.B.S.C. could not afford it, hence the slow progress. In Edwardian times the "Brighton" had to face rebuilding Victoria station, building Lancing carriage works, and electrification, all of which were somewhat in conflict with paying dividends. Without much in the way of mineral traffic. the line was apt to have periodic financial and locomotive repair crises.

D.E. Marsh may have been a bit of a "rotter" personally but the situation he bequeathed was not all of his doing. Rectifying it also cost money.

The L.S.W.R. system was cheaper and in Sir Herbert Walker, the line had one of the shrewdest railway managers around when it came to value for money. Hence the 3rd rail system "won".

Paul H

 

Apart from the LSWR being the cheaper system to instal it was also the most extensive at the time hence the replacement cost (to adopt one of the other 2 schemes) was the highest. Given the Financial environment at the time Sir Herbert accepted the LSWR system as the best and cheapest in the long term; remember that the SR was only looking to operate within its own Regional boundaries hence its long term aspiration (especially post WWII) for non-electric traction to work lines west of Salisbury and its development of the Bulleid trio 10201-3

 

a lot of engines used on secondary duties achieved high mileages because of their long lives . I would guess that a lot of Southern locos came in that category because there was no will to replace them .
I would also guess that LNWR locos were able to be intensively used because of the amount of "hot work" that was done . the men had little or no choice in that because labour was cheap and there was always somebody who would do it rather than have no job.
labour was a cheap commodity-just look at some of the pics of old country stations with a dozen or more station staff. heaven knows how many men would be employed at a shed-and the working week was often 70 hours or more, so potentially a lot of men could be aimed at a loco to achieve a quick turn round.
this also applied to other railways , of course . I would bet a shilling that the GNR Atlantics achieved more miles than the A1/3 s

most of the Pacifics we know and love achieved relatively mediocre mileages , in spite of the distance jobs they were given 1.1/4 to 1.3/4 M miles seems to be typical.
i wonder what mileages were achieved by the Midland 2-4-0 and 4-4-0s some of which lasted 60 years + , albeit with rebuilds

 

With the Shoreham line up and running before the mainline, I've always been a bit mystified by the choice of Brighton for a works, if only because of the sheer scale of earthworks which the railway required. There's a fairly well known lithograph of work in progress, with an army of navvies shown effectively carting off a fairly substantial chalk bluff to provide a level site, which can't have been cheap even in the 1830's.

As early as the survey stage, it must've been pretty obvious that the town would expand. The Hanover area began being developed in the decade before the railway arrived and the area between Brighton Station and Seven Dials and the northwards expansion along the London Road towards Preston Village pretty much straight after.

Although the River Adur wasn't crossed by the railway until the 1840's, to reach Lancing and Worthing, the sometime agricultural coastal plain between Cliftonville (West Hove) and Shoreham-by-Sea by way of Portslade-by-Sea (which was south of the coastway, with Portslade Village proper being a good mile north of the line) remained largely undeveloped inland of the Coast Road (the present A259) until the early 20th century and would've made for a more sensible choice for the works, especially bearing in mind proximity to Kingston Wharf. The Old Shoreham Road (further inland and now the A270) was pretty much a cross country lane up to around 1890 at it's extremities and the 1930's in the middle. Possibly, important landowners (plus a monastery) forsaw better profits from future residential developmment (many Hove council wards still carry names of the former estates on which they stand).

 

I believe that the Shoreham branch opened first so that the then London and Brighton Railway had a reliable source of locomotive coal (via coastal shipping to be unloaded at Shoreham): I don’t think at that point it was seen as part of a bigger enlargement that ultimately became the West Coast Line.

I think you are probably being too harsh on the then directors in failing to predict the growth of Brighton, and the growth in rolling stock construction and repair facilities that would be needed. Bear in mind that even at the turn of the twentieth century, both the LSWR and LCDR were still building new locos and carriages in central London, which must have been even more subject to space constraints. In the first decade of the twentieth century, both companies converted their Locomotive workshops to be just running sheds, and concentrated new construction at more spacious facilities - green field at Eastleigh for the LSWR; moving into the spacious works at Ashford for the LCDR (by then as part of the SECR working union).

Meanwhile, at the same time, and under similar pressures, the LBSCR moved carriage construction to a green field site at Lancing, to allow more space for locomotive construction and repairs at Brighton, but it was probably too little too late. Reading Klaus Marx’ books on Billinton and Marsh, you get a sense of a management unable to take a decisive course of action, so endless vacillation - whether that was in account of being unable to get land at a suitable price, or other reasons. Ultimately, had they made the same decision twenty years earlier, a lot of the later troubles could have been avoided. But that’s not the same as saying that eighty years previously, the board of the L&BR should have done likewise, just as it is hardly a criticism of the LSWR directors in 1835 that they chose to make their headquarters for locomotive and carriage repairs at Nine Elms rather than Eastleigh.

Tom

 

Small though the LB&SCR was, it was (unfortunately) a bit ahead of its time being not only one of the pioneers of high-voltage AC overhead electrification, but also for the use of the air brake, both of which are standard now. Not forgetting they were also pioneers in the use of superheating and piston valves as used very effectively in the I3 4-4-2 tank locos.

 

@Jamessquared It was intended more as an observation than an outright critism, though I believe the portents were clearly visible to anyone looking. The board of the L&B/LBSC were scarcely the only (or worst) offenders in that regard. Although clearly coal supply was of vital importance (for profit as much as for locos, I'd imagine), I'd not previously come across the assertion that it was the reason behind the Shoreham line being built first, although it makes sense. My quite possibly flawed understanding was that it was as a result of delays to construction on the London line. The earliest image I've seen of Brighton Station in use (a lithograph as usual for the period) shows a passenger service most definitely on the Shoreham side.

@Eightpot the same thought about tech being 'a bit previous' occured to me on Friday, while rereading the tale of the 3-car articulated LMS DMU, which never had another unit with which to demonstrate its connectivity. It had hydraulic transmission! Quite why LMS authorities seemed so disinterested is puzzling, all the more so since their Irish offshoot, the NCC, was using IC railcars from 1933 and considered them vital to maintaining passenger services during WWII, unlike the LMS example which was quietly sidelined.

 

Was he appointed before or after the big strike

 

before according to Steamindex.

 

Damned.
It would have been marvelous conspiracy theory.
He was more rigthwing political than Dengish Kahn I have read somewhere.

 

Going back to LMS / Midland issues...

The Midland loading / shopping system was a bit more complicated than given above. All locos were given a power rating, 1 to 4. All jobs were given a similar rating, denoting what power class of engine was needed. The idea was that if, say, a job required a Class 4 loco, any Class 4 could do that job, whether it was fresh from works overhaul or due to go in for a Heavy General the following week. Either could work that train. This meant that locos in good and even fair condition had an easy time of it as they were working below their capacity; this is one reason why Midland engines ran some excellent mileages between repairs. It also masked some inherent defects: poor steaming and undersized axleboxes being the more usually mentioned.

The Directors would not become involved in details of loco design; they (theoretically) appointed a CME to do that. On the LMS, in consultation with the Traffic people - James Anderson - so the CME should have provided the new locos to meet the Traffic Departments needs. Any new orders were discussed and, hopefully, agreed by two committees: Mechanical & Electrical Engineering Committee; and Traffic Committee. The CME, Traffic Superintendent and, usually, the Accountant, would attend both meetings. If both agreed the building programme, it would then go to a sub-committee of the Board fro final approval. The problem was that Anderson, apparently with Board approval going back to Midland practice, was specifying locomotive details and even complete locomotives, invariably of Midland descent. That was why there was split responsibility, and the top management, much of it by the mid- to late-1920s, were ex-Midland men and were simply perpetuating a system they were used to over many years.

This did result in a very mixed bag of engines of post-Grouping design. The Crabs and 2-6-4Ts have already been mentioned as the best; they were in fact excellent engines in their own right and not merely on a comparative basis. The 2-6-4Ts were a Derby product; so too were the 2-6-2Ts, awful things, even after Stanier breathed on them. Apart from being under-boilered, they suffered from terrible valve events, in marked contrast to their bigger sisters. Then there were the Austin 7 0-8-0s: good boiler (derived from the LNWR G2) and excellent valve gear. Totally inadequate 4F axleboxes and other Midland fittings which ensured that half were withdrawn prematurely while the survivors eked an existence on the ex-L&Y, care being taken not to overstrain them.

No, pre-Stanier the CME's department was a mess, and much of this was due to Anderson's interference. And remember, he was not even attached to the CME Department: he was Traffic Superintendent! Stamp intervened, but it takes time to move the right people into the right places, including Hartley, Lemon and, eventually, Stanier.

 

The evidence seems to be that a George fresh out of the shops was a great engine, whereas a George needing a shopping was a rough coal-devouring bucket of a loco...

 

This is probably quite true: LNWR engines were lightly and cheaply built, cheap to repair, and heavily thrashed between shoppings.

 

In (partial) defence of Anderson, he was only following previous Midland practice, and there is no single 'right' way to organise a railway company. And it made sense to standardise on one of the constituent railway's designs and parts (otherwise, as Bulleid said about the BR standards, you're just adding new classes which rent standard with the existing ones). And, of the constituents, the Midland was already fairly standardised and its locos were (for the time) efficient, reliable and robust. So ordering them made some sense, at least.

 

At least, they were from Whale onwards. Not sure if Ramsbottom and Webb engines were, but that was yet another era.
The Crewe philosophy you outline was a perfectly reasonable one, especially before labour got expensive. Sometimes people make it a criticism, but I think it was a policy. It seemed to suit them until the very end.