Incompetent CMEs

[The Johnster]

Would you describe a CME who signed off on an express passenger loco that was incapable of service on half of his company's main line routes as incompetent?  Or one who produced a 'mixed traffic' loco incapable of hauling trains of goods stock because of piston surge?  If so, you have just described the GW's last two CMEs as incompetent!

[Zomboid]

I don't think you can call someone incompetent on the basis of one failure. And I think it's pretty well accepted that the GWRs last CME to design anything was Churchward.

[Compound2632]

18 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

I don't think you can call someone incompetent on the basis of one failure. And I think it's pretty well accepted that the GWRs last CME to design anything was Churchward.

 

But I think it's been demonstrated that that's not the function of a 20th-century CME. Probably the last think anybody wanted - not least the Chief Draughtsman and his team - was the boss coming into the drawing office and actually trying to design something.

 

Some well-respected CMEs came from the running side of the department - George Whale and John McIntosh spring to mind - they knew what was needed to work the trains and could communicate that effectively to the drawing office team. 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Compound2632

[JimC]

Its also been my experience that how good a senior exec was at doing my job when they were younger bears no relationship to how good they are at doing their job now.

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

the boss coming into the drawing office and actually trying to design something.

 

Ah, now we are talking about a CME who really divides opinion: O V S Bulleid. His Chief Draftsman was loyal to him though, and contributed significantly to the best engineering biography of him.

 

What about J C craven of the LBSCR? He seemed to create a sort of locomotive anarchy, upset his workforce, and reputedly had his son do most of the work on his later designs. When the directors told him to sort out the anarchy, he got the hump and resigned. His predecessor was sacked, so possibly not all that good himself.

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

What about J C craven of the LBSCR? He seemed to create a sort of locomotive anarchy, upset his workforce, and reputedly had his son do most of the work on his later designs. When the directors told him to sort out the anarchy, he got the hump and resigned. His predecessor was sacked, so possibly not all that good himself.

 

As far as I can make out, he had the right experimental approach for the late forties but failed to move with the times. But then the Brighton got the supremely competent Stroudley, so one can't complain.

[Zomboid]

18 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But I think it's been demonstrated that that's not the function of a 20th-century CME. Probably the last think anybody wanted - not least the Chief Draughtsman and his team - was the boss coming into the drawing office and actually trying to design something.

 

Some well-respected CMEs came from the running side of the department - George Whale and John McIntosh spring to mind - they knew what was needed to work the trains and could communicate that effectively to the drawing office team. 

I was just taking a pot shot at Swindon, since they didn't design anything actually new there after about 1912.

[Compound2632]

Just now, Zomboid said:

I was just taking a pot shot at Swindon, since they didn't design anything actually new there after about 1912.

 

I know. It was the soporific effect of all those tranquil branch lines...

[runs as required]

My favourite candidate for this would be Thomas Wheatley more about his dismissal from the NBR here. I would have loved to had the chance to take my young family off to Galloway to set about running a 1:1 scale railway.

It seems they made a good enough hand of it to be loved by the local community.

[corneliuslundie]

Before he went to the NBR the Honourable Edmund de Petre was with the Shrewsbury & Birmingham Railway, though not for very long.

If not being a good manager is a criterion then how about H F Golding of the Barry Railway? I don't think he was fired, but he may well have been invited to look for another job. There appears constantly to have been friction between him and the locomotive department. His leaving appears to have been a very quiet affair, no presentations and hardly a mention in the minutes.

And I am never sure about Drummond on the LSWR.

Jonathan

[Invicta Informant]

Francis Webb of the London & North Western Railway.

 

He is listed in Stephen Pile's 1980 book The Book of Heroic Failures as 'The Worst Locomotive Designer'.

 

Pile writes that a book (which he does not mention the title of) lists Webb in the index as: 'Webb, Francis - his incompetence'.

 

Many people did not understand what he saw in the 2-(2-2)-0 designs such as the Experiment Class.

 

D.E. Marsh of the LBSCR is also up there in my opinion, especially for designing the I1 Class which I believe had a pejorative nickname.

[SD85]

Marsh did design other 4-4-2 classes which were successful though, and both J Class tanks were outstanding engines. Also the Atlantics, even though they were a crib from the GNR design.

Edited June 13, 2020 by SD85

[pete_mcfarlane]

2 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

That's the bit about framing policy, or as Churchward reportedly said to Holcroft, "Very well, get me out a 2-6-0 with a No (whatever it was) boiler and as many standard parts as you can." Locomotive design involved quite a bit of interaction between the Chief, his Assistants, the Chief Draftsman and his lead Draftsmen, all in accordance with the established hierarchy.

 

Jim

Holcroft's various books are definitely worth a read, as they explain all of this in great detail. 

[Compound2632]

46 minutes ago, Invicta Informant said:

Francis Webb of the London & North Western Railway.

 

He is listed in Stephen Pile's 1980 book The Book of Heroic Failures as 'The Worst Locomotive Designer'.

 

Pile writes that a book (which he does not mention the title of) lists Webb in the index as: 'Webb, Francis - his incompetence'.

 

Many people did not understand what he saw in the 2-(2-2)-0 designs such as the Experiment Class.

 

F.W. Webb could hardly have held the position of Locomotive Superintendent of the principal railway company in the United Kingdom for a third of a century if he had actually been incompetent.

 

There has been a great deal of nonsense written about his compound locomotives; it has to be remembered that there were only 30 of the 2-2-2-0s and 20 of the 2-2-2-2s out of a total locomotive stock of over 2,000. The best of those, the Teutonic Class of 2-2-2-0s, were very good engines that put in some fine performances - notably Adriatic's very swift run down to Crewe in the '95, and Jeanie Deans' day-in-day-out working of the 2pm "Corridor" - the principal daytime Scotch Express - down from Euston to Crewe and back up later in the day - throughout the 90s. Like most express passenger engines of the 90s, their time in the limelight was curtailed by the increasing weight of expresses in the Edwardian era. 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Compound2632

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Would you describe a CME who signed off on an express passenger loco that was incapable of service on half of his company's main line routes as incompetent?  Or one who produced a 'mixed traffic' loco incapable of hauling trains of goods stock because of piston surge?  If so, you have just described the GW's last two CMEs as incompetent!

And much of the work that was done on the first mentioned was by the man who created the same problem when on the LMS.

Mind you how many companies had their top express locos capable of travelling over the majority of the company's main lines?

Best attempt IMHO goes to OVS on the Southern.

[drmditch]

34 minutes ago, Invicta Informant said:

Francis Webb of the London & North Western Railway.

 

He is listed in Stephen Pile's 1980 book The Book of Heroic Failures as 'The Worst Locomotive Designer'.

 

Pile writes that a book (which he does not mention the title of) lists Webb in the index as: 'Webb, Francis - his incompetence'.

 

Many people did not understand what he saw in the 2-(2-2)-0 designs such as the Experiment Class.

 

D.E. Marsh of the LBSCR is also up there in my opinion, especially for designing the I1 Class which I believe had a pejorative nickname.

 

Autocratic and eccentric yes, especially in his later years, but a lot of later very well regarded engineers trained at Crewe under Webb.

[melmerby]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

 

There has been a great deal of nonsense written about his compound locomotives; it has to be remembered that there were only 30 of the 2-2-2-0s and 20 of the 2-2-2-2s out of a total locomotive stock of over 3,000. The best of those, the Teutonic Class of 2-2-2-0s, were very good engines that put in some fine performances - notably Adriatic's very swift run down to Crewe in the '95, and Jeanie Deans' day-in-day-out working of the 2pm "Corridor" - the principal daytime Scotch Express - down from Euston to Crewe and back up later in the day - throughout the 90s. Like most express passenger engines of the 90s, their time in the limelight was curtailed by the increasing weight of expresses in the Edwardian era. 

No doubt they went well when on the move but they, by all accounts, could be a b*gger to start.

There's the well documented but maybe apocrypal case of one that managed to have the uncoupled driving wheels going in opposite directions.

[Andy Kirkham]

52 minutes ago, Invicta Informant said:

Francis Webb of the London & North Western Railway.

 

He is listed in Stephen Pile's 1980 book The Book of Heroic Failures as 'The Worst Locomotive Designer'.

 

Pile writes that a book (which he does not mention the title of) lists Webb in the index as: 'Webb, Francis - his incompetence'.

 

 

That book is Locomotive Designers in the Age of Steam by J.N.Westwood, which I picked up in the Oxfam shop last year. It's a very readable and informative book with international scope, but Westwood definitely has it in for Webb.

 

Westwood is an American academic and seemingly a serious writer judging by such other titles as Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History, 1812-1971. By J. N. Westwood. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1974. and Soviet Locomotive Technology During Industrialization, 1928-52 as well as numerous volumes on naval history

Edited June 13, 2020 by Andy Kirkham

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, melmerby said:

No doubt they went well when on the move but they, by all accounts, could be a b*gger to start.

There's the well documented but maybe apocrypal case of one that managed to have the uncoupled driving wheels going in opposite directions.

 

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson's challenge to James Macpherson: "show me your documents".

 

12 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

That book is Locomotive Designers in the Age of Steam by J.N.Westwood, which I picked up in the Oxfam shop last year. It's a very readable and informative book with international scope, but Westwood definitely has it in for Webb.

 

That demonstrates to me sufficiently well that J.N. Westwood's research relies on second-hand accounts and hearsay, so I wouldn't trust anything else he has to say in his book. 

 

High time we had a picture:

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Compound2632

[runs as required]

Edward Talbot's anthology "The LNWR Recalled" has some particularly human insights on aspects of FW Webb and his "Kingdom".

He had to stand up to the parsimony of the LNW Board of Directors and defend the extraordinary range of Crewe works in-house output from steel making to signalling and standardised easily recognisable prefab timber and robustly detailed Crewe made brick buildings from Peterborough to Swansea and Holyhead and north to Carlisle. 

There does seem to have been ever-keen profit takers amongst the Directors - the inheritors of the unscrupulous Captain Huish. Give him his due, Frank Webb seems mostly to have kept the respect of Sir Richard Moon in maintaining economy against efficacy (compared to Churchward's defensive "mine could pull two of theirs backwards" answer to his Paddington cost critics.

 

During my short time working for the old Chief Civil Engineer of ER in King's Cross, (as the Deltics were taking over- and being housed) I realised how we much we had to hang on to the coat tails of our Chief in pitching to the General Manager for approval of our Department's design proposals.

How different it all seems nowadays when all procurement seems centralised in Westminster.

 

Edited June 14, 2020 by runs as required
fatfinger typing

[RJS1977]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Would you describe a CME who signed off on an express passenger loco that was incapable of service on half of his company's main line routes as incompetent?  Or one who produced a 'mixed traffic' loco incapable of hauling trains of goods stock because of piston surge?  If so, you have just described the GW's last two CMEs as incompetent!

 

I presume we're talking Kings and Counties here respectively.

 

The Kings were built to fulfil a mandate from Felix Pole that the GWR was to have the most powerful locos in the UK. That this mandate meant they were too heavy to run on certain routes is not the fault of the CME. However they did work over the routes which had the heaviest traffic, so where the extra power was most useful, so they did the job they were designed for. To say they were a failure because they were too heavy for other routes is like saying the West Coast Main Line electrics were a failure because they couldn't work the line to Holyhead.

 

As regards the Counties, it seems to me that much like the Bulleid Pacifics, they were really express passenger locos designated as 'Mixed Traffic' to enable them to be produced during wartime.

[jim.snowdon]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Would you describe a CME who signed off on an express passenger loco that was incapable of service on half of his company's main line routes as incompetent?  Or one who produced a 'mixed traffic' loco incapable of hauling trains of goods stock because of piston surge?  If so, you have just described the GW's last two CMEs as incompetent!

"Piston surge" as you put it, is an effect inherent in all 2-cylinder locomotives by definition. It would have affected the 28xx just as much, and we all know that they were respected haulers of goods trains. It affected the Brittannias as well when first built, and was correctly identified as a resonance in the drawbar springing between loco and tender and tender and train. All that can really be said of the GW 10xx is that the drawing office got it wrong for on reason or another.

 

Jim

[kevinlms]

8 hours ago, melmoth said:

 

Maybe not, but possibly over promoted. Before he was CME he was Works Manager at Horwich, and not many CMEs left that position to go back into works management.

Wikipedia says this

 

When John Aspinall was appointed General Manager, Hoy became Chief Mechanical Engineer. His principal contribution was the design of an electrification system for the Liverpool to Southport line, including motor bogies.

 

So he's prime reason for appointment, wasn't for steam locomotives?

[kevinlms]

3 hours ago, runs as required said:

Edward Talbot's anthology "The LNWR Recalled" has some particularly human insights on aspects of FW Webb and his "Kingdom".

He had to stand up to the parsimony of the LNW Board of Directors and defend the extraordinary range of Crewe works in-house output from steel making to signalling and standardised easily recognisable prefab timber and robustly detailed Crewe made brick buildings from Peterborough to Swansea and Holyhead and north to Carlisle. 

There does seem to have been eve-keen profit takers amongst the Directors - the inheritors of the unscrupulous Captain Huish. Give him his due, Frank Webb seems mostly to have kept the respect of Sir Richard Moon in maintaining economy against efficacy (compared to Churchward's defensive "mine could pull two of theirs backwards" answer to his Paddington cost critics.

 

Don't forget that Webb saw off George Westinghouse, when the latter offered him a bribe for the LNWR to adopt the Westinghouse Air brake. I wonder if any other CME did take the bribe or was Webb the first business appointment in Britain & so Westinghouse realised that bribery wasn't going to work in Britain?

 

The attempt at bribery, probably did lead to various experiments on brakes by the LNWR, leading to adoption of the notorious Chain Brake. Probably would have been better to throw an anchor out the back!

 

Don't forget that for every 2-2-2-0, there were many 2-4-0s, 4-4-0s, 2-4-2Ts, 0-6-0s & 0-8-0s, all of which performed the job adequately. Nothing wrong with a bit of experimentation to try to improve the efficiency of standard locomotives, although you do need to quit, when things don't work out. The various 2-8-0 compound freight locos were a case in point. 

[LMS2968]

Francis Webb's contribution to LNWR motive power, and via his pupils who became chiefs in many other railways both in Britain and abroad, was immense and went far beyond locomotives, including expanding and the reorganising of Crewe works to pre-eminence among loco works. He expanded into other aspects of railway operation, most noticeably signalling and trackwork. His engines were solid, hard working, economical and efficient machines and he provided thousands of them over a thirty year period, during which time he had the solid backing of a profits-orientated Board of Directors. The Compounds, both three- and four-cylinder, varied between poor and very good. His main problem was that he suffered from a poor press AFTER he resigned for medical reasons, powered by the powerful enemies he made when in charge.