Incompetent CMEs

[Adam88]

https://www.huntleyarchives.com/preview.asp?image=1004990&itemw=4&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=1#

 

Check this out from 1:30 onwards - the differences being a) the engineers and railway involved and b) we are talking pushing rather than pulling.  With appropriate cut-offs, oil on the rails perhaps anything is possible.

 

As a boy I was taken to hear Dr Tuplin give a talk but it's so long ago that the only thing I really remember was that a demonstration he gave went wrong.  It was based on a home-made boiler set up over a spirit lamp or Bunsen burner and the top of the boiler blew off so he had to restart it.  I seem to recall the bolier was base on a cocoa tin but cannot remember what he was using the steam for - perhaps a small Stuart-Turner engine or a Pelton wheel.

 

I have several Tuplin books, but as you say they do come with a bit of a health warning.

[jim.snowdon]

19 hours ago, Adam88 said:

https://www.huntleyarchives.com/preview.asp?image=1004990&itemw=4&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=1#

 

Check this out from 1:30 onwards - the differences being a) the engineers and railway involved and b) we are talking pushing rather than pulling.  With appropriate cut-offs, oil on the rails perhaps anything is possible.

 

As a boy I was taken to hear Dr Tuplin give a talk but it's so long ago that the only thing I really remember was that a demonstration he gave went wrong.  It was based on a home-made boiler set up over a spirit lamp or Bunsen burner and the top of the boiler blew off so he had to restart it.  I seem to recall the bolier was base on a cocoa tin but cannot remember what he was using the steam for - perhaps a small Stuart-Turner engine or a Pelton wheel.

 

I have several Tuplin books, but as you say they do come with a bit of a health warning.

Useful in such spectacles as this is that once you induce wheelslip, the coefficient of friction falls. No oiling of the rails is needed.

 

Jim

[Tom Burnham]

On 14/06/2020 at 11:58, Wickham Green too said:

In Bradley's words "It is true that motive power problems did arise in 1912-3, but these were caused by the directors' insistence that Longhedge Works be closed before its capacity had been fully overtaken by the extensions at Ashford. As frequently occurs with directorial errors, the blame was allowed to fall elsewhere and Wainwright was asked to retire .... " ......................... no, I've no idea whether you're right or Bradley - but the quality of the locos produced & rebuilt by the team that Wainwright inherited / assembled is in little doubt.

Harry Wainwright had been a successful carriage & wagon superintendent before becoming CME, and made a very effective job of improving the overall passenger experience on the SER and SE&CR between 1896 and 1913.  Reading contemporary press coverage of the SE&CR order for a batch of L class 4-4-0s from Germany in 1914, there was a comment that the railway should have ordered them a couple of years earlier when British builders were short of orders and would have offered the railway very attractive prices, but that's a failure of strategic planning, and the general manager and the Managing Committee have at least as much responsibility as the CME (Wainwright in 1912 when this forward thinking should have happened).

[Wickham Green too]

Wainwright was still investigating the use of 4-6-0s in March 1913 - so to get the 'L' class off the drawing board and into traffic by August the next year was pretty good going ( How long would that take with today's tendering procedures ? ). Contemporary press coverage might have been tinged with just a smidgen of anti-German feeling, of course.