Why did the LNER not adopt a policy of standardization until Thompson?

[Bernard Lamb]

15 hours ago, toby_tl10 said:

 

As for the LNER, when people talk about "standardisation", I think they are asking "Why didn't Gresley design one 0-6-0 class to replace several pre-grouping 0-6-0 classes?" (Or insert any wheel configuration you like)

As he inherited some very good machines from various pre-grouping companies that lasted almost until the end of steam there was no need to look at a more modern alternative. From north to south J36, J27, J15 for example, did the job for which they were built rather well.

Bernard

[melmerby]

17 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

That number also includes Pre-Grouping.

On the last day of it;s existence the LNER had 6545 locos including a few electric and diesel locos, there was also some railmotors and departmental locos.

6000 classes is total rubbish.

[OnTheBranchline]

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

On the last day of it;s existence the LNER had 6545 locos including a few electric and diesel locos, there was also some railmotors and departmental locos.

6000 classes is total rubbish.

I did correct what I said if you read further.

[Aire Head]

On 06/12/2022 at 18:12, The Johnster said:

disastrously on the LMS

 

I fail to see what was disastrous about it considering the LMS was able to run more passenger trains at a 60mph or at a better start to stop average than the rest of the other railway companies could combined in the pre war years.

 

Was it perfect - no.

 

Was it a disaster - far from it.

[Compound2632]

On 06/12/2022 at 16:40, Steamport Southport said:

I think the oldest ex MR locomotive in 1947 was built in 1866!

 

Well, yes, but the only 1866 element in 1947 was the outside frames, and maybe some of the motion. New cylinders at least twice, new class of boiler three times, and of course many boiler changes. Not the original tender, either.

[Compound2632]

On 06/12/2022 at 16:13, OnTheBranchline said:

 

Oh you mean like on here? 😉

 

I relistened to it and I was mistaken. It was there was "6500 locomotives in stock. New standard design Thompson locomotives 648, non standard Gresley locomotives to be maintained, Peppercorn engines 134, Raven non standard locos to be maintained 17, Robinson non standard lcoos 453, Pre-Grouping outside of these groups to be maintained 4646" in 1948.

 

URL for where they talk about it.

 

 

I think you can take what Simon says as reasonably authoritative; much of it is based on primary research. Some things he has turned up don't go down so well with the Gresleyites, though.

[Compound2632]

15 hours ago, DCB said:

As a text book example of what not to do look at the LMS.   Plenty of money, great designs, Crab etc and they built 775 4fs You couldn't make it up.

 

Those 4Fs did the work for which they were designed - of which there was plenty - cheaply and effectively. What more could one want of a locomotive?

[melmerby]

18 hours ago, DCB said:

As a text book example of what not to do look at the LMS.   Plenty of money, great designs, Crab etc and they built 775 4fs You couldn't make it up.

Crab was out of date when built, boiler pressure was too low and needed oversize cylinders to get the power required, leading to the clearance problems which dictated the steep cylinder incline.

However it did the job required of it with little fuss and seemed popular with railfans.

180ps on a new design in the 1920s was definitely past technology, 225psi was fairly common by then and that would have allowed smaller cylinders and a more convential look, however it wouldn't have been a Crab then!

[kevinlms]

4 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

I fail to see what was disastrous about it considering the LMS was able to run more passenger trains at a 60mph or at a better start to stop average than the rest of the other railway companies could combined in the pre war years.

 

Was it perfect - no.

 

Was it a disaster - far from it.

Yes, but you are forgetting. The LMS, LNER & SR weren't part of the GWR, who according to some commentaries, could do no wrong!

[LMS2968]

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

Crab was out of date when built, boiler pressure was too low and needed oversize cylinders to get the power required, leading to the clearance problems which dictated the steep cylinder incline.

However it did the job required of it with little fuss and seemed popular with railfans.

180ps on a new design in the 1920s was definitely past technology, 225psi was fairly common by then and that would have allowed smaller cylinders and a more convential look, however it wouldn't have been a Crab then!

George Hughes, who designed the Crabs, believed that boiler pressures above 180 p.s.i. increased boiler maintenance costs, which is why he wouldn't go above that figure. He had a point. So the large cylinders and their positioning were simply part of the package. It worked, and it worked very well; the Crabs were probably the best pre-Stanier engines on the LMS. They were popular with enginemen as well as enthusiasts and the Traffic people couldn't get enough of them. Your reference to 225 p.s.i. with smaller cylinders simply describes the first of Stanier's designs from 1933.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

George Hughes, who designed the Crabs, believed that boiler pressures above 180 p.s.i. increased boiler maintenance costs, which is why he wouldn't go above that figure. He had a point.

 

i don't really know much about locomotives after c. 1902 but looking at S,W, Johnson's standard 0-6-0s for the Midland, built over a period of a quarter of a century, one sees an increase in boiler pressure from 140 psi to 150 psi and finally 160 psi (for engines as built), with a concomitant increase in engine weight (ditto), due to thicker boiler plates. There was also an increase in cylinder size, so although the engines built around the turn of the century look much the same as, and were the same size as, the ones built in the late 70s, they were in fact considerably more powerful. Of course the earlier engines were gradually brought up-to-date.

[t-b-g]

One factor was that the LNER inherited a lot of very good locos from the old companies.

 

Many worked without any major rebuilding or replacement right through to the last days of steam and were replaced by diesels rather than by newer steam locos.

 

Gresley didn't introduce lots of new classes during his LNER days. He added to a few successful older classes and built a few new designs. Some, like the P1s and P2s were a bit experimental and somewhat limited but others were produced in large numbers.

 

In what way isn't a J39 or a V2 regarded as a "standard" class? In terms of Pacifics, there were lots of A3s and a smaller number of A4s for the really fast trains on the ECML. Pretty much "standard" in my view.

 

There was a need to replace a big variety of ageing secondary passenger locos and the V4 was intended for that role. If Gresley had still been around there would have been lots of those built. As it was, the Thompson B1 did the job. Under the wartime conditions, the simpler, more rugged B1 was probably a better idea but the V4 was a very good loco that, had the war not happened, would have been ideal.

 

When it comes to things like the 2-8-0 locos, under Thompson the LNER just ended up with more different types than it had before. The O2s and O4s just kept going. I would also class the O2 as a Gresley standard as it was the only 2-8-0 built during his LNER period.

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

One factor was that the LNER inherited a lot of very good locos from the old companies.

 

To compare the LMS, one could say that that group inherited a lot of deeply unsatisfactory locos from the old companies, especially on the passenger side. From the LNWR, it had a lot of 4-6-0s that, although many were less than five or six years old, were not up to the job even on their home territory - the defects of the Claughtons in particular were rapidly becoming apparent. Their replacement on the northern section of the LNWR main line, the Hughes 4-cylinder 4-6-0s, whilst they did the work, were allegedly sluggish and no easier on coal than the ex-LNWR engines. The Caledonian 4-6-0s were stuck in the post-Drummond design rut. 

 

There were many classes of 4-4-0s that had been brilliant engines in their day but being of many different classes created inefficiency and hence expense in maintenance, though there was still plenty of work for engines in their power class; it was these that the standard 4P and 2P 4-4-0s were intended to replace. 

[LMS2968]

29 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

To compare the LMS, one could say that that group inherited a lot of deeply unsatisfactory locos from the old companies, especially on the passenger side. From the LNWR, it had a lot of 4-6-0s that, although many were less than five or six years old, were not up to the job even on their home territory - the defects of the Claughtons in particular were rapidly becoming apparent. Their replacement on the northern section of the LNWR main line, the Hughes 4-cylinder 4-6-0s, whilst they did the work, were allegedly sluggish and no easier on coal than the ex-LNWR engines. The Caledonian 4-6-0s were stuck in the post-Drummond design rut. 

 

There were many classes of 4-4-0s that had been brilliant engines in their day but being of many different classes created inefficiency and hence expense in maintenance, though there was still plenty of work for engines in their power class; it was these that the standard 4P and 2P 4-4-0s were intended to replace. 

I think you're being a bit over simplistic here. The Claughtons dated back to 1913 and did a lot of excellent work, particularly during the First World War. After that war, traffic demands rose and certainly they were then found wanting. Moreover, they hadn't aged well and design defects, not previously apparent, began to appear, exacerbated by their being pushed beyond their designed criteria. The Hughes Dreadnoughts were designed for L&YR conditions: relatively short runs at medium speed with frequent restarts, often against severe gradients; they were never intended for the long distance, high speed, non-stop runs of the WCML. Both suffered heavy coal consumption but due to the single Schmidt valve ring, the replacement of which brought the consumption of both classes down to reasonable figures. E. Stewart Cox, no fan of anything from the L&YR, although (or possibly because) he served his time at Horwich, reported on all the Dreadnoughts' faults but admitted that the cures were both simple, quick and inexpensive, but by that time withdrawals had already begun so far too late. The Midland Compounds, good engines for the Midland, were even less suitable for the heavy ex-LNWR conditions, and if you want to talk about sluggish, look no further than the Midland 2P.

 

I don't know why but we seem to have settled on the wrong side of the Pennines for this thread!

[t-b-g]

19 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

To compare the LMS, one could say that that group inherited a lot of deeply unsatisfactory locos from the old companies, especially on the passenger side. From the LNWR, it had a lot of 4-6-0s that, although many were less than five or six years old, were not up to the job even on their home territory - the defects of the Claughtons in particular were rapidly becoming apparent. Their replacement on the northern section of the LNWR main line, the Hughes 4-cylinder 4-6-0s, whilst they did the work, were allegedly sluggish and no easier on coal than the ex-LNWR engines. The Caledonian 4-6-0s were stuck in the post-Drummond design rut. 

 

There were many classes of 4-4-0s that had been brilliant engines in their day but being of many different classes created inefficiency and hence expense in maintenance, though there was still plenty of work for engines in their power class; it was these that the standard 4P and 2P 4-4-0s were intended to replace. 

 

There were some less than satisfactory types on the LNER too but they did have a core of very good locos. Each individual company had a good selection that gave great service through many years.

 

I was always puzzled by the so called Thompson "Standardisation Plan". Did he really think that the LNER would have money to replace perfectly good locos with new ones just so he could reduce the number of different classes? Especially in the middle of a war?

 

He knew he would only be there a short while as he was always due to retire after 5 years. I have always thought that he was just trying to make as big an impact as possible in a short time.

 

Either as rebuilds or new types, he introduced, I think I read somewhere, 13 different classes in 5 years. There were more different (and smaller) classes of Thompson Pacifics than Gresley ones.

 

So Thompson experimented just as much as Gresley with rebuilds and altering things to create small classes.

 

There were also big gaps in his plans. There were no locos suitable to replace the J15s on the GE section, or the Z class dock tanks in Scotland, or the numerous G5s in the NER. There are probably many others too. So at best, this would have been a list of locos for new builds for some lines.

 

By the 1940s, plans for electrification and diesels were starting to come into the LNER ideas so Thompson must have known that a new range of "standard" locos would have been very much a stopgap and that the chances of his plan being around long enough to be fully funded and implemented must have been slim.

 

I find it interesting that Gresley had started going down the route of ordering diesel shunters, which were coming onto the scene at the time. Yet Thompson preferred a rather old GNR design instead. Did he really see steam as the way forward?

[Flying Pig]

7 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Either as rebuilds or new types, he introduced, I think I read somewhere, 13 different classes in 5 years. There were more different (and smaller) classes of Thompson Pacifics than Gresley ones.

 

So Thompson experimented just as much as Gresley with rebuilds and altering things to create small classes.

 

 

Some of those classes were intended to be larger, like the B2 (B17 rebuild), which worked well but did not justify multiplication to the extent originally envisaged (all the B17s). The solitary K1/1 (K4 rebuild) was essentially a prototype for the production K1.

[melmoth]

24 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

 

E. Stewart Cox, no fan of anything from the L&YR, although (or possibly because) he served his time at Horwich...

 

 

I'm happy to defer to your far wider knowledge of anything relating to the LMS and its constituents, but I'm re-reading Cox at the moment and I'm not completely sure about this. He is fairly scathing about a number of designs originating from Derby/Fowler/Anderson (Beyer, 2P 4-4-0, 2P 2-6-2T, 7F, 2P 0-4-4T) , doesn't have much good to say about Crewe And All Its Works (apart from the G2) and is reasonably even handed towards Horwich, particularly with regard to the Crabs.

 

He seems to say that while Crewe built locos down to a price and Derby was in thrall to an 8' + 8' 6" wheelbase and inadequate axleboxes, Horwich was more open-minded about developments in locomotive design (apart from boiler pressure). In addition to the Crabs, he reserves his highest praise for the Royal Scots (Collett and Holcroft via the NBL) and the 2-6-4 tank, seen as a development of the Crab in terms of better proportioned axleboxes and long travel valves.

[LMS2968]

Cox's job was, to some extent, fault finding on the mechanical side so he tended to report all the negatives of the designs of various companies, as well as new LMS ones. The Horwich Crabs and Baby Scots were both new designs at the time and had had little opportunity to develop defects over time; the Crabs developed few of these although the Baby Scots, after an excellent start, went very much downhill post war.

 

He was very critical of LNWR engines which were mostly lightly built and then worked hard, so maintenance costs were high. On the whole, they did the work well but from a crew's point of view, footplate conditions were extremely poor, a result of their great age (Old Midland and L&YR engines were probably little better). He was generally appreciative of Midland designs with their comparatively low maintenance costs. To at least some extent, these engines were being underworked on their home railway and had not been on the other lines long enough for problems to become acute.

 

Contrary to popular belief, the 4F axleboxes were not bad (they weren't particularly good either) until their use was extended to bigger engines, such as the Garratts and Austin Sevens. The original Royal Scot boxes, bigger but Midland inspired, had problems too but could be and were replaced by the Stanier type.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

I think you're being a bit over simplistic here.

 

Yes, deliberately so, for the sake of provocation! The Midland gets castigated for having small engines whilst it is conveniently overlooked that the other lines' big engines weren't that brilliant.

 

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

The Claughtons dated back to 1913 and did a lot of excellent work, particularly during the First World War. After that war, traffic demands rose and certainly they were then found wanting. Moreover, they hadn't aged well and design defects, not previously apparent, began to appear, exacerbated by their being pushed beyond their designed criteria. The Hughes Dreadnoughts were designed for L&YR conditions: relatively short runs at medium speed with frequent restarts, often against severe gradients; they were never intended for the long distance, high speed, non-stop runs of the WCML. Both suffered heavy coal consumption but due to the single Schmidt valve ring, the replacement of which brought the consumption of both classes down to reasonable figures.

 

You have splendidly explained the point I was making.

 

28 minutes ago, melmoth said:

I'm re-reading Cox at the moment and I'm not completely sure about this. He is fairly scathing about a number of designs originating from Derby/Fowler/Anderson

 

I think there is ample evidence from more recent research that Cox should be regarded as at best an unreliable witness, busy grinding his own axe.

 

Getting back to the LNER (the LMS was well-entrenched on both sides of the Pennines!)

 

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

Thompson [...]

 

There were also big gaps in his plans. There were no locos suitable to replace the J15s on the GE section, or the Z class dock tanks in Scotland, or the numerous G5s in the NER. There are probably many others too. So at best, this would have been a list of locos for new builds for some lines.

 

Is this not simply because these classes were doing their work adequately and cost-effectively, so with the financial constraints of the time, there was no incentive to even think of replacing them?

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

I don't know why but we seem to have settled on the wrong side of the Pennines for this thread!

 

I meant to start a thread for discussion of the LMS and the Midland which seem to be the whipping boys of "wot everyone knows" in the enthusiast community.  Unfortunately I can't access the prototype discussion forum - perhaps someone else could start the thread so that all the old wives tales can be given an airing without derailing other threads. (Cue people continuing to derail this one by responding to this post :banghead:)

 

I'm reminded of an old Spitting Image episode in which David Baddiel repeatedly appears to state that "The trouble with [various subjects] is it's, like, cr*p". Eventually he is bundled off as soon as he begins to speak.  Mentions of the Midland and LMS on RMweb seem to go the same way.

 

[t-b-g]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Is this not simply because these classes were doing their work adequately and cost-effectively, so with the financial constraints of the time, there was no incentive to even think of replacing them?

 

Quite right. Yet people talk about Thompson's standardisation plan as if by the time he had finished, there would only be a handful of classes running. This was never a realistic prospect so his "standard" classes really just created more variety by working alongside the existing classes.

 

The only real success story in terms of one class of loco replacing many others was the B1, which replaced the types that Gresley was going to replace with the V4 anyway.

[Aire Head]

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

I don't know why but we seem to have settled on the wrong side of the Pennines for this thread!

 

The Midland Mainline was more on the right side of the Pennines than it was the wrong one!

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

To compare the LMS, one could say that that group inherited a lot of deeply unsatisfactory locos from the old companies, especially on the passenger side. From the LNWR, it had a lot of 4-6-0s that, although many were less than five or six years old, were not up to the job even on their home territory - the defects of the Claughtons in particular were rapidly becoming apparent. Their replacement on the northern section of the LNWR main line, the Hughes 4-cylinder 4-6-0s, whilst they did the work, were allegedly sluggish and no easier on coal than the ex-LNWR engines. The Caledonian 4-6-0s were stuck in the post-Drummond design rut. 

 

There were many classes of 4-4-0s that had been brilliant engines in their day but being of many different classes created inefficiency and hence expense in maintenance, though there was still plenty of work for engines in their power class; it was these that the standard 4P and 2P 4-4-0s were intended to replace. 

It's probably just as well that the Midland (Fowler) didn't get to build an enlarged version of the 4-4-0 Compound for the LMS. There was a proposal for a compound 4-6-2 and I suspect that it would have been just as wanting as LNWR Claughton's or L&YR 4-cylinder 4-6-2s.

The WCML certainly needed locomotives with a fair bit of grunt for it's long fast runs and respectable hill climbing requirements, which in the 1920s & 1930s, got steadily heavier and faster. It took the LMS a long time to come up with locomotives that could match the performance of the LNER Pacifics (and dare I say exceed them in some respects) and be expected to do so day to day.

It still proved unrealistic to expect locos to work throughout from Euston to Glasgow.

[OnTheBranchline]

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think you can take what Simon says as reasonably authoritative; much of it is based on primary research. Some things he has turned up don't go down so well with the Gresleyites, though.

No one is infallible… 

[Aire Head]

1 minute ago, OnTheBranchline said:

No one is infallible… 

 

You can't say that about Gresley! 🤪

Edited December 8, 2022 by Aire Head