Centenary of the Grouping

[62613]

38 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

It is interesting and not uncommon for recollections from those who were actually there to be found to be faulty later. I would think it highly improbable if the appointment was not discussed with Robinson at some point. There would have been talks and succession planning before the date when things actually changed to ensure continuity.

 

It is interesting to read Robinson's account, which has been disputed on the grounds of his great age. For somebody supposedly struggling with his mental health and memory, he writes beautifully. He was still writing very lucid letters later than that.

 

What I don't understand was what had Robinson to gain from inventing such a story? He and Gresley were good friends and he only had to say that he had decided to retire and that he suggested Gresley would be the man for the job. Why say he had been offered it and declined it?

 

So my view is that we may never really know exactly what was said at the time, whether Robinson was actually asked to take the job or if it was just proposals but I would be quite shocked if there had been no discussions with Robinson about who should have the post on the LNER.

 

 

Time for someone to go delving through the records

[t-b-g]

19 minutes ago, gr.king said:

It may be relevant, if controversial, to ask whether London-Edinburgh non-stop, 100mph in the early thirties, and 126mph in 1938 would have been achieved had the design of "express" locos with Robinson's restricted grate areas, cramped ashpans and limited air supply to the grate continued, rather than Doncaster's wide grates over modest sized carrying wheels - although the latter was possibly over-done in some designs, and included in some which may not have needed it at all.

 

With hindsight, I think Robinson had gone as far as he was ever going to with his design development, whereas Gresley was still very much "on the up". Robinson's earlier work was much more successful than his later designs, apart from the D11s which were superb locos and performed better than most of the larger GCR locos. I don't think Robinson was ever really satisfied with his larger and later 4-6-0 types. I did see some designs for a Robinson Pacific that might have solved some of the problems with the firebox but in truth, Gresley was the best man for the job.

 

Of course, when we build models, none of that matters and I model Robinson locos because of the way they looked, not the way they performed.

 

 

[t-b-g]

24 minutes ago, 62613 said:

Time for someone to go delving through the records

 

Count me out!

[phil_sutters]

In what way would you want or expect the model manufacturers to mark the centenary? A range of the first locos built by the 'new' companies? Existing models in their early groupings liveries? (I have a feeling that we have had these questions raised before.) Perhaps some of the hybrid liveries, with new company names and numbers on the pre-grouping liveries?

[JohnR]

I see LNER, the current operator of East Coast Main Line express trains, is commemorating the Grouping, and considering itself a continuation of the company formed in 1923. 

[Northroader]

Perhaps modern versions of contemporary models?

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, gr.king said:

It may be relevant, if controversial, to ask whether London-Edinburgh non-stop, 100mph in the early thirties, and 126mph in 1938 would have been achieved had the design of "express" locos with Robinson's restricted grate areas, cramped ashpans and limited air supply to the grate continued, rather than Doncaster's wide grates over modest sized carrying wheels - although the latter was possibly over-done in some designs, and included in some which may not have needed it at all.

 

100 MPH was achieved in the early 1900s with a GWR Belpaire firebox attached to a small 4-4-0. The Castles were certainly doing something similar on the Cheltenham Flyer in the 1920s.

 

If the LNER didn't believe that City of Truro was the first, why did they buy it to display in their museum?

 

 

Jason

[rogerzilla]

Some purists would argue that the GWR's best days were over by 1923, as Churchward had already retired.  I think Collett gets a bit of a rough ride, personally - the Castles and Halls were outstandingly successful and the Kings did what they were meant to. The main failure was to recognise the benefits of higher superheat (something Churchward hadn't accepted either) but you can argue it wasn't necessary - the GWR engines ran perfectly economically on Welsh coal and the high boiler pressures helped make up the difference anyway.

[burgundy]

9 hours ago, t-b-g said:

One of the great "what ifs" of railway history is how the ECML might have looked had Robinson accepted the offer of the CME job for the LNER rather than decline it and recommend the young man Gresley instead.

In a similar "what if" vein, what if Colonel Lawson Billinton had been appointed to be CME of the Southern, rather than the older Maunsell?

Best wishes 

Eric 

[gr.king]

4 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

With hindsight, I think Robinson had gone as far as he was ever going to with his design development, whereas Gresley was still very much "on the up". Robinson's earlier work was much more successful than his later designs, apart from the D11s which were superb locos and performed better than most of the larger GCR locos. I don't think Robinson was ever really satisfied with his larger and later 4-6-0 types. I did see some designs for a Robinson Pacific that might have solved some of the problems with the firebox but in truth, Gresley was the best man for the job.

 

Of course, when we build models, none of that matters and I model Robinson locos because of the way they looked, not the way they performed.

 

 

The layout of the steam ports and passages in the first (only?) design of four-cylinder arrangement that was purely "Team Robinson" is of course now widely regarded as just as big a hindrance to performance as the grate / ashpan problems were. I wonder how much better the revised cylinder castings used in the later B7s were, and who had had a hand in the redesign. I understand that the B7s also had extra dampers to overcome some of the air supply problems for the grate, possibly suggesting that the penny had eventually dropped for somebody at Gorton, but as the B7s had smaller wheels than the 4-6-0 express locos, giving more space for a decent ashpan, was the extra damper really a "key" difference? The earlier very few B6s, also with small wheels, were highly regarded, and I'm not sure that the extra damper was present in those.

[gr.king]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

100 MPH was achieved in the early 1900s with a GWR Belpaire firebox attached to a small 4-4-0. The Castles were certainly doing something similar on the Cheltenham Flyer in the 1920s.

 

If the LNER didn't believe that City of Truro was the first, why did they buy it to display in their museum?

 

 

Jason

Whether the un-authenticated GWR claim is or isn't true was not really the point. I was thinking solely about LNER loco design. It was the question of whether any loco using typical Robinson design features would have done the things that Gresley's locos eventually did, after long travel valves had been adopted, and whether any of the other distance and speed feats on the LNER would have been achieved if design progress had been delayed by even a very few years of Robinson's tenure of office as group CME. For instance, Gresley and Bulleid might have moved elsewhere in that time in order to further their own careers. Nobody can ever know.

[t-b-g]

16 minutes ago, gr.king said:

The layout of the steam ports and passages in the first (only?) design of four-cylinder arrangement that was purely "Team Robinson" is of course now widely regarded as just as big a hindrance to performance as the grate / ashpan problems were. I wonder how much better the revised cylinder castings used in the later B7s were, and who had had a hand in the redesign. I understand that the B7s also had extra dampers to overcome some of the air supply problems for the grate, possibly suggesting that the penny had eventually dropped for somebody at Gorton, but as the B7s had smaller wheels than the 4-6-0 express locos, giving more space for a decent ashpan, was the extra damper really a "key" difference? The earlier very few B6s, also with small wheels, were highly regarded, and I'm not sure that the extra damper was present in those.

 

I would have liked to have seen what a Robinson Atlantic might have done deputising for an A4 of some of the lightweight streamliner services. When Ivatt Atlantics deputised, they put in some fantastic performances and the Robinson Atlantics were capable of very fast running when needed. The Manchester Newspaper train was one of the fastest in the country back in the day and that was usually Atlantic hauled.

 

It needed Gresley to really crack high speed running, day in, day out. Does any other line come close in terms of the number of instances of high speed running to the ECML, especially in the pre war streamliner era?

[Bucoops]

2 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

100 MPH was achieved in the early 1900s with a GWR Belpaire firebox attached to a small 4-4-0. The Castles were certainly doing something similar on the Cheltenham Flyer in the 1920s.

 

If the LNER didn't believe that City of Truro was the first, why did they buy it to display in their museum?

 

 

Jason

 

They didn't buy it, the GWR donated it to display as the LNER were keen to not just display LNER and derivative items. L&NWR, LB&SCR, Bodmin & Wadebridge and so on. As is usual when this comes up - will we ever *know* CoT made 100mph? No. Is it likely? Maybe, probably not impossible. I did over 100mph in my 1.3 Austin Allegro - as indicated by GPS. Was it recorded or officially witnessed? No, so it's not something I can claim beyone anecdotal.

 

If evidence comes to light that CoT did hit the ton, good on it - hopefully the record can be changed. Until then, FS has the record.

[Arun Sharma]

12 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Actually with some quite considerable additions - its Docks Dept grew massively as a result of the grouping and was of course subsequently headed by someone who came from one of the amalgamated companies;  Its coal traffic also received a major boost giving the combined company access to one of the richest parts of the South Wales coalfield and arguably it was its coal revenue that allowed it to carry on running various quiet rural branchlines.  And financially if definitely dead something right because at nationalisation certain GWR stock (i.e. shares) received the highest continuing guaranteed payments post 1948 of any of the Big Four stocks.

 

But are we entirely right to look upon 1923 as the anniversary of anything more of the Grouping than the attachment of names to three of the new Groups?  The legislation dated from 1921 (see above) and amalgamations started before 1923 - for example all of the larger Welsh companies amalgamated with the GWR from 1 January 1922 and the revised GWR was established by legislation passed in July 1922 with absorbtion of various smaller companies coming in January 1923.  And the GWR did not absorb the M&SWJtR until July 1923 with the Caledonian and North Staffs similarly surviving as separate companies until that month when they finally amalgamated with the LMS.

 

So the centenary - apart from the names used by three of the Big Four - spreads over the period from 1921 to mid 1923

....... and of course the L&Y was incorporated into the LNWR a year prior to the Grouping

[RJS1977]

3 hours ago, Bucoops said:

 

If evidence comes to light that CoT did hit the ton, good on it - hopefully the record can be changed. Until then, FS has the record.

 

I think a spokesperson for the NRM summed it up beautifully when FS was purchased for the museum.

 

"We now know we have the first steam locomotive to do 100mph. We just don't know which one it is!"

[Bucoops]

7 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

I think a spokesperson for the NRM summed it up beautifully when FS was purchased for the museum.

 

"We now know we have the first steam locomotive to do 100mph. We just don't know which one it is!"

 

Superb!

[gr.king]

And no matter how many pages of latter day calculations are churned out to specifically try to demonstrate that the City of Truro claim is likely to have been true, the fact remains that it was not properly measured and checked at the time, so it simply doesn't count...

[62613]

On 01/01/2023 at 09:11, t-b-g said:

One of the great "what ifs" of railway history is how the ECML might have looked had Robinson accepted the offer of the CME job for the LNER rather than decline it and recommend the young man Gresley instead.

 

 

Gresley was as conservative as most CMEs of his time; as originally built, his pacifics had 180 p.s.i. boilers and short - travel valves. It took the exchage with the GWR Castle in 1925 to convince him of the advantages of a higher steam pressure, and a great deal of persuasion by Spencer and Bullied for him to adopt long - travel valves. I suppose the good point about the original A1s was that they could be upgraded reasonably easily.

 

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

With hindsight, I think Robinson had gone as far as he was ever going to with his design development, whereas Gresley was still very much "on the up". Robinson's earlier work was much more successful than his later designs, apart from the D11s which were superb locos and performed better than most of the larger GCR locos. I don't think Robinson was ever really satisfied with his larger and later 4-6-0 types. I did see some designs for a Robinson Pacific that might have solved some of the problems with the firebox but in truth, Gresley was the best man for the job.

 

Of course, when we build models, none of that matters and I model Robinson locos because of the way they looked, not the way they performed.

 

 

But when it came to appointments that was hardly relevant - seniority played a major part.    Just look what happened on the LMS as a consequence of that🙂

[t-b-g]

8 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

But when it came to appointments that was hardly relevant - seniority played a major part.    Just look what happened on the LMS as a consequence of that🙂

 

Indeed and that is why, in my view, it was highly likely that Robinson was approached. He had the seniority. No matter how people try to interpret the surviving records 100 years later, it is highly unlikely, in my view, that Gresley would have been appointed without some sort of discussion with Robinson.

[t-b-g]

38 minutes ago, 62613 said:

Gresley was as conservative as most CMEs of his time; as originally built, his pacifics had 180 p.s.i. boilers and short - travel valves. It took the exchage with the GWR Castle in 1925 to convince him of the advantages of a higher steam pressure, and a great deal of persuasion by Spencer and Bullied for him to adopt long - travel valves. I suppose the good point about the original A1s was that they could be upgraded reasonably easily.

 

 

I disagree. The K3 was hardly a conservative design. The Pacifics needed tweaking before they were at their absolute best but at a time when most railways were happy with 4-6-0 types, he was the only one who adopted what became the ultimate express passenger type in the country.

[Darryl Tooley]

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

Indeed and that is why, in my view, it was highly likely that Robinson was approached

He was.

 

What is less certain is why.

 

The late Dr Hughes plausibly suggests, in 'The Gresley Influence' (Ian Allan, 1983), that it was with the intention of gently pointing him in the direction of recommending a younger man.  If this were done judiciously, Robinson might leave the room thinking it was his idea all along; there is no need to impute his later recollection to senility.

 

From C J Allen’s account of the formation of the LNER in 'The London & North Eastern Railway' (Ian Allan, 1966) it is clear that each of the constituent companies was concerned to get as many of its own men in the top jobs as possible, which resulted in a good deal of jockeying for position, horse trading, and general politicking.  Seen in this light, there are good reasons for getting Robinson’s seal of approval on Gresley’s appointment.

 

As you say, however, we will probably never know.

 

D

[phil_sutters]

As usual this thread has gone off at a tangent! Most of the above doesn't relate to the original post's suggestion that the manufacturers don't seem to have any plans to acknowledge the centenary - or if they have, they haven't publicized them.

[t-b-g]

The OP was just to recognise and remember the anniversary but it seems that people can't even agree that it was the right date.

 

I have no great interest in what the RTR people do or don't do. Somebody else brought that up.

[RichardT]

40 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

The OP was just to recognise and remember the anniversary but it seems that people can't even agree that it was the right date.

 

I have no great interest in what the RTR people do or don't do. Somebody else brought that up.

I think things will build over the year.  The Grouping was a process, not an event, and the anniversary is the whole of 2023, with 1st Jan simply the start of the process. And the fact that there were some anticipatory mergers before 1923 and some minor tidying-up went on into 1924 doesn’t alter that.

 

I’m sure that as model manufacturers/the railway press/the heritage industry/the railway industry reach suitable press dates there’ll be further recognition & commemoration. A lot of it will be opportunistic and spurious - like the modern LNER video mentioned above!

 

What I suspect there won’t be is any significant new research or publications on the history of the Grouping.  Like the impending S&DR bi-centenary in 2025, most of the specific history has already been researched and published to death.  
 

(Although of course the 1925 S&DR centenary celebrations and the subsequent establishment of the York Railway Museum were themselves a direct product of the Grouping, with a coterie of ex-NER managers & staff determined that their old company’s perceived pioneering heritage wasn’t going to get lost in the new conglomerate. Just as the 1875 commemorations were the Pease family’s attempt to ensure that their perceived standing and Darlington’s role weren’t eroded by the 1863 merger of the S&DR into the York-dominated NER.)

 

RichardT

Edited January 2, 2023 by RichardT
Adding “perceived” in vain attempt to head off pedantry