Locomotive Exchanges in 1948

[Gloster]

The correct way to pronounce the name and that of Maunsell is to be found in Bulleid of the Southern by H.A.V.Bulleid, who ought to know. Incidentally, when checking this I found out that H.A.V. was a respected historian of the silent film era.

 

[DerekC]

The correct way to pronounce the name and that of Maunsell is to be found in Bulleid of the Southern by H.A.V.Bulleid, who ought to know.

Would you like to give those of us who haven't got the book a hint?

 

[Gloster]

Would you like to give those of us who haven't got the book a hint?

Sorry, I can’t remember where it is in the book and the book is somewhere in a pile waiting to be packed for a move (or already packed).

 

[zwk500]

Would you like to give those of us who haven't got the book a hint?

For those on twitter: https://twitter.com/spearmint2796/status/245703756619075584
For those not on twitter, according to the NRM's official account it's 'Bull-eed'

Richard Maunsell - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

According to Wikipedia it's 'Mansell'

 

[Benn White]

For those on twitter: https://twitter.com/spearmint2796/status/245703756619075584
For those not on twitter, according to the NRM's official account it's 'Bull-eed'

Richard Maunsell - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

According to Wikipedia it's 'Mansell'

H A V Bulleid says in his book "Bulleid rhymes with succeed and Maunsell rhymes with cancel."

 

[zwk500]

H A V Bulleid says in his book "Bulleid rhymes with succeed and Maunsell rhymes with cancel."

Thanks for the confirmation!

 

[70014IronDuke]

He did (compare the Bulleid to B1's).
'I tried to run a railway', page 80 (reprint edition Head of Zeus 2016):

Oh, ok. It was that quote.

Nontheless, G Fiennes esq, though not an engineer, I'm sure was perfectly aware of many of the factors involved. So I'm sure he didn't say/think/write this as if totally gobsmacked - more a case of wow - ok - now I really know for sure what a proper class 7, with massive cylinders, 250 psi boiler pressure and wide firebox can do vs a Class 5 with 2 much smaller cylinders, narrow firebox and a boiler pressure of (I forget, 225 psi?).

 

[Deepgreen]

Thank you. So, in effect, little useful was learned?

I remember in G. F Fiennes famous memoirs he described how borrowed Battle Of Britain locomotives wiped the floor with the B1s he was used to. Yet when a few years later I started train spotting, B1s (61000 series) were still in regular use.

The exchanges took place in 1948, but the 1955 modernisation plan sounded the death knell for steam anyway, so the window of opportunity for learning and application was quite small. The exchanges saw different regions' locos used on foreign metals but it really came down the the various entrenched maintenance and operating regimes in use around the country being challenged - fitters and drivers were used to 'their' machines and could not necessarily get the best out of visitors. After all, a 7P loco working out of, say, Euston is the same as one out of Victoria in theory. A Welsh gradient of 1 in 100 is the same as a Scottish one. Standardisation aimed to take the best of various designs' features, but it could be argued that the locos didn't need to be passed around the country to do that. The fact that there was really only about a decade to go once the exchanges' output was acted upon in design work made them of limited benefit.

A minor point and I admit to being a bit of a pedant - do you think we could spell Mr Bulleid's name correctly?

Correct spelling is not pedantry. OVB's name is often mis-spelled as Bullied, unfortunately. The pronunciation is as the mis-spelling.

 

[Taunton]

Funny thing is the carriages, also the CME's remit, seemed to pull together quite straightforwardly for the Mk 1 design the best elements of the company designs (as they stood in 1948), for gangways, efficient layout, length, etc, as if the four carriage superintendents had spent the morning together and just worked it out between themselves.

 

[Cowley]

Funny thing is the carriages, also the CME's remit, seemed to pull together quite straightforwardly for the Mk 1 design the best elements of the company designs (as they stood in 1948), for gangways, efficient layout, length, etc, as if the four carriage superintendents had spent the morning together and just worked it out between themselves.

It does seem like that doesn’t it? They weren’t radically different to some of the later Big Four offerings but once they had a decent set of bogies under them they were pretty good really and made a decent standard design for the start of BR (and did a job for many many years).

 

[thesignalman]

The exchanges took place in 1948, but the 1955 modernisation plan sounded the death knell for steam anyway, so the window of opportunity for learning and application was quite small.

The 1948 exchanges are discussed and explained well here, but there is no mention of what was going on in 1951 - see:

Ipswich Station SB (34039 passing)

Any thoughts?

John

 

[John Webb]

John - were these replacements when the first Britannia locos on the GE main line were found to have wheel/axle problems?

Regards,
John W

 

[Taunton]

John - were these replacements when the first Britannia locos on the GE main line were found to have wheel/axle problems?

Regards,
John W

That was indeed, when the Brits were brand new. The loan was organised by Gerry Fiennes, who remembered the 1948 exchanges, and also seems to have been more impressed by the Southern Pacifics than by the Britannias. He wrote about the latter, amusingly "The wheels went round faster than the axles, which was not good for the motion".

 

[thesignalman]

Thanks, folks, that's interesting. I'm not an "engine bod" but I do know the WCs and BBs were rather prone to slipping, in their case you could say the wheels moved faster than the rails beneath them! Seriously, though, if the GE trains weren't too heavy they should have done fine on what was a largely level route.

Its probably factors like that which are the make or break as to whether specific locomotive types are regarded as good or not and this would explain differing opinions.

John

 

[chorleyjeff]

Although I am technically old enough to have seen it I grew up in the "wrong" part of the country and have no actual memories of working steam so tended to have the prejudiced view of steam locos being just mobile kettles. However when I later developed a more serious interest in railways I eventually became aware of the 1948 exchanges and was sufficiently intrigued that I borrowed a copy of Cecil J Allen's authoritative book on the subject.

Now that was many years ago but I remember being somewhat disappointed that in practice the exchanges were of little real value other than in reinforcing ideas already well established. In particular the benefits of designing for the highest steam pressure possible and that it is possible for fireboxes and boilers to be optimised to work on a specific fuel.

Mention has been made of CMEs having various opportunities to exchange ideas but this was not limited to the British engineers and lessons were also learned from French designers especially Chapelon as evidenced by the eventual adoption of his Kylchap double chimney design which transformed the A3s in the 1950s.

As for the BR Standards I think that they tend to be rather under-appreciated largely due to their significantly shortened lives. What might have been...

I was around, but in short trousers, at that time. The whole exercise seems to have been flawed with little consistency in how locos were driven, type of coal used, fireman/driver familiarity with routes and so on. For example why would an LMS 8P be driven for maximum economy on the Southern while Southern pacifics blasted their way over Northern hills. Can't help thinking it was a big boys game and much more could have been learnt from controlled testing on a test rig and from using comprehensive actual information on running, maintenance costs and overhaul costs and times. But I guess it was great fun all round.

Thanks, folks, that's interesting. I'm not an "engine bod" but I do know the WCs and BBs were rather prone to slipping, in their case you could say the wheels moved faster than the rails beneath them! Seriously, though, if the GE trains weren't too heavy they should have done fine on what was a largely level route.

Its probably factors like that which are the make or break as to whether specific locomotive types are regarded as good or not and this would explain differing opinions.

John

I think there was much prejudice in favour of engines you knew how to run and maintain to best effect rather than foreigners whose foibles and best practices were not known.

 

[Spamcan81]

It wasn't just the 1948 loco exchanges that seem badly and minimally prepared, it occurred elsewhere. In 1925 the GWR (with a Castle) and the LNER (with an A1 Pacific) exchanged locos for a week on London to Leeds and to Plymouth. The outcome was the Castle was felt to have performed brilliantly (and speaking of Cecil J Allen, he timed it), and the Pacific poorly, especially west of Newton Abbot, and even lost time. But the latter was just sent over on a Monday morning with a footplate crew completely unprepared for it, being given a GWR conductor, and it was of course Welsh coal which they were quite unused to. Churchward did prepare a bit better, and the Old Oak crew were sent the previous week to hang out of the window of the first coach of a Leeds train to get a bit of a feel for the line, which LNER supporters described as "sneaky". It wasn't as if it was just a trivial test - apart from Allen's timing, it got into the national press.

Incidentally, I believe that after the A1 (4474 Victor Wild) in 1925, the next LNER Pacific through Taunton was Pegler's Flying Scotsman in late 1963. I've got a childish out-of-focus box camera photo of it somewhere which I took, coming off the train there.

You're forgetting the A4s that worked to the west during the 1948 exchanges.

If it's of German origins it would be pronounced bull-eyed, - but with names many invent weird ways to pronounce them for all sorts of reasons and the chastise those who didn't guess right first time.

The man himself said that Bulleid rhymes with succeed.

Whilst LMS features were continued in many of the Standard classes, some features from the other companies did get used. The LNER type of slide bar found use on the Standard Pacifics, Class 5 and Class 4 4-6-0s. The Britannia boiler was modelled on the MN boiler.

 

[30907]

Funny thing is the carriages, also the CME's remit, seemed to pull together quite straightforwardly for the Mk 1 design the best elements of the company designs (as they stood in 1948), for gangways, efficient layout, length, etc, as if the four carriage superintendents had spent the morning together and just worked it out between themselves.

As all 4 companies had moved in very similar directions pre ww2 it isn't surprising - Bulleid's design was visually the nearest of the ancestors.

 

[Bevan Price]

Guilty! oops. And of course once autocorrected your brain tends to go with it in subsequent posts even without autocorrect.

The best thing to do with autocorrect is to bin it.
It is totally hopeless if what you write contains names (people or places.)
By all means use "spell check" manually, as it enables you to accept or reject changes yourself, rather than let the computer try to change words to something that happens to be in its dictionary.