Tag Archives: Richard Maunsell

General, History

Marking 100 years since the formation of the Southern Railway – a potted history

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It would be remiss of me not to mark the fact that today is 100 years since the Grouping and the formation of the Southern Railway, it also of course marks the demise of its constituent companies. This post attempts to provide a simplified potted history of the Grouping and the Southern Railway.

The Southern Railway coat of arms incorporated heraldic elements from the main constituent companies.

Although the actual Grouping occurred on 1st January 1923, it’s instigation can be traced back to the First World War where all railways were under state control until 1921. The Railways Act 1921, followed discussions at the time on potential nationalisation, had the aim of stemming the losses being occurred at the time by many of the 120 or so railway companies.

The form of Grouping originally proposed in 1920, by former North Eastern Railway executive, the Minister of Transport, Eric Geddes, was for five English and one Scottish regional companies, by 1921 this was amended to four English and two Scottish companies before the Scottish routes were incorporated in the companies that we know as the ‘Big Four’.  Royal Assent for the Railways Act was in August 1921.

The main Constituent companies of the Southern Railway were the well known three, actually four: The London and South Western Railway (LSWR), The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) and the combined South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, under the South Eastern & Chatham Railways’ Managing Committee (SECR).

The first SR passenger livery was a continuation of the LSWR style in Olive Green with expanded Clarendon ‘Egyptian’ style ‘Southern’ font as seen on ex LSWR Adams A12 0-4-2. From 1937 the Bulleid malachite green and ‘Sunshine’ lettering as seen on the ex LSWR M7 in the background was introduced.

Also incorporated were the three Isle of Wight railway companies and the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway (Bere Alston and Callington section).
Some non-working or joint companies that had been previously leased or worked by the main constituent companies, including for example (not an exhaustive list): the North Cornwall Railway, Sidmouth Railway, Lee-on-the-Solent Railway, Hayling Railway, Cranbrook and Paddock Wood Railway, London and Greenwich Railway, Croydon & Oxted Joint Railway and Dover & Deal Railway, were also included, as was the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway although not covered by the Railways Act 1921, it had been absorbed by the LSWR.

The Southern Railway also was to share or jointly operate a number of lines including: the East London Railway, West London Extension Railway, Weymouth & Portland Railway and of course the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.

The Southern Railway Network

The total route mileage owned whole by the Southern Railway at Grouping was 2,186 miles, with the main constituents not surprising forming the majority with 1,020 miles ex LSWR, 457 miles ex LBSC and 637 ½ ex SECR. The SR was operated essentially as three Districts: Western, Central and Eastern based approximately on the previous main constituents.

There were two Chief Mechanical Engineers; Richard Maunsell, ex SECR, between 1923 and 1937 and Oliver Vaughan Snell Bulleid, ex GN / LNER, from 1937 to 1948.

And just because you can never have enough Bulleid pacifics or Southern malachite green…

Although originally three general managers were appointed from each of the main constituents, with a year Sir Herbert Walker became the single General Manager and the development of the SR was built upon many of his ex LSWR practices. Following his retirement in 1937 he was succeeded as general manager by his long-time assistant Gilbert Szlumper. In 1939, Szlumper left the Southern Railway for war service and Sir Eustace Missenden took over.

The Southern Railway officially lasted, of course until Nationalisation in 1948, although in reality, just as during the First World War, the Railways due to the outbreak of The Second World War were taken once again under Government control via The Railway Executive on 1st September 1939 and would remain so until the 1st January 1948 becoming the Southern Region of British Railways.

With the passing of the Transport Act 1947 that nationalised the Railways, Missenden became the first Chairman of the Railway Executive and John Elliot became acting General Manager of the SR and would later become Chief Regional Officer of the Southern Region of British Railways.

I hope this brief simplified history of the Southern Railway has been of interest, and appropriate to mark the 100 years since its formation. I thought it was about time that it was included on my corner of the blogsphere!

35006, 35011, General

And now for something different… Southern related influences up t’north… some bank holiday reading

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With this weekend being a bank holiday, with so far some typical overcast weather (at least it’s not raining yet…), I thought I would provide some light reading based on my trip away, with the 35011 General Steam Navigation Locomotive Restoration Society last weekend, to some of Yorkshire’s railway attractions where I was able to find a Southern Railway related connection.

A Bulleid coach far from home

It was a pleasant surprise, seeing this excellently restored Bulleid Open Third at the wonderful Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, looking so great and nice to see in the BR Crimson & Cream livery that she carried when first introduced.
Coach number S1469 is a Diagram 2017 Open Third built at Eastleigh between October and December 1950 with the deeper 15″ window vents rather than the 10″ vents fitted to the SR built versions. They were introduced as loose vehicles, i.e. not allocated into a coach set.
Whilst many like to see the preserved Bulleid coaches in green livery, I think she does look very smart in the immaculate Crimson and Cream livery.

A Southern /  Bulleid connection to a BR standard 4MT tank

A trip on the splendidly scenic North Yorkshire Moors Railway saw a a BR Standard 4MT tank at the head of the service in a splendid LNER teak bodied Tourist Open Third.  An SR / Bulleid connection to a BR standard 4MT tank… you might ask?
The design, although based on the LMS Fowler / Fairburn tanks, of these locomotives, introduced from 1951 was completed and the first batch built at Brighton. The design was required to meet the the L1 loading gauge to give them a great route availability (such as working between Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells West). They therefore have a continuous curved profile to the tanks and cab sides, (not to be confused with the overall loading gauge), that also matched the curve of the Bulleid locos and stock. There was even a discussion at the time about them being built with Bulleid-Firth-Brown style wheels.

Even the LNER coach has  Bulleid connection as before he left the LNER to become CME of the Southern Railway he had modernised the interiors of such open coaches with the use of the new synthetic leathercloth ‘Rexine’.

We did see some proper traction on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway as Maunsell S15 4-6-0 Number 825 was also on services. 825 was built in April 1927 at Eastleigh works near Southampton and along with most of the class was allocated to Feltham. By the time of nationalisation she was based at Exeter Junction before moving to Salisbury in 1951 and remaining there until withdrawn in January 1964. No. 825 is one of three S15 locomotives owned by the Essex Locomotive Society, all of which are stabled at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

What’s in a name…

There are two Merchant Navy Class names plates on display at the National Railway Museum. With the Merchant Navy’s four plates were cast (the centre part disc was enamelled), two for the loco, one presented to the relevant shipping company and one circular part turned into a coffee table and also presented to the shipping company at the time of the official naming ceremonies (I have not yet managed to see any of the coffee tables, I wonder if any any survive and if so do the owners know the significance?)
The first is Channel Packet the first member of the Merchant Navy class loco, that also gave rise to one of the nicknames of the class as being ‘Packets’, this is one of the plates that was ceremonially given to the namesake shipping co. at the time of the loco naming

The Orient Line name plate is from the actual 21c8 loco, you can compare the difference in the wear and tear including the remaining thickness of the raised cast letters to tell the difference. The boiler currently being restored by the 35011 General Steam Navigation Locomotive Restoration Society, is coincidently the one that was first fitted to 21c8 when built.

The centre enamelled discs usually illustrated the shipping company flag and the plates were handed so that the flag always flew towards the rear of the loco, the only Merchant Navy plate that has a flag that flies forwards is 21c6/35006 Peninsular & Oriental S.N.Co as it’s flag is part of the whole P&O company logo on the enamel plate so could not be flown the other way around on the right hand side so flies forwards.

We didn’t remove any parts honest…

Merchant Navy 35029 Ellerman Lines although preserved is displayed as a sectioned exhibit, originally she was mounted on rollers so that wheels and motion could be rotated to see it in action but she now resides on a section of plain track.
Whilst neatly sectioned and painted to show the inner workings of a steam locomotive I feel the Museum have missed a trick as there are no actual information board to explain the how it works part of the exhibit to visitors. Whilst photographing I did spend time to actually explain how it works to many visitors.

I’m sure it doesn’t need it’s crank axle really… with 35011 General Steam Navigation needing a new crank axle it would be nice to swap this now static exhibit with a plain axle to help get 21c11 / 35011 back in steam but I think the museum staff would have noticed if I tried to borrow it… The tender would be handy too…

Duck à le bleu…

The Bulleid connection to the well known steam speed record holder LNER A4 pacific 4468 ‘Mallard’ is his work with the French firm Bugatti on behalf of Sir Nigel Gresley, Bulleid spoke fluent French, after his spell working early in his career for the French Westinghouse Company as a test engineer. Initially he was investigating their ‘The Flying Hamburger’ that  was a high-speed diesel twin-coach railcar introduced in 1932 that was used for express passenger services between Berlin and Hamburg.
Developed using wind-tunnels, the train could travel the 178 miles between the two station in 138 minutes, at an average of 77mph.
This was considered to be an expensive option but led to Bugatti assisting Bulleid and Gresley with the A4 front styling and overall streamlining.
Mallard was also a visitor to the Southern Region a couple of times the first being for the 1948 Locomotive Exchange trails, where she failed at Salisbury with a hot middle big end, and again later in the 1960s on rail tour duty.

Doesn’t need a key… (sorry Stanier…)

The sole surviving austerity good looking* / ugly* (*delete as per your view) Bulleid Q1 class No. C1 built in 1942 has been an exhibit within the National Railway Museum since 2004 before which she had been restored and running on the Bluebell Railway. It is my understanding that she is not on the list for possible restorations to working order in the future.
When the class were first introduced under wartime austerity conditions in 1942 William Stanier was reported to have said “Where do you put the key” in response to the look of the loco.

I hope you enjoyed the read and the SR connections.

Fisherton Sarum, Talking Stock

Talking Stock #9 Around the table of the N15 King Arthurs

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Although not iconically named after Arthurian legends until (Sir) John Elliot joined the Southern Railway in 1925, and set up what is reputedly the UKs first Public Relations Department, the N15 ‘King Arthur’ class of 4-6-0 locomotives were first designed by Urie of the London and South Western Railway in 1918. The design was adopted and modified by Maunsell as the newly appointed CME of the Southern Railway and this along with differing build batches, including some contracted to North British in Glasgow, means that there are a number of variations within the class both internally and externally.

Urie N15 no. 745 ‘Tintagel’ n Bulleid Malachite Green livery

The external more obvious variations include: tenders, cab profiles, footplate / running board heights (to match tenders), smoke deflectors, blastpipe / chimney and safety valves. Hornby with their model of the N15 class, first introduced in 2007,

Urie N15 no. 744 ‘Maid of Astolat’ in Bulleid black livery

have managed to successfully incorporate a number of these variations within their tooling. This post is not a full history of the class, as more can be found elsewhere such as here on the excellent SeMG website, but to simply illustrate the variations (and those renumbered, renamed and reliveried by myself) that can be seen on Fisherton Sarum.

Maunsell G14 ‘rebuild’ no. 455 ‘Sir Launcelot’, Still Urie style but note the Drummond style watercart tender.

The first batch introduced by Urie between 1918 and 1923, numbers 736 to 755, featured the LSWR style high arc cab roof profile and Urie style safety valves and 5000 gallon bogie style tenders.

During 1925 Maunsell ordered a number of G14 class engines to be ‘rebuilt’ as N15 class instead (although in practice these were new engines), numbers 448 to 457, and these can be identified from the original Urie builds due to the reuse of the G14 5200 gallon watercart style tenders.

Maunsell ‘Scotch Arthur’ no. 785 ‘Sir Mador de la Porte’ note the different safety valves and cab roof profile. This model I have repainted into Malachite as Hornby have not to date released an Maunsell version in this livery.

As the number of the class required by Maunsell in 1925 exceeded build capacity at the time a batch, numbers 763 to 792 was ordered from north British of Glasgow. Known as the ‘Scotch Arthurs’ these featured redesigned steam passages & cylinders and the new composite loading gauge style Maunsell Cab roof profile and safety valves.

Maunsell ‘Scotch Arthur’ no. 782 ‘ Sir Brian’ in Bulleid black livery, 782 retained this black livery until it gained BR Brunswick green, not gaining Malachite.

The final batch built at Eastleigh in 1926/7, numbers 793 to 806 were similar in design to the Scotch Arthurs but were paired with standard Ashford style 3500 gallon 6 wheel tenders, for use on the central section, and the running plate height at the cab end was raised to suit. I do not have a model of this variation.

Urie N15 no. 736 ‘Excalibur’ as fitted with the Lemaitre blastpipe and larger diameter chimney in January 1941

Five of the class from the Urie batch were fitted by Bulleid with Lemaitre blastpipes and large diameter chimneys to try and improve steaming (in addition 792 was the only Maunsell version so fitted). Number 755 ‘The Red Knight’ also carried unique vertical smoke deflectors in conjunction with it being fitted with the Lemaitre blastpipe. (Hornby originally announced their Lemaitre version as being 755 but changed it rather than tool revised deflectors).

Oil burning conversion no. 740’Merlin’ note the tank in the tender coal space and the electric lighting, powered by the generator just behind the smoke deflector. This is modified Wills Kit rather than a Hornby model.

One further variation is that four members of the class were converted for a short while in 1946 to Oil Firing, which involved modification to the fire grate, the oil tank fitted in the tender coal space and the additon of a steam generator and electric lighting. This was short lived and by the end of 1947 were converted back to conventional coal burning.