Readers’ Platform
Send your letters to: The Railway Magazine, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR. email: railway@mortons.co.uk NB. Publication of a letter does not imply that the Editor or staff of The Railway Magazine necessarily agree with its contents.
STAR LETTER
THOMPSON REVISITED
I ENJOYED the recent article by Nicola Fox on Edward Thompson (April 2021), but it left me wondering why, at a time of wartime crisis and postwar austerity, Thompson and the LNER were allowed to design and build the B1 4-6-0 and the L1 2-6-4T locomotives when equivalent proven LMS designs were available?
The LNER built 274 B1s between 1942 and 1947, plus 136 under BR; 410 in total. In addition to a prototype L1 built in 1945, 99 were built under BR between 1948 and 1950.
From a business perspective the LNER could have saved expensive design, engineering and tooling resources by ordering the proven LMS Stanier 4-6-0 5MT, and Fairburn 2-6-4T designs instead of the B1 and L1. This would have also been less risky, which was demonstrated when the L1 tank was found to contain serious design flaws despite a prototype being built three years before volume production commenced.
Building a proven LMS design for LNER use was acceptable when Doncaster, Darlington and Brighton built 128 8F 2-8-0 freight locomotives in 1944-45.
Ordering LMS designs would have given the entire railway scale economies in production and operation, possibly reducing the cost of the LMS designs.