FAMOUS BRITISH LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS: THE LNER AFTER GRESLEY – EDWARD THOMPSON AND ARTHUR PEPPERCORN

Sir Nigel Gresley’s untimely death in 1941 after 30 years as CME of the GNR and LNER, left the LNER with problems in finding a replacement and there were two CMEs during the last seven years of the company’s existence, who took locomotive design in often very different directions. Brian Sharpe contrasts the careers of Edward Thompson and Arthur Peppercorn.

FAMOUS BRITISH LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS: THE LNER AFTER GRESLEY – EDWARD THOMPSON AND ARTHUR PEPPERCORN
The new Peppercorn A1 Pacific, No. 60163 Tornado, departs from Waterloo with UK Railtours’ ‘Devon Belle’ to Exeter on April 2. JOHN TITLOW
Sir Nigel Gresley was arguably Britain’s greatest steam locomotive engineer, and would clearly be a hard act to follow.

Among the LNER’s locomotive design team were two very different characters, whose careers had followed similar paths and who were well-known to each other.

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One of them, Edward Thompson, was born at Marlborough on June 25, 1881, the son of an assistant master at Marlborough College, and educated at Marlborough before taking the Mechanical Science Tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Read more in the May edition of HR


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