Sir Nigel Gresley, His Life and Work

“Sir Nigel Gresley, His Life and Work” was the subject Simon Martin presented to us this afternoon, attracting our largest meeting attendance for several years. Starting with a look at his life and family, he was born in 1876, knighted in 1936 and died in 1941. He was appointed CME at Doncaster works in 1923 on the formation of the LNER. The first Pacific loco produced under his leadership was 1470 Great Northern, his design criteria was to build locomotives that were easy to maintain and simple to build. Simon went on to show and describe the complete range of loco’s Gresley built explaining many of the intricate detail and design features. One of the key things about these engines was that because of the easy maintenance all had very good reliability and work availability. At Doncaster Gresley chose the engineers he wanted in his team, two of these were Edward Thompson and Oliver Bullied for his boiler experience.

Bullied also assisted on the design of the front end streamlining of the A4’s, which was the narrower streamlining at the lower section of the smoke box to lift the air up and over the engine keeping the drivers view ahead clear, a front end that seems to have been carried forward on to the Class 800’s today. Of course, we spent time discussing the merits and achievements of Flying Scotsman and Mallard also. An excellent meeting bringing forth requests for technical presentations.

Dave Elsdon,

Branch Secretary