Edward Thompson, Wartime CME

‘Don’t believe what you’ve seen or read’ – so started Simon Martin at our Hitchin meeting on 13th February. His subject for the evening was Edward Thompson, Wartime Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNER from 1941 to 1946. On taking over from Nigel Gresley, Thompson said ‘I have much to do gentlemen and so little time in which to do it’. Simon started with a brief look at Thompson’s life – educated at Marlborough School followed by Pembroke College, Cambridge. His railway career started in 1902 and Thompson is believed to have been the worst CME that LNER had but he was following in Gresley’s footsteps. He was appointed to the position of CME only 23 days after Gresley’s death and became the subject of so much criticism, speculation and downright denigration, yet through it all, Thompson the man remained some-thing of an enigma. He did not have the breadth of vision of his predecessor, Sir Nigel Gresley. Simon has researched LNER board minutes, engine cards and other archived documents to find out the truth or so he said. He told us he believed stories about Thompson were not fair or accurate to his reputation with some false and others needing challenging. Simon showed us documents that showed how the LNER was performing during this period and the actions taken by Thompson to resolve these. The chief of these actions was his standardisation programme which Simon illustrated with various slides of locos to support this. 11 non-standard classes were maintained of which 10 were Gresley designs. Simon has purchased a folio of Thompson’s work showing outlines of various classes – this rare/valuable document will be given to a museum in due course. One final point on Thompson’s life is that no-one attended his funeral as requested in his will.
A most interesting, detailed and controversial presentation enjoyed by an attendance of 22. We look forward to welcoming Simon back when his next book ‘Oliver Bulleid’ is published.

Paul Holloway
Branch Treasurer