Arthur Peppercorn

Arthur Henry Peppercorn, OBE (29 January 1889 – 3 March 1951) was the last Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Eastern Railway.

Arthur Peppercorn was born in Leominster in 1889 and educated at Hereford Cathedral School. In 1905 he started his career as an apprentice with the Great Northern Railway (GNR) at Doncaster. Gresley took a liking to the young apprentice and would supervise his career; in turn, Peppercorn was devoted to Gresley, and would in time be treated almost like one of the family.

Gresley's sudden death in 1941 was a shock to all in the LNER, and although Peppercorn was considered for the role, his great modesty in comparison with that of the other candidate, Edward Thompson, as well as the influence Thompson held within the LNER seniority meant that it was Thompson who succeeded Gresley. Thompson was already 60 years old, and both he and the LNER recognised that his appointment was not a permanent solution: both Peppercorn and Harrison were ready in the wings.

When Peppercorn did succeed Thompson as CME on 1 July 1946, his style of work proved to be very different from that of his predecessor. Peppercorn was recognised as an amiable and very well liked man, though despite his popularity, he remained very modest and humble. He believed the job was above him, but in truth he possessed much of the outstanding ability of his mentor Sir Nigel Gresley. He could see beyond the limitations of the Gresley conjugated valve gear and the flaws surrounding the Thompson locomotives. Peppercorn finished several projects which were started by Thompson and cancelled others. He revised the K1/1 design to build a batch of 70 class K1s, continued the building of the B1s, and halted further rebuilding of the A10 class into A1/1 specification. His most significant mark on railway history must be his LNER Peppercorn Class A1 and the LNER Peppercorn Class A2.

Locomotives Edward Thompson had set down strict guidelines for the incoming CME, relating directly to the upcoming design of an Express Passenger Pacific. The design was to draw heavily on the A1/1 Pacific Great Northern which had been rebuilt during Thompson's time in office. This would have created a cross between the A2/3 Pacifics, and Great Northern's 6'8" driving wheels. By the time Peppercorn was in office, reports of Great Northern's persistent frame problems, hot axleboxes and steam leaks were all filtering back into the design office. The belief was that the problems were caused by a lack of frame support at the front end, largely due to the cylinders not being aligned with each other (an aspect of divided drive combined with equal length connecting rods). Thompson's guidelines would have produced another locomotive with the cylinders apart, so Peppercorn decided against it, and brought the cylinders in line, and arranged the locomotive as something of a merging of both Gresley's A4 and Thompson's A2/1, creating first the A2 class, and then the A1.

...
Wikipedia