Edward Thompson (engineer)

Edward Thompson (25 June 1881 – 15 July 1954) was an English railway engineer, and was Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway between 1941 and 1946. Edward Thompson was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire on 25 June 1881. He was the son of Francis Thompson, assistant master at Marlborough College. He was educated at Marlborough before taking the Mechanical Science Tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge, earning a third class degree. Thompson entered the railway scene after education, contrasting that of his predecessor Nigel Gresley, who had also attended Marlborough after gaining practical experience as a pupil at Horwich Works.

Edward Thompson was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire to Francis Thompson. His grandfather Francis ran a tailoring business in London.

He would be educated at Marlborough College, same as his predecessor. After education at Marlborough, he would attend Pembroke College and be influenced by Sir George Stokes, ultimately graduating with a third class degree.

After graduation Thompson worked in both industry and the railways for a while. He worked as a pupil at Beyer, Peacock's drawing office, before moving to work at the Midland Railway's Derby shed. By 1910 he was assistant divisional locomotive superintendent on the North Eastern Railway (NER), in which capacity he gave evidence at the inquiry into the fatal accident between two goods trains at Darlington on 15 November 1910. In 1912 he was appointed Carriage and Wagon Superintendent at Doncaster for the Great Northern Railway (GNR). He served in the British Army during the First World War, and was twice mentioned in dispatches, and awarded OBE, Military Division for action at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Upon demobilisation, he returned to the railways, alternating between the wagon works at Darlington and Doncaster, and consequently between the North Eastern and Great Northern respectively. In 1920 he returned to the NER at York as Carriage and Wagon Superintendent, and joined the LNER upon grouping. He became Workshop Manager at Stratford Works in 1930 and was able to make significant improvements although the works layout prevented major changes there. He would become a Mechanical Engineer at Darlington and Doncaster in 1934 and 1938 respectively, before becoming Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1941 after the death of Nigel Gresley.

Edward Thompson would marry Guendolen Raven, daughter of Sir Vincent Raven, CME of the North Eastern Railway. After Guen's death in 1938, he subsequently became very lonely.

During World War Two, he met Richard Hardy by chance, who was working on the footplate of a locomotive without permission. He was fond of the boy and the two boarded a train to Doncaster, where Thompson spoke to him with great enthusiasm about ongoing projects. Richard Hardy would join the LNER and become part of Thompson's design team.

When Thompson was appointed CME of the LNER, he became in charge of a railway which had a greatly reduced labour force and foundry capacity. To remedy this, he sought to start a much needed standardisation programme out of an urgent need for simplicity. The LNER was continuing to operate almost 5,000 locomotives across 160 classes from pre-grouping companies, many of which were aging and unreliable. He intended to reduce the number of locomotive classes from 160 to just 19 classes by scrapping or removing most of the pre-grouping era locomotives of the LNER. Some^[who?] believed that in doing so, he intended to "rid the LNER of Gresley", when in reality he sought to retain most of his predecessor's work.