When Richard Maunsell took up the appointment of Chief Mechanical Engineer of the South Eastern & Chatham Railways Managing Committee, his first task was to reorganise Ashford Works whose efficiency had fallen right away following the transfer of staff and equipment from the Chatham’s ‘factory’ at Longhedge in 1911. Experience gained in Ireland on the Great Southern & Western Railway at Inchicore as Works Manager and then Locomotive Superintendent, and his proven administrative ability – something his predecessor Harry Wainwright did not exercise effectively – might well have been among the reasons the SECR board offered him the post It followed, too, the arrival from the London & North Western Railway of Francis Dent as General Manager in 1911, probably at the instigation of Sir Frederick Harrison, a former General Manager of the North Western who had joined the SECR board upon his retirement in 1909.
It wasn’t long before Dent proved to be a tough ’new broom’ who expected departmental chiefs to carry out their duties more than just competently and thus soon came to consider changes were directly and sorely needed in the ‘Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Department’. Among his recommendations was the segregation of the mechanical and running sides of the department, both of which had been the Locomotive Superintendent’s responsibility up to that time and which Wainwright had been unable to manage effectively. The change came fully into being with Maunsell’s arrival in December 1913, though A. D. Jones had already come from the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway as Locomotive Running Superintendent (Dent ‘retired’ in 1920 after a monumental row with his Chairman, Henry Cosmo Bonsor.)
One other and no less important factor in Maunsell’s favour might have been taken into account by the board. If the SECR was a relatively financially straitened company, the Great Southern & Western was continually on the comer of Queer Street so everything that could be usefully recycled was. Inchicore thus consistently outshopped engines, even in quite small batches, at a cost well below that achieved by almost all its contemporaries to the east of the Irish Sea.
Maunsell had introduced only two classes during his two yeans in charge at Inchicore, one of which was little more than an updating of an existing design. That may have influenced his response to Wainwright’s L Class 4-4-0, still then on the drawing board.1 Not having had the opportunity to take the measure of his drawing office staff, despite the experienced Robert Surtees being its Chief, and with the need for new motive power quickly, time he did not have, he referred it to his trusted if conservative former Chief Draftsman at Inchicore, Ernest Joynt He recommended changes to the valve settings that apparently shortened the travel which may later have been a matter of regret to Maunsell. With time still against him, the same swift and comprehensive modifications that made the reconstructed D and E Classes into such formidable performers as D1 and El were not possible with the L. Surtees retired in 1914, the Chief Draughtsman’s mantle felling on the trusted James Clayton who had spent much of his career on the Midland Railway at Derby though it had begun at Ashford.
Maunsell was known to keep well abreast of developments outside his immediate realm and for that reason perhaps recruited from go-ahead Swindon. George Pearson came as Assistant CME and Works Manager while Harold Holcroft took responsibility for the reorganisation and updating of Ashford Works. Lionel Lynes came to oversee design of the splendid rolling stock produced during Maunsell’s time, but he went to Inchicore for his Assistant Works Manager. C. J. Hicks had supported him during a period of labour unrest and it has been suggested the move for Hicks was to avoid
