One of the drawbacks to reading railway history, apart from repetition too often of myths and half truths, is that little attention is paid to the inter-relations between those members of management who played a crucial part in the developmental progress. It is not always very helpful, either, to consult original documents because the references there will often be anonymous, or represented by a head of department who makes no reference to any prior discussion underscoring his proposal. For what we know of this, we have to rely on those who were involved setting it down, or relating to others what they witnessed. This is open to manipulation by the memoirists and can be distorted by an interpreter collecting aural evidence. And that is a great pity because it is this underlying discussion that gives us our best information about why things were the way they were.
This has recently been brought to my mind by a review of the scant facts in the case of the Great Western Railway Pacific, work on which was done at Swindon, at a very junior and unofficial level sometime around 1945. However, that is not the starting point for this particular article. I want to try to establish a sequential line of activity that flowed from the retirement, in December 1921, of George Jackson Churchward from the position of Chief Mechanical Engineer, which he had held since 1902. It is said that he objected to the development of professional union negotiators preventing him from dealing with his ‘people’ on the spot. One can see that a paternalist manager would prefer his subordinates to deal directly with him, and there are several reactions to that which do not really need to be stated. However, in my view, the pressure to retire came as a result of a developing feud with the new General Manager, Felix Pole. This came on top of a very bitter stand-off with James Inglis, a previous GM; though the latter had the board’s approval for changes to procedure, it had never actually been implemented. Churchward and other departmental heads had objected to his proposals which consequently he had shelved.
Pole was not like Inglis; his reputation is that of a go-getter who let nothing stand in the way of anything he proposed to do. It would not be overstating the case to say that the new, virulent, enterprising GWR of the late 1920s/ early 1930s was due to a large degree to Pole’s work. However, that is not all the story; he could be unpleasant, overbearing, unsympathetic towards employees and concerned about his own ‘legacy’. His memoirs, printed privately and distributed to senior officers at his own cost, make interesting reading.1 In this book he came very close to accusing Churchward of dishonesty with workshop finances.
On the retirement of G. J. C., Charles Collett was appointed CME, perhaps an obvious appointment since he had been Deputy CME since 1919. but it was challenged by F. C. Wright, formerly works manager and Churchward’s ‘principle assistant’. There is some doubt about the prevalence of this title, it seems to have existed alongside Deputy CME and may have been what is now known as a ‘P.A.’. If his challenge was based on his previous position, it did him no good, and one can see why. Wright was 60 in 1921, only five years younger than Churchward, and a younger man able to offer a longer period of service was obviously preferred. There is, however, more to this. K. J. Cook wrote that during the war he had raised a company of volunteers but had not gone to the front with them.2 In those years this was certainly a mark against one’s reputation, but the maximum age for volunteers was actually 51, so that as early as 1914 Wright at 53 was past the age for active service.
The confirmation of Collett’s appointment marked a considerable change at the top, a point which I think is constantly missed; Collett was not a design engineer. Despite the water tube boiler engine which he may have drawn up in 1896,3 he was, essentially an engineering administrator, a workshops man, and a good one, who could handle negotiations with employees
