A RECORD OF THE ENTERPRISE AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY DURING THE GREAT WAR By G. R. S. DARROCH (CROIX DE GUERRE) ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF MECHANICAL ENGINEER L. & N.W.R. WITH A PREFACE BY L. J. MAXSE With Illustrations "The Railway Executive Committee have been too modest, the public do not know what they achieved."— Engineering. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1920 All rights reserved...

Page 120 , footnote, for said the Tsar, read said of the Tsar. " 149 , line 22, for Walschaerte valve appertaining, read Walschaerte valve gear appertaining. " 162 , line 23, for mileage of permanent available read mileage of permanent way available....

"Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent," is a golden and an olden precept, one moreover that may, or may not, impel the aspiring rhetorician to beware the pitfalls which ever and anon threaten to ensnare his footsteps; and in compiling this little work the present Author has not been unmindful of at least two dilemmas with which he has felt himself to be faced; one, the danger of toying with that "little knowledge" which in the course of his professional duties he has been at pains

The British cannot be accused, even by their bitterest critics, of blowing their own trumpet. Indeed, they fail in the opposite direction, and, as a general rule, carry their modesty to a point when it positively ceases to be a virtue, because it causes credit to go where it is not due. If we are unpopular as a nation—of which we are continually assured, though whether we are more disliked than other nations may be doubted—it is certainly not on account of boasting by our men of action and achie

"England woke at last, like a giant, from her slumbers, And she turned to swords her plough-shares, and her pruning hooks to spears, While she called her sons and bade them Be the men that God had made them, Ere they fell away from manhood in the careless idle years." Thus it was that on that fateful morning of August 5th, 1914, England awoke, awoke to find herself involved in a struggle, the magnitude of which even the most well-informed, the most highly placed in the land, failed utterly, in t

"The armourers, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation." Shakespeare. Actually the first "job" to be undertaken in Crewe Works, with a view to winning the war and kicking the Hun away back across the Rhine whence rudely and ruthlessly he had pushed his unwelcome presence, was the hurried overhaul of a L. & N.W.R. motor delivery van which, destined for immediate service overseas and in conjunction with other and similar vehicles volunteered by such well-kno

"I am more than grateful to you and your fellow-locomotive superintendents of the various railway companies for your readiness to help us in this time of pressure." In these brief but none the less straightforward and sincere terms, did the late Sir F. Donaldson, then superintendent of Woolwich Arsenal, address himself to Mr. Cooke in the early part of November, 1914, terms expressive, not merely of his own personal feelings of gratitude, but also of Government appreciation of the assistance so

"A world of startling possibilities." Dole. Graze-fuses (so called from the fact that the very slightest touch or shock imparted to the fuse or foremost part of the shell by any intervening object, and against which the fuse grazes whilst in flight, is sufficient to cause the spark necessary for igniting the explosive charge) were first taken in hand at Crewe in March, 1915. It was at this time that the late Earl Kitchener, then Minister of War, first drew attention in the House of Lords to the

"As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to attract." Wilde. All good sportsmen know what is a cartridge, whether for gun or rifle; they know too that the nice brightly-polished little disc on the end of it contains the percussion cap by means of which the shot or bullet, as the case may be, is fired. Beyond this they do not worry. They load their gun or rifle; if the former, they are naturally pleased supposing fo

"The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will make him ferocious." Goethe. The apposite nature of this moral dictum could have been exemplified in no degree more accurately, nor indeed remarkably, than in the light of events which transpired during the forty odd years intervening between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the present-day world conflict; events which may, perhaps, best be summarised as comprising a persistent policy of unremittant and so-called peaceful penetration, inte

"We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." Smiles. A year or two prior to the war, the present writer remembers one occasion, in particular, on which he was discussing with a friend, possessing considerable knowledge and experience, the well-worn subject relating to the merits and demerits of the various leading "makes" of motor-cars. To a direct question as to what particular "make" he considered as being th

"A world where nothing is had for nothing." Clough. In the summer of 1917, at the urgent request of the Railway Executive Committee, Mr. Cooke, in conjunction with Sir Francis Dent and Mr. A. J. Hill, chief mechanical engineer G.E.R., undertook, personally, a "mission" to the Government of the U.S. of America, as representing the unprecedented straits to which the leading railway companies of Great Britain had become reduced, and for the purpose of enlisting the practical sympathy of the great r

"Who made the law that men should die in meadows, Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes, Who gave it forth that gardens should be boneyards, Who spread the hills with flesh and blood and brains? Who made the law?" Seldom, perhaps, does a plain question receive so plain an answer as that coming direct from so qualified an authority as Prince Lichnowsky, former German Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who, in the course of his confessions, which he entitles "My Mission to London

"Unless we had order, unless we had certainty, in the moving of large masses, the day of battle, which might come, would be to us a day of disaster."—Colonel McMurdo, late Inspector-General of the Volunteer Forces, January 9th, 1865. Der Tag , which came on August 4th, 1914, was not fated after all, as we know, to be a day of disaster. That it was not so is perhaps attributable in the main to two causes. "Miraculous" is the manner in which escape from disaster has been described; but as we have

"With the rearward services rests victory or defeat." Sir Douglas Haig. In the preceding chapter we have been able to digest a few of the more interesting facts and figures gleaned, in the one case from Sir Douglas Haig's final dispatch, and having reference to the task performed by the rearward services of the British Army in France; in the other, from the two reports issued by Mr. L. W. Horne, and dealing with the working of the London and North-Western Railway in the interests of the State, a

"La Mort n'est rien, Vive la tombe, Quand le pays en sort vivant, En avant!" Surely no one will deny to M. Paul Déroulède, that eminent and talented French homme-de-lettres , to whose inspiring enthusiasm these lines are attributable, the right of his assertion that Death in the conditions which he mentions is a negligible quantity? Supreme as has been the sacrifice of those well-nigh countless scores of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, who now "in glory shine," bitter too and crush

Fitted with standard vacuum brake, the train was also driven by an ingeniously devised vacuum system of control, which could be operated from either end of the train or from the footplate of the engine. On the smoke-box side, and intermediate between steam chests and main regulator valve, was fixed an additional regulator valve, actuated by a small vacuum cylinder. A 3/4-inch vacuum pipe acting in conjunction with the vacuum brake pipe and running the whole length of the train was connected to t

Gauges may be divided into two categories known as "working" and "inspecting" gauges; again each category is further divided into two sub-categories, designated in approved munitions' parlance as "to go" and "not to go." "Working" gauges being in more or less constant use, and subjected, not infrequently, to a certain measure of rough usage, were allowed a slightly less "tolerance" or margin, plus or minus, high or low, than were "inspecting" gauges; that is to say, given a certain specific meas

The action of a thread-milling machine is as follows:—The cutter fixed on a mandrel, and the shell in the milling machine, revolve in opposite directions to one another. The teeth of the cutter, contrary to expectation, are simply a series of parallel rings cut the correct pitch of the thread required; consequently all that is necessary is that the shell shall travel longitudinally the distance of one pitch of the thread during one complete revolution, and the job is done. Particular interest ce