Transformations in Carriage and Wagon Building on the LMSR
An earlier version of this post was first published in the HMRS Journal. Vol. 19 No 6.
At the end of the First World War the social fabric of the United Kingdom had changed; some 2,367,000 Britons had been killed or injured(1), thus constraining the post-war supply of labour and increasing its cost. The social and economic cost had been high and many of the pre-war social and industrial practices were under question. Some railway production engineers questioned the continuance of previous manufacturing practices. R. W. Reid C.B.E. the Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the Midland Railway Company, who later became the Vice President of Works and Ancillary undertakings for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway together with Ernest Lemon his junior and then successor, were two such men.
The traditional method of building a wagon or carriage was to make it at one place in a workshop, thus bringing together a number of workers of varying trades in order that their piece of the job could be achieved. Each piece of wood often went between the joinery shop and the erecting shop several times for cutting to size. The methods were labour intensive, craft based, uneconomic (in the terms of the day), as well as extravagant in their use of space and labour.
With a view to changing the above “old” practices, Reid and Lemon had visited companies producing highly finished wooden items of “...furniture, pianos and gramophones, with a view to gleaning any methods of production which could be applied economically to the construction of the body or wooden structure of carriages.”(2). The machines making small and delicate items might, they realised, be adapted to the manufacture of parts for railway carriages and wagons. Such machinery, though needing high initial capital expenditure, would, if successfully introduced, quite quickly lead to possible savings of both time and labour, by the introduction of production line techniques. The mass production of railway carriages and wagons needed machines producing highly finished wooden components to fine tolerances along the lines of the, then relatively new, mass produced metal components in the car industry.
Lemon in a 1930 paper read to the Institute of Transport Annual Conference stated “...we were told that the methods adopted for the mass production of gramophone cabinets could not be applied to railway rolling stock, and we had also to oppose a great many objections based on the fear that owing to the timber shrinking and swelling it would be impossible to assemble the parts without hand fitting, and that we should not be able to carry through the scheme successfully” (3) The exploratory visits were then extended to include the manufacturers of the precision woodworking machinery seen in the gramophone and other works. These manufacturers when asked if they could scale up the machinery they produced to suit railway practice, replied positively, but were anxious about their ability to make the tooling to the sizes required. The LMSR therefore designed many of the required tools “in-house”.
Reid was a great facilitator and Lemon a highly skilled production engineer and both were interested in the American practice of “Scientific Management” (often called “rationalisation” in the UK)(4) . Thus when they set about reorganising the shops at Derby it may not be surprising that the tenets of scientific management (5) became obvious. One of the cornerstones of Lemon’s organisation of the production of rolling stock was that the work should come to the man; the exact reverse of the traditional method of production outlined above.
Photo: Railway Engineer
The use of the production line in railway rolling stock manufacturing plants was not new. Indeed far from the popular belief that mass production began in the car industry, an industrial consultant who later worked for the LMSR claimed that it, “...started almost by accident…in the building of railway freight cars in the United States…” (6) . Wherever it began, mass production revolutionised practice in the workshops of first the Midland Railway and then the LMSR.
Not only were the methods of production reformed, but also the standardisation of parts. The aim was that a worker would have a standard set of parts from which a wagon or carriage could be built. This arose from the fact that though the woodworking machines were extremely efficient and accurate, they needed careful and expensive setting up for the cutting of each part, thus constant changing of the settings to produce short runs was uneconomic. Rolling stock designs were thus changed, particularly those of the necessarily more complex carriage parts, in order to standardise them for mass production by the new machinery.
The new methods reduced the time taken to build a coach from six weeks to six days and in wagon manufacturing a new vehicle left the assembly line each half hour of the working day. The methods used are interesting, because not only were all the parts to the workman’s hand, but where necessary, he was supplied with mechanical aids for putting them together.
The principle of work study, minimisation of effort and the readily to hand supply of parts for the workman, are directly connected to scientific management. As Taylor generically puts it: “…the greatest prosperity can exist only as the result of the greatest possible productivity of the men and machines of the establishment.” (7)
The application of scientific management to railway vehicle construction made the whole process much more economic and efficient, ousting the craft practices that had pertained before. The London Midland and Scottish Railway Company was amongst the first to use the techniques of production mechanisation and scientific management in the United Kingdom and as such may be thought to be business innovators. In such a short post it is impossible to delve into the social, business and economic detail. However, it is important to note that the railways were in the vanguard of mass production in the United Kingdom and as such they were extremely important exemplars.
References:
1 Wilde, R. (2003) Casualties of the First World War (URL) http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/blww1castable.htm Accessed: 02 January 2012
2 Lemon, E. J. H. (1930) Lemon, E.J.H. 1930, “Railway Amalgamation and its effect on the L.M.S.R. Workshops” Paper read at the Morning Session July 8th - Institute of Transport Conference -Glasgow.Printed in the Journal of the Institute of Transport, July 1930. beginning at Page 421
3 Lemon, E. J. H. (1930) Ibid.
4 Jenkins, T. (2011) Sir Ernest Lemon – A Biography. The Railway and Canal Historical Society. Oxford. UK.
5 Taylor, F. W. (1911), “The Principles of Scientific Management”. Harper & Brothers. New York, USA and London, UK:. Also available from Project Gutenberg. This is Taylor’s monograph and a much larger literature on the topic exists.
6 Orde, L.G. (1944) Secrets of Industry. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. London, P15.
7 Taylor, F. W. (1911), Ibid.
