Charles Collett

Charles Benjamin Collett

Charles Benjamin Collett OBE (born September 10, 1871 in London , Great Britain , † April 5, 1952 in Wimbledon ) was from 1922 to 1941 the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway (GWR). He designed, among other things, the successful steam locomotives of the Castle class and the King class .

biography

Charles was the son of a journalist and grew up near Paddington Station , where he saw GWR trains. After school and studies in London, he joined the ship engine builder Maudslay, Sons and Field before moving to GWR in May 1893. In the design office of the Swindon Railway Works he accepted the position of draftsman . Within four years he was appointed head of the building department and a year later, in 1898, he was offered the position of assistant to the chief designer. In June 1900 he became quality manager of the Swindon Railway Works and was appointed deputy manager a few months later. After twelve years he became head of the plant and managed it for seven years. While managing the plant, he developed a taste for manufacturing that would play an important role in the future of Great Western locomotives. His appointment as assistant chief engineer in May 1919 paved the way for him to succeed George Jackson Churchward .

Churchward and Collett were believed not to get along too well, but that's hard to prove. Certainly the men were different personalities and in fact the two men were different like day and night, but they were a valuable team nonetheless. Churchward's standard designs met the foreseeable needs of the GWR, so no locomotive designer was actually required. A talented employee would bring production up to the level of the 20th century, as Churchward had already done with the locomotive designs. Collett, with his education and experience, was the obvious choice for the job.

Senior engineer

In January 1922, Charles Collett took over the position of chief engineer. It was not easy to follow a man with Churchward charisma, but his demeanor was milder than that of his predecessor and he was much less domineering, although he still insisted on quality work.

Locomotive Earl of Mount Edgcumbe the Castle class

One of his first assignments was to develop a locomotive with greater power for use on the Great Western Main Line . He revised Churchward's successful Star class series and went to the limit of the permitted axle load of the route, which was 19.8 t. He lengthened the frame of the locomotive and added a larger, more powerful, but lighter boiler, which in turn made it possible to use larger cylinders. The newly created series was called the Castle Class and was considered the most powerful express locomotive in Great Britain in its time. The head office in Paddington was delighted with the successful design and exploited the success when in 1924 the locomotive with the name Caerphilly Castle was shown at the British Empire Exhibition together with the LNER locomotive Flying Scotsman designed by Nigel Gresley in 1924.

Locomotive King Edward II of King class

Collett was able to dispel fears that the bridges would not be able to carry heavy locomotives, so that he could build the King class for 22.8 t axle load. The first locomotive of the new series had to be completed under time pressure, as the GWR was given the honor of showing the locomotive as a representative of British locomotive engineering in September 1927 at the exhibition for the centenary of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland , USA .

Other series from Collett were the Manor class , the Hall class and the Grange class .

Collett's work was sometimes criticized for the fact that his series were not independent designs, but only extensions of the designs developed by Churchward. That's true in some cases, but the Standard Series had lived up to expectations for fifteen or twenty years. The main achievement of Collett was improvements in the details of the series and improvements in production, so that the locomotives could be built more cheaply and more accurately.

Passenger car developed by Collett

In the passenger car sector , Collett standardized the bogies . When GWR took up his position as a top machine engineer, he used seven different types of bogie. Before designing a standard bogie, Collett had a test train put together with which the driving characteristics of the existing bogies could be checked. Each passenger car on the train received a different pair of bogies. Lime paint of a different shade was poured into the toilet tank of each car. During the test drive, there was an observer for each car who sprayed lime paint into the gravel with every jolt felt, so that the colors in the gravel could later be used to assess how the bogies were performing.

Collett was a senior mechanical engineer for 20 years and retired shortly before his 70th birthday, moving his residence from Swindon back to Wimbledon, London.

Activities outside of locomotive construction

In contrast to his predecessors, Collett was hardly interested in city affairs, and his only public post was that of lay judge from 1921 to 1928 . During the First World War , Collett tried to manufacture ammunition in the Swindon Railway Works , for which he received the award of an Officer of the Orders of the British Empire (OBE). But he was disappointed with the behavior of the Ministry of Labor towards the plant, which is why he hesitated for a long time during World War II to accept orders for the manufacture of ammunition.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} John Daniel: Charles Collett. In: The Great Western Archive. 2013 (English). 
2. ^ GWR and BR Castle Class 4-6-0 Locomotive. In: Southern Steam Trains. Retrieved September 23, 2018 . 
3. ^ ^{A b} Charles Collett. In: Guide to Swindon. (English).