Oliver Bulleid
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Oliver Vaughan Snell Bulleid (19 September 1882 - 25 April 1970) was a British railway and mechanical engineer best known as the Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the Southern Railway between 1937 and the 1948 nationalisation, developing many well-known locomotives.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in Invercargill, New Zealand to William Bulleid and his wife Marian Pugh, both British immigrants. On the death of his father, Bulleid returned to Llanfyllin, Wales in 1889 with his mother, where the family home had been. At 18, after a technical education, he joined the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster as an apprentice under H. A. Ivatt, the then CME. After a four-year apprenticeship he became the assistant to the Locomotive Running Superintendent, and a year later the Doncaster Works manager. In 1908 he left the railway to work in Paris with the French division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation as a Test Engineer, soon promoted to Assistant Works Manager and Chief Draughtsman. Later that year he married Marjorie Ivatt, the youngest daughter of the railway mechanical engineer H. A. Ivatt.
A brief period working for the Board of Trade followed from 1910, arranging exhibitions in Brussels and Paris, but a more important change followed in 1912 when he rejoined the Great Northern Railway as the Personal Assistant to Nigel Gresley, the new CME of the railway. Gresley was only six years Bulleid's senior.
World War I intervened; Bulleid joined the British Army and was assigned to the rail transport arm, rising to the rank of Major. After the War, Bulleid returned to the GNR as the Manager of the Wagon and Carriage Works.
[edit] Grouping
Grouping in 1923 saw the GNR subsumed into the new London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), and Gresley was appointed the CME of the new amalgamated railway. He brought Bulleid back to Doncaster to be his assistant, a post that he held until 1937. This was the period during that Gresley produced the majority of his famous locomotives and innovations, and Bulleid had a hand in many of them.
Among the projects Bulleid was involved with were the LNER Class P1 2-8-2 and LNER Class U1 2-8-0+0-8-2 Garratt freight locomotives, and the LNER Class P2 2-8-2 express locomotive.
[edit] Southern
In 1937, Bulleid accepted the post of Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern Railway (SR). At first, his work mostly involved improving the existing types, but in 1938 he gained approval to build a class of modern 4-6-2 "Pacifics", inspired by Gresley's but with all the most modern equipment. The first of the Bulleid Pacifics, 21C1 Channel Packet (Merchant Navy class) was built in 1941, featuring chain driven valve gear and a partially welded boiler and firebox rather than the traditional riveted designs. Twenty-nine followed, the last being 35030 Elder Dempster Lines. A slightly smaller Pacific class for more lightly built lines followed in 1945, the West Country/Battle of Britain class, of which 110 were built; 21C101 Exeter was the first. His other major steam locomotive design, the SR Class Q1 "Austerity" 0-6-0 freight engine, appeared in 1942. Most of Bulleid's locomotives for the Southern Railway had Bulleid-Firth-Brown wheels.
Bulleid also played a major role in the electrification of the Southern Railway, including infrastructure, electric multiple units, and electric locomotives. Towards the end of his tenure at SR he was responsible for the design and construction of Britain's only double-deck passenger trains, the two members of the 4DD class.
His final steam locomotive design for the SR was the unconventional Leader, appearing in 1949 after nationalisation. This encased the boiler, coal and water supplies and everything else in a smooth double-ended body reminiscent of a diesel locomotive. The drive was through two six-wheel powered bogies, each with three cylinders. The axles on each bogie were connected by chains. The Leader was innovative but unsuccessful.
[edit] Ireland
Bulleid worked briefly as CME of British Railways Southern Region but soon took a post in Ireland with Córas Iompair Éireann (Irish Railways) as their Chief Mechanical Engineer. He developed an unsuccessful peat-burning locomotive along the lines of the Leader, which proved to be a dead end, but was also responsible for much modernisation of Ireland's locomotives and rolling stock.
He retired from CIÉ in 1958 and subsequently lived in Belstone in Devon, and subsequently Exmouth. Bulleid was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bath University in 1967. Shortly thereafter he moved to Malta, where he died in 1970 aged 87.
