Douglas Earle Marsh (1862–1933) was an English railway engineer, and was the Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR; known also as the Brighton line, the Brighton Railway or the Brighton) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its ...
from November 1904 until his early retirement on health grounds in July 1911.
Early career
Marsh was born at
Aylsham,
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
on 4 January 1862, and was educated at
Brighton College and
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
. He worked for the
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...
under
William Dean becoming an Assistant Works Manager at
Swindon
Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon un ...
in 1888. In 1896 he became Chief Assistant Mechanical Engineer of the
Great Northern Railway at
Doncaster railway works
Doncaster Railway Works is a railway workshop located in Doncaster, England.
Also referred to as The Plant''", it was established by the Great Northern Railway (England), Great Northern Railway in 1853, replacing the previous works in Boston, ...
under
H.A. Ivatt
Henry Alfred Ivatt (16 September 1851, Wentworth, Cambridgeshire – 25 October 1923) was an English railway engineer, and was the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Northern Railway from 1896 to 1911.
Career
London and North Western ...
, where he participated in the design of the
Ivatt Atlantics.
LB&SCR
Marsh succeeded
R.J. Billinton as the Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent at
Brighton Works on 23 November 1904. Marsh's locomotive classes included two designs of Atlantic 4-4-2 (
H1 Class
H1, H-1, H01, H I may refer to:
Places
* Interstate H-1, a highway in Hawaii
* Area H1, the area of Hebron controlled by the Palestinian Authority under the Hebron Protocol
Science
* H1 (particle detector)
* Histamine H1 receptor
* Histone H1 ...
and
H2 Class), and four designs of
4-4-2T (
I1,
I2,
I3, and
I4). In 1910 he designed two 4-6-2T tank locomotives of the
J1 and J2 classes. His least successful design was the
LB&SCR C3 class
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway C3 class was a class of 0-6-0 steam locomotives, intended for heavy freight trains. Ten were built by Brighton railway works in 1906 to the design of Douglas Earle Marsh.
History
This class was int ...
0-6-0
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...
freight locomotives.
Marsh also rebuilt many of his predecessors' locomotives with larger boilers thereby creating the
A1X,
B2X,
C2X
C2x is an informal name for the next (after C17) major C language standard revision. It is expected to be voted on in 2023 and would therefore become C23. The most recent publicly available draft of C23 was released on January 24, 2023.
The f ...
,
E4X ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is the standarprogramming language extension that adds native XML support to ECMAScript (which includes ActionScript, JavaScript, and JScript). The goal is to provide an alternative to DOM interfaces that uses a simpler synt ...
,
E5X and
E6X classes. In 1907 he introduced an example of the
Schmidt superheater on one of his
LB&SCR I3 class locomotives, with dramatically improved results. Whilst at Brighton he abolished the
Stroudley yellow livery for passenger locomotives and removed the names from them.
During Marsh's period in office
Brighton railway works built up a serious backlog of locomotives awaiting repair, and by 1910 30% of the locomotive stock was unusable. Marsh received a lot of the blame for this situation although it was partly because the works was overwhelmed with work.
Resignation and retirement
Marsh was never popular within the workforce at Brighton. He resigned on the grounds of deteriorating health in July 1911, following accusations of a number of irregularities in his accounting. Shortly after his resignation he became a consulting engineer for the
Rio Tinto Company
Rio Tinto Group is an Anglo-Australian multinational company that is the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). The company was founded in 1873 when of a group of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto, ...
until 1932. He died in
Bath
Bath may refer to:
* Bathing, immersion in a fluid
** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body
** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe
* Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities
Plac ...
in May 1933.
Patents
* GB191028252, published 30 November 1911, Improvements in and relating to systems and apparatus for washing out and filling locomotive boilers and the like
References
Sources
* D.L. Bradley, ''Locomotives of the LB&SCR, Parts II. and III.''
Railway Correspondence and Travel Society, 1972.
, 1978.
* Klaus Marx, Douglas Earle Marsh: his life and times. Oakwood Press, 2005.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marsh, D. E.
1862 births
1933 deaths
English engineers
Locomotive builders and designers
Locomotive superintendents
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway people
English railway mechanical engineers
People from Aylsham