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
Aylsham ( or ) is a historic market town and civil parish on the River Bure in north Norfolk, England, nearly north of Norwich. The river rises near Melton Constable, upstream from Aylsham and continues to Great Yarmouth and the North Sea, ...
,
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
Brighton College is an independent, co-educational boarding and day school for boys and girls aged 3 to 18 in Brighton, England. The school has three sites: Brighton College (the senior school, ages 11 to 18); Brighton College Preparatory Sc ...
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 under
William Dean becoming an Assistant Works Manager at
Swindon 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, 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
Brighton railway works (also known as Brighton locomotive works, or just the Brighton works) was one of the earliest railway-owned locomotive repair works, founded in 1840 by the London and Brighton Railway in Brighton, England, and thus pre-da ...
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 0-6-0 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 syn ...
,
E5X and
E6X classes. In 1907 he introduced an example of the
Schmidt superheater on one of his
LB&SCR I3 class
The LB&SCR I3 class was a class of 4-4-2 steam tank locomotives designed by D. E. Marsh for suburban passenger service on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.
History
After introducing two unsuccessful designs of 4-4-2 tank locomot ...
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
Brighton railway works (also known as Brighton locomotive works, or just the Brighton works) was one of the earliest railway-owned locomotive repair works, founded in 1840 by the London and Brighton Railway in Brighton, England, and thus pre-da ...
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 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
The Railway Correspondence and Travel Society (RCTS) is a national society founded in Cheltenham, England in 1928 to bring together those interested in rail transport and locomotives.
Since 1929 the Society has published a regular journal ''The ...
, 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