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

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. 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 (

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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,

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, 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

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until 1932. He died in

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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