Craven re-organised and greatly enlarged Brighton railway works, and recruited skilled engineers from Leeds thereby enabling locomotives to be built there for the first time. He built useful and reliable locomotives but believed that standardisation of locomotive design held back progress. Instead he followed a policy of producing classes of one or two locomotives designed for specific duties. This proved to be expensive and eventually created a chaotic maintenance situation on the railway. By the time he left office there were seventy-two different designs of locomotive in use. When the directors pressed him to reduce the number of new classes in 1869, Craven offered his resignation. This was accepted by the directors and he was succeeded by William Stroudley.