Nord 2-6-0 Locomotives in France

Class 3.101 (Locobase 3068)

Data corrected and supplemented by November 1889 article in RREJ -- French Locomotives at the Paris Exposition.

The accompanying photograph in Reder (1974, pl 240) shows a long-striding Mogul designed by Edouard Sauvage with the radial carrying axle (Roy system) thrown well forward of the stack and the outside cylinder down at axle level behind it. (The inside HP cylinder was in line with it.) The 1 HP, 2 LP compounding system would later be used by Smith in Great Britain. Although tests showed it capable of scaling a 0.3% grade at 30 mph with 549 tons of coal train and it appeared in the 1889 Paris Exhibition, only two more were built. Reder comments that "of course, the 2-6-0 had no advantages over the 0-8-0 freight train engine."

Tufnell (1986) gives the tractive effort as 21,000 lb, which is double that of the single HP cylinder and one of two ways of measuring compound tractive effort.

Class 3.1401 (Locobase 7943)

Data from the French locomotive website [], last accessed 15 November 2006.

This was a big, handsome engine with a long boiler ahead of the well-scaled Belpaire firebox and over widely set driving axles. The big, LP cylinder sat on the left side and drove the second axle. The HP cylinder sat on the right side..

The 1401 was simpled in 1933. At the same time these compounds were built, the Nord turned out two simple-expansion counterparts. See Locobase 20741.

Class 3.1501 (Locobase 20741)

Data from "2-6-0 Mixed Traffic Locomotives, Chemin de Fer Nord", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXV [25] (15 August 1915), pp. 122.123.

Locobase 7943 describes the two cross-compound Moguls produced by the Nord at the same time as these two simple-expansion engines. LM reported that the Nord needed medium-sized power to handle much of the traffic that was too light for much larger engines to handle.

"The Mogul type", LM declared, " lends itself well to this intent." Its "considerable boiler and cylinder power" was matched by enough adhesion weight "very uniformly distributed" to take advantage of the power. Add to this a leading truck that facilitated "easy running and steadiness even at the high speeds permitted by the ample diameter of the coupled wheels."

Like many French engines of the time, the boiler contained a mixture of large-diameter (70 mm) Serve tubes and smaller-diameter (50 mm) plain tubes. (Serve tubes had eight 1/8" wide, equally spaced fins lining the insides of the tubes; plain tubes were smooth. Serve tubes were credited with adding 50% more heating surface area than the plain tubes of equal length.)

Although the pair seemed appropriate for their intended duties, the two 1401s and these two 1501s were the only 2-6-0s Nord would produce.