London & North Western 0-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 2360 Dock Shunter (Locobase 21197)

Data from "Shunting Engine, London & North Western Railway", Engineering, Volume 30 (3 September 1880), p. 191. See also "W & J Galloway & Sons" in Wikipedia at [], last accessed 1 September 2024; and Edward Talbot, An illustrated history of LNWR engines (Shepperton: Oxford Publishing, 1985), pp. 84-86.

Like many other large and complex railways that built "in-house", the LNWR often needed bespoke designs for very specific purposes. Francis Webb produced this little "very weird" (wrote Talbot) four-coupled tank to serve docks and goods [freight] yards. Never intended for main-line service, the engine featured loops of "light, flexible coupling of rope or leather" in place of the usual drawbar link. Moreover, the fireman stood at one end, the driver at the other in what Edward Talbot described as "Hackworth fashion", so that either could drop the loop onto the hook at the end of a goods wagon. (A later photo suggests that the flexible loop gave way to the more common drop link.) Both ends had brake and reversing gear.

Webb sought to use every available heating surface to heat the boiler's water. The small, oil-fired firebox consisted of semicircular top and bottom joined by straight sides braced by stays. Thirteen 1 7/8" water tubes, each 33" long, formed the grate; this arrangement also appeared in several larger four-coupled shunter designs.

Ahead of the firebox's 30" (762 mm) length came a combustion chamber that included a Galloway tube linked to the short tube bundle that ended at the smokebox. Wikipedia says the Galloway tube was a single large flue in which several conical water tubes connected the top and bottom of the boiler. A modern equivalent is the thermic syphon. Webb also extended the boiler forward to surround the smokebox and directed its exhaust up through the steam dome to further extract heat. (Locobase can't help but wonder at the maintenance demands for a design with such extensive leakage potential.)

The frame and couplng rods were made of steel. The works cast all four of the eccentric sheaves as a single component. Later photos show LNWR numbers 3016 and 3017; 3017 sported a curved overhead canopy to protect the crew.

A Wikipedia summary of LNWR locomotives states that four of the ten locomotives were used as "service stock" (i.e., operating within the Crewe Works itself?). More than 40 years later, all six showed up on the London, Midland & Scottish (LMS) during grouping in 1923.

Class 4ft Shunter (Locobase 2164)

Data from W A Tuplin, The Steam Locomotive: Its Form and Function (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974) and [], last accessed 8 July 2011.

Ramsbottom design for yard switcher ("shunting locomotive") built between 1863 and 1892 that puttered around until 1933. According to the London and North Western Railway Society's description of the locomotive, it was a rudimentary design in terms of added features and provisions for comfort. As delivered, the driver and fireman had only the spectacle board in front of them and no overhead protection; a later photo shows a small canopy.

Their single technical innovation was the use of the cast-iron H-section spoke.

Class Steam railmotor (Locobase 9987)

Data from [], last accessed 17 March 2009.

The first of the L & NW's steam railmotors was delivered to the Dysterth & Prestatyn Railway in North Wales and went into regular passenger service on 28 August 1905. The locomotive portion occupied one end of the 57-foot long coach; at the other end was a set of controls for the conductor. The rest of the coach held a luggage section and two passenger compartments -- one for smokers, one for non-smokers -- divided by the vestibule. When the railmotor approached of the D & P's six "halts" (rudimentary platforms), the vehicle was held in place by brakes applied automatically when the steps on either side were swung down from under the vestibule door.

There was traffic enough on the P & D for passenger service, but the L & NW, like most railways in Britain, found that other options served them better. By 1920, the P & D branch was served by push-pull tank-engine and standard rail carriage sets and two years later, the railmotor was out of service.

Two other, better-known L & NW railmotor services were the Oxford to Bicester and Bletchley to Bedford.