London & South Western 0-6-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 273 (Locobase 10453)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol X (14 May 1904), p.82. Works numbers were 1163-1168, 1269-1274 (and possibly 1208-1210).

The LM history describes this design as "very sturdy and powerfully built and were a step in advance of any previously constructed by the company." The frame certainly had a brutish quality to it, with a thick outside plate whose upper line included curved "eaves" over the crank radius. (Locobase doesn't remember seeing such a line in any other locomotive.)

By 1886, however, the first of the class was rebuilt with a slightly bigger boiler (1,063.6 sq ft) pressed to 160 psi (for a calculated TE of 15,464 lb) and a total weight of the engine and tender of 128,128 lb.

Class 302 (Locobase 10515)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol XI (15 July 1905), p.119. Works numbers were 1360-1371.

These are described as "large and powerful engines", successors to the Ilfracombe Goods. One wonders just how successful they were when their histories show them being rebuilt in 12-17 years after their introduction and 3 were scrapped in the early 1890s.

Class 395 (Locobase 10616)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol XIII (15 April 1907), p. 69. Works numbers were 2747-2758.

These were pretty typical goods locomotives of the period, but were reportedly highly satisfactory. As the LM reported in 1907: "The engines have performed most excellent service, and had all along given the utmost satisfaction, hauling the heaviest goods trains over the main lines with ease and steadiness, proof of which is found in the fact of the large number of this class of engine built in later years."

Class Black Motor (Locobase 14912)

Data from wikipedia's LSWR 700 class entry at [] . See also the Southern E-group's account at [] . Dugal Drummond drew up his own design for a new six-coupled goods engine after the L&SWR sought designs from outside builders when the previous superintendent William Adams's health was failing. According to the E-group account, the result was very similar to a Drummond design for the Caledonian and used the same boiler as the recently introduced M7 class (Locobase 3133).

702-716 were renumbered very soon after they entered service, taking numbers of earlier engines: 306, 308, 309, 315, 317, 325v327, 339, 346, 350, 352, 355, 368, 459 respectively. (459 would be renumbered again in 1912 as 316.

Early days of operations exposed problems with jammed regulators that led to broken axles, but the class soon demonstrated their power to haul goods trains as well as pulling local passenger trains.

In 1919, Urie superheated the last of the class as a trial, which led to making over the rest; see Locobase 14913.

Class Black Motor - superheated (Locobase 14913)

Data from wikipedia's LSWR 700 class entry at [] . See also the Southern E-group's account at [] . After twenty years of service using saturated boilers (Locobase 14912), this class of six-coupleds underwent a substantial modification that featured a superheated boiler. The Southern E-group details the changes which included raising the boiler's pitch by nine inches (279 mm), extending the smokebox, and lengthening the frames. The first eleven engines were fitted with superheaters designed in the Eastleigh shops; these were credited with 167 sq ft (15.5 sq m) of area. Maunsell later installed his own design on all thirty and it is that version that appears in the specfications.

Because they were flexible and reasonably powerful locomotives, all but one the 700s served the L&SWR, the Southern, and British Railways until the early 1960s. Retirements began in 1961 and were complete a year later except for 30697, which remained in service until January 1964.

Class Ilfracombe Goods (Locobase 10465)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol X (15 September 1904), p.154. Works numbers were 1208-1210.

These small freight engines worked goods traffic on and around the Ilfracombe lines, which lay due north of Plymouth on the northern side of the Cornwall peninsula.

The class was rebuilt in the the late 1880s, at which time they were fitted with boilers pressed to 160 psi that had more tubes (182) of smaller diameter, a smaller grate (12.6 sq ft). They weighed 8/10 of a long ton more (59,584 lb) and used a bigger tender.

Class Lion (Locobase 10394)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol IX (24 October 1903), p. 240. Works numbers were 13-15, 22-24, 30-32.

Beattie took the Medusa-class goods design (Locobase 10392), hot out of the foundry, and increased the size of the firebox and consequently reducing the amount of tube heating surface (most likely by using shorter tubes). The result thus owned a bit more puff, although the power at the crosshead calculated as identical. In addition to Lion, Lioness and Tiger in 1863, the class included Rhinocerous, Mazeppa, Medea, Sultan, Sirocco, and Sappho in 1865.

The rest of the design was quite similar and the class operated change-and-change-about with the Medusas for 25 or more years. Lioness was scrapped first in June 1888 and Sirocco last in 1897.

Class Medusa (Locobase 10392)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol IX (24 October 1903), p. 239. Works numbers were 7-8.

Identical to the Gem class 2-4-0s (Locobase 10390) in most respects and following them immediately in production, Medusa and Mentor used inside cylinders to power the drivers, which now included all 3 axles. Medusa was scrapped just a year before the Gems in June 1884 while Mentor went two years later in June 1886.

See Locobase 13894 for 3 more very similar engines with larger fireboxes.

Class Ruby (Locobase 10442)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol X (12 March 1904), p. 43. Works numbers were 54-59.

These were very similar to the earlier Medea locomotives, but were slightly different in details. Their names were mixture of Rs (Ruby, Rocklia) and rivers (Avon, Test, Trent, and Stour). Avon was sold in April 1897 while the others were scrapped in August 1898 to early 1900.

Class Scotia (Locobase 10405)

Data from "The History of the London & South Western Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol IX (21 November 1903), p. 295. Works numbers were 569-574.

Beyer, Peacock's all-adhesion goods locomotives had very nearly the same power dimensions as the Nine Elms' Lion design, but the boiler was pressed to a higher degree and the grate was slightly larger.

After an average of 30 years service, the class was broken up between August 1891 and March 1898. One of the class - Cambria - accumulated about 870,000 miles in service before being scrapped.