Midland & Great Northern Joint 0-6-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 81 (Locobase 10166)

Data from "New Goods Locomotive, M & GN Joint Railway," Locomotive Magazine, Vol VI (January 1901), p. 1; and PCD, "Midland and Great Northern Railway and Its Locomotives", Volume XXVIII [28] (15 June 1922), p. 177. Works numbers were 3933-3944 in 1900.

This batch of locomotives was described as being exactly the same as a batch built for the Great Northern and were originally intended for the GNR. On the M & GN they were painted in a yellow livery.

Class D / J40 (Locobase 5973)

Data and information from Richard Marsden [] (3 April 2004).

Marsden says these were based on SW Johnson's Midland 6-coupleds. Neilson & Company supplied the first 8 in 1896 and Kitson & Co added 8 more in 1899.

They were intended solely for freight service and operated primarily between Yarmouth Beach and Melton Constable and South Lynn. J40s were pressed into passenger service when motive power grew scarce. Marsden adds the interesting note the Great Northern 0-6-0s were preferred in the western lines, however, "...due to the J40's relatively low water capacity which could pose problems in a headwind." (narrow margins, as we can see). Five were retired by 1937, when the M&GN was taken over by the LNER.

These Class Ds became J40s only in 1942; two years later in 1944, the last J40 had been retired.

Class D Rebuilt / J41 (Locobase 5974)

Data and information from Richard Marsden [] (3 April 2004).

When the M&GN took a locomotive in hand for a rebuild, it didn't stop at half measures! The D class obviously fell short of the mark in some ways at least because these Belpaire-boilered upgrades were much bigger and heavier than the originals. Tractive effort didn't change much, but the grate was bigger as was the tube surface, which meant more steam for a longer stint of driving. Adhesion also grew mightily and, Marsden points out, J41s "were usually used on the heavier and/or faster goods services."

But even a J41 could be overmatched. On one summer run in 1936, J41 #68 bogged down on a 1.1% grade while trying to haul 17 Gresley bogie coaches.

Soon after that incident (and unrelated to it) came the LNER's takeover of M&GN rolling stock. Neither the J40s nor the J41s lingered with the latter being phased out by 1943.