Taff Vale 0-6-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 75 (Locobase 10430)

Data from "Old Mineral Locomotive, Taff Vale Railway", The Locomotive Magazine, Volume IX (26 December 1903), p. 373..

According to Steamindex's summary of Taff Vale's locomotive history , Locomotive Superintendent Joseph Tomlinson designed the class. In production for 13 years and supplied by several builders in addition to the West Yard shops -- Hawthorn, Kitson & Company, Slaughter Gruning (later Avonside) -- the moderately sized engine was a familiar sight.

They betrayed most of the features of the engines of their day. Lots of rivets, weatherboard with spectacles, but no other shelter, wide-capped stack, double frames, outside springs over the drivers and between the frames, prominent equalizer, and outside coupling rods, but inside cylinders.

Soon after Tom Hurry Riches took over the superintendency, however, he switched to an inside-frame design because the double-frame locomotives often suffered from broken axles. An economical manager, Riches converted four of the class to 0-4-4T for branch line operations, a conversion which entailed removing the last coupled axle, placing a bogie inside the frame, and adding a bunker behind the footplate.

Class 90 (Locobase 20447)

Data from "The Sirhowy Railway", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXI [21] (15 January 1915), pp. 9-13.

Locobase almost never ignores the original owner of a locomotive, but makes an exception in this case. The Taff Vale was the principal beneficiary of the Metropolitan's rapid disillusionment with the size of the design originally procured for its St John's Wood extension in 1868. (Sirhowy Railway, in Monmouthshire, bought the fifth engine in 1873 and gave it #9.)

The rationale for their purchase was the severity of grades met on that line. In terms of cylinder volume and heating surface area, this was one of the biggest six-coupled tanks built in Great Britain. Its small drivers generated considerable tractive effort for the time. The side elevation showed a double-framed locomotive with relatively short tanks extending forward from the utterly unprotected footplate and ending between the first two axle boxes. All three sets of axle springs per side were equalized with externally mounted levers. The dome sat squarely over the middle axle. From the side, the smokebox had trapezoidal sides (bottom side wider than top).

But the Metropolitan found -that the 0-4-0Ts already in service provided ample power. (Locobase wonders if the small drivers couldn't generate the rapid acceleration necessary for suburban line service.) So the Taff Vale bought two engines in 1873 and two more in 1875. Despite the axle boxes in both frames, the design sufferered from repeated bouts of broken axles. (Locobase suspects misalignment between the two frames caused by the stresses of a relatively large cylinder wracking one or the other.

Sirhowy operated the 9 for only four years (one year as London & North Western 1891) before selling it to the Alexandra Docks & Railway in Newport, where it took engine #5. It remained in service well into the 20th Century and even earned a new boiler and new cylinders.

Class L (Locobase 20248)

Data from "A Trip to Ireland - Part 2", Locomotive News and Railway Notes, Volume V [5], No 28 (25 April 1920), p. 91 and "Old Mineral Engines, Taff Vale Railway", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXIII [23] (15 November 1917), pp. 225-227.

In its original form, the Class L tender engine design was produced by the railway itself (12 between 1874-1889 at the Cardiff shops) and 73 by Kitson & Company between 1874 and 1885. Kitson's works numbers were 1974 in 1874, 1975-1979 and 2025-2034 in 1875, 2109-2110, 2135 in 1878, 2238-2240 in 1879, 2344-2354 in 1880, 2355, 2440-2450 in 1881, 2581-2586 in 1883, 2587-2590 and 2656-2667 in 1884, 2841-2848 in 1885.

They were the last engines with separate tenders the TVR would buy, but the class remained one of the most numerous right up to the Grouping years beginning in 1923.