Mersey Tunnel Railway 0-6-4 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class Class 1 (Locobase 3246)

Data from "Tank Locomotives for the Mersey Railway", Engineer, Volume 61, (19 February 1886), pp. 143, 150; Ahrons (1927), "Locomotive for the Mersey Tunnel Railroad", Railroad Gazette, Volume 18 (9 April 1886), p. 241; and Robert Tufnell, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Railway Locomotives (London: Quarto Publishing Ltd, 1986). See also Francis Fox [chief engineer] "The Mersey Railway", Paper 2165 in Minutes of Proceeding of the Institute of Civil Engineering, pp. 40-59, plus illustrations, archived at [] and "Mersey Railway Tunnel" online in the Grace's Guide To British Industrial History website at [], both last accessed 7 December 2022. Robert Tufnell, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Railway Locomotives (London: Quarto Publishing Ltd, 1986). Works numbers were 2601-2608 in 1885 and 2782 in 1886.

Tufnell describes these brutes, which were designed to handle the 3.7% grades out of the Mersey River Valley. Each locomotive cost the railway 2,775 pounds and they were named The Major, Earl of Chester, Duke of Lancaster, Gladstone, Cecil Raikes, Fox, Liverpool, Birkenhead, and Connaught.

Ahrons pointed out that the cylinders were the largest yet produced in England at the time of their introduction. RG repeats the requirements originally presented in The Engineer, some of which dictated the unusual wheel arrangement. One was that a trailing load of 336,000 lb (152.5 short tons) would be hauled up a 1 in 27 (3.7%) grade and the engine should be able to start the train on that incline. Moreover, Beyer, Peacock had to be able to put that power inside an extreme width that would not exceed that allowed outside of the tunnel.

The tunnel itself was the first subsurface railway passage outside of the London Underground's tubes. It crossed under the Mersey River between the city of Liverpool's Central Station on the east bank with Hamilton Station and Central Station in Birkenhead and the rest of the Wirral peninsula on the west bank. After 1879 test bores into New Red Sandstone rock, construction of the tunnels began in August 1881, was "vigorously prosecuted by day and by night", and opened for revenue traffic on 1 February 1886. The Mersey measured 3/4 of a mile (1.25 km) wide over the tunnel, which was 26 ft (7.92 m) wide and "about 3 miles [4.8 km] long", according to Fox..

Resolving those two demands meant placing all the drivers ahead the firebox, which was supported by the carrying bogie. The cylinders, which were tucked inside the frame, had their slide valves located underneath . The short rigid and long flexible wheelbase allowed the "engine to run steadily even at high speeds, and pass easily through 9-degree curves on the main line and 14 1/2 degrees on the sidings."

In summary, said Engineer's February 1886 report, "[T]here is nothing whatever, either in the general arrangement or in the detail, which is not perfectly simple and straightforward, and every part is easily accessible. The engine is well-proportioned, and all the wearing surfaces have been made amply sufficient."

RG's report also describes the advantages and limitations of condensing exhaust in tunnels. Advantages included heated feed water for more efficient steaming and lime in the water falling to the bottom of the tanks. The lime would gradually build up in the bottom of the tanks to as much as several inches deep, but its absence in the feed water meant that tubes and fireboxes would remain "unusually free from deposit", which extended their working lives.

On the other hand, "the absence of the blast on the fire of course renders it difficult to keep up steam for any length of time, but when working on the part of the line in open cuts, the blast can be used and the fire revived."

As with virtually all railway tunnels served by steam locomotives, many passengers found the smoke and cinders hard to take. Although passenger counts rose to 10 million in 1890, too many prospective riders returned to ferry boats and the line went bankrupt in 1900.

Four of these unusually powerful (and, perhaps, powerfully unusual) tank locomotives were sold in 1903 to J. & A. Brown of New South Wales, Australia. Overhauled in England, where the condensing system was removed, the locomotives arrived on the Richmond Vale Railway where they hauled coal from collieries at Minmi, Stockrington, Pelaw Main and Richmond Main to the junction with the New South Wales Government Railway.

Three others wound up on the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway.