Great Northern 2-2-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 1 (Locobase 8247)

Data from [], Steamindex's summary of Great Northern locomotive practice. See also George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 3

The capsule on this class of "Little Sharps" says that it was ordered in two batches in 1847: 6 on 5 February, the other 44 on 4 March. Their initial service area was on the "... Lincolnshire lines: Louth to New Holland on 1 March 1848, including the East Lincolnshire Railway from Boston to Grimsby," according to Steamindex. Both Steamindex and Bird comment on the compensating levers that allowed the class to follow the relatively poor and light branch-line track; Bird notes that its installation followed its successful patent application, which was granted in 1850.

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Class 229 (Locobase 2208)

See Ahrons (1927) for data. . See also George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 31.

Designed by Archibald Sturrock. Kitson & Sons supplied the first 4, Sharp the next 4 (with 236 arriving in 1861), and Robert Stephenson the last 4.

Originally delivered as coke burners. In 1864, the longitudinal mid-feather firebox was fitted with a brick arch and deflector plate and in 1866 the firebox was converted for coal burning.

Bird's encomium on what he described as "Mr Sturrock's masterpiece in designing": "These were single driving engines of generous dimensions and fine proportions, which must strike the observer as being well in the front rank of locomotives so far as grace of appearance is concerned, while their performances abundantly proved that in no way were workmanlike qualities of speed and power sacrificed to obtain a satisfactory outline."

Certainly the grate and firebox areas represented substantial increases over previous British express passenger engines.

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Class 51 (Locobase 9650)

Data from [], Steamindex's summary of Great Northern locomotive practice. See also George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 4

The first six of the "Little Hawthorns" (works #685-690) ordered by Benjamin Cubitt were intended for service on the Glasgow, Dumfries & Carlisle Railway. The next batch to be delivered had lower works numbers (654-659), but higher road numbers (57-62). The last group (660-667, road #63-70) had 15 1/2" cylinders.

As the class aged, some were rebuilt. Four done by Archibald Sturrock -- 54 in 1861, 52 and 59 in 1862, and 51 in 1865 -- received 16" cylinders and had their wheelbases extended. Patrick Stirling gave 60, 62, and 69 straightback boilers and enclosed cabs in 1867. 67 and 70 were substantially rebuilt in 1879 with new frames, 4-ft diameter boilers, new cylinders, and an 0-4-2 arrangement. (What was left of the original, Locobase wonders.) Greater power being a constant demand, the cylinders were enlarged to 17", then 18" before the two were retired in 1900-1901.

As the East Kent Railway began construction in 1860, the Great Northern lent them 6 engines (52 to 57). The southern English navvies of the EKR (later part of the London, Chatham & Dover) bestowed on the sextet the nickname "Geordies" to reflect their Yorkshire origins.

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Class 6 (Locobase 3503)

Patrick Stirling's dramatic enlargement of the Jenny Lind design (Locobase 664) featured higher boiler pressure, larger pistons, a 271% increase in tractive effort, and an even lower factor of adhesion. They could pull 220 tons at 60-62 mph on the level. They served as prototypes for the French Nord.

Note how nicely sized the boiler and grate dimensions appear to be, a good balance all the way around. Even the factor of adhesion is relatively high for a single. Sometime later, the cylinders were bored out to 17 1/2".

Steam ports were 14" x 1 1/2", exhaust ports 2 1/2" in diameter. Valve travel in full gear measured 4 1/2" with an outside lap of 1 1/2" and no inside lap; lead was set at 1/2".

Ahrons (1927).

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Class 871 (Locobase 8966)

Data from C J Bowen Cooke, "British Locomotives", (London: Whitaker & Co, 1894) and George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 136-138.

Locobase notes that Patrick Stirling apparently used the same boiler as that of the 1888 2-2-2, but fitted it to a smaller grate. Bird comments that the engine's long wheelbase "...was mitigated to some extent by special play in the leading axleboxes which eased the engine on curved portions of the road." These axle boxes had strictly lateral play in them, Bird adds; the traverse was at right angles and "...in no sense what is implied by the use of the word 'radial'".

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Class 91 (Locobase 9653)

Data from [], Steamindex's summary of Great Northern locomotive practice. See also George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 17.18.

The original locomotives delivered by Longridge were built to a Thomas Crampton patent and was laid out on a 4-2-0 arrangement. To allow for the tall drivers and low-pitched boiler called-for in Crampton's concept while making use of greater adhesive weight, a cross spring connecting the the two drivers also linked with the two sets of carrying wheels. The connecting rods from the inside cylinders drove a dummy crank axle just ahead of the firebox, which turned outer crank axles that were coupled to cranks on the drivers.

All of this failed to put enough weight on the drivers so Sturrock converted the class to the 2-2-2s shown in the specifications. Known as "converted Cramptons" and given new frames with the drivers placed ahead of the firebox and one of the two carrying axles under the footplate, these engines served for years.

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Class 92 (Locobase 9666)

Data from [], Steamindex's summary of Great Northern locomotive practice. See also George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 66-67.

Locobase 3047 tells the story of the single 4-2-2 (road #215) that Sturrock put into service ahead of its time. In the present entry, we encounter the drivers of the 215 as they spun under a new locomotive. The story went that Stirling couldn't bear the thought of scrapping "those beautiful wheels".

This engine was similar to the 84"-drivered 7-footers of 1868 ( see Locobase 3503) , but had a wheelbase measuring 6" longer and, of course, the very tall drivers.

Ultimately the 92 was rebuilt in 1883, this time with new wheels. It was retired in 1902.

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Class Class 4 (Locobase 2212)

Data from George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910) and from "A Rebuilt GNR 7 ft Single" p. 25.

Steam ports were 14" x 1 1/2", exhaust ports 2 1/2" in diameter. Valve travel in full gear measured 4 1/2" with an outside lap of 1 1/2" and no inside lap; lead was set at 1/2". (Ahrons, 1927) At the Newark brake trials in 1875, this engine achieved 49.5 mph with a train load (including engine and tender) of 257 tons.

Ivatt fitted a larger boiler in 1897 to 21 that had 1,020 sq ft of tube heating surface, 103 sq ft from the firebox (1,123 sq ft total), working pressure of 170 psi, and a grate measuring 17 3/4 sq ft.

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Class Large Hawthorns (Locobase 3046)

Data from [], Steamindex's summary of Great Northern locomotive practice;WB Paley, "An Old English Locomotive", Railroad Gazette, Volume XXXII [32], No 23 (8 June 1900) and "Large Hawthorn", archived on the Great Northern Railway Society website at [], last accessed 20 July 2023. See also David Kinnear Clark and Zerah Colburn, Recent Practice in the Locomotive Engine (London: Blackie and Son, MDCCCLX [1860], p. 78 and plate XXXIV [34]; George Frederick Bird, The Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway 1847-1910 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1910), p. 14-15, Ahrons (1927), and Glover (1967). (Thanks to Alexander Blessing for his 11 July 2023 email correcting specifications for the valve gear, wheelbase, coal capacity, driver diameter, boiler pressure, tube count, and grate area.) Works numbers were 95-106 in 1951-1952.

Inside-cylinder, outside-frame express engines that had fireboxes raised above the boiler line. Apparently drawing on his experience as works manager for the Great Western Railway, Sturrock used a "mid-feather", essentially a wall dividing the firebox in half transversely that left the upper quarter of the firebox open for the flame path. Three of the clas--203, 213-214 were delivered with domeless boilers. The other nine used quite large domes These RB Paley farily described as "unusually large and ugly."

David Kinnear Clark offered praise at the time for the "moderate number of flue-tubes within a comparatively spacious barrel, [that] has always been a good feature in Messrs Hawthorn's engines, and account for the generally superior steaming power of their engeins."

Boiler pressure is an estimate. Ahrons was not able to find the boiler pressure, but noted that "many of A.[Archibald] Sturrock's Great Northern engines worked at 150 psi." Clark

WB Paley published more information on this class in a 1900 RG issue.. Paley gave the heating surface total as 968.4 sq ft and reported two more tubes (173 total). Paley didn't give the adhesion weight. However, he noted that Sturrock pressed his boiler to 150 psi, but that many later engines on the Great Northern (as well as the Midland and the London and North Western) ran at 120-140 psi.

Paley also described a typical run in 1853 with these engines on the Scottish Express between Hitchin and Peterborough as covering the 32 miles in 40 minutes and the entire Peterborough to King's Cross (London) distance of 76 1/4 miles in 100 minutes even.

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Class none (Locobase 655)

Data from E L Ahrons, The British Railway Locomotive, 1825-1925 (London: Locomotive Publishing Company, 1926).

Ahrons offered his judgement on this later example of the outside-cylinder version of Patrick Stirling's single-wheeler design: "The were excellent straightforward engines, the chief characteristics of which were the very long wheel base and the smallness of the boiler, which; in justice to the engines, hardly seem to trouble them at all, even with heavy loads at very high speeds.

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Class none (Locobase 8447)

David Kinnear Clark, CE, The Steam Engine: A Treatise on Steam Engines & Boilers (London: Blackie & Son, 1890), pp. 557-567.

This was the apotheosis of the very tall "8-ft single", an outside-cylinder engine with a relatively large boiler (for the singles - modest by most other measures).

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Class none (Locobase 8448)

David Kinnear Clark, CE, The Steam Engine: A Treatise on Steam Engines & Boilers (London: Blackie & Son, 1890), pp. 565-566.

Clark says Stirling built this class of 7-ft 7 1/2" singles because he would be able to construct them for less than the 8-ft singles he had been manufacturing up to that point. The firebox was the same, the boiler slightly larger.