Great Central 4-2-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 13 / X4 (Locobase 2249)

Ahrons, 1927 gives 132 sq ft firebox heating surface, Glover (1967) says 142 sq ft. Railroad Gazette (27 July 1900) breaks the tie with 132 sq ft.

Designed by Pollitt and fitted with his standard boiler and Belpaire firebox; steam admission came through piston valves.. Used only briefly near London but carried on for years on the Cheshire Lines between Liverpool and Manchester.

[] says 1900 as a service introduction date; Ahrons said 1890. RG confirms that it was 1900. The same article noted that Pollitt had resigned from the Great Central soon after the design was finished.

Four were equipped with superheaters in 1915; see Locobase 6442.

---

Class X4 (Locobase 6442)

Data from Richard Marsden's LNER Encyclopedia found at [] (visited 27 Dec 2004).

Like most of Pollitt's locomotives, these had Belpaire fireboxes of such size that when superheated, the furnaces contributed nearly half of all the heat available to turn water into steam. Marsden notes that these were not a big success in the London Extension service for which they were designed. Once assigned to Cheshire, however, the class served those express trains adequately.

By the 1923 Grouping, they were clearly antiquated and retirement had been completed by 1926. Marsden notes that the supreheated boilers were still in good shape, so they soldiered on as stationary boilers for some time.