Metropolitan - District 4-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class unknown (Locobase 9415)

Data from Locomotive Magazine "Steam Locomotives of the Metropolitan District Railway", Vol XII (15 January 1906), p. 3; and

Locobase 2144 describes the Metropolitans that ran in the Inner Circle. The present entry covers the District locomotives of the same basic design. They had smaller boilers and grates, but the same power dimensions as the Metropolitan engines. "Under heavy work," Hutton notes, coal consumption was claimed to be less than 30 lb/mile.

Twenty-four were delivered in 1871 (works 1063-1086) with BP adding more at the steady rate of 6 in each of 1876 (1612-1617), 1881 (2053-2058), 1883 (2298-2303), 1884 (2584-2588), and 1886 (2776-2781). The LM history notes the varieties among the 54 locomotives. Those built under Cecil (31-48) and Estal (49-54) had the Great Northern style of stack and most had plain brass domes and Ramsbottom safety valves mounted on the firebox. Estal introduced a cast-iron stack on his batch and retrofitted the first 36 when they came due for new boilers. Beginning with 25, the tanks had a cross-feeding bridge pipe and used the Adams bogie for its lead truck in place of the relatively rare four-wheel Bissell truck.