Midland & Great Northern Joint 4-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class A rebuild (Locobase 8352)

Data from Richard Marsden's LNER Encyclopedia -- [], last accessed 5 September 2006.

These were upgrades of an upgrade of fifteen locomotives built by Beyer, Peacock for the Lynn & Fakenham Railway (4) and the Midlands & Eastern Railway (11). Their origin earned the class the nickname of "Peacocks" and, Marsden comments, "...had a reputation for being well built and giving good performances."

The first update came in 1895-1909 when the locomotives were refitted with standard Midland Railway C-class boilers pressed to 160 psi. Marsden comments: "Compared to the original boilers, they had larger fireboxes and smaller barrels."

M & GN began another upgrade in 1914 to about half the original class. Not a high-priority program, apparently, the effort covered eight locomotives over the next 13 years. Larger boilers pitched 4" higher formed the centerpiece of the retrofit.

Long since relegated to secondary service, the Class A Rebuilds hauled passenger and goods trains in the Bourne and Spaulding areas, according to Marden, who comments :"These passenger services were usually light trains of only four six-wheeled coaches, but the goods trains could sometimes be quite heavy."

All of the 1895-rebuild class As and three of the Class A rebuilds were gone before the LNER took over the M & GN in October 1936. The remaining 5 Class A Rebuilds were clapped out as well and the LNER scrapped three of them within a year and the last was gone in May 1941.

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Class C/D52 & D53 (Locobase 8348)

Data from Richard Marsden's LNER Encyclopedia -- [], last accessed 11 April 2007. Sharp, Stewart works numbers were 3988-4013 in 1894.

Designed by Samuel Waite Johnson, this class of 4-4-0s served the jointly operated M & GN on the metals west of Lynn in East & Midland Railway territory. Sharp, Stewart produced the first 26 in 1894 and added seven in 1896. Beyer, Peacock & Co finished the class in 1899 with seven more. Marsden comments that it was unusual in Britain for a small railway to procure so many locomotives in just five years.

As delivered, they were fitted with standard Class B boiler that had 244 1 3/4"-diameter tubes. When later rebuilt by the LNER, those that had not otherwise been rebuilt were fitted with the round-topped boiler with three rings used in the J40 0-6-0 (Locobase 5973); they were LNER Class D52. It is that configuration that is shown in the data. Seven Class C were refitted with a small Belpaire boiler with 2 rings were later classified as C/2, then in July 1942 redesignated D53.

Marsden notes that the early history of the C class was pulling through trains from the Midlands to Lowestoft and Yarmouth as well as expresses to Peterborough and Cromer. They also served fast freight traffic such as produce expresses and fish trains (i.e., perishable commodities).

In the 1930s, the line, now part of the LNER, pulled the suddenly very popular Saturday beach trains. Indeed, although the LNER would double-head trains, "...single-handed D52s and D53s wer often recorded hauling twelve or even fifteen bogie trains."

Noting that such usage meant heavy coal consumption, Marsden says that the locomotives "...managed to handle these extremely heavy loads with success." Because the line was mostly single-tracked and signal delays were common, the trains often had to wait for clearance, which let the locomotives to "...'catch their breath' as it were, and build up sufficient boiler pressure."

Even so, the LNER scrapped many of the D52s (13) and a few of the D53s almost as soon as the Grouped system took over the M & GNJ in 1936. The last D52 was retired in 1943. The last D53 went out of service near the end of World War II in January 1945.