Great Central 4-4-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 1090 (Locobase 10691)

Data from "Railway Notes - Great Central Ry," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol XV (15 March 1909), p. 42.

Derived from the same base as the compounds shown in Locobase 2270, this engine was rebuilt from a simple-expansion class that had 19" x 26" cylinders. The boiler and Belpaire firebox as well as the running gear remained the same, except that the link motion was replaced by 3 sets of Walschaert radial valve gear. Indeed, the cylinder volume remained essentially unchanged, so clearly J G Robinson was looking for a way to smooth out the reciprocating stresses by inducing six beats per turn of the wheel. He divided the drive, with the outside cylinders driving the rear axle like 1090's stable mates and the inside cylinder turning a crank on the leading coupled axle.

Whatever its merits, 1090 was the only locomotive converted and would be the only GCR locomotive to use Walschaert gear. Just before Grouping, the GCR converted the 1090 back to a 2-cylinder setup by removing the center cylinder and valve train and reinstalling the Stephenson link motion.

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Class 8B Jersey Lilies / C4 (Locobase 2289)

Data from Ahrons, 1927. See also Samuel Rendell (M. I Mech.E), "The Steam Locomotive: Fifty Years Ago and Now", read Saturday, 13 January 1906 and published in the Transactions of the Manchester Association of Engineers 1906 (January to March); and "New Powerful 'Atlantic' Type Express Passenger Locomotive-Great Central Railway Company", Practical Engineer, Volume 32 (8 December 1905), p. 884.

JG Robinson simple-expansion design followed almost immediately by the compound 258 class (Locobase 2270).

They had a relatively modest firebox heating surface of 133.1 sq ft, which Glover (1967) explains was a result of using the same boiler and firebox as that adopted for the contemporaneous 4-6-0 design. The 1905 variant had a deeper Belpaire firebox that yielded the heating surface area as shown in the specifications. At the time of their delivery, the locomotives were described in the Practical Engineer report as being "of considerable dimensions, and will rank amongst the most powerful engines ever built for the Great Central traffic."

See Locobase 10691 for the one C4 that was converted to a 3-cylinder locomotive.

When taken up by the LNER in the 1923 grouping, these engines became the C4 class.

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Class 8D & 8E / C5 (Locobase 2270)

Data from Ahrons, 1927 and Richard Marsden's LNER Encyclopedia [] (26 September 2004).

Designed by JG Robinson , this particular variant represents the later engine with a deeper Belpaire firebox offering more heating surface area. They were later superheated, . One originally was fitted with Schmidt superheater in 1911, a second with a 24-tube Robinson variant. In their final, 1922 form, the 2" flue count being reduced to 110 to make room for 22 5 1/4" flues.

Hamilton Ellis (Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways, 1968) presents us with the" ..somewhat ponderous" name of one of the engines as "The Rt. Hon. Viscount Cross, GCB, GCSI."

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Class 9K/9L / C13/C14 (Locobase 2310)

Design of an inside-cylinder tank engine by JG Robinson. See Ahrons (1927) for data, corrected and expanded from article on Richard Marsden's [] (22 Feb 2004) and from "New Ten-Wheel Passenger Tank Engine, Great Central Railway," Locomotive Magazine, Vol VIII (18 April 1903), pp. 264-265

Vulcan Foundry delivered the first dozen, which were allocated GCR's road numbers 1055-1066. The 12 Beyer, Peacock-built C14s delivered in 1907 were identical in most respects, but had larger side tanks with 375 Imp.gal (450 US gal) greater water capacity and more coal bunkerage.

All were superheated to the same design; see Locobase 5927.

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Class C4 superheated (Locobase 6300)

See Richard Marsden's LNER Encyclopedia [] (26 Sept 2004) for data.

Marsden explains that the conversion of the C4 to a superheated design occurred first in 1912, but took over 20 years to complete. Most of the conversions included the substitution of 10" piston valves for the original slide valves at the same time new cylinders with a 2" larger diameter would be fitted. All but 7 of the original 8B stud would be converted.

Although superseded on the express runs for which they were originally built, most of the C4s didn't begin leaving service until the 1948 Nationalization. Very quickly after that , the 20 still in service were scrapped.