4-6-0 Steam Locomotives in Great Britain

Class 1400 (Locobase 2192)

Data from "New Six-Coupled Mixed Traffic Locomotive, L & N W Ry," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol VIII (9 May 1903), p. 334.

The last of Webb's unsatisfactory compounds, these engines were not rebuilt as were other designs and were retired by 1920. See below, however. The LNWRS argument recounted below suggests that the retirement may have come as much out of change of policy as from real dissatisfaction with the class.

But much more recently, [] (10 May 2003 -- the website of the London & North Western Railway Society's Goods Locomotives "exhibit" - says that the class's bad rap may have been undeserved. Acknowledging that the unofficial nickname was "Bill Bailey" (as in then-popular song that pleaded "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey?"), Chris Northedge, the exhibit's author, goes on to ask:

"But were they so bad? In fact, recently discovered drivers experiences have reported they were sure-footed engines that could ñplug away' at a load, preferred to much later LMS Stanier ñBlack 5' and ñ8F' 2-8-0's. Because they did their job well but unexceptionally they were never exciting and so were too easily dismissed as failures + which was not in fact the case."

Northedge presses his argument: "In support of this, only two had been built before Webb retired. The total of thirty finally built could not have been completed if they were such failures. Further, even the malicious name may not be true: Rodney Weaver has suggested the name may have come from prestige haulage of the ñBarnum & Bailey' circus trains, touring the country at the time. Maybe we shall never now know the true origins. Did they really deserve to be so maligned?"

Note: Tuplin (1963) gives a nominal tractive effort of 28,000 lb, commenting that it is "that of the simple engine produced by removing the high-pressure cylinders." The number given in the specifications is based on a 1924 ARA formula.

Class 19" Express Goods (Locobase 2196)

Data from [] (10 May 2003 -- the website of the London & North Western Railway Society's Goods Locomotives "exhibit"; and "New Express Goods Engines: London and North Western Railway", Railway Engineer, Volume 28, No 1 (January 1907), pp. 36-37. (Thanks to Alexander Blessing for his 1 January 2023 email supplying the Railway Engineer cite that supplied significant missing data.) Crewe works numbers were 4600-4619, 4640-4659, 4690-4769, 4790-4819, 4870-4789

Although based on George Whale's first express passenger Ten-Wheelers--the "Experiment" class shown in Locobase 2195--and therefore known informally as "Experiment Goods", these engines had smaller drivers and higher boiler pressure. The L&NWR's Crewe works interposed the two classes on their production line.

Chris Northedge, author of the LNWRS's commentary, notes that the LMS fitted a number of these with Belpaire fireboxes in 1927-1934. Three survived into British Rail days.

Class Claughton (Locobase 2201)

Data from "Simple Locomotives with Three and Four Cylinders", Engineering News, Volume 69, No 22 (29 May 1913), p. 1113; and "Four-Cylinder 4-6-0 Passenger Engines, 'Claughton', Class, London and North Western Railway", Railway Engineer, Volume 34, No 6 (June 1913), pp. 173-175. See also "Four-cylinder Express Locomotive, London & North Western Ry.", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XIX [19], No. 247 (15 March 1913), pp. 51-52; and Volume XXVI [26], No 337 (15 September 1920), p 189; Edward Cecil Poultney, British Express Locomotive Development (London: Northamptonshire Printing, 1952), pp. 125-127;. Graham Glover, British Locomotive Design 1925-1960 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), 2 W A Tuplin, The Steam Locomotive: Its Form and Function (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974); and G. Freeman Allen, Great Railway Photographs of Eric Treacy (London: Peerage Books, 1987), p.32. (Thanks to Alexander Blessing for his 2 April 2023 email detailing differences between the 1913 Claughtons and the 1920 batch.)

The cylinders were arranged in line abreast and powered the leading coupled axle; each cylinder was fed by its own 8" (203 mm) piston valve, but the valves on the inside cylinders on each side were actuated by rocking levers coupled to the outside valve spindles. (Piston size and port design as well as valve settings were criticized for their potential for inconsistent performance.)

A note about heating surface areas: The figures given in all of the sources don't compute. The 1913 accounts credit the class with 159 1 7/8" (47.6 mm) tubes measuring 14 ft long (4.27 m), but a total heating surface area of 1,818 sq ft (168.9 sq m). Locobase's data reflect the calculation of tube heating surface based on external diameters. So we don't know where the extra 92 sq ft (8.55 sq m) came from.

See Steamindex's excellent summary of the variety of opinions at [], in particular their excerpt from AJ Powell's Steam Days, last accessed 4 May 2023. In other sources, Tuplin and Glover both noted how controversial was this Bowen-Cooke design. After praising the size of the Belpaire firebox and its heating surface area, Glover observed "When new and in capable hands, [they] were responsible for prodigies of haulage power and speed, probably unequalled in Great Britain at the time." LM reports on the 9 February 1913 trial run between Rugby and Crewe trailing a load equivalent to 20 1/2 vehicles. The engine covered the 75 1/4 miles (121 km), which included two "permanent way slacks", in 82 minutes for an average of 55.2 mph (89 kph).

Tuplin summarized his case by noting that the design "was excellent in broad principle and some of its early performances were very striking, but imperfections in detail caused its average performance to be little better than that of smaller North Western locomotives with superheaters." He adds that "quite small changes" might have anticipated the Castles of the Great Western by ten years.

Poultney's admittedly "limited" experience on the footplate hauling relatively light 260-280 ton trains left him with the impressions of "comfortable engines to ride on and worked nicely at fairly short cutoffs, about 20 to 30 per cent" As a passenger, he found their work had been " noted with very much heavier trains."

At the other end of their lives, we have G. Freeman Allen (in Great Railway Photographs of Eric Treacy ) noting their "greed for coal" and the "fretting of motive power chiefs with heavy repair bills, [which] no manner of tinkering with Caprotti valve gear, blastpipe modifications, piston valve adjustments or reboilering had managed to tame." Two were rebuilt as Patriots.

E C Poultney wrote that most Claughton cylinder diameters measured 16" (as shown above in Locobase's data), but that some had 15 3/4" and even fewer had 15" cylinders. The "official" diameter was claimed to be 15 3/4" and its total area including superheater came to 2,128 sq ft (197.70 sq m) using a superheater offering 379 sq ft (35.21 sq m) area.

Alexander Blessing cited the 1920 LM report on the naming of one Claughton "Patriot" in memory of the L&NWR staff that fought and died in World War I. Compared to the original design, the data supplied by its designer Charles Bowen Cooke stated the tube heating surface as 1,574 sq ft (146.25 sq m) derived from 149 tubes (10 fewer) and 24 flues. that together with the 171.2 sq ft from the firebox yielded 1,745 sq ft (162.12 sq m) over all.

Despite a later installation of a somewhat larger boiler, which also served as the basis for the "Baby Scots" described in Locobase 1485, the Claughtons never quite gained the reputation of many other British four-cylinder 4-6-0 designs. Virtually all of the class had been retired by the end of the 1930s.

Class Experiment (Locobase 2195)

Data from "Mixed Traffic Locomotive, London & North Western Railway," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol XIII (15 May 1907), pp. 80-82. See also See also J Maxwell Dunn, A.M.I.Loco.E., " Modern Locomotive Practice on the London and Nother Western Railway," Locomotive News and Railway Notes, Volume 2, No 7 (10 June 1919), p 3. Crewe works numbers were 4505-4509, 4550-4559, 4620-4639, 4680-4689, 4770-4789, and 4830-4869

George Whale's first Ten-Wheelers on the London & North Western, although Dunn contended they were almost identical to the 19-class goods locomotives supplied in the same year. (Locobase 2196). In fact, the L&NWR's Crewe works interposed the two classes on their production line.

According to Tuplin (1963), this passenger engine was an indifferent performer. He adds that more than 100 were built because it's more expensive to stop construction of a class once it's underway than it is to let it run out its string. In part, Glover (1967) explains, the weakness of the design lay in the provision of a shallow firebox offering 19% less heating surface than the earlier Precursor Atlantics while their smaller drivers demanded more, not less, steam for the same turn of speed.

The last of the class retired in 1935.

Class Prince of Wales (Locobase 2200)

Data from Wikipedia and from Edward Cecil Poultney, British Express Locomotive Development (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1952), p. 121, 123. Supplemented by "Railway Notes from Great Britain", Indian Industries and Power, Volume XIII [13], No 12-issue 156 (August 1916), p. 508 See also J Maxwell Dunn, A.M.I.Loco.E., " Modern Locomotive Practice on the London and Nother Western Railway," Locomotive News and Railway Notes, Volume 2, No 7 (10 June 1919), p 9; and "An Altered Valve Gear on a London, Midland & Scottish Ry Locomotive", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXIX [29], No 370 (15 June 1923), pp. 157-158. (Thanks to Peter Christener and Wes Barris for their 12 July and 14 August emails correcting the number built.)

LNWR's Crewe Works produced 135 over a long run. North British Locomotive Company produced 20 in 1915-1916. Schmeiser's usually reliable builder's list shows no such activity, but BRDatabase's accounting--[], last accessed 25 August 2025--gives the following:

21256-21257 in October 1915, 21258-21263 in November, 21264-21269 in December, and 21270-21275 in January 1916.

William Beardmore & Company works numbers were 174 in June 1921, 175-185 in August, 186-196 in September, 197-207 in October; 208-216, 234, 217-218 in November, 219-233 in December, 235-237 in January 1922, 238-247 in February, 248-255 in March, 256-263 in April, and an afterthought: 1 in February 1924 with no works number.

Big Bowen-Cooke designed Ten Wheelers, these were the largest two-cylinder passenger engines built for the L&NWR. Dunn described them as "practically the same as the well-known Experiment class [Locobase 2195] with the addition of a Schmidt superheater." Eight-inch (203 mm) diameter piston valves supplied steam to the cylinders.

So large a class meant that the Crewe Works wouldn't build all of them. North British Locomotive supplied 20 in 1915-1916 and William Beardmore & Company produced the last 90 to a 1920 order. (works numbers 174-263 in 1921-1922.)

The Joy valve gear proved troublesome in service, including a liability to breakage that contributed to at least one fatal accident at Betley Road. Tests of modified Joy gear and a Walschaert variant failed to demonstrate a real improvements according to Steamindex, citing P Atkins,West Coast 4-6-0s At Work (1981). "The adoption of marine-type big ends on the Joy-fitted engines largely cured the problem." (LM's 1923 report on the "Bret Harte's" update characterized the advantage of outside gear operating inside cylinders was the elimination of congestion between the frames. LM acknowledged that such a layout was "absolutely novel" in British practice..)

Steamindex cites Bulleid, H.A.V. Master builders of steam. 1963 for its colorful comments on LMS's Stanier being surprised by the high quality of Crewe boilers: "" These boilers were decidedly on the small side for the engine duties, and the L.N.W.R. footplate teams were expected to, and did, thrash them to keep time with heavy trains. They made a rather invigorating noise, and at night looked highly pyrotechnic. But these boilers did not require excessive maintenance and had long lives" They also ranged widely across the LNWR because of their relatively low axle loading.

Almost all were retired in the 1930s, with only six surviving until Nationalization in 1948; these were withdrawn in 1949.