London & North Western 4-6-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 2665 (Locobase 16113)

Data from "London & North Western Ry", Locomotive, Volume 17, No 221 (14 January 1911), p. 2.

Charles John Bowen Cooke's design first appeared as a mixture of engines with saturated boilers and others with superheaters. All had Belpaire boilers and the saturated engines received superheated in a very short time; see Locobase 2199.

Class 2665-superheated (Locobase 2199)

Data from "Side-Tank Passenger Engines, L&NWR", Engineer, Volume 111, No 26 (23 June 1911), p 654. See also Ahrons (1927).

The only "Pacifics" built for the L&NWR, these Bowen-Cooke only just qualify as their trailing truck served only to allow a larger coal bunker and not to enlarge the firebox.

Out of the first twenty in this class, the first two were delivered with saturated boilers in December 1910 (Locobase 16113). The next eight were delivered with superheaters beginning a month later in January 1911 and then ten saturated boiler engines in March-April 1911. Crewe added seventeen superheated locomotives beginning fifteen months later in July 1912.

At that point, the L&NW began installing superheaters in the twelve saturated engines, the first two appearing in May 1913. The other ten more went through the makeover before Crewe produced its last ten superheated locomotives in September-November 1916.

Steam Index, at [] accessed 20 March 2005, says these "superheater tanks" with Belpaire fireboxes, served quite effectively:" They had relatively small 8" (203 mm) piston valves to serve steam to their cylinders.

Steamindex outlines their service history: "As well as being very useful suburban tank engines, they assisted over Shap, both banking and double-heading, and worked on the Central Wales line where Precursor Tanks, with their higher axle loading, were prohibited."

As tank engines, they operated in local service from 1909 to 1941.