North Western Railways 4-4-0 Locomotives in India

Class H - converted (Locobase 10705)

Data from "Views on the NWR", Locomotive Magazine, Vol XV (15 April 1909), p. 75.

This tank engine was converted from a tender-engine Eight-wheeler at the Quetta shops to the design of Locomotive Superintendent L E H Yates.

Class SPS (Locobase 20920)

Data from "Standard Passenger Engine and Tender for the North Western Railway", No. 22, Vulcan Foundry Locomotive Catalogue, found on Flicker's Historical Locomotive Images website at [], last accessed 26 June 2021. See also Jan Shearsmith"Pakistan Railways Engine No. S/PS 3157-Part One: Production, posted 21 September 2017 at [], last accessed 8 January 2022. (Many thanks to Jorge Cerezo Toledo for his 26 June 2021 email containing links to several sites including the Vulcan Catalogue referred to above.) Vulcan works numbers for the four engines were 2770-2773 in 1911.

Shearsmith, writing about the museum's locomotive 3157, argues that it is "more than an object in the museum's collection. It reflects Britain's colonial past, particularly its role in creating the railway networks and subsequent trade networks formed for exporting British goods around the world and importing exotic and other goods from across the Empire.

Map of the Indian Railway system in 1931, prior to partition."

Part of a long-running SPS class of standard Indian passenger engines, this quartet of Eight-wheelers came equipped with a smokebox superheater that promised simpliciity in installation in existing locomotives. Otherwise, the engines retained the Belpaire firebox, tall drivers, and piston valves.

On the down side, smokebox superheaters provided only lackluster performance and were soon replaced with Robinson's version of the Schmidt fire tube superheater; see Locobase 4257.