4-4-0 Steam Locomotives in Ireland

Class 34/A (Locobase 4776)

Data from "Compound (Worsdell-von Borries) Passenger Engine: Belfast & Northern Counties Railway", The Railway Engineer, Volume 43, No 11 (November 1903), pp. 364-365. See also OS Nock, Railways at the Turn of the Century 1895-1905, plate 81 and pp. 134-135.

Nock also commented that the King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were very satisfactory engines, describing them as "fast and efficient engines that did excellent work on the Belfast-Londonderry expresses and the seaside trains to Portrush."

Class 59 / B (Locobase 13466)

Data from Wikipedia entry at [], last accessed 18 November 2011. Works numbers were 3885-3889 in 1897.

Wikipedia reports that these cross-compounds were procured to increase available power as the 2-4-0s already in service (Locobase 10411) were being overmatched. They were known as the "Light Compounds".

They were immediately joined by larger Class D 4-4-0s; see Locobase 4776.

Two of the class -- 59 and 62 -- were "renewed" (Wikipedia's appropriate quotes) by the NCC in 1924, "although probably very little remained of the original engines except for their wheels and valve gear." They were held in their own U1 class.

60 and 62 were updated as Class B1 compounds, then years later in 1932 were converted to simple-expansion B3-class engines. As B3s, they joined 24, which had been simpled in 1925 and classed B2, then modified again to become the first B3.

Class A (Locobase 11377)

Data from George Montagu, Ten Years of Automotive Progress (London: Alston Rivers, Ltd, 1907) , p.124 and Wikipedia.

Locobase is subdividing the A class into the Belfast York Road group and those built by the Midland after the latter railway took over the BNCR in 1903. The compounding system is Worsdell's version of the original von Borries cross-compound. According to Wikipedia, the only "...visible difference between the two builders was the number of spokes on the bogie wheels, the Belfast-built batch had nine spokes while those built at Derby had ten."

After World War I, the Northern Counties Committee then operating the railways elected to rebuild many of the locomotives on their roster. See Locobase 11378 for the A1 modification.

Class A1 (Locobase 11378)

Data from Wikipedia at [], last accessed 18 November 2011.

See Locobase 11377 for the original Worsdell-von Borries 2-cylinder layout.

This was the rebuild that converted the As to simple-expansion operation. Tthe last -- Queen Alexandra -- completed the conversion in 1936.

Class B3 (Locobase 10543)

Data from Wikipedia "NCC Class B3", [], last accessed 17 June 2009.