Fowler Crab - Stanier Lobster?

Well despite being interested in LMS motive power for nearly sixty years I have never heard a Stanier 2-6-0 being referred to as a Lobster, sometimes Stanier Crab, more often just Stanier Mogul, so when I paid a visit to Bradford Industrial Museum yesterday and saw the caption card below I almost laughed out loud!

Perhaps I'm in error though as an internet search does bring up a couple of references and the curatorial team at Bradford must have got it from somewhere, but I've never come across it in my (many) books on LMS motive power.

I'm hoping LMS2968 will give us the lowdown .

Cheers
Dave

 

They can't spell "Crewe" either.

 

And as far as I'm aware, Stanier moguls were never painted red either, only the Fowler Crabs received crimson lake.

 

Unfortunately it did happen among the spotting fraternity. Most enginemen of my acquaintance simply called them 'Crabs' and worked them turn and turn about with the Horwich variety on exactly the same workings. Other names, I hate to say, include 'Camel', 'Tapered Crab' and 'Straight Framed Crab'. Personally. I go for 'Stanier Crabs', although others in the SMF aren't always happy!

Of course, not only does Crewe have an E on the end, but also starts with a capital letter.

And yes, all forty were ALWAYS black, whereas the first hundred only Horwich Crabs were originally in Crimson Lake, which survived only until their first repaint.

 

Looks like a very moderate Princess Marina to me.

 

How I would react to Crewe being misspelled:

 

Calm down dears, its only a spellcheck error...

Presumably its a Lobster because it turned red when it was steamed...

 

huochemi is quite correct it is a 3.5"g LBSC design 'Princess Marina'. The card is clearly wrong.

Cheers,
Julian

 

Yes, should have mentioned that. 'Curly' Lawrence as LBSC drew the plans and had many fittings available for a 3 1/2"gauge Stanier Crab, and there are a lot of them around. There are many variations as the model engineers who built them didn't always stick rigidly to the plans.

The SMF owns one of these, although incomplete and minus tender. It's quite big, but rather lost on the front running plate of the 4' 8.5" model!

 

To heap further Ignominy on my local Museum, did Stanier moguls really run throughout the UK rail Network ?
so how about
' This is a fanciful 'Pink' model of a steam locomotive quite similar to the Stanier designed 2-6-0's of which 40 were built at Crewe works for the London Midland Scottish Railway which were in reality all painted black '

 

They covered an awful lot of it. Up to about 1935 they were spread across all sections of the LMS, including the Midland, Central and Northern (Scotland) as far north as Aberdeen. After that they were concentrated mostly in the Western Division. But they worked fitted goods in particular across Western, Eastern and North Eastern Regions. Excursions took them all over the place on the east and west coasts and down to Bath and Bristol. There is even a recording of 2956 on the northbound Pines Express on 09/08/56. There is only a single sighting of a class member South of the Thames though (2984 Hither Green shed 17/09/60) and while there are sightings of them on Kingmoor mpd, the only known working after 1935 is 2961 on a Down Class K minerals at Etterby Junction 22/04/1965.

 

I think what's more disturbing is the lettering on the Moguls tender and the Black Five cab, did Stevie Wonder apply them ?.

 

It's not uncommon for beautiful miniature steam locos that have often taken years to build being given quite frankly rubbish paint jobs!

Dave

 

Although there were an awful lot of them, Crabs don't seem to feature much in discussion & railway literature

 

Weren't they 'Hughes Crabs' not Fowler?

 

Yes, but they entered traffic under Fowler's CMEship (if that's a word) and he'd managed to make changes to George Hughes plans: Midland vacuum over steam brake and ejector and, of course, the Standard Midland-derived tender, which famously was eighteen inches narrower than the cab sides.

They were excellent engines and popular with enginemen (except at disposal: there were only two rows of firebars front to rear and they were very heavy). But of course, they were rarely used on express passenger duties, were painted black and didn't carry nameplates so were of no great interest to the average spotter.

 

I think LMS classes are particularly prone to silly nicknames because the official classifications were so unsystematic: there was only the power classification and (in some cases) an 'official' name, mostly not used by anyone much (e.g. Princess Coronation).
I say this as an LMS partisan.

 

Couldn't agree more with what you say but I probably misinterpret what you mention over the adopted brake arrangement. Was it not Hughes/L&Y practice for vac locos whereas Fowler/Midland had steam brake plus ejector? The latter being the Crab arrangement?
Apologies if that is what you meant or if I have any of the facts wrong.
The Crab is a fine design and the equal of Stanier 5s for all but the fastest timetabled demands I would imagine. No doubt the Stanier mogul is better still?

 

A great class of engines. Sad to think that with less internal politics the early LMS could have had more excellent designs like this.
I read somewhere that although Hughes designed, they were based on a St Rollox idea, derived from the ex-HR River class.

 

Cox claims that while they looked at a St Rollox 2-6-0 proposal, it was quite unsuitable, and so the Hughes mogul was a clean sheet of paper job. Or, he says, 9 clean sheets of paper jobs, for they evaluated 9 different preliminary designs. (Cox, Chronicles of Steam, pp16-17).
At least that's Cox' side of the story, he may not always be a totally dispassionate observer.