BR steam liveries

As clinker mentioned ,it was nearly always(examples ) five fifty for a midland 2P, eighty seven o four for a 8 f ,forty four sixty five for a 4f. It was a bit different with the Midland 2F s ,I can remember when a long standing Kettering loco' ,thirty ninety, became 58214,it was then known as the later. Not only loco men but signalmen missed the 4 out as well for their register book.

 

The first digit will always be the same so it was superfluous. At Camden and Willesden generic class names were used for the various classes from listening to drivers and firemen. A Princess Pacific was always a corkie Liz, apparently there were an unbelievable number of corkes oiling points on them. Duchesses were either that or simply a big un and Royal Scots were always just Scots. For Jubilees there was a hangover from LMS days, they were 5Xs on both the ex LNW and Midland sheds

 

As a spotter in the 50's & 60's I would generally only write down the last four digits of the loco but it did depend where you were. If at York, LNER locos would have the 6 omitted but LMS locos would be written in full. If at Holbeck, it would be the other way around, with LMS locos having the 4 omitted and LNER locos recorded in full. This was to avoid confusion. How locos were verbally referred to followed an unwritten pattern that is hard to explain. For example, 76079 would be seventy six, o seven nine but 45428 would never be forty five, four, two, eight but either four, fifty four, twenty eight or simply fifty four, twenty eight. 44806, on the other hand would be either four, four, eight o six or forty eight o six; never forty four eight o six or four, forty eight o six.

 

The Pacifics' nicknames varied with the sheds. The earlier 6200-12 series were always just Lizzies. At Camden the later ones, 6220-57, were also Lizzies, were elevated to Big Lizzies at Carlisle, and Big 'uns at Crewe. The Jubilees were either 5Xs or Red 'uns (in contrast to Black 'uns), although they hadn't been either red or classed as 5X since 1950 at least. Their predecessors were always Baby Scots. An 8F was just an Eight, their LNWR forebears were simply Ds.

 

A Jinty was a class 3 tank, a 2-6-4 tank, of any variety, was a class 4 tank, a 4F a Derby 4 and a WD an Austerity

 

Shouldn't that be "narrow gauge" (for standard gauge locos on the Great Western)?

 

It's all a matter of perspective!

 

On the Midland it was quite simple number 2 s were the 2fs ,3fs number 3s ,8fs number 8s. etc. One interesting variation at Kettering was the Ivatt 4s 2-6-0s,several passed cleaners who, when doing their National Service were sent to Korea .On troop trains they saw Chinese looking loco's .so on return the Ivatt 4s became Chinese 4s.A very good friend of mine took several photo's of the troop trains,he also scrounged a footplate trip. They had other names by some,not to be repeated here .One fireman was knocked out when his driver opened the pull out regulator (there was a handle fireman's side)that caught him under the chin. He soon recovered though. It took a few years from when they were first built ,to get these loco's steaming okay, Midland 4fs being preferred.

 

I think Midland men referred to the 4F as the big goods, I’m sure when ex LNWR men got them they must have thought that was a joke. An ex Willesden driver who I knew at the model railway club used to refer to them as Derby 4s

 

Yes, you can imagine a driver climbing down from a Super D and being told he had a Big Goods . . .

 

At an Eastleigh Open Day back in the 70's I overheard Ron Druce (hope I've spelt him right) being interviewed by the press. He referred to 'Derby 4's', and he'd been a Wellingborough man. (He was driving David Shepherd's 'Class 9' up and down the Airport Sidings, as I recall.)
Pat

 

The D s were known a Wesses, at Kettering , no body thought them as super .They soon got rid of them when plenty of 8f came available.The tender cab ones were very very hot in the summer. Wesses were 6f/7fs ,4f were 4s bound to be a difference in power. To save being made redundant in the late fifties a couple of mates transferred to 1E Bletchley, there was a large allocation of Wesses there, they weren't to keen on them .They told me that there was a hook near the steam pressure gauge where they would hang there coats so the driver couldn't see the gauge. Equally I don't know what a driver on a Burton to London fitted beer train ,that 4fs worked along with crabs ,would say if they gave him a Wesse instead. Big goods never heard the term ,always Number 4s.

 

The name Super D was a bit of an anomaly: the 0-8-0s started as the A class, the next development were Bs, etc., and then they got to Ds. They actually went passed that and got to Gs, although the men still referred to them as Ds. Then the Gs were given superheating, so the 'super' refers to the boiler and and the D to the 0-8-0 chassis. But realistically, they were G1s, later superseded by G2s (higher boiler pressure), with many G1s rebuilt to the higher pressure as G2a; D didn't come into it anywhere by BR days.

They were either very good or very bad engines, depending on your point of view. To the traffic people, they were good: economical, free steaming and strong enough to shift anything they put behind them. It was a bit different for the crews, especially Midland or Lanky men who didn't get them often enough to learn their funny little ways, like smashing the fireman's knuckles with the handbrake wheel as he swung the shovel, or a brake which was, to say the least, poor. Western men, who knew them simply as Ds, generally had a grudging respect, but they were always poor from an ergonomics viewpoint, no matter how used to them you became, with controls scattered all over the place. But they could keep the steam up using a thin fire; over-firing by inexperienced fireman from other divisions was a problem. So too was a too high water level, they were prone to lift the water when working hard and knocked off cylinder covers were far too common. What should be remembered is that they long outlasted their alleged replacements, the Austin 7s, the last Ds surviving to 1965.

 

Talking of the Austin 7s: was there a reason why the LMS designed those rather than, say, building a large batch of S&DJR 7Fs? There can't have been much difference in price, surely? Was loading gauge an issue with the S&DJR locos being wide over the cylinders?

Tom

 

Yes, there was a reason. The LMS (Derby) decided that a new design of heavy goods engines were needed so did comparative trials over the Toton - Brent route to chose the type on which it would be based, the two classes being the S&D 2-8-0 and the Super D. Despite Derby's expectations, the D won hands down. It had a good steaming and economic boiler, and the Joy's gear gave decent valve events, neither being an attribute of the 7Fs. The S&D engine was whipped off to Derby to have its valve settings checked and another test undertaken - with the same results. So the 2-8-0 returned to Bath in disgrace, and the Austin 7 was born from the D. Realistically, only the boiler in modified form made it into the new design. Perhaps if parts of the running gear had been incorporated, they might have got a more reliable engine!

 

The Austin 7s tended to congregate at ex L & Y sheds where they replaced the L & Y 0-8-0s. Agecroft and Lees had big allocations of them. They were then replaced in turn by WDs, I don't think the ex L & Y section got 8Fs until quite near the end of steam in any numbers

 

Question for 2968, did any Ds move off the Western (ex LNWR) section? In the Manchester area they were only at ex LNWR sheds, Longsight, Stockport Edgeley and Patricroft.

 

Some went to Stoke shed on the old NSR system, although still Western division. Some were even repaired at Stoke loco works before that was wound down in 1927.

 

Lees was an ex LNWR shed, but, yes, it did have some Austin 7s allocated there.
Just looking at the shed allocation lists for the Super Ds during the B.R. period. Found one interesting one, 49405 was allocated to Northwich, on the CLC, between August 1951 and August 1955.

 

They were common in South Wales, Swansea and surrounding area, and worked the Central Wales line over Sugar Loaf to Salop. They were not unknown to the nearby GWR men, but not if they could avoid it. The book with it all in is 'Working with LMS Steam' by H.C.H. Burgess (1983) D Bradford Barton ISBN 0 85153 450 3. It's a good read too!

They also appeared occasionally on the L&Y, but they had a lot of Austin 7s then WDs, so managed usually to avoid them. They also worked over the Midland and all the Belpaire engines had the cab roofs cut back to allow this. They appeared particularly in the Peaks and around Buxton, which of course was both Midland and LNWR territory.