Numbers of locos in railway company fleets

Damn right. Those little machines were just so handsome, although I've a hankering for the earlier (arguably not as good looking) 1860's Slaughter Gruning 4-4-0Ts, the last built by outside contractors before the NLR got it's own facility up and running. I'll freely admit to total bias, due to nowt more than one finding it's way to the IWCR, lasting until 1906/7.

 

Correct on the LSWR "Others" being the Drummond "Double Singles". Distinctive engines, but they don't seem to make it onto anyone's fantasy "new build" list. "Others" also included the 0-10-0 "Lickey Banker" and the NBR's last 0-4-0 tender engine.

I can oblige with the attached table of tank engine statistics, but had to scrunch up the entries for the smaller railways particularly the South Wales lot (totals for these were given in post #7 earlier in this thread). It can be seen that the 0-6-0 was the most numerous type for tanks as well as for tender engines. The GWR's overall high number of tank engines also shows up, a preference that was reinforced by the take-over of the South Wales companies.

I have separated the NLR engines on the attached table. The William Adams origin of the NLR 4-4-0Ts is noteworthy. Although the NLR tank retained at Derby was unfortunately scrapped in 1932, its further development is seen in the LSWR Adams 4-4-2T surviving on the Bluebell. It is interesting to see how Adams, during his successive appointments with the NLR, GER & LSWR, alternated both between the 4-4-0T and 0-4-4T and between inside and outside cylinders. The GER Society web-site shows 0-4-4Ts that he built there, siimilar to his later LSWR T1s and O2s but unlike his NLR and early period LSWR practice. As an aside, Dugald Drummond also flip-flopped between 4-4-0T and 0-4-4T while on the North British and Caledonian.

 

The Highland likewise employed 4-4-0Ts, though they didn't last anywhere near as long as the NLR 1-10 class.

I've always thought it a wee bit odd that this wheel arrangement found favour on a couple of Irish 3ft gauge lines, the longer lived, by some way, being the C&L examples, out of eight built (amazingly) Nos.2&3 survive.

 

The Metropolitan Railway and Metropolitan District Railway should also be remembered when it comes to locomotive fleets and they both made extensive use of 4-4-0T's. The Metropolitan Railway needed locomotives as a matter of urgency when an agreement to work their lines with the Great Western proved short lived and in 1863 Beyer Peacock successfully tendered to supply the Metropolitan. The design they adapted was one that they had already used for the Tudela and Bilbao Railway in Spain in 1862 to whom they had supplied 8 locomotives.

66 of the design were acquired by the Metropolitan Railway and 54 by the Metropolitan District Railway. They performed efficiently for 40 years and it was not until electrification of the lines in 1905/6 that they were stood down. Even then some did departmental service and others were sold and the last survivor on the system in 1948 was preserved.

One famous byway they worked until the end in 1935 was the Brill Tramway.

Beyer Peacock also supplied others of the design to amongst others the Midland, the London and South Western and the London and North Western. The Cambrian purchased 6 second hand and converted them to tender locomotives.

The 16 sold to the LNWR in 1871/2 were for their London suburban work and 10 were converted in the 1890's to 4-4-2T and used on Manchester suburban works. One was intriguingly converted to a three cylinder 4-2-2-0T as part of Francis Webb's experiments with compounding.

Luckily two Beyer Peacock type's are preserved. There is Metropolitan Railway number 23 in the London Transport Museum and one of the Spanish locos:

http://www.manuserran.com/index.php...article&id=7:n-29-qizarraq&catid=8&Itemid=238

 

How in the name of zarking fardwarks did the rest of us forget the underground locos? Many thanks for the photo of the Spanish survivor @Bluenosejohn . Gauge aside, pretty much identical to the Met/Dist editions. That's quite made my afternoon.

 

The North British railway also had a few 4-4-0 tanks, as did the Caledonian

 

A tantalisingly brief glimpse of the Brill branch. Difficult to imagine a bigger contrast in services for the loco from the 40 years of hustle and bustle of London to a very quiet backwater. Even more surprising was that Brill was part of the London Transport system.

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/last-journey-of-quaint-old-railway

 

Does that include the H&B stud?
A total of 186 engines were operated by the Hull and Barnsley Railway. On merging into the North Eastern Railway, the locomotives were briefly renumbered by adding 3000 to the original number.

 

4-4-0T's seem to have been a popular type on the Broad Gauge. From the Broad Gauge Society website there are 93 locomotives shown ( 95 locos less 2 being transferred from one company to another ) with the earliest being a GWR class from 1849 built by R W Hawthorn and Co.


http://www.broadgauge.org.uk/locos/bg_loco_info.html

Some details of one of the more remote areas and photographs of two of the tanks:

https://spellerweb.net/rhindex/UKRH/GreatWestern/Broadgauge/Cardigan.html

 

Thanks for the reminder about the Metropolitan and District Railways. We should indeed not overlook them.

At the time of Grouping, they seem to have had about 40 steam locos, for goods and engineering trains and for the Metropolitan non-electrified country lines. These locos were a mix of surviving original 4-4-0Ts and more recent types including the now-preserved E-class 0-4-4T. Several of the 4-4-0Ts were scrapped in the mid-1920s following delivery of the Maunsell-type 2-6-4Ts.

The H&B details are shown separately in the tables attached to Posts #36 and #42 above. There were heavy withdrawals following the NER takeover in April 1922 and only 138 H&BR engines survived to be allocated LNER running numbers.

 

While it's way outside the scope of this thread, in NSW we had a locally developed version in traffic until June 1972.

https://www.google.com/search?q=nsw...VfxzgGHbGsArQQ_AUoAXoECAYQAw&biw=1440&bih=767

http://www.australiansteam.com/1301.htm

They were rebuilt from a 4-4-0 tender engine derivative of an 1862 2-4-0 tender loco which postdates the Spanish locos but predates the Metropolitan Class A.