Going Loco - September 2024

27 SEPTEMBER

These Weren’t the Prairies that You Were Expecting From Us …

I figured that it was about time that I scribbled a few more notes for you all to read! What to write about? Well, there are two engines which visited us last weekend which I definitely haven’t written about before. Mainly of course because they are not Great Western! However, this doesn’t mean to say that they are not interesting and worthy of their own Going Loco. Without further ado …

The Prairie or 2-6-2 wheel arrangement was fairly common in the UK and was not exclusive to the Great Western Railway. Apart from the GWR ones, there were the V2 and V4 classes on the LNER, and the LMS had their own as well. It’s here we’re going to look today.

LNER V2 2-6-2 No 4774. Photograph from Phil Kelley’s collection

The LMS Prairie tank engines began with Sir Henry Fowler’s design that were built between 1930 and 1932. Although the LMS classified them as passenger engines, later on in their career they were most definitely mixed traffic. While they followed the same broad brushstrokes as their GWR cousins, they were very different machines to look at. The large dome and outside Walschaerts valve gear along with the typical Fowler smokebox door fastened by dog latches easily set them apart. They had a class 3 power rating and there were a few variations within the fleet. Some with fitted with condensing apparatus so that they could work in underground tunnels in London. Sadly, none of these locomotives survived into preservation.

LMS Fowler class 3 2-6-2T No 4. Photograph from Phil Kelley’s collection

Sir William Stanier also had a go at a class 3 Prairie tank and 139 of them were built from 1935 to 1938 between Crewe and Derby Works. The difference between these locomotives and their predecessors was that they had a taper boiler amongst other small changes. Strangely, despite Stanier’s outstanding reputation both on the GWR and the LMS these locomotives were not widely liked. Various modifications were undertaken to improve the steaming but nothing really helped. Despite being thought of as the least successful of Stanier’s standard designs, the last one was still in service until 1962. Again, like their predecessors and rather unsurprisingly given their performance, none were preserved.

It’s not looking good for the survival of the LMS prairies is it? However, George Ivatt is going to come to our rescue here! He was in some way not expected to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LMS. The post-war job after Stanier retired in 1944 had been given to Charles Fairburn, but he died suddenly in October 1945 leading to Ivatt taking up the post.

The austere conditions in postwar Britain meant that he didn’t enjoy the freedoms of his pre-war predecessors. He did however make a very large contribution to the future of Britain’s railways when he ordered the famous LMS diesels Nos 10000 and 10001. These were Britain’s first ever mainline diesel locomotives and although the twins remain unique, they were highly influential in future British designs.

Ivatt class 2 2-6-2T No 41224 at Rhyl engine shed on 21 August 1954. The Welsh Dragon ran between Rhyl and Llandudno and is believed to be the only officially titled steam push-and-pull train in Britain (there were unofficially titled push-and-pull trains such as Bulliver on the Dart Valley line). Photograph by Phil Kelley

There are three LMS steam designs that Ivatt is associated with. There was a class 4 mixed traffic 2-6-0, or Mogul, tender engine design, and two class 2 locomotives. One was a Mogul tender design and was given the nickname of the ‘Mickey Mouse’ and the others were 2-6-2 tank locomotives of which two visited us here at Didcot.

Ivatt class 2 2-6-2T No 41319 at Southampton Terminus in the 1960s. Photograph by Phil Kelley

The class 2 Prairie tank locomotives were designed in 1946 to replace a disparate group of Victorian locomotives working on LMS branch lines. These machines were very much an LMS version of the GWR small prairie design, but set apart with outside valve gear and a domed boiler. Some were fitted with vacuum-operated push-pull control. Very much like the auto-trailers of the GWR, except the western system was mechanical. They also had hopper-style bunkers and such crew-friendly features as self-emptying ash pans and rocking gates – unimaginable comforts on the Western!

Unlike Stanier’s effort, these engines were very successful, leading to a total of 130 being constructed until 1952. This made some of them purely British railways locomotives and in fact Ivatt stayed on as CME of the Midland Region until 1952. Only the first ten were built by the LMS before the railways were nationalised in 1948.

41241 and 41312 at Didcot Railway Centre on Sunday 22 September

Some of these engines were allocated to the Western Region of BR in the 1950s and 60s and were a common sight at Bristol Bath Road shed in the late 1950s. Due to nationalisation, the last 30 locomotives built at Crewe were allocated to the Southern Region and it clearly sparked an idea as, when British Railways drew up their own standard locomotives, they built their very own version of the Ivatt prairie called the Standard 2 tank engine.

In order to make these engines able to traverse more of the network, they have slanted cabsides to reduce their profile. They also incorporate many fittings and parts from the British Railways design stable.

Thankfully, four of the Ivatt 2-6-2 tank engines for the Midland Region have been preserved. Two of them (Nos 41298 and 41313) are resident on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. This meant that having Nos 41241 and 41312 with us, from our friends at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and the Mid Hants Railway respectively, we had the entire mainland population of this class in one place at one time!

41312 and 5322 were posed together at Didcot Railway Centre on 20 September. Both locomotives were preserved from Barry scrapyard by the late John Mynors, and both went to Caerphilly as their initial preservation depot. 5322 left Barry in March 1969 and moved from Caerphilly to Didcot in 1973. 41312 left Barry in August 1974 and in 1995 moved on to the Mid Hants Railway

6 SEPTEMBER

Galloping Away With Enthusiasm

I love a story of an absorbed locomotive. We’re very fortunate at Didcot in having two that served with the Great Western*. Absorbed locomotives were engines that became Great Western Railway property when the railway company they were originally built for was absorbed by the GWR. These machines ran counter to standard GWR practice. While Swindon tried to make their huge fleet of locomotives as standard as possible, because these absorbed railways were much smaller, they could only afford to buy small numbers of locomotives.

The integration of these engines into the GWR fleet made them something of an anomaly. They were treated in a variety of different ways. Some were brought to Swindon where after an examination they were found to be no longer fit for purpose or surplus to requirements and were duly either sold or scrapped. Some however were discerned to have further use. Didcot’s No 1338 from the Cardiff Railway is a great example. Post-grouping she had decades of further use, lasting well into the BR era.

One of the things that the GWR did to these oddballs was a process called ‘Swindonisation’. Although these engines were of non-standard designs, many of their fittings and systems could be replaced with off-the-shelf standard items, from Swindon’s own stores. While the engines remained non-standard, this did at least make it easier to keep these machines running. Several even had Swindon-designed boilers fitted.

While there are just a few survivors of this type of machine, there were once hundreds. One of them, despite no longer being with us, is still quite a famous loco. Interestingly, she came from a railway on Swindon’s doorstep. The Midland & South-Western Junction Railway (M&SWJR) was itself a product of a grouping of a kind. It was formed when the Swindon, Marlborough & Andover Railway (SM&A) and the Swindon & Cheltenham Extension Railway were merged in 1884, the route of this railway therefore really is no surprise! Starting at Andoversford near Cheltenham it wound its way down through Swindon to Andover and then shared tracks down to Southampton docks.

When it was absorbed by the Great Western Railway, it had a total of 31 locomotives. Not possessing a railway workshop for itself on anything like the scale of Swindon, these engines were all built by private contractors – Dübs, Sharp-Stewart and Beyer Peacock were all contributors.

Galloping Alice as M&SWJR No 16

It is from this last company that our subject for today’s chat came. No 16 can only be described as a very pretty looking machine. She is typical of late Victorian design, but just unusually small. She had the 2-6-0 or Mogul wheel arrangement with 4ft diameter driving wheels, and unusually for absorbed locos, was a tender engine. Completed in 1896, she had a tall chimney and dome along with a narrow tender and a curious flat-sided cab. The engine does however have a slightly foreign air about her, and this isn’t really surprising. Several engines of a very similar design were built and sold overseas by Beyer Peacock. Indeed, there are surviving locomotives in Australia showing their family lineage.

She had the wonderful nicknames of Galloping Alice or Galloping Gertie although sadly the engine never carried a nameplate. Like all the surviving M&SWJR engines, the 1923 grouping meant she became Swindon property and was remembered to GWR No 24. In February 1925, Alice got a makeover. Here she was rebuilt using a Swindon standard 9 boiler with a large dome reminiscent of those fitted to the Dean Goods type locomotive. Her cab was also replaced with a far more Great Western style version and she even sported the famous brass tapered safety valve bonnet. Her tender was also upgraded to a standard 2,500 gallon version, giving her 500 gallons more capacity than the previous one.

Galloping Alice as GWR No 24

Galloping Alice, despite being very heavily rebuilt, only survived for another five years. Her usual duties were working local good trains between Stoke Gifford and Swindon. She did however have one last hurrah… Barely a few months before she was withdrawn in 1930, No 24 came to the rescue of a mighty monarch. No 6003 King George IV was hauling the 11:45 am Bristol to Paddington express when part way through the journey the King failed. This happened at Badminton and what happened to be coming the other way? Galloping Alice! She was pulling a Swindon to Stoke Gifford pick up goods train and was immediately requisitioned to pull the express. Clearly Alice was not going to make it all the way to Paddington but despite running tender first, she did manage to get the train to Swindon. Here a spare locomotive was put on the train to complete the journey.

Although number 24 did not survive, part of her railway does. It survives as the route that our friends at the Swindon & Cricklade Railway now run on. So, next time you’re in the area (or possibly on the way to visit Didcot), take a look at their living memorial to the Midland and South-Western Junction Railway and spare a thought for Galloping Alice.

P.S. Did you know that the one of the engines from Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway was almost the first in the UK to have Walschaerts valve gear? No 4 was built to the single Fairlie design by Avonside as a demonstrator for the Paris Exhibition in 1878. Hugely unreliable, she was scrapped in 1892.

The Fairlie-patent engine which became SM&A No 4 but had a short working life

* No. 1338 and No. 1340 Trojan

• Going Loco - Latest Blogs

« Back To Going Loco Index