POWER OF THE ‘GEORGES’

Pontllanfraith (Low Level) station in Monmouthshire was a tranquil place that summer’s afternoon in 1958. True, a ‘56XX’ 0-6-2T had just pulled out with a train from Neath to Pontypool Road; but that was as nothing compared with the sudden explosion of exhaust from a ‘Super D’ 0-8-0 battling uphill through the nearby High Level station on the Sirhowy Valley line with a load of ‘empties’.

I had previously seen former LNWR 0-8-0s at Watford, Bletchley and elsewhere, but never before had I witnessed one in full cry.

Its two-cylinder exhaust beats, four for each cycle of the coupled wheels, had comprised two very loud blasts followed by a softer pair; apparently, this phenomenon was typical of a ‘Precursor’ or ‘George the Fifth’ 4-4-0 going up Shap at a slightly higher speed but, because of their larger coupled wheels, with exhaust beats sounding at about the same rate.

Now for some history: 1903 found Francis Webb, a sick man, relinquishing the post of LNWR chief mechanical engineer (CME) under the cloud of his partly unsuccessful ventures into compounding.

Benefited

Admittedly, the later ‘Compounds’ had benefited from having coupled driving wheels and four cylinders, two of them low pressure and two high pressure, and each pair independently controlled by the driver. Such features enabled Alfred the Great, a 52-ton four-cylinder compound 4-4-0, to haul 480 tons gross over the 77 miles from Rugby to Willesden in 85min 42sec.

Nonetheless, the earlier three-cylinder Webb Compounds in particular were erratic, with high running costs, and an edict that all trains equivalent to 17 or more six-wheeled coaches should be double-headed led to a slaughter of motive power by Webb’s successor, George Whale. Something simple and robust was needed to replace the Compounds and reduce the expensive double-heading that had become rife, something on the lines of the ‘no-nonsense’ ‘Cauliflower’ 0-6-0s and ‘Jumbo’ 2-4-0s, only larger.

The result was No. 513 , the first of 130 straightforward inside-cylinder 4-4-0s outshopped from Crewe between 1904 and 1907. With a deep firebox and 2,009.7sq ft of heating surface, the ‘Precursors’ could be flogged up to Tring and even over Shap, despite their lack of superheating and use