Aspinall’s ‘Lanky tanks’ Just what the Lancashire & Yorkshire needed

WHEN John A Aspinall moved from Ireland’s Great Southern & Western Railway to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway in 1886, his mission was to design a new range of locomotives to be built at the new Horwich Works, near Bolton, which occupied a 3250-acre site and opened on November 15 of that year to replace the original works at Miles Platting, Manchester.

Incorporated in 1847, the L&Y operated through some of the most densely-packed industrial areas in the country and became a hugely successful railway company, with routes stretching from Liverpool and Fleetwood in the west to Goole in the east. Three divisions operated routes between Manchester, Blackpool and Fleetwood; Manchester, Bolton, Wigan, Southport and Liverpool; Manchester, Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Todmorden, Accrington, Burnley and Colne; and Todmorden to Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Normanton, Goole and Doncaster. An important connection to Stockport enabled traffic to continue on to London along the London & North Western Railway, and the express line between