SAMUEL Waite Johnson designed exceedingly handsome locomotives. Some aesthetes would even claim his 4-2-2 ‘Spinners’, with their 7ft 9½in driving wheel diameter, had the most pleasing appearance of any locomotive, worldwide. The nickname derived from the resemblance of their speeding huge ‘drivers’ to Sleeping Beauty-type spinning wheels.
Born in 1831, Johnson was educated at Leeds Grammar School before becoming a pupil at locomotive manufacturer R B Wilson & Co, where he worked as a draughtsman under David Joy. He assisted on the production of ‘Jenny Lind’ locomotives, of which 24 went to the Midland Railway, where he was eventually appointed chief mechanical engineer in 1873. Such a position in one of the top four Victorian railway companies commanded a salary rising to £3500 per annum, some £410,000 in current terms, so it was small wonder he chose to remain in this post for 31 years.
Locomotive design is a function of the engineer’s creativity, availability of funds and commercial policy of the company. Unlike some railways, the Midland had a clear focus on its core business, which was built around the manufacturing cities of the East Midlands: Leicester, Nottingham and Derby – extending to Sheffield, where railway geography had best placed the Midland to provide the prime London service. Leeds, Bradford and Manchester traffic was harder won, principally relying on trade generated from the Midland’s own provincial cities. The extension over the hills and far away to Carlisle and Scotland towards the end of the railway construction era was arguably less an aspiration, more an aberration.
To serve its core traffic, the corporate mantra was ‘fast, frequent and featherweight’, and there was no need for gargantuan locomotives for this work. If such a fleet had been produced, it would have wasted capital and running expenses on unsuitable duties. When longer-distance traffic demanded greater capacity, a second locomotive could be purloined from other work, or a relief train could be commandeered.
It was during S W Johnson’s regime that the
