Southern Railway, Lord Nelson Class 4-6-0s: Their Design & Development

By Tim Hillier-Graves

A pictorial history of the sixteen-member British steam locomotive class all named after famous admirals.

The Lord Nelson Class has come to be viewed as an “also ran” amongst express locomotives and is largely overlooked for that reason. It had the misfortune to be sandwiched on Southern metals between the classic and much revered King Arthurs and Schools and by Bullied’s controversial Pacifics. In such company any design might suffer by comparison. And yet when first appearing they attracted plaudits from railway professionals, including the footplate crew, and the public alike. But with only 16 being built their impact was muted and any faults in their design were magnified beyond their actual impact. In truth they deserved far better than this and were, in fact sturdy, reliable performers that served the company well on the heavy boat trains for which they were designed and across their other passenger services for 30 years and more in peace and war.

Much has been written about these locomotives, but no story is ever complete, with new information and photographs emerging to deepen our understanding of them. This book provides an in-depth view that re-examines these impressive engines using, new material, eyewitness accounts, contemporary assessments and more than 200 photographs and drawings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526744753

Tim Hillier-Graves

Tim Hillier-Graves was born in North London in 1951. From an early age he was fascinated by steam locomotives. In 1972, Tim joined the Navy Department of the MOD and saw wide service in many locations. He retired in 2011, having specialized in Human Resource Management, then the management of the MOD's huge housing stock as one of the department`s Assistant Directors for Housing. On the death of his uncle in 1984, he became the custodian of a substantial railway collection and in retirement has spent considerable time reviewing and cataloging this material.He has published a number of books on locomotives and aviation.

Book preview

Southern Railway, Lord Nelson Class 4-6-0s

Their Design and Development

TIM HILLIER-GRAVES

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

Pen & Sword Transport

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright © Tim Hillier-Graves, 2020

ISBN 978 1 52674 473 9

eISBN 978 1 52674 478 4

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52674 479 1

The right of Tim Hillier-Graves to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Books Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Transport, True Crime, Fiction, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Seaforth Publishing, Wharncliffe and White Owl.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact:

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LTD

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

E-mail: [e-mail]

Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Or

PEN AND SWORD BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

E-mail: [e-mail]

Website: www.penandswordbooks.com

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Evolution

Chapter 2 The Prototype

Chapter 3 The Full Production Programme

Chapter 4 Bulleid Takes Over

Chapter 5 To The End of Their Days

Appendix 1 Locomotive Histories

Appendix 2 The Life of One Locomotive

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

During my life I have been privileged to meet many people who worked on the railways and were happy to paint vivid pictures of the days when steam dominated their day to day lives – engineers, designers, footplate crew, managers and many more. Their number grows thinner each year, but luckily many have been moved to reminisce or write about their experiences. This has created a bank of information for future generations to enjoy and so increase their understanding of a time of which few could have any personal experience. To this we can add many other individuals who have made a huge commitment, personal and financial, to preserve and record so many aspects of railway history. Amongst these most dedicated people I number my late uncle, Ronald Hillier, whose legacy has helped me to write about many railway related subjects.

National and local institutions also played a huge part in this process. The National Railway Museum and National Archives sit at the centre of this work, but they are ably supported by many other bodies, including many preserved railways which have created their own libraries and collections. We are very lucky in Britain to have so many sources of information to inform our history.

The principal sources of material I have used are listed in the bibliography of this book. Occasionally I have quoted directly from these items, mostly because I couldn’t improve on the descriptions or the technical assessments made by specialists in these fields. I thank the authors or holders of this material for permission to use it to enliven this book and give it greater authenticity.

Engine No. 851 leaving Salisbury Station for Waterloo just before the outbreak of war in 1939.

(SR/RH)

Photographic Sources

The photographs reproduced in this book come from many sources and are credited as follows:

British Rail (BR), O.V. and H.A.V. Bulleid (B), John Click (JC), Ronald Hillier (RH), Harold Holcroft (HH), Ron Jarvis (RJ), Southern Railways (SR) and the author’s collection (THG).

Copyright is a complex issue and often difficult to establish, especially when the same picture may exist in a number of collections - public and private. Checks have been strenuously made to ensure each picture has been correctly attributed to a person or collection, but no process can be flawless, especially when many of the pictures are more than 70 years of age and the photographers long gone. If an error has been made it was unintentional. If any reader wishes to affirm copyright please contact the publisher and an acknowledgement will be made in any future edition of the book, should a claim be proven. We apologise, in advance, if a mistake has been made.

To all the people who helped me write this book I give my thanks and hope I have done justice to all that they have contributed. Ultimately though, all an historian can do is to sift and consider all material and reach a judgement that he or she thinks honestly represents history. There will, undoubtedly, be alternative views or conclusions, but that is as it should be. I don’t think there’s ever a final word and new material may be found to allow fresh interpretations to be made.

INTRODUCTION

In August 1926, the Southern Railway launched what it hoped would be a locomotive capable of grabbing headlines as well as make light work of its many glamorous and profitable boat train services. Richard Maunsell, the SR’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, probably had less altruistic motives in designing this new class, simply wishing to produce a strong and reliable engine. To meet these assorted aims the first of sixteen Lord Nelson Class locomotives came rolling out of the workshops at Eastleigh, near Southampton. Such was the hope placed in this new engine that the company’s Public Relations machine had soon encouraged the soubriquet ‘Britain’s most powerful loco’, allowing these impressive words to filter through press reports and adverts. It was a proud boast but it was one that would be hard to justify in an industry where competition between companies was rife and claims likely to be challenged or shown to be false in the years ahead.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see only too clearly the danger inherent in making such a claim and the optimistic hopes they encouraged, because, in some eyes, the class fell short of these inflated expectations. It didn’t help that there were strong rivals for this blue riband accolade – the GWR’s exemplary Castle Class and the LMS’s admirable Royal Scots. Such was the competition fostered between these three companies that the SR even produced a blueprint which overlaid these engines on an outline of its own prestigious design, though what this was supposed to have achieved isn’t entirely clear all these years later.

In many ways, the period between the two world wars was a golden age for steam locomotion. During these years, each of the ‘Big Four’ railway companies, formed in 1923, found the impetus generated by amalgamation impossible to ignore and pressed ahead with ambitious construction programmes. In the years that followed, each new development attracted media attention in a way deemed impossible before the Great War. Now there were more specialist journals sitting alongside the established newspapers and magazines with a readership growing exponentially. Photography and the printing process had also moved forward, allowing a great deal more information to be conveyed to the masses. Then there was the growing influence of moving pictures and greater access to radios, all of which encouraged the rapid passage of news. The Lord Nelsons, and their competitors, arrived when this flood of news was beginning to reach a peak and would benefit from its patronage. So would their principal designers whose names still resonate today because of it – Gresley, Stanier, Fowler, Collett and, last but not least, Maunsell himself.

Of these five engineers, Maunsell probably faced the greatest challenge in bringing his ideas to fruition, because the Southern Railway were investing heavily in electrification and increasingly saw steam as a sideshow, important in the short term but a dying technology soon to be replaced by something more efficient and reliable. With such a heavy commitment to these new schemes, Maunsell had little money to finance his plans for steam and never enjoyed the freedom his contemporaries took for granted. Yet no matter what advantages the others had, there was a single thought underlying all their work. The demand placed on the railways was growing rapidly, supported in part by rising industrial needs and passenger numbers. Longer, heavier trains were becoming the norm and bigger and better engines were needed to pull them. It was against this background that the Lord Nelsons were developed; the next generation in a programme that had its genesis many years earlier in the hands of Dugald Drummond and Robert Urie when CMEs of the London and South Western Railway.

Three for the price of one. A simple comparison of competitors seeking to be best of breed as the 1920s came to an end. (

THG

)

Engine No. 861, Lord Anson, which was built in 1929, stands at Waterloo with a Southern Railway 4 Cor electric unit to the right pointing the way to the future.

(SR/RH)

In the circumstances, the fact that Maunsell achieved as much as he did is quite remarkable. But he did more than simply edge steam towards an electrified future where it would eventually prove irrelevant. Within the limits imposed on him, he produced some fine locomotives and had plans to take his ideas still further. Sadly, ill-health and old age intervened and in 1937 he retired, making way for Oliver Bulleid, whose Pacific programme would soon eclipse much of Maunsell’s work, particularly his Nelsons. But the new CME didn’t simply ignore or relegate them to lesser duties, when stories of their tepid performance and poor steaming qualities became impossible to ignore. Instead, he attempted to improve the design in his own inimitable way. In so doing, he continued a modification programme begun by Maunsell many years earlier, engendered by reports that the class was falling short of expectations. His efforts had minimal success and it was left to Bulleid to highlight the cause of the problem and find an adequate solution. Once completed, their reputation improved significantly, as did their performance, and they lasted in service until the early 1960s. Yet they would remain forever in the shadows of many other of the SR’s types, including Maunsell’s own Schools Class and the more numerous Southern Pacifies built by Bulleid. Yet despite this, they did their duty in peace and war and are worthy of remembrance for that reason.

Publicity material of the period fostered an idealised view of premier services, none more so than the ‘Belle’, (

THC

)

With such a small number of Nelsons in service, any sighting could become an important event to the many small and large boys who congregated at Waterloo in the late 1950s and early ’60s. By then, steam was reaching the end of its life, but still dominated express services. I remember only too well the pleasure of seeing a Nelson coming into view, breaking for a few moments the dominance of the Pacifies. To my mind, they had great elegance and power and ‘looked right’. Sadly, I never rode behind one and only managed to get on a footplate once when engine No. 30865, Sir John Hawkins, arrived at Waterloo with an express from the West Country. The sight, sounds and smell of an engine that has worked hard is difficult to forget and this one occasion has stayed in my memory more than many others. For this reason, when John Scott-Morgan, Pen and Sword’s Commissioning Editor, suggested writing about the class I jumped at the opportunity of learning more about these engines and the design team. Much has been written about them already but no story is ever complete, with new information and photographs emerging to deepen our understanding of people and events. This is just such a case.

The true heroes of any book about locomotives – the driver and fireman. With their great skill and endeavour, a poor performer could be made to work efficiently and a mediocre performer to become something of quality. It was a fact not lost on most designers. But theirs was a hard life, though few seemed to have grumbled about it publicly.

(SR/RH)

Chapter 1

EVOLUTION

The public face of the Southern Railway between the two World Wars. A Class T9 4-4-0 (No. 729) with Pullman Cars on duty with the Royal Navy in Portsmouth Naval Base. Captions on different copies of this photo give conflicting dates. One copy suggests it is 1929 and the other 1935 when Edward, Prince of Wales, was visiting the RN. Either date could be correct and the only certainty is that the Nelson Class battleship in the background, dressed overall for the occasion, entered service in 1927 so the picture was taken after that.

(SR/RH)

‘Little in science is truly original and each invention is often an amalgam of ideas formed and developed over many years, sometimes from diverse, apparently unconnected fields of research’. So wrote an unidentified scientist for a newspaper article in 1946, when describing the nature of design in engineering. In essence, he was saying that we build on the work of our forebears in seeking new ways to meet changing needs and conditions. A ‘mix and match’ arrangement, perhaps, where various established ideas are sorted, sometimes reconfigured and tried in an attempt to extend the performance of a machine. True or not it is an interesting