Locomotives of the Midland Railway


The Locomotives of the Midland Railway, followed its small engine policy. The policy was later adopted by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and contrasted with the London and North Western Railway's policy. The small engine policy was partly the consequence of a difference in the background of senior managers. In most railway companies, the elite position was the design, construction and maintenance of locomotives. Bigger engines brought more prestige and allowed longer trains. In the Midland, the marketing department was paramount. They recognised that people wanted more frequent, shorter trains rather than an infrequent service. It concentrated on very light, very fast and frequent trains.

Overview

The small engine policy was, perhaps, carried on too long, giving rise to the derisive poem:

M is for Midland with engines galore

Two on each train and asking for more

Prior to around 1900 the Midland's locomotives were not noticeably different in size or power to those of other British railway companies; what was more notable was the company's commitment to standardisation of a small number of related locomotive designs. This policy began in the 1850s with Matthew Kirtley as Chief Mechanical Engineer. Kirtley provided two basic engine types - 0-6-0 locomotives for freight and 2-4-0 types for passenger work. Over 800 Kirtley 0-6-0s and 150 2-4-0s were built up to 1873. Samuel W. Johnson and Richard Deeley continued the policy but with a gradual progression in the locomotive designs. By 1914 the entire Midland network was being operated by six basic engine designs: a Class 1 0-6-0 tank engine for light freight and shunting, Class 1 0-4-4 tank engine for light passenger work, Class 2 4-4-0 engine for general passenger work, Class 3 0-6-0 engines in tank and tender variants for mixed traffic and freight, and Class 4 4-4-0 for express passenger work. This degree of standardisation was exceptional amongst the pre-grouping British railway companies. All the Midland designs were built to the same basic design principles and a 'kit' of parts meaning that many parts such as boilers, cylinders, wheels, cabs and bearings were interchangeable across some or all of the six types.
During the 1890s a new phase in British locomotive development began with the arrival of 'large engine' designs to cope with rising average train weights for both passenger and freight traffic and demand for faster journey times. This new generation of engines featured much larger, more efficient boilers and were physically larger, heavier and more powerful than the locomotives commonly built in the preceding 40 years. During the 1900s many British railways began introducing new locomotive designs, with the 4-6-0 becoming predominant for express passenger work, the 0-8-0 for heavy freight trains and the 2-6-0 for fast freight and mixed traffic. Unusually amongst the large British railways, the Midland chose not to develop its own 'large engines' - when such designs were proposed by both Johnson and Deeley, they were rejected by the railway's management. Instead the Midland chose to continue production of its existing locomotive designs largely unchanged and thus adopted the 'small engine policy' for the 20th century.
The Midland was blessed, in that George Stephenson had built its main lines with very shallow gradients while its main rival the LNWR had to cope with the hilly country north of Lancaster. The Midland favoured building large numbers of relatively small, low-powered engines to standardised designs. Each engine was cheaper to build and run than a larger equivalent and while more locomotives were required, the Midland's Derby Works was able to achieve economies of scale. The Midland found that on the majority of its well-graded lines a single small engine was sufficient, and that it was more efficient to add either more trains of a shorter length to handle greater demand or to employ multiple small engines when heavier trains were needed. This was deemed preferable to building a small number of large engines for the routes and duties that required them which did not fit into Derby's standardised production and risked being underutilised and incurring expensive running costs unnecessarily. Indeed, the Midland's operations were often based around keeping even its small engines lightly loaded at a time when other railways were not only building larger, more powerful locomotives but working them to their maximum capacity with the heaviest trains possible. The Midland's philosophy was to keep individual train weights as low as was practically possible and run more trains, providing short-term economies in fuel consumption and wear-and-tear on the locomotive, which in the long term this meant that Midland locomotives generally enjoyed longer service lives than hard-worked contemporaries on other railways. This was one reason why the relatively undersized standard Midland axle bearing was successfully retained for so long into the 20th century - under Midland operating practices the loads imposed on the bearing by a low-powered locomotive working well within its capabilities was minimised.
Smaller, less powerful engines also allowed savings in civil engineering as they permitted lighter-laid track and cheaper bridges. In turn this acted against the widespread adoption of larger, heavier engines as this would require a simultaneous large-scale civil engineering programme to improve the Midland's permanent way and associated structures. Similarly, the Midland was unusual among British railways by continuing to favour roundhouses to stable and service its locomotives instead of the more common longitudinal shed. While a shed could be relatively easy expanded and lengthened to accommodate larger locomotives, the roundhouses could not, further adding a secondary cost to adopting large engines. Another such factor was that decades of running light, short trains meant that the Midland's network featured shorter-than-average sidings and passing loops - if more powerful locomotives were to be procured and used to the full, these would have to be rebuilt to work with longer trains.
The small engine policy served the Midland well when its network was confined to the English Midlands, which is largely free of steep gradients. As the company expanded into other parts of Britain the policy's downsides began to cause problems. The company's own main line to Scotland and the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway were renowned for their steep gradients and the company's locomotive stock proved badly suited to the task. Nonetheless the small engine policy remained and double-heading or banking was used to make up for the shortfall in power. The policy also greatly reduced capacity on the Midland's network as not only were there more trains than there would have been on another railway but further capacity was taken up by the need to accommodate light engines that had been used for piloting or banking duties that were returning to their depots. The small engine policy was a contributing factor to two fatal accidents on the Settle-Carlisle Line, at Hawes Junction and Ais Gill. In the former case it was due to excessive light-engine movements and in the latter due to a train stalling on the main line due to a lack of power.
The small engine policy remained in place into the 1920s and remained an influence during the early years of the Midland's successor the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, its Chief Mechanical Engineer for most of the 1920s being Henry Fowler, a long-standing Midland engineer and former CME of that company. Midland-era standard designs were continued or lightly updated and constructed for use across the new LMS network. Many of these types proved ill-suited or inadequate for routes and operating practices away from ex-Midland territory - while ex-Midland locomotives were imposed on the new LMS, the operational practices that went with them were not, on top of still-rising demands with regard to train speeds and weights. This left Midland-designed 'small engines' being worked to the full on heavy trains by crews used to working their engines as hard as possible. Under these conditions many of the designs proved inadequate in terms of both performance and reliability and this left the LMS with a shortage of modern motive power by the late 1920s. Fowler designed the Royal Scot class locomotives in 1927, which effectively ended the Midland small engine tradition and he was replaced by William Stanier in 1932 who brought in a new generation of modern 'large engine' designs, greatly influenced by his previous employer, the Great Western Railway.

Numbering and classification

Before 1907 numbering was somewhat erratic. New locomotives might take the numbers of old engines, which were placed on the duplicate list and had an A suffix added to their numbers. In 1907 the whole stock were renumbered in a systematic way, each class in a consecutive sequence, classes being ordered by type, power and age. After the grouping
this system was adapted for the whole LMS
The Midland classified their stock into three classes numbered 1 to 3 with 1 the least powerful and three the most. Stock were also split into passenger and freight engines. When the two largest 4-4-0 classes, the 3-cylinder compounds and the "999s", were introduced these were put into Class 4. This system formed the basis for the subsequent LMS and BR classification systems.

Engines inherited from constituent companies

Midland formed in 1844 from the Midland Counties Railway, the North Midland Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway, and took over a number of others including the Leicester and Swannington Railway and the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway. See
Initially, the Midland concentrated on maintaining and improving the somewhat varied fleet that it had inherited, with the assistance of The Railway Foundry in Leeds. In addition, it bought in twenty-four of their Jenny Lind locomotives and, in 1848, two unique Crampton locomotives.

Ex- LT&SR (1912-1922)

In 1912 the Midland bought the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway, but this continued to be operated more or less separately. The Midland, and the LMS subsequently built some LT&SR designs.

Liveries

Prior to 1883 painted green. After 1883 the Midland adopted its distinctive crimson lake livery for passenger engines.

Influence on LMS locomotive policy

The London, Midland and Scottish Railway continued the Midland's small engine policy until William Stanier arrived in 1933. The last new Midland design was Stanier 0-4-4T of 1932/3 but some Fowler 4Fs were constructed as late as 1941.

Preservation

Five original Midland locomotives have survived, these being:
ImageMR No.1907 No.MR ClassTypeManufacturerSerial No.BuiltWithdrawnNotes
158A21562-4-0Derby Works—18661947 Rebuilt 1881, 1897; Deeley Class 1
1186731154-2-2Derby Works—18971928 Rebuilt 1909; Deeley Class 1
2631100010004-4-0Derby Works—19021959 Rebuilt 1914; Deeley Class 4 Compound
1418170813770-6-0TDerby Works—18801965 Rebuilt 1896, 1926; Deeley Class 1
—392438350-6-0Derby Works—19201965 Class 4 Goods. First locomotive to leave Woodham Brothers scrapyard in September 1968.

In addition, there are 13 engines of two classes built by the LMS to essentially Midland designs:
And two engines built by the Midland for the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway:
Also, one ex-LT&SR engine which passed through Midland ownership:
Two post-grouping NCC locomotives also survive.
Further, there are several more engines to later non-Midland designs built at Derby which have survived.