The

Great Northern Railway (Ireland) The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) (GNR(I) or GNRI) was an Irish gauge () railway company in Ireland. It was formed in 1876 by a merger of the Irish North Western Railway (INW), Northern Railway of Ireland, and Ulster Railway. The government ...

(GNRI) VS class steam locomotives were

4-4-0 4-4-0 is a locomotive type with a classification that uses the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement and represents the arrangement: four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four po ...

three-cylinder simple expansion

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s built in 1948 by

Beyer, Peacock and Company Beyer, Peacock and Company was an English railway locomotive manufacturer with a factory in Openshaw, Manchester. Founded by Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock and Henry Robertson, it traded from 1854 until 1966. The company exported locomotives, ...

. They were procured in order to operate the

Enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterprise ...

train service between

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

and

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

and were the last series of steam engines ordered by the company.

Design

The locomotives of class VS, designed by Mcintosh, were very similar to the compound locomotives of

GNRI Class V The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) V class steam locomotives were 4-4-0 three-cylinder compound locomotives built in 1932 by Beyer, Peacock and Company. Design The V class was intended for the GNR's most important passenger service, the Dubl ...

, built in 1932 by

. Unlike the latter, however, they had only simple expansion steam engines with Walschaerts valve gear. Their wheel arrangement was due to the restricted space in the Dundalk workshops. Class VS used the same Belpaire boilers as class V with an evaporation surface of and a superheating surface of , and other parts were also interchangeable. The locomotives were equipped with

smoke deflectors Smoke deflectors, sometimes called "blinkers" in the UK because of their strong resemblance to the blinkers used on horses, and "elephant ears" in US railway slang, are vertical plates attached to each side of the smokebox at the front of a ste ...

, rocking grates, hopper ashpans, and self-cleaning fireboxes with a grate area of , and were fitted with Stanier type tenders.

Roster

Five locomotives of this type were built. Their works numbers were 6961 to 6965, their running numbers were 206 to 210. They were named after the rivers Liffey, Boyne, Lagan, Foyle, and Erne. The VS class shared working the heaviest and fastest expresses on the Dublin to Belfast main line with Class V compounds; and were noted for use on the non-stop ''Enterprise'' express services. In 1958 with the split up of the cross border GNRI Nos. 206, 207, and 209 went to

CIÉ Córas Iompair Éireann (''Irish Transport Company''), or CIÉ, is a statutory corporation of Ireland, answerable to the Irish Government and responsible for most public transport within the republic and jointly with its Northern Ireland counte ...

whilst acquiring a suffix of N. At the same time Nos. 208 and 210 became 58 and 59 under the

Ulster Transport Authority The Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) ran rail and bus transport in Northern Ireland from 1948 until 1966. Formation and consolidation The UTA was formed by the Transport Act 1948, which merged the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board (NIRTB ...

(UTA). CIÉ sold No. 207N to the UTA in 1963 and utilised on both main line and suburban services from Belfast. All were taken out of service by 1965, none surviving into preservation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gnri Class VS 4-4-0 locomotives 5 ft 3 in gauge locomotives V Passenger locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1948 Scrapped locomotives 2′B h3 locomotives