The Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST is a class of
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 ...
designed by
Hunslet Engine Company for
shunting. The class became the standard
British shunting locomotive
A switcher, shunter, yard pilot, switch engine, yard goat, or shifter is a small railroad locomotive used for manoeuvring railroad cars inside a rail yard in a process known as ''switching'' (US) or ''shunting'' (UK). Switchers are not inten ...
during the
Second World War, and production continued until 1964 at various locomotive manufacturers.
Background
The 48150 class were built for the
Guest Keen Baldwins Iron & Steel Company in 1937, being an enlarged version of a design dating from 1923. These developed into the 50550 class of 1941–42, with various modifications.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the
War Department had initially chosen the
LMS 'Jinty' 3F 0-6-0T as its standard shunting locomotive, but was persuaded by Hunslet that a simplified version of their more modern 50550 design would be more suitable. The first locomotive was completed at their
Leeds works at the start of 1943.
Construction
Hunslet subcontracted some of the construction to
Andrew Barclay Sons & Co.,
W. G. Bagnall
W. G. Bagnall was a locomotive manufacturer from Stafford, England which was founded in 1875 and operated
until it was taken over in 1962 by English Electric.
History
The company was founded in 1875 by William Gordon Bagnall. The majority ...
,
Hudswell Clarke,
Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns and the
Vulcan Foundry in order to meet delivery requirements.
After
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...
, they were used on
Continental Europe
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...
and in
North Africa, as well as at docks and military sites in Britain.
A total of 377 had been built for the War Department by 1947 (on orders placed during the war), with two further engines having been built for
collieries (without the permission of the
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...
). When the end of the war reduced the need for locomotives, the military started to review its fleet:
* 90 locomotives were kept by the military for use on their railways.
* 75 locomotives were sold to the
LNER and classified as
J94.
* 27 that had been loaned to
Nederlandse Spoorwegen were sold to that company in 1947, becoming the
NS 8800 class.
* 11 were loaned to the
Nederlandsche Staatsmijnen, who bought 9 of them.
Others were sold for industrial use. A number of those used on the continent are believed to have worked on light and industrial railways in
France, six going to the
Chemins de Fer Tunisiens in 1946. One was used in
Valentigney on the
Peugeot industrial branch line.
Post-war construction
As the final War Department locomotives were being delivered, the
National Coal Board was placing orders for identical locomotives to be used at their collieries. Between 1948 and 1964, 77 new "Austerity" locomotives were built for the NCB. A further fourteen engines were ordered in 1952 by the British Army to supplement its 90 existing engines.
The
Yorkshire Engine Company also built eight locomotives to this design in 1954 for use in ironstone quarries and at
Scunthorpe Steelworks. It has been suggested, although it has not been proven, that Hunslet sold some of the parts for the eight "Austerities" to the Yorkshire Engine Company as part of a subcontract settlement for the
GWR 9400 Class , ordered by the
GWR from Hunslet and partially subcontracted to the Yorkshire Engine Company.
Hunslet rebuilt many NCB locomotives and when the Army started to sell off locomotives again in 1959, they bought 15 examples that were to be rebuilt and sold on. The NCB bought 13 of these, the 14th was sold directly into preservation and the final locomotive was scrapped without being rebuilt. Ultimately from first to last, a total of 485 examples were constructed between 1943 and 1964.
The NCB continued to use Austerities in the 1970s and a small number remained in service until the early 1980s, notably at
Bickershaw Colliery,
Greater Manchester. Some of the examples that survived the longest were those fitted with
mechanical stokers and
Kylpor blast pipes or
Giesl ejector
A Giesl ejector is a suction draught system for steam locomotives that works on the same principle as a feedwater injector. This ejector (German: ''Ejektor'', ''Flachschornstein'' or ''Quetschesse'') was invented in 1951 by the Austrian engineer ...
s to improve their performance and reduce smoke.
Preservation
Seventy Austerities have been preserved on
heritage railway
A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...
s, many in working order. Several have been painted as
LNER Class J94s to represent mainline rather than industrial use. During the "Rocket 150" celebrations in 1979, NCB Bold Colliery "Austerity" No. 7 ''Robert'' also participated in the cavalcade of locomotives at Rainhill.
Not all have survived intact; the boiler of RSH 7135 of 1944 was used on the replica
broad gauge
A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways.
Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union (CIS ...
locomotive "
Iron Duke" built at the
National Railway Museum in 1985. A former Hunslet Austerity at the
Watercress Line has been rebuilt from an into a
Thomas the Tank Engine lookalike, and another one into Douglas, also from ''
The Railway Series''.
Models
The Hunslet "Austerity" was produced as a model by
Kitmaster from 1961 onwards in
00 gauge
OO gauge or OO scale (also, 00 gauge and 00 scale) is the most popular standard-gauge model railway standard in the United Kingdom, outside of which it is virtually unknown. OO gauge is one of several 4 mm-scale standards (4 mm to 1 foot, ...
. The Kitmaster toolings were sold to
Airfix in 1962 and later
Dapol in 1981 when Airfix stopped production of model railway items; Dapol continued to use the Kitmaster toolings until they were destroyed by a fire at Dapol's Winsford headquarters in 1994. Dapol also produced a ready-to-run model of these locomotives; this tooling was sold in 1996 to
Hornby
Hornby may refer to:
Places In England
* Hornby, Lancashire
* Hornby, Hambleton, village in North Yorkshire
* Hornby, Richmondshire, village in North Yorkshire Elsewhere
* Hornby, Ontario, community in the town of Halton Hills, Ontario, Canad ...
who have continued to produce the "Austerity" as both the J94 class and in various industrial liveries.
Graham Farish and subsequently
Bachmann have produced the "Austerity" as the LNER/BR J94 class for
N gauge.
DJmodels also produced J94 and austerity tanks in 00 gauge in a variety of liveries including BR as well as several industrial liveries.
This model has since become part of the EFE Rail range.
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Austerity Locomotive Owners Association
{{Authority control
0-6-0ST locomotives
Austerity
Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. There are three primary types of austerity measures: higher taxes to fund spend ...
War Department locomotives
Railway locomotives introduced in 1943
Industrial locomotives of Great Britain
Shunting locomotives