The

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...

(LNWR) Class A was a class of

0-8-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and no trailing wheels. Locomotives of this type are also referre ...

steam locomotives 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 ...

. From 1893 to 1900,

Crewe Works Crewe Works is a British railway engineering facility located in the town of Crewe, Cheshire. The works, which was originally opened by the Grand Junction Railway in 1840, employed around 7,000 to 8,000 workers at its peak. In the 1980s, a lot ...

built 111 of these engines, which had a three-cylinder

compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struct ...

arrangement, and were designed by Francis Webb. According to the LNWR Society, 110 were built between 1894 and 1900.

Rebuilding

Like the other Webb compounds, they proved problematic, so in 1904

George Whale George Whale (7 December 1842 – 7 March 1910) was an English locomotive engineer who was born in Bocking, Essex, and educated in Lewisham, London. He worked for the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Career In 1858 he entered the LNWR ...

began rebuilding these to

simple expansion A compound engine is an engine that has more than one stage for recovering energy from the same working fluid, with the exhaust from the first stage passing through the second stage, and in some cases then on to another subsequent stage or even st ...

engines. Fifteen were converted to Class C between 1904–1906, 62 to Class D between 1906–1909, with the remaining 34 rebuilt by

Charles Bowen Cooke Charles John Bowen Cooke (11 January 1859 – 18 October 1920) was born in Orton Longueville (then in Huntingdonshire) and was Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). He was the first to add superheating ...

to Class C1 between 1909-1912. All Class D locomotives were later rebuilt to Class G1. Some of them, rebuilt to Class G2a, were still running in 1962.

Classification

The LNWR letter classification system for 8 coupled engines (A, B, C, etc.) was introduced in 1911.

Rebuilding

Classification

References

Further reading