The North Eastern Railway (NER) Class Y (

LNER LNER may refer to: * London and North Eastern Railway, a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1923 until 1947 * London North Eastern Railway, a train operating company in the United Kingdom since 2018 * Liquid neutral earthing resistor, a typ ...

Class A7) 4-6-2T

tank locomotive A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers (or fuel tanks) to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locom ...

s were designed whilst

Wilson Worsdell Wilson Worsdell (7 September 1850 – 14 April 1920) was an English locomotive engineer who was locomotive superintendent of the North Eastern Railway from 1890 to 1910. He was the younger brother of T.W. Worsdell. Wilson was born at Monks Co ...

was

Chief Mechanical Engineer Chief mechanical engineer and locomotive superintendent are titles applied by British, Australian, and New Zealand railway companies to the person ultimately responsible to the board of the company for the building and maintaining of the locomotive ...

, but none were built until 1910 by which time

Vincent Raven Sir Vincent Litchfield Raven, KBE (3 December 1859 – 14 February 1934) was an English railway engineer, and was chief mechanical engineer of the North Eastern Railway from 1910 to 1922. Biography Vincent Raven was born the son of a clergy ...

had taken over.

Overview

The Class Y locomotives were intended for hauling coal trains and were developed from the

NER Class X The NER Class X (LNER Class T1) was a class of 4-8-0T tank locomotive designed by Wilson Worsdell for the North Eastern Railway. They were intended for use as powerful shunting engines to arrange and move coal wagons for loading into ships. In ...

(LNER Class T1) 4-8-0T heavy shunters. However, they had larger boilers and smaller cylinders for higher working speeds. Twenty were built in one batch and numbered between 1113 and 1195. Originally built with saturated boilers pressed to , seven locomotives were later fitted with boilers equipped with

superheater A superheater is a device used to convert saturated steam or wet steam into superheated steam or dry steam. Superheated steam is used in steam turbines for electricity generation, steam engines, and in processes such as steam reforming. There ar ...

s and pressed to . All twenty locomotives passed to the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

at the

1923 Grouping The Railways Act 1921 (c. 55), also known as the Grouping Act, was an Act of Parliament enacted by the British government and intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, by "grouping" them into four la ...

. The LNER left the NER's locomotive numbers unchanged, but raised the boiler pressure of the saturated locomotives to . They also fitted ten more locomotives with the 160 lbf/in² superheated boilers that the LNER classified as diagram 55. By the time the A7s entered LNER ownership in 1923, the A7s had been relegated to shunting in the larger

marshalling yards A classification yard (American and Canadian English (Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard ( British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English (Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway ...

. Their power was invaluable when shunting heavy trains over the shunting hump. In the 1930s, Nos. 1136 and 1175 were allocated to hauling chalk quarry trains from Hessle Quarry to Stoneferry Cement Works, in the Hull area. Heavy mineral traffic declined after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and the A7s moved to the Hull area, except for Nos. 1181 and 1192 which stayed at Stockton. At Hull, the A7s replaced the old

Hull and Barnsley Railway Hull may refer to: Structures * Chassis, of an armored fighting vehicle * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a ship * Submarine hull Mathematics * Affine hull, in af ...

(H&BR) types which were being withdrawn at that time. During LNER ownership in the 1940s, two locomotives were rebuilt with diagram 63B superheated boilers pressed to 175 lbf/in²; the locomotives were then assigned to Class A7/1. In the LNER 1946 renumbering scheme, the class received the 9770 to 9789 block; at nationalisation in 1948 all 20 locomotives passed to British Railways they were assigned the numbers 69770–69789, although the last locomotive was withdrawn before it was renumbered. BR continued the rebuilding scheme, dealing with another 13 locomotives, although one received a diagram 63B saturated boiler and one a diagram 63C superheated one. Both were pressed to 175 lbf/in².

Withdrawal

The A7s were withdrawn between 1951 and 1957 and none have survived into preservation.

Fleet list

References

* *

External links

LNER Encyclopedia
{{LNER Locomotives Y 4-6-2T locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1910 Scrapped locomotives Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain Passenger locomotives