The

London, Midland and Scottish Railway The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMSIt has been argued that the initials LMSR should be used to be consistent with London and North Eastern Railway, LNER, Great Western Railway, GWR and Southern Railway (UK), SR. The London, Midland an ...

(LMS) Fowler Dock Tank was an

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, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

. Designed for shunting in

dock The word dock () in American English refers to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore). In British English, the term is not used the same way as in American Engl ...

s, it had a short

wheelbase In both road and rail vehicles, the wheelbase is the horizontal distance between the centers of the front and rear wheels. For road vehicles with more than two axles (e.g. some trucks), the wheelbase is the distance between the steering (front ...

in order for it to easily negotiate tight curves. The locomotives spent their entire lives painted in plain black.

History

The LMS operated lines on a number of docks which due to space constraints contained curves considerably sharper than most other places, thus most dock tanks had only four coupled (i.e. driving) wheels in order to allow them to negotiate the tight curves.

Design

With the growth in freight transport a more powerful engine was required, resulting in this design by

Sir Henry Fowler Sir Henry Fowler, (29 July 1870 – 16 October 1938) was an English railway engineer, and was chief mechanical engineer of the Midland Railway and subsequently the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. Biography Fowler was born in Evesham, ...

: an locomotive with a wheelbase which, aided by the use of Cartazzi self-centring axleboxes on the rear axle, allowed the engines to negotiate curves of .

Construction

Ten members of the class were built on Lot 61 in 1928 and 1929 by

Derby Works The Derby Works comprised a number of British manufacturing facilities designing and building locomotives and rolling stock in Derby, England. The first of these was a group of three maintenance sheds opened around 1840 behind Derby railway sta ...

, although unusually for dock tanks they incorporated outside cylinders which was normally considered too dangerous in an area where people were working close to the track. Other than this they were typical of most dock tanks with simple slide valves and oval buffers.

Numbering

They were initially numbered 11270–11279, renumbered under the LMS 1933 renumbering scheme to 7100–7109, and renumbered again in 1939 to 7160–7169. Despite the small class size, the LMS considered them standard locomotives. After nationalisation in 1948,

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

ways added 40000 to their numbers making them 47160–47169, and allocated half the class to Scottish depots for use on branch lines as well as docks.

Withdrawal

Withdrawals took place between 1959 and 1964 with all examples being scrapped.

References

* {{LMS Locomotives 0-6-0T locomotives C n2t locomotives 2 Fowler Dock Tank Railway locomotives introduced in 1928 Scrapped locomotives Standard-gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain Shunting locomotives