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 ...

(LNER) Thompson Class L1 was a class of

2-6-4 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a locomotive has two leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels. This arrangement is commonly called Adriatic. Overview With only a few known except ...

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 designed by Edward Thompson. The prototype no. 9000 was built in 1945, but the remaining 99 were built under

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

jurisdiction in the period 1948–1950.

Overview

The class, at least on paper, should have been very free steaming and powerful engines but, in practice, they were not suited to the work to which they were assigned. The engines had driving wheels, which would give them excellent power at low speed, such as that required for freight work, but these engines were intended for passenger use. The speeds required for suburban passenger work wore the engines out in a remarkably short time. Axleboxes, crosshead slides and crank bearings all suffered due to the high speeds.

Accidents and incidents

*On 19 November 1958, a freight train overran signals and was in a rear-end collision with another at

Hitchin Hitchin () is a market town and unparished area in the North Hertfordshire Districts of England, district in Hertfordshire, England, with an estimated population of 35,842. History Hitchin is first noted as the central place of the Hicce peopl ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

. A third freight train ran into the wreckage and was derailed. Locomotive No. 67785 was pushed over by the wagons from the third train.

Modifications

In an attempt to reduce wear, two experiments were tried. In May 1951, five locomotives had liners fitted to their cylinders to reduce the cylinder bore from . In March 1953, five locomotives had their boiler pressure reduced from . Neither experiment was a success.

Numbering

Withdrawal

Withdrawals were between 1960 and 1962. None survived to preservation.

Modelling

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 ...

produces the L1 class 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, ...

with a number of different liveries, both green with LNER or BR running numbers, and black with BR running numbers.

References

* {{LNER Locomotives L1 2-6-4T locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1945 Scrapped locomotives NBL locomotives Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns locomotives Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain