The North Eastern Railway (NER) Class H, classified as Class Y7 by 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) is a class of

0-4-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven. The wheels on the earliest four-coupled locomotives were ...

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 loco ...

s designed for

shunting Shunting may refer to: * Ribosome shunting, a mechanism in protein biosynthesis * Shunting (rail), a rail transport operation * Shunting (neurophysiology), a concept in neurophysiology * Shunting (sailing), a maneuver for sailing upwind See a ...

Description

Introduced in 1888 by Thomas W. Worsdell, six were built in 1888. Their simple, bare design easily navigated the tight curves and poor quality track which they ran on. The H proved so successful, that the NER ordered a further ten in 1891, three in 1897 and five more were ordered by the LNER in 1923. Coal was carried in side bunkers incorporated into the side tanks. The absence of a rear bunker and the small size of the cab provided the driver with a clear view of the buffer bar when reversing onto a train. The H shared their simple domeless boiler design with the H1 (J78) and H2 (J79) classes. The locos were originally fitted with dumb buffers, but these were changed for small round buffers during the 1930s, some also gaining vacuum brakes during this period; only hand and steam brakes were fitted when built. Locomotives operating at Tyne Dock were altered to take shunting poles on each corner of the loco, giving the ability to pull a wagon on an adjacent line.

Numbering and livery

The LNER originally painted the Y7s in black with quarter-inch vermilion lining; repaints after 1928 omitted this with locomotives in plain black. Two entered

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 ...

stock in 1948, becoming BR 68088 and 68089.

Operation and preservation

The original work of these locos was on Tyneside, at Hull docks, and within Darlington works, but LNER no. 8088 was recorded working at Stratford works between 1943 and 1952. Dock work was hit hard by the depression, and between 1929 and 1932 the sixteen locomotives which made up the first two batches delivered were withdrawn, nine being sold to industrial use while the remainder were scrapped. At least one operated passenger trains on the

North Sunderland Railway The North Sunderland Railway was a railway line in Northumberland, England. It was opened in 1898, and ran from to , with an intermediate station at . Chathill was on the main line of the North Eastern Railway between Morpeth and Berwick. The bra ...

before its closure in 1951.Railway Magazine March 1959 p. 218 Two have survived to preservation: *NER No. 1310 (Gateshead, 1891), was withdrawn in 1931 and sold to Robert Frazer & Sons, and sold on to Pelaw Main Collieries Limited in 1933. It passed to the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...

in 1949, who renumbered it 63. In 1965, it was bought by the Steam Power Trust, and has been located at the

Middleton Railway The Middleton Railway is the world's oldest continuously working railway, situated in the English city of Leeds. It was founded in 1758 and is now a heritage railway, run by volunteers from The Middleton Railway Trust Ltd. since 1960. The rail ...

since 1965. *LNER No. 985 (Darlington, 1923), was renumbered 8088 by the LNER in 1946. It passed to British Railways in 1948, who renumbered it as 68088, and transferred it to the Eastern Region departmental fleet. It was sold to the

in November 1952 and worked at Bentick and Thurgaton Collieries until 1964 when it was purchased by the Y7 Preservation Society. This locomotive has been located at the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway since 2016.

References

Sources

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External links

* {{LNER Locomotives H 0-4-0T locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1888 Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain Shunting locomotives