IRISH ‘JEEPS’
Northern Irish main line steam’s finale
Do you have a copy of a 1948 Ian Allan Abc? It lists all 20,102 steam locomotives that British Railways inherited when the ‘Big Four’ – the GWR, LMS, LNER and Southern – were nationalised on January 1 1948. Or does it? Turn to the section dedicated to LMS 2-6-4Ts and flick through it. Henry Fowler’s locomotives are there, and so are William Stanier’s two and three-cylinder variants, as well as Charles Fairburn’s post-war take on the subject. But where are those of H.G. Ivatt? Missing… British Railways did indeed have ten H.G. Ivatt 2-6-4Ts on its books. Yes, they were 5ft 3in gauge, yes, they worked in Ireland and yes, they were only BR property for 15 months or so, but they were BR engines. And they outlived their 4ft 8½in gauge cousins to become the last main line steam locomotives in revenueearning service in the British Isles. It’s a sad fact that the railways of Ireland still remain a bit of a mystery to most enthusiasts in Great Britain. Is it because the locomotive fleet looks somehow familiar and yet strangely foreign at the same time? Could it be that Ireland’s political history spoils our usual pre-Grouping, ‘Big Four’ and BR historical narrative? Or is it just ignorance of Ireland’s geography? The Midland Railway didn’t share that ignorance. All the railway companies invested heavily in ports and docks, and places like Southampton and Harwich owe their maritime success to railway investment. Being essentially a Midlands company, finding a suitable seaside location to develop as a port was not easy for the Midland Railway. Its push north towards Carlisle meant that the small port at Heysham became a viable option for traffic to not only the Isle of Man but to Ireland too.
IRISH INVESTMENT
The MR invested about £3 million into developing Heysham but, in order to maximise and protect its investment it wanted to buy an Irish railway company. It made an offer to buy the profitable Belfast & Northern Counties Railway and, in 1903, the BNCR management agreed to the amalgamation. The Midland Railway (Northern Counties Commission) became the proud operator of 201 miles of 5ft 3in gauge railway and 64 miles of 3ft gauge railway. These railways became part of the LMS after the Grouping in 1923 and the 17-mile 3ft gauge Ballycastle Railway joined the empire in 1924. Fascinating stuff for sure, but where do BR and Ivatt 2-6-4Ts fit in? The LMS (NCC)’s broad gauge motive power fleet was a rather mixed bag as the Second World War drew to a close. It had 15 ‘W’ 2-6-0s, an amalgam of Derby and LMS practice with the look of a Hughes-Fowler ‘Crab’, which had been delivered between 1935 and 1942, plus myriad older 4-4-0s. Major Frank Pope became the LMS (NCC)’s manager in 1941. He was a long-time LMS company servant, as well as having experience of railways in India. The LMS (NCC)’s system was small fry in comparison and he believed that the entire 5ft 3in gauge network should be operated by tank engines, comprising 18 new ones and rebuilding the existing fleet. Those new engines became the LMS (NCC) ‘WT’
2-6-4Ts, which were given the nickname ‘Jeeps’. They were an amalgam of LMS ideas: the foundation was Sir Henry Fowler’s 2-6-4T of 1927 but with dimensions modified to match the ‘W’ 2-6-0s – 16ft 6in coupled wheelbase, 6ft driving wheels and 3ft diameter bogie and pony truck wheels. H.G. Ivatt’s influence can be seen in F.G. Carrier’s styling (Carrier, who also styled the BR Standard ‘4MT’, was part of Ivatt’s team), rocking grates and self-cleaning smokeboxes. Ten were built at Derby and shipped in bits to Belfast York Road Works where they were assembled. Nos. 5-8 arrived in 1946 and Nos. 1-4, 9 and 10 followed in the spring of 1947. An order was placed in the October for a further four, to be delivered in 1949. But then, on January 1 1948, British Railways came into being.
LEGAL QUAGMIRE
The British Transport Commission swallowed up everything from canals and seaports to road hauliers and bus companies. The LMS and its assets formed a key part of British Railways. Nationalisation also took place in Northern Ireland in 1948 but it was less encompassing. The Ulster Transport Authority took on the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board and the Belfast
& County Down Railway. The LMS (NCC), despite being part of BR, became ‘The Railway Executive, NCC’. The GNR(I)’s lines in Northern Ireland remained independent. How often do lawyers appear in stories of locomotive construction? Probably not that often, but they do in the story of the ‘Jeeps’. BR’s Derby works started to build the four new ‘WTs’ ordered in 1947, during 1948 when the Railway Executive, NCC placed an order for four more, to be delivered during 1950. The first of the new locomotives were ready for delivery to Ireland by the middle of April 1949 and the rest were well on the way towards completion. The issue was that BR had sold the NCC to the Ulster Transport Authority on April 1 1949 and that the Transport Act 1947 expressly forbade the use of BR’s works to build rolling stock for third parties. The eight 2-6-4Ts found themselves in a legal quagmire, which found its way to the top echelons of BR and the British Transport Commission. A memorandum from Railway Executive Chairman Eustace Missenden to the British Transport Commission said: “...the Executive’s Legal Adviser and Solicitor has expressed the opinion that there would be no objection to the programme being completed.” The UTA, however, would pay not only for construction but the costs of dismantling the engines for transport, shipment to Heysham and erection in Belfast. The UTA appears to have been more ruthless with line closures than BR, but there was no hard and fast end to its steam operations, unlike August 11 1968. The first closures took place in 1950, including Northern Ireland’s last 3ft gauge lines, but the UTA is credited with introducing what was the first completely dieselised passenger service in the British Isles in 1954. The GNR(I) was nationalised in 1958; lines south of the border became part of Republic railway operator CIÉ, while its Northern Ireland operations became part of UTA. The majority of ex-GNR(I) lines were closed a few years later. The same happened with the Londonderry Port & Harbour Commissioner’s lines too. UTA then ‘did a Beeching’. Taking cues from BR’s 1963 report, UTA commissioned Sir Henry Benson to undertake a study of its activities in order to maximise its profits. The resulting report, published in 1963, devastated UTA’s railways network and just left passenger services between Londonderry and to the border via Belfast, with branches to Portrush, Larne and Bangor. But unlike Dr Beeching’s The Reshaping of British Railways, the Benson Report didn’t accelerate the withdrawal of steam. UTA steam locomotives were withdrawn as and when they became life-expired. The last ex-LMS (NCC) 4-4-0s had gone by the early 1960s and the last ‘W’ 2-6-0s were withdrawn in 1965. Eventually, the only steam locomotives left intact and in service were the ‘Jeeps’.
USEFUL ENGINES
The ‘WT’ 2-6-4Ts gained their ‘Jeep’ sobriquet because, like the famous wartime vehicle, they could go anywhere and do anything. If any locomotive in mainland Britain also deserved that complimentary nickname it had to be the Stanier ‘Black Five’. It’s interesting to compare the fortunes of both fleets as 1968 dawned, mainly because ‘Black Fives’ – still – were in charge of the Manchester-Heysham boat trains and the ‘Jeeps’ were hauling the complementary services in Ireland, from Larne to Belfast. Allocation records for January 6 1968 reveal just 149 ‘Black Fives’ on BR’s books, just 17% of the entire build. In Ireland, ten out of the 18 ‘WTs’ were still in use but, more importantly, none of the eight that had been withdrawn had been scrapped. Instead, they were stripped for spares to keep the survivors going. The 1966-1970 period was a dark one for British main line steam as the last BR locomotives were withdrawn and the ban on preserved main line steam came into effect. The only post-1968 main line steam came in the form of exGWR pannier tanks but London Transport restricted their use to engineering trains and shunting, often late at night or away from public view. UTA and its successor, Northern Ireland Railways, took a different approach because it had no other choice. BR had invested in diesel and electric locomotives as well as multiple units but UTA had gone down the multiple unit route. It had no locomotives other than the ‘Jeeps’ and one of a handful of pre-war diesels. Its most recent
acquisition was Beyer Peacock 0-6-4T Lough Erne, which it bought in 1959 (classmate Lough Melvin had been withdrawn in 1965). Even the RPSI’s GSWR ‘J15’ 0-6-0 No. 186 was employed by UTA and NIR for station pilot duties, dock shunting and ballast trains. The ‘Jeeps’, all gathered at Belfast York Road from 1966, were still used for passenger duties, including excursions and specials, boat trains from Larne, 11-coach trains on the Portrush branch and even for venturing down to Dublin (the Republic had been steam-free since 1963). But the real excitement came with the winning of a contract to move stone from Magheramorne quarry (just south of Larne and now home to Castle Black from Game of Thrones) to Belfast Lough, where a motorway was being built on reclaimed land. It was a remarkable turnaround for steam. The best ‘Jeeps’ were given overhauls at York Road Works and called on to move NIR trains of up to 800 tons. Could you imagine something like that happening on BR? Regular steam continued into the new decade but only just, for the last regular steam duties ended in 1970. British enthusiasts could reel off an almost interminable list of end-of-steam survivors from BR: Oliver Cromwell, Ayrshire Yeomanry… the list goes on. But what of those end-of-steam survivors from Northern Ireland? What were Ireland’s equivalent of the ‘1T57’ ‘Black Fives’?
FINAL DAYS
The first ‘Jeep’ was withdrawn in 1965 but withdrawals were sporadic throughout the 1960s. They were stripped for spares to keep the others going but NIR had a purge in March 1969 and scrapped the seven carcasses. Seven ‘Jeeps’ – Nos. 4, 5, 6, 50, 51, 53 and 55 – were still in action in early 1970. No. 50 didn’t last long – it was withdrawn in January. Nos. 5 and 55 were withdrawn at the end of March, with No. 6 following in April. No. 4 really deserved further recognition for the role it played in the end of steam. It hauled the last steam-hauled main line passenger train in the British Isles when it drew into Carrickfergus with the 5.25pm from Whitehead on March 31 1970. This was the last day of NIR steam-hauled passenger operations. The last stone train ran on May 2, topped and tailed by No. 53 and, of course, No. 4. No. 51 was used for the last time on October 16; No. 4 succumbed on October 22, the last official day of steam on NIR. The lure of a working main line steam engine was too much for preservation societies in mainland Britain; LT’s panniers and surviving BR tank engines in industry were eagerly acquired for nascent preserved railways, such as the Severn Valley and Keighley & Worth Valley. Something similar would have happened in Ireland had there been more societies than the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. A ‘Jeep’ was a natural choice for the RPSI. It originally selected No. 53 but wasted stays forced a last-minute change to No. 4. Given its place in Irish railway history, it was arguably the better option. No. 4 is in working order, so why not retrace the steps of those intrepid enthusiasts who crossed the Irish Sea in the search for steam 50 years ago and enjoy some Ivatt 2-6-4T action? It’s ironic, given the brouhaha around the construction of Nos. 50-57, that BR would build the ‘Jeep’s’ successors. Rules had relaxed in the 20-odd years since BR sold the Railway Executive, NCC to the Ulster Transport Authority (Swindon had built at least one new firebox). Hunslet had won the contract to build three 1,350hp Bo-Bos for the Belfast-Dublin ‘Enterprise’ services but with no space capacity, it sub-contracted the work to Doncaster Works. Not only was a BR works building locomotives for a third party but it wasn’t even the main contractor! Times had indeed changed.