Thompson’s B1s – in the shadows of yesteryear but much admired

WHEN No. 61111 became the first member of the B1 class to be entered in my log of trains passing through Ilford back in April 1957, the furthest thing on my young mind would have been that nearly 65 years later, my indifference to these 4-6-0s – other than underlining them in my Ian Allan Combined Volume – had morphed into nostalgia and even admiration for what many regard as one of the LNER's most successful designs.

Although popular with drivers on the former GER lines out of Liverpool Street, during the 1950s they became B-listers with trainspotters on the East Anglian routes.

This was due to the arrival of the far more glamorous Britannia Pacifics, and also because of their sheer ubiquity and the uninspiring names carried by a few members of the class. Duiker or Nilghai hardly cut it when compared with Alfred the Great or Coeur-de-Lion.

I did, though, log a member of the class on a named train, on April 27, 1960, when No. 61236 of Cambridge (31A) came through Ponders End with the Down ‘Fenman' from Liverpool Street to Hunstanton.

At King's Cross, where the roost was ruled by Nigel Gresley's A3 and A4, Arthur Peppercorn's A1, and the A2, the B1s really stood no chance at all.

In my photograph collection is an image I took there on January 2, 1959, of two adjacent locomotives waiting to leave with trains to the north.

The shot is dominated by A1 Pacific No. 60120 Kittiwake of Copley Hill (56C) on a Leeds express, while in the shadows (and out of focus) is B1 No. 61082, a resident of Immingham (40B) and thus probably awaiting departure to Grimsby.

In the shadows – that surely was the fate of the B1s, but decades later that seems unfair. They were Edward Thompson's thoroughly competent answer to the ‘Black Fives' and Halls, which were also two-cylinder mixed traffic 4-6-0 designs with similar tractive efforts, but the LMS and GWR engines stirred the trainspotters' souls far more than the B1s.

Exactly 54 years after the final three members of the class were withdrawn, in September 1967, prolific railway author Peter Tuffrey has made a pictorial case for the defence, with a 160-page hardback published by Great Northern Books that is packed with 230 colour and black-and-white photographs accompanied by detailed captions.

Well-liked and reliable

Peter, who was born in Doncaster – a railway town to its core but ironically not one of the four locations where the 410 members of the B1 class were built – writes in praise of Thompson's design: “The class had very few modifications during their time in service, and on the whole performed well and were well-liked by enginemen,” adding that the class was relatively reliable, with some running 100,000 miles between general repairs.

The book starts with a Darlington Works' photograph of the brand-new class pioneer, December 1942-built No. 8301 Springbok, which Peter reveals was the only member of the class not to receive a works' number, as Darlington had abandoned the practice in about 1910. However, a numbering scheme was adopted in early 1943, enabling the second member of the class, No. 8302 Eland, to be assigned the works' No. 1912.

Members of the class are photographed at such locations as King's Cross, Marylebone, Neasden, Colchester, Grantham, Nottingham,

Leicester, Hull, Doncaster, Sheffield, York, Darlington, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Fort William – a broad geographical spread that illustrates the extensive sweep of the class.

The cover sets an artistic tone with an image of No. 61009 Hartebeeste crossing the River Witham at Lincoln on July 8, 1959, with the backcloth consisting of the city's magnificent cathedral.

Understandably, however, artistry doesn't dominate the publication; such a quest would be impossible with a subject as workmanlike as the jack-of-all trades mixed traffic Thompson B1. Members of the class are seen on sheds, in workshops, in deeply industrial landscapes, and conversely in lonely outposts, such as No. 61278 at Riccarton Junction on the Edinburgh to Carlisle Waverley route.

Peter Tuffrey is in no doubt about the value to the LNER and British Railways of the B1 class, two of which, Nos. 61264 and 61306, survive in preservation. “The design,” he says, “is a fitting tribute to an engineer that stepped into a difficult position at an adverse time in British history.”

➜ Thompson's B1s. By Peter Tuffrey (Great Northern Books, hardback, 160 pages, £25, ISBN 978-1-91422706-6).

BEN BROOKSBANK GEOFF COURTNEY On the level: In a photograph from Great Northern Books’ latest publication, Thompson’s B1s, No. 61326 is running light engine at Lincoln Central on May 21, 1956. At first sight it seems the driver of an Austin A40 Devon saloon, a van driver, a motorcyclist and a cyclist are dashing across to beat the closure of the level crossing gates as the B1 approaches, but the 4-6-0 is reversing into the station. The crossing survived to the early 1960s when, doubtless to the relief of local motorists, it was replaced by a bridge. A fair cop: Ian Allan’s ABC Combined Volume was a constant companion of steamera trainspotters throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s. This two-page extract from the 1959 volume of Heritage Railway senior contributor Geoff Courtney covers parts of two classes of LNER locomotives he had ‘copped’ during his travels, the V2 and B1. A new book by Peter Tuffrey describes the latter as a “fitting tribute” to Edward Thompson.