Aspinall’s ‘Lanky tanks’ Just what the Lancashire & Yorkshire needed
The 2-4-2 radial tank locomotives of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway punched well above their weight, and with Bachmann’s 00-scale version about to be released in glorious L&Y lined black this summer, Pete Kelly looks into the history of these and other Aspinall locomotives and that of the railway itself.
WHEN John A Aspinall moved from Ireland’s Great Southern & Western Railway to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway in 1886, his mission was to design a new range of locomotives to be built at the new Horwich Works, near Bolton, which occupied a 3250-acre site and opened on November 15 of that year to replace the original works at Miles Platting, Manchester.
Incorporated in 1847, the L&Y operated through some of the most densely-packed industrial areas in the country and became a hugely successful railway company, with routes stretching from Liverpool and Fleetwood in the west to Goole in the east. Three divisions operated routes between Manchester, Blackpool and Fleetwood; Manchester, Bolton, Wigan, Southport and Liverpool; Manchester, Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Todmorden, Accrington, Burnley and Colne; and Todmorden to Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Normanton, Goole and Doncaster. An important connection to Stockport enabled traffic to continue on to London along the London & North Western Railway, and the express line between Manchester and Liverpool was fast and lucrative.
Three years ago Ken Carter, of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society*, awakened me to the L&Y’s many proud boasts in an article he wrote for the freely-distributed Railway Magazine Guide to Modelling, which I was editing at the time.
The railway had 601 route miles of track, all but 41 miles of them being at least double-track, with a total mileage, including sidings, of 2217. Only 24 miles consisted of level track, while 134 miles were on gradients steeper than 1-in-100. Along the route miles, wrote Ken, were 291 passenger stations and slightly more goods stations, and with several large marshalling yards. There were 91 tunnels (the longest being the 2885-yard-long Summit Tunnel near Rochdale) and 2478 bridges and viaducts, with train movements being controlled by 733 signal boxes and ground frames.
Ranging from the ubiquitous Class 27 0-6-0s of 1889 to the rapid Class 7 Atlantics of 1899, Aspinall’s new locomotives were perfectly suited to their tasks. From standing starts on Manchester to Liverpool expresses, the 4-4-2s – known as ‘Highflyers’ on account of their high-mounted boilers and 7ft 3in driving wheels – were capable of rapid acceleration and speeds well above 80mph.
The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway ranked fifth among the pre-Grouping companies in overall size, with a greater population per route mile than other major lines as it served the great textile towns, collieries and major Irish and North Sea ports – indeed, the 28 ships of its Irish Sea
and North Sea fleets made it the largest railway-owned shipping fleet in the country.
It had 32 engine sheds, 4360 carriages, and almost 38,000 wagons. About 1200 booked goods trains ran each day, including coal and mineral trains, along with around 2000 passenger trains, a quarter of which were electric trains on two major lines.
Traffic mileages totalled 30.8 million: 9.5 million being steamhauled passenger trains, two million electric passenger trains, 46 million goods trains (three million miles comprising coal and mineral traffic), and 8.3 million miles were clocked up in shunting alone!
First class passenger journeys came to 2.8 million miles, third class 57 million, and workmen’s tickets 33.7 million. Of the 73,000 seasonticket holders, a fifth were first class travellers. Ken’s statistics also noted that about 12 million tons of coal was moved, along with 400,000 heads of livestock.
The first locomotive to emerge from Horwich Works in 1889 was one of Aspinall’s Class 5 2-4-2Ts which quickly became known as ‘Lanky tanks’ or ‘radial tanks’, and they were in their element working frequent suburban passenger services in either forward or reverse gear.
By the time 270 had been built in 1909, they were working well over half of the L&Y’s passenger duties, totalling no fewer than 7.5 million miles per year as they hauled 270-ton trains over some of the steepest gradients in England. The 1540-gallon water tanks could be replenished from troughs in either direction while on the move.
No fewer than 330 of these locomotives were eventually built, the vast majority with 18 ½x26 in cylinders, and at places like Bolton, with forests of cotton-mill chimneys in the background, such locomotives would have fitted comfortably into any JS Lowry ‘matchstick men’ painting!
The original locomotives weighed 55 tons 19cwt and had a coal capacity of two tons, but over the 22-year construction span at Horwich, where the likes of Richard Maunsell and Nigel Gresley served under Aspinall’s leadership, various modifications emerged. In 1890 some of the 2-4-2s were built or rebuilt with slightly smaller cylinders, and from 1893 a number were fitted with larger bunkers that could hold four tons of coal – twice the original capacity.
Aspinall was succeeded by Mr HA Hoy in 1899, but five years later George Hughes became the CME, introducing in 1905 a more powerful ‘Lanky tank’ version sporting Belpaire fireboxes, bigger boilers with a fifth more water and two-fifths more steam space, and extended smokeboxes. Hughes also oversaw the construction of the 1000th locomotive to be built at Horwich, a four-cylinder compound 4-6-0 in 1908.
Between 1911 and 1914, the final 20 66 ½-ton ‘large 2-4-2Ts’ to be built under Hughes were superheated, with 20 ½ in-bore cylinders and bigger big-end bearings. Putting down a remarkable tractive effort of 24,585lb, their power classification was increased from five to six. Over time, 44 of the earlier locomotives were similarly modified, 26 of them, originally built under Aspinall, gaining Belpaire fireboxes at the time.
The entire class of 2-4-2s remained intact when the London, Midland & Scottish Railway was formed at the 1923 Grouping, but the first withdrawals took place four years later. By 1944, 154 of them were left, and British Railways took over the remaining 115 in 1948, although that year’s Ian Allan ABC listed just 112, including eight of the heavier 3P versions built under George Hughes and boasting larger cylinders of either 19 ½ x 26in or 20 ½ x 26in.
Only 83 of the locomotives appeared in the loco shed listings of the same combined volume, however: two at Rhyl (7D), three at Warrington (8B), three at Preston (10B), one at Plodder Lane (10D), one at Barrow (11B), one at Leeds (20A), one at Normanton (20D), 10 at Manningham (20E), two at Hellifield (23B), two at Rose Grove (24B), one at Lostock Hall (24C), 15 at Wakefield (25A), four at Huddersfield (25B), two at Sowerby Bridge (25E), two at Low Moor (25F), two at Newton Heath (26A), nine at Bolton (26C), two at Bacup (26E), two at Aintree (27B), seven at Blackpool (28A) and 10 at Fleetwood (28B). No. 50897 was listed as being based out of service at the Rugby Test Plant.
In his pocket-sized book, School Days and Steam Days, published by Silver Link Publishing, which is now a part of Mortons, my Liverpool friend Barry Allen recalls seeing ‘Lanky tank’ No. 50721 at the city’s Exchange station when he was a young trainspotter. The locomotive, shedded at Bank Hall (27A) at the time, took out the empty stock after the arrival of a BR Standard Clan Pacific with a passenger train from Glasgow. I too have vague childhood memories of the engines at Blackpool, Southport and Bolton, but by 1961 only a handful of the locomotives remained.
Barry had also read about the derailment of a ‘Lanky tank’ heading a Liverpool to Southport express near the city’s Waterloo station in the early 1900s that cost the lives of several people. Investigating more, I learned that seven people, including the fireman, had been killed, and that the driver, three company staff and 112 passengers were injured. A Board of Trade report suggested that, while the train’s speed of 50mph was above the advisory 35mph for the curve on the station’s approach, a fault on one of the locomotive’s radial axle-boxes had probably been the root cause.
During the First World War, misfortune overtook another radial tank, No. 661, while standing on the Penistone viaduct on February 2, 1916, when a pier and two arches collapsed beneath it and the locomotive plunged into the valley. The 2-4-2 had been running round its train for the return trip to Huddersfield, and fortunately the footplate crew ran clear to safety... unlike North British Railway 4-4-0 No. 224. That, along with the Edinburgh-Aberdeen train it was heading, plunged into the River Tay, resulting in the deaths of 75 people, when Sir Thomas Bouch’s original railway bridge collapsed during a violent storm on Sunday, December 28 1879.
No. 661 was not recoverable and was broken up where it lay. The parts were lifted up the embankment and sent to Horwich Works, where some were re-used in a new locomotive carrying the same number.
Although the last of the Lancashire & Yorkshire 2-4-2s had gone by 1961, the first one built, L&Y 1008 (LMS 10621, BR 50621), which had been withdrawn in 1954 but was earmarked for preservation, remains part of the Science Museum Group’s Collection and is a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum. It still has its round-top boiler and small coal bunker.
*To join the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society, visit www.lyrs.org. uk or write to its membership officer, Ken Carter, at: 11 Waveney Close, Arnold, Nottingham NG5 6QH.
The models
Bachmann’s latest OO-scale model of Aspinall’s 2-4-2 radial tank locomotives is due to be released this month as No. 1042 in the stunning lined black livery of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway itself, following on from examples that have already appeared in LMS crimson lake and British Railways lined black.
A ‘Lanky tank’ was the first locomotive to emerge from the new Horwich Works in 1889, and at its height the class numbered 330. The latest model (31-171) depicts No.1042, a short-bunker variant, complete with the original oval-styled works plate-cum fleet number, and incorporates lots of fine detail including an extremely wellmodelled and decorated cab interior.
All-axle electrical pick-up and sprung buffers, along with a 21-pin DCC decoder socket, is also part of the specification, and Bachmann’s recommended retail price for this little gem is £144.95.
Bachmann Europe plc has now received its first painted OOscale samples of these evocative locomotives – and they look absolutely superb.