1948: BR’S FIRST YEAR
Nottingham, August 1948. An Ivatt ‘Flying Pig’ stands at the city’s Midland station. Aside from the British Railways branding, and the unorthodox design of the locomotive, this typical railway scene could have been recorded a decade or more previously.
The rake of ex-LMS corridor and noncorridor stock recalls the railways’ Grouping glory days, while the gas wagon coupled immediately behind the ‘4MT’ is typical of the eclectic mixture of traffic which prevailed until the advent of containerisation. Could any of the passengers standing on the adjacent platform imagine that, 20 years hence, steam would be eradicated from the main line altogether, or that the railways would undergo the most rapid and comprehensive change for a generation? Probably not.
Nonetheless, the signs are already there. Ivatt’s Class 4 ‘Moguls’ were a radical departure from London Midland locomotives of old and, indeed, were the last new design of locomotives for the LMS – although only three of the 162-strong class were actually built under LMS auspices (SR474). The high running plate and extensive external pipework more or less set the template for the myriad BR Standards that were to follow, and the move away from elegance towards austerity and ergonomics set a trend from which the railways would not escape until the end of steam.
Six of these locomotives actually survived into the last year of BR main line steam, with preserved example No. 43106 lasting until June 1968, when it was withdrawn from Lostock Hall.
Even more radical were the 22 Stanier ‘Black Fives’ fitted with Caprotti poppet
valve gear. No. 44755 was one of an initial batch of 20 ‘5MTs’ fitted with the valve gear in an attempt by the LMS to increase mileage between overhauls. A further two, Nos. 44686/7, were fitted with improved Caprotti gear in 1951.
The success of these trials would result in 30 BR Standard ‘5MTs’ – the design of which was heavily based on the last two ‘Black Fives’ – being similarly fitted, as was the one-off ‘8P’ No. 71000 Duke of Gloucester.