London Transport pannier tanks: before and after

REGARDING the London Transport pannier tanks article (August issue) and subsequent correspondence (September issue), it may be of interest that rather than all the locomotives being dealt with at Swindon Works before handing over to LT, several were repaired at Stafford Road Works in Wolverhampton, notably:

■ No. L90 (the second of that number, ex-7760), from Oxford at the Works between September 8 and November 2, 1961;

■ No. L96 (ex-7741) from Lydney, between September 26 and November 2, 1961;

■ No. L97 (ex-7749) from St Philip’s Marsh, between June 15 and July 20, 1962;

■ No. L98 (ex-7739) from Neath, between August 3 and September 28, 1962.

The livery in which each locomotive was outshopped is not recorded, but No. L92 (ex-5786 and transferred to LT in 1958) underwent repair at Stafford Road between April 11 and July 5, 1963 and was received in full LT red livery but outshopped in plain black devoid of any insignia or numbers.

The first No. L90 (ex-7711, acquired by LT in 1956) has been photographed at the back of Stafford Road shed on an unknown date, but possibly 1961, prior to it being replaced in full LT livery, its Kerr Stuart builder’s plate prominent on the front splasher distinguishing it from its replacement built by the North British Loco Company.

Was No. L90/7711 scrapped at Wolverhampton in its red livery? It would be interesting to know. Also where did the transferred locomotives receive their red livery?

Simon Dewey Tettenhall, Wolverhampton

WITH reference to the pannier tank article, I was on a Warwickshire Railway Society visit to Swindon Works in October 1967.

Parked outside were two ex-9400 tanks used as stationary boilers, Nos. 8466 and 8497. The doorways were boarded up, but looking through them they still retained all the levers and gauges inside so the boiler could be steamed. Both had been reduced to 0-4-0 tanks, presumably because of the very tight curves outside the works.

According to the ‘Whatever Happened to Steam’ website,

No. 8466 was retained as a stationary boiler from August 1964 to August 1968; No. 8497 was retained as a stationary boiler from July 1964 to June 1968.

These locos were still in the possession of BR and steaming, albeit as stationary boilers. So, perhaps they could take the accolade as the last Western Region-owned locos to steam? Steam on the mainline for WR finished in 1966.

Chris Barber, by email

I VERY much enjoyed Howard

Johnston’s article in the August issue on the last steam workings on LT. This also got me thinking, had the topic been phrased slightly differently, another contender could be in the frame.

Up until 1970, Northern Ireland Railways retained a few survivors of the Class WT 2-6-4Ts. They had remained in service to move spoil from a quarry near Larne to fill in the strip of land along the shore of Belfast Lough just beyond York Road station on which the M2 motorway was later constructed.

Over 7600 of these ‘spoil trains’ were run between November 1966 and

May 1970 when the contract ended. However, on the last two Sundays of May in that year, WT tanks – or ‘Jeeps’ as they were affectionately known – operated on the former LMS/NCC main line, moving girders for later use on motorway bridges over the line. I have seen photographic evidence of the now preserved No. 4 on this duty on the first of these Sundays (May 24). The second of these workings (on May 31) was just before that last pannierhauled LT permanent way train. I think it is possible that one of the remaining ‘Jeeps’ was steamed at York Road shed after this date, though I have never seen definitive proof of this.

Either way, the NIR WTs gave the LT panniers a good run for their money, and of course No. 4, one of the first batch of locos supplied to the NCC, was built by the LMS at Derby in 1947 – so in that sense, it has as much of a claim to be a British built loco as the panniers.

Tom Ferris Shrewsbury