LB&SCR E1 class
Encyclopedia
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its apex, practically the whole coastline of Sussex as its base, and a large part of Surrey...

 E1 Class were 0-6-0
0-6-0
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-6-0 represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and no trailing wheels...

T steam locomotives designed by William Stroudley
William Stroudley
William Stroudley was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers of the nineteenth century, working principally for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway...

 in 1874 for short-distance goods and piloting duties. They were originally classified E, and generally known as "E-tanks"; They were reclassified E1 in the time of D. E. Marsh
D. E. Marsh
Douglas Earle Marsh was the Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from November 1904 until his early retirement on health grounds in July 1911.-Early career:...

.

Construction and use

The first six locomotives of this useful and long-lived class were built at Brighton
Brighton railway works
Brighton railway works was one of the earliest railway-owned locomotive repair works, founded in 1840 by the London and Brighton Railway in Brighton, England, and thus pre-dating the more famous railway works at Crewe, Doncaster and Swindon...

 and appeared in traffic between September 1874 and March 1875. They performed well and further orders were placed at regular intervals until December 1891 when the class consisted of eighty locomotives and were used throughout the LBSCR system, principally for goods and shunting, but occasionally for secondary passenger duties.

In 1884 Stroudley also built one example of the class (No. 157 Barcelona) with a larger boiler and Gladstone-type cylinders with valves underneath to work on the steeply-graded lines between Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...

 and Tunbridge Wells. This Special E-tank was withdrawn in 1922.

Rebuilds and withdrawals

After 1894/5 the class gradually began to be replaced by R.J. Billinton's radial
Radial axle
A radial axle is an axle on a railway locomotive or carriage which has been designed to move laterally when entering a curve in order to reduce the flange and rail wear....

 tanks of the E3
LB&SCR E3 Class
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway E3 Class were 0-6-2Tside tank steam locomotives. Seventeen were built and they were designed by R. J. Billinton as a development of an earlier design by William Stroudley....

 and E4
LB&SCR E4 Class
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway E4 Class is a class of 0-6-2Tside tank steam locomotive designed by Robert Billinton. They were introduced in 1897 and were essentially a larger version of the E3 Class...

 classes. Withdrawals commenced in 1908 when one locomotive was broken up for spares, and others were withdrawn at intervals until May 1914. However the increased need for locomotives during the First World War meant that there were no further withdrawals. One locomotive (no.89) was rebuilt with a larger boiler by D. E. Marsh
D. E. Marsh
Douglas Earle Marsh was the Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from November 1904 until his early retirement on health grounds in July 1911.-Early career:...

 in 1911 and reclassified E1X and renumbered 89A. However this was rebuilt as an E1 in 1930 once the boiler was condemned.
Under Southern Railway (Great Britain)
Southern Railway (Great Britain)
The Southern Railway was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, South coast resorts and Kent...

 ownership, withdrawals continued during the 1920s, with some examples sold to industrial railways rather than scrapped. Eight examples were also rebuilt as 0-6-2
0-6-2
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-6-2 represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle...

  radial
Radial axle
A radial axle is an axle on a railway locomotive or carriage which has been designed to move laterally when entering a curve in order to reduce the flange and rail wear....

 tank engines for use in the west of England. These were classified as E1/R
SR Class E1/R
The Southern Railway E1/R is a class of 0-6-2T tank steam locomotive designed for light passenger and freight duties. They were rebuilt from earlier LBSCR E1 class locomotives initially to be used on the North Devon and Cornwall Junction line....

.

Four E1s were also transferred for duties on the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

 in 1932 and 1933. They were renumbered W1-W4 and given names related to the Island.

Thirty examples survived the transfer of ownership to the Southern Region of British Railways
Southern Region of British Railways
The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound up at the end of 1992. The region covered south London, southern England and the south coast, including the busy commuter belt areas of Kent, Sussex...

 in 1948 but during the 1950s they were gradually replaced by diesel shunters. The last survivor, BR no 32694, was allocated to Southampton Docks. It was withdrawn in July 1961 and scrapped at Eastleigh Works
Eastleigh Works
Eastleigh Works is a locomotive, carriage and wagon building and repair facility in the town of Eastleigh in the county of Hampshire in England.-History under the LSWR:...

 later that year.

Preservation

One example, No. 110 (originally named Burgundy) was sold in 1927 to the Cannock
Cannock
Cannock is the most populous of three towns in the district of Cannock Chase in the central southern part of the county of Staffordshire in the West Midlands region of England....

 and Rugeley
Rugeley
Rugeley is a historic market town in the county of Staffordshire, England. It lies on the northern edge of Cannock Chase, and is situated roughly midway between the towns of Stafford, Cannock, Lichfield and Uttoxeter...

 Colliery Company. They gave it the number 9 and named it Cannock Wood, and it worked their internal system until 1963.

After withdrawal it was bought for preservation and moved between several sites before restoration began in 1986 and it returned to action at the East Somerset Railway
East Somerset Railway
The East Somerset Railway is a heritage railway in Somerset, running between Cranmore and Mendip Vale. Prior to the Beeching Axe, the railway ran from Witham to Wells, meeting both the Cheddar Valley line and Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway at the latter station.- History :The line was...

in 1993. It was withdrawn prematurely in 1997 requiring firebox and boiler repairs, and spent many years in pieces awaiting overhaul., although in 2011 it was cosmetically restored into (inauthentic) BR Black.

Sources

  • Bradley, D.L.(1972). Locomotives of the LB&SCR. Part 2. Railway Correspondence and Travel Society.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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