LNWR Dreadnought Class


The LNWR Dreadnought class was a class of 40 passenger three-cylinder compound 2-2-2-0 locomotives designed by F. W. Webb for the London and North Western Railway, and manufactured by them in their Crewe Works between 1884 and 1888. The railway also commissioned the Beyer, Peacock and Company to construct an additional locomotive of the design for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Design

The design featured a boiler pressed to delivering saturated steam to two outside high-pressure cylinders, which exhausted to one low-pressure cylinder inside the frames. All three cylinders had a stroke of ; the high-pressure cylinders drove the rear wheels, while the low-pressure drove the leading driving wheels. As the two pairs of driving wheels were not connected, the locomotives were "duplex drive" or "double-singles".
They were a development of Webb's Experiment class; they had larger boilers and smaller driving wheels, and while the Joy valve gear for the HP and LP cylinders could still be independently adjusted, it was now also possible to reverse both sets simultaneously. The inside valve gear was subsequently amended to the loose or slip-eccentric system, thus giving automatic reversal.

Decline

When George Whale become chief mechanical engineer of the LNWR in 1903, he started a programme of eliminating Webb's over-complicated duplex compound locomotives. Consequently, the class was scrapped between December 1903, and July 1905, having been replaced by Whale's Experiment class.
LNWR No.LNWR NameCrewe
Works
No.		Date builtDate scrappedNotes
503Dreadnought2795
508Titan2796
504Thunderer2797
507Marchioness of Stafford2798
509Ajax2799
510Leviathan2800
511Achilles2801
513Mammoth2802
515Niagara2803
685Himalaya2804
2055Dunrobin2886
2056Argus2887
2057Euphrates2888
2058Medusa2889
2059Greyhound2890
2060Vandal2891
2061Harpy2892
2062Herald2893
2063Huskisson2894
2064Autocrat2895
173City of Manchester2896
2City of Carlisle2897
1539City of Chester2898Renumbered 437 in November 1886
410City of Liverpool2899
1353City of Edinburgh2900
1370City of Glasgow2901
1395Archimedes2902
1379Stork2903
545Tamerlane2904
659Rowland Hill2905
637City of New York3012
638City of Paris3013
639City of London3014
640City of Dublin3015
641City of Lichfield3016
643Raven3017
644Vesuvius3018
645Alchymist3019
647Ambassador3020
648Swiftsure3021