LNER Class P2
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The London and North Eastern Railway Class P2 was a class of 2-8-2 steam locomotives designed for working heavy express trains over the harsh Edinburgh to Aberdeen Line. As they were to serve on Scottish expresses, they were given famous names form Scottish lore.
Introduced in 1934, the first locomotive of the class - No.2001 Cock o' The North - was built with Lentz rotary-cam poppet valve gear and was tested in France where a modern locomotive-testing facility was available; no such facility existing within the UK at that time. The class (except No. 2005) featured a Kylchap-type blastpipe / chimney system to aid efficiency, which was designed to take different fittings to allow experimentation with this then new exhaust arrangement.
The second engine of the class No.2002 Earl Marischal was completed with the usual Walschaerts valve gear and proved to be the more efficient engine of the two, the only major deficiency being a softer exhaust that led to a second pair of smoke deflectors being utilised to clear the smoke away from the driver's view forward.
The production series of a further four engines were completed in 1936 and were all based mechanically upon No.2002. They were all given a wedge shaped streamlined front end, akin to that on the A4 class locomotives, which successfully solved the smoke deflection problem, No.2002 being altered to this form in 1936 and No.2001 in 1938.
It was suggested that they were not entirely successful, that their eight-wheel chassis was too rigid for the many sharp curves on the route and that the class was too big for optimum utilisation leading to heavy coal consumption. However, it has also been suggested that Gresley's successor, Edward Thompson, made these largely unsubstantiated criticisms in order to justify his rebuilding of the entire class into LNER Thompson Class A2/2 pacifics during 1943/4.[1]
[edit] Locomotives
- 2001 — Cock o' the North
- 2003 — Lord President
- 2004 — Mons Meg
- 2005 — Thane of Fife
- 2006 — Wolf of Badenoch
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[edit] External links
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[edit] References
- ^ Nock, O.S: British Locomotives of the 20th Century Volume 2. Book Club Associates, London, 1984
