BR 4-6-2 City of Bradford

Beschrijving:

During the 1930's railway companies were competing to establish the fastest regular London to Edinburgh or London to Glasgow service of six and a half hours or less. The Princess Class could not meet the demands of pulling heavy loads at constant high speeds over these distances.

This led to major modifications of William Stanier's original Princess Class design, including changes to wheel size, wheel base length, size of boiler and firebox, etc. The addition of the Art Deco style streamlined steel casing produced a locomotive that not only looked stylish but was fast and powerful, never failing any test of pulling power and setting a speed record of I 14mph in June 1937. With streamlining the weight of the 105.25 long ton locomotive increased to 108.1 long tons.

A total of 38 Princess Coronation Class locomotives were built at Crewe between 1937 and 1948. The first ten built were fully streamlined, five of which were liveried in the Coronation Blue with silver stripes and five in Crimson Lake with gold stripes.

Engines built during World War 11 were without any streamlining due to wartime steel shortages and were painted in Wartime Black. Smoke deflectors were added in 1945 to improve the crew's forward view and eventually all engines were fitted with fully rounded smokeboxes. From 1946 all streamlined Princess Coronation Class locomotives had their streamlining removed, a popular decision with the maintenance staff. These locomotives continued in service with the newly formed British Railways from 1948. Livery continued to be varied, including BR experimental blue-black and BR standard blue-green-red. With the introduction of diesel engines all but three of the Princess Coronation Class locomotives were scrapped between 1962 and 1964 regardless of condition. Three of the locomotives were saved from the cutters' torch No. 46235, 'City of Birmingham', No. 46233, 'Duchess of Sutherland' and No. 46229, 'Duchess of Hamilton' which is now part of the National Collection. LMS locomotive No. 6236 'City of Bradford' was outshopped l from the LMS Crew Works on the 31st July 1939 and was originally streamlined. On passing to the newly formed British f Railways in 1948 'City of Bradford' was re-numbered as 46236. The locomotive was withdrawn from service on the 14th March 1964 from Shed 68A, Carlisle Kingmoor and cut up at the BR Crew Works on the 30th April 1964.