The GER Class M15 was a class of 160

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

s designed by

Thomas William Worsdell Thomas William Worsdell (14 January 1838 – 28 June 1916) was an English locomotive engineer. He was born in Liverpool into a Quaker family. Family T. W. Worsdell – normally known as William – was the eldest son of Nathaniel Worsdell (18 ...

and built for the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

between 1884 and 1909. The original (F4) class of locomotives were fitted with

Joy valve gear 250px, Joy Valve Gear Diagram Joy valve gear is a type of steam locomotive valve gear, designed by David Joy (3 March 1825 – 1903), Locomotive and Marine engineer, and patented (no. 929) on 8 March 1879. The British patent has not been found b ...

which was notoriously difficult to 'set'. This earned them the nickname of 'Gobblers' thanks to their high coal consumption rates. As a result, between 1911 and 1920, 32 of them were rebuilt by James Holden with

Stephenson valve gear The Stephenson valve gear or Stephenson link or shifting link is a simple design of valve gear that was widely used throughout the world for various kinds of steam engines. It is named after Robert Stephenson but was invented by his employees. ...

and higher pressure boilers. Despite this, the nickname stuck for many years after.

Rebuilding

Rebuilding included the fitting of a higher pressure boiler, and also involved replacing

with

thus forming the M15R class.

Modifications

Many were fitted with condensing gear for working in the

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

area. In 1949 seven F5s were fitted with vacuum-controlled regulators, converted from Westinghouse air brake to steam brake, and fitted with push-pull apparatus and trip cock gear for branch line operation. (67199 was never fitted with trip cock gear). Five of these locomotives worked trains on the line between Epping and Ongar, two (numbers 67199 and 67218) were allocated to Yarmouth for working the Yarmouth-Beccles line. 67218 would later be transferred to Epping in 1955. These seven received British Railway lined-black passenger livery; the rest were unlined-black.

Ownership

London and North Eastern Railway

One-hundred-and-eighteen M15s and all thirty-two M15rs (including numbers 789 and 790, the two locomotives that were rebuilt with

GER Class G69 The GER Class G69 was a class of twenty steam locomotives built by for the Great Eastern Railway by S. D. Holden in 1911–12 following the design of two rebuilt examples of the GER Class M15 designed by James Holden, his father, in 1904. T ...

cabs), passed into

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after London, Midland and Scottish Railway, LMS) of the "Big Four (British railway companies), Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It ope ...

(LNER) ownership at the

1923 grouping The Railways Act 1921 ( 11 & 12 Geo. 5. c. 55), also known as the Grouping Act, was an act of Parliament enacted by the British government, and was intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, by "grou ...

. The number 7000 was added to the ex-GER fleet. They received the following classifications: * Unrebuilt (M15) locomotives: F4. * Rebuilt (M15R) locomotives: F5. * Numbers 7789 and 7790 were incorrectly classified F6. British Railways reclassified both of them F5 on 22 December 1948. On 1 January 1923 the majority of the class were allocated to Stratford Engine Shed and were employed on suburban traffic in East London on the lines out of Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street. The table below shows where they were allocated and includes the two examples erroneously allocated as F6 by the LNER:- During World War 2 in 1940 a number of the class were taken out of service and had armoured plating added. They were then deployed on armoured trains, not only in their native East Anglia (Westerfield, Mistley and Tilbury), but in Kent, Lincolnshire and as far north as Aberdeen. They were also found at Ministry of Defence depots in the west of the country (Bicester, Long Marston and Wooton Dassett. By 1943 they were being returned to the LNER and were later fitted with brass plaques commemorating their role. These read - "LNER - during the war of 1939-1945 this locomotive was armoured and hauled defence trains on coast lines".

British Railways

Thirty-seven F4s and all of the F5s, including 7218 and 7219 (ex-7789 and 7790), passed into

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commis ...

(BR) ownership in 1948. Their BR numbers were: * Class F4: 67151-67187. (Fifteen of these F4s were allocated BR numbers but never carried them). * Class F5: 67188-67219

Withdrawal

Ten of the original series of forty engines constructed between 1884-87 were withdrawn in Great Eastern days, between September 1913 and December 1922. F4 withdrawals continued until 1937, and then again from 1943 to June 1956 when the last one, number 67157, was withdrawn from

Kittybrewster Kittybrewster is an area within Aberdeen, Scotland, north of the city centre and roughly southwest of Old Aberdeen. Transport Within the area the A9012 road joins the A978 road; there are also several railway tracks, one of which follows th ...

. The F5 class remained intact until 1955 but withdrawal then proceeded rapidly, and they finally became extinct in May 1958.

Preservation

None of the F4s or F5s survived into preservation. However, a project to build a working replica of F5 number 789 was launched in the early 2000s. The project is based at Tyseley for erection and construction work. The completed locomotive (originally set to appear as 67218 in BR Black) is to be outshopped as No.789 in

blue livery.

References

{{LNER Locomotives M15 2-4-2T locomotives 1′B1′ n2t locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1884 Condensing steam locomotives Standard-gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain Scrapped locomotives Passenger locomotives