The 4-4-0 Classes of the North Eastern Railway - Ken Hoole

The North Eastern Railway, because it did not favour the naming of locomotives, could not offer such evocative class names as the ‘Dunalastairs’ on the Caledonian, the ‘Claud Hamiltons on the Great Eastern, the ‘Georges’ and ‘Precursors’ on the London & North Western, or the ‘Scots’ and ‘Glens’ of the North British. Instead all the North Eastern could offer were the prosaic letters of the alphabet, mundane-sounding F or M or R classes.

Another way the NER differed was that its 4-4-0 engines were not rebuilt or reboilered to move them up a class, as happened, for instance, with the Great Eastern’s ‘Claud Hamilton’ engines, which (using LNER classification) progressed from D14 to D15 to D16 to D16/3 on the strength of boiler alterations. The NER 4-4-0s remained within their own classes.

Yet, the 4-4-0 classes of the NER are of considerable interest to the enthusiast or railway historian. The McDonnel, Raven, W. and T. W. Wordsell designed locomotives, while not perhaps having the charisma of those designed by Churchward or Ivatt, were functional and reliable machines that lived long into the 20th century. With over 130 photographs and extensive and informative data tables, this book presents a well-documented and informed picture of these NER locomotives.