A9?

[Kyle1987]

I have heard rumour that there was a locomotive designated A9 by Peppercorn. Did this class of locomotive ever exist, or is this simply one of the many false articles that exist on wikipedia?

[richard]

Possibly a proposed plan, but I can't see any reference in the two RCTS books.

One would expect such a plan to have progressed quite far in the design process, if it had received a provisional classification.


Richard

[richard]

I think the Peppercorn & Raven listings in the index for LNER locomotives on Wikipedia are best described as "confused".


Richard

[Kyle1987]

I suspected as much. Some ill-informed person has probably seen the gap between the A8 and A10 and thought "I guess Peppercorn must have designed that!"

Thanks for the clarification

Although I must ask, why were there some gaps in the allocation system eg. C3, B10, B11 etc? Has this even been satisfactorily explained?

[dlester]

Although I must ask, why were there some gaps in the allocation system eg. C3, B10, B11 etc? Has this even been satisfactorily explained?

It is my understanding that gaps were deliberately left for potential new classes to be introduced. So, for example, a gap was left in the "A" series: A1 for the GNR pacifics, A2 for the NER pacifics, A5 onwards for the tank engines. Presumambly Mr Gresley anticipated developments of his Pacific?

In a similar vein, I would expect that the designation C3 was left blank for future developments of Mr Ivatt's large-boilered Atlantic. The RCTS volume includes a weight diagram for a stream-lined Atlantic, so it was clearly a locomotive class close to Mr Gresley's heart --- even in the 1930s.

[richard]

Yes this is what happened. I think it is telling that many of the gaps are after GNR classes and before the GCR ones...

The largest gap was in the 'J' series - between J37 and J50. This allowed a lot of space for new 0-6-0s, and in the event was filled by the new J38, J39 classes as well as the inherited J40, J41 classes; and for a while space for the DES1 as 'J45'.


Richard

[Colombo]

At the time when Thompson produced his A3 rebuild of Great Northern into an A1, the LNER used to paint the running number and Class of a loco on the bufferbeam. If you reclassified them you had to paint a new number on the front of every one, this would require a repaint of the front bufferbeam. Remember there was a war on, and economy was a paramount consideration.

I suspect that the reason why there are no A9s is because it was easier and cheaper to convert the remaining Gresley A1s into A10s by painting a 0 after A1, if you see what I mean. I have seen a photo of the front of an A10 somewhere and I remember that the zero was a lighter colour than the rest of the numbering on the bufferbeam.

Colombo