1923/46/48 LNER/BR Renumbering schemes

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Hi all below is a brief guide to the three main renumberings of LNER/BR locomotives feel free to add any comments about smaller renumberings

LNER/BR Locomotive renumbering schemes.

Prior to the grouping of the railway companies in 1923 each Constituent Company used its own numbering schemes. After the grouping, in February 1924 a renumbering scheme was carried out with Ex NER locomotives retaining their original numbers by virtue of being the largest of the constituent companies. The other constituent companies had the following amount added to their original numbering .Ex GNR locomotives had 3000 added, Ex GCR locomotives had 5000 added, Ex GNSR had 6800 added, Ex GER had 7000 added and Ex NBR locomotives having 9000 added to theirs giving rise to some five figure numbers. During this period as the LNER built new locomotives they used up the missing numbers in the scheme at random. Until in 1946 a comprehensive renumbering scheme was introduced by Thompson that placed locomotives in a logical numerical system with each class receiving numbers in a particular sequence usually with the earliest built receiving the lowest numbers. Thompson’s scheme is laid out in brief below.

Numbers / Locomotive types
1-999 Passenger & mixed traffic tender locomotives of 4-6-2 & 2-6-2 types. #
1000-1999 Passenger & mixed traffic tender locomotives of 4-6-0 & 2-6-0 types. *
2000-2999 Passenger & mixed traffic tender locomotives of 4-4-2 & 4-4-0 types. *
3000-3999 Freight tender locomotives of 2-8-0 & 0-8-0 types.
4000-5999 Freight tender locomotives of 0-6-0 types.
6000-6999 Electric locomotives.
7000-7999 Passenger tank locomotives.
8000-8999 Shunting tank locomotives.
9000-9999 Freight & mixed traffic tank locomotives.

After nationalisation in 1948 British Railways simply added 60000 to the 1946 scheme numbers.

#Also included were P2 2-8-2 & W1 4-6-4 locomotives.

* A slight deviation from the above scheme was made to allow for the new build of seventy Class K1 2-6-0 tender locomotives that were allocated numbers in the 20XX series or 620xx series in the post nationalisation scheme.