Metropolitan Railway Electric Locomotives

[Rlangham]

Currently about half way through Christian Wolmar's 'Subterranean London', a history of the London Underground, really superb, and was looking up the electric locomotives used on the various railways last night. I'm aware of the Metropolitan's early 'camelback' or 'steeplejack' electric locomotives from the 1900's, and the more well-known 1920's versions such as 'Sarah Siddons', however according to wikipedia;

The second ten, also constructed by Metropolitan Amalgamated, were built to a box car design with British Thompson Houston control equipment.[1] These locomotives weighted 47 tons, and were 33 feet 6 inches (10.21 m) long over buffers and entered service in 1907. The control equipment was replaced with the Westinghouse type in 1919.[2]

I can't find a single photo of this 1907 batch of locomotives, does anyone have one?

[silverfox]

I have seen a pic of a double header on the through tains from Eling to Southend, will try and find it.

[guillyman]

Greetings, Rlangham! Yes, I have a photograph and a 4mm scale drawing of this batch of locomotives. There are a couple of pages covering it in the book published by Ian Allan entitled " The London Underground Surface Stock Planbook, 1863 - 1959." ISBN 0-7110-1721-2

For these reasons I am hesitant to scan and copy the pages here, since I would no doubt be infringing somebody's copyright, but if you would care to PM me then I am certain that I could legitimately email you the material you are seeking.

Kind regards,

Alan.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

Did you know that the Met electric loco was the subject of the first British made electric train set? It was from Hornby, had a tinprinted body on an 0-4-0 (!) chassis and used mains electricity, "made safe by passing the current through a light bulb." Needless to say, Questions were raised in Parliament as to the safety of this and they were withdrawn from sale pending the release of an accumulator-powered version.

I don't suppose it will suprise anyone that the original version is very rare and sought after....