New member and Tender question

[adams]

Hello All, I'm new to this forum, and look forward to LNER and British railway discussion. I'm in the Dallas, Texas area, so any local enthusiasts--let me know you are out there! My model collection tends toward the LNER, and I have a question: Were corridor tenders on A4's only used after nationalisation? Does that mean Wrenn's A4 model with corridor tender is incorrect (in NE wartime black). Thanks! Chris

[richard]

No they were in use before that. Some of the A1s and A3s were fitted with them for non-stop runs because they allowed a crew change.

Without looking in the books, I'm not sure if all the A4s had them, but definite a lot did. Silver Link was built with one, for example. The story has it that on the original press run, Gresley walked through to the footplate to tell the driver to slow down! The footplate ride was remarkably smooth and they were going faster than the driver thought. In contrast the bogie springing on the coaches still need to be fine tuned and tended to pick up every uneven bit of track, resulting in quite a "ride" for the passengers (press and dignitaries)!


Richard

[Bill Bedford]

Hello All, I'm new to this forum, and look forward to LNER and British railway discussion. I'm in the Dallas, Texas area, so any local enthusiasts--let me know you are out there! My model collection tends toward the LNER, and I have a question: Were corridor tenders on A4's only used after nationalisation? Does that mean Wrenn's A4 model with corridor tender is incorrect (in NE wartime black). Thanks! Chris

There were 20 corridor tenders built, 10 in 1928 an used initially with A1s & A3s. 10 more were built to a slightly different design in 1935/6 for A4s. The original 10 were then modified to match the later tenders and attached to A4s.

[hq1hitchin]

Without trying to over simplify things, the RCTS book on the Pacific tells us that seven A4s (all Newcastle based engines) never had corridor tenders. As Richard says, some of the A3s (and A1s but the old classification, not the Peppercorn machines) had corridor tenders for working the summer 'Flying Scotsman' but these were exchanged for non-corridor ones by 1937

[stembok]

Welcome to the forum 'adams': The first order was for ten corridor tenders built in 1928 in time for the introduction of non-stop King's Cross -Edinburgh services in that year and attached to Gresley A1 and A3 engines. Thirteen A1 and A3 engines carried corridor tenders at one time or another, some for a very short period of time. From 1936 these tenders -refurbished- were transferred to new A4 class engines and the last A3 to carry a corridor tender was 2750, which lost its corridor tender in September 1937. From 1935, beginning with 2509 Silver Link, more corridor tenders of the streamlined type were built and attached to A4s. The remaining A4s (35 in class, though one was later destroyed in WW2 ) were attached to streamlined non-corridor tenders and seven Gateshead (Newcastle) A4 engines never carried corridor tenders during their lives. The Gresley 4-6-4 10,000 also carried a corridor tender for many years, but eventually gave it up to A4 60004 in 1948. From time to time exchanges would occur and A4 engines might gain, lose or swop one of these tenders. For example, in 1957 60008 Dwight D Eisenhower lost its corridor tender in a swop with 60021 Wild Swan.
In 1960 A4s 60004/7/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/17/21/22/24/25/27/28/29/30/31/32/33/34 had corridor tenders.

60001/2/3/5/6/8/16/18/19/20/23/26 non -corridor.

[73D]

There is a very detailed description of the tenders used on the A4s hidden away on the Sir Nigel Gresley Site: http://www.sirnigelgresley.co.uk You have to navigate to the 'Chime' Archive and choose 'A Tangle of Tenders' there is a four part article there, which will tell you all you need to know.

I can't give a direct link to this as the site is frame based, so you have to access things from the home page.

One thing not mentioned is that that there are differences between the two batches built for the A4s – not just the length of the handrails!