The Thompson L1 2-6-4T Tank Locomotives.

[61070]

Thanks giner: the platform excavations appear to have been in connection with the main supplying the water crane at the north end of platform 3; note that the patch crosses between the edges of platforms 4 and 3 in the photo. It can then be picked up in the opposite direction on the third photo of the following sequence, posted elsewhere on this forum: grantham-thursday-24th-may-1962-t2952.html, ending at the base of the water crane. No doubt you'll have noticed my Dad's shadow, in photographer's stance, at bottom left of the colour photo.

Here's another photograph with plenty of detail to study, and with a couple of L1s thrown in to keep us - just about - on topic! This is one of my personal favourites. It was taken on the evening of 31st August 1961. The date is known thanks to information previously gathered through this forum about other photos known to have been taken on the same day, though I've not posted this picture before.

I've shown it to an audience at Grantham which included many retired railwaymen. Interestingly, they had most to say not about the locomotives - they were 'taken as read' - but about the cabin near the right of the photograph which has a bike leaning against it. This was the Pilotmen's Cabin, a messroom where the local men who were on standby pilot duty would await the call to action, and where visiting locomotive crews could rest and make a brew while waiting for their return working. The bike probably belonged to a caller-up and odd-job man called Pete Balaam, who would often be sent out to get pork pies from Watkin's Pork Butchers in the town (still in business, http://www.citikey.com/business/10879236/) for visiting crews - especially 'Cockneys' as they were referred to (from King's Cross depot) who relished this local speciality.

Locomotives of types WD (90059), B1, O2, L1, and V2 (60872) can be seen, and there is a fully-coaled pacific loco in the right distance beyond the Pilotmen's Cabin. This is the 'standby pilot', an express locomotive which was kept ready in case of a breakdown on the main line. Can anyone identify whether this is an A1 or an A3 for me please? Unfortunately the number is not readable, even on the original slide. Part of the remaining back wall of the demolished 'old shed' can be glimpsed on the left, beyond the WD, B1 and old tender.

By the way, for modelling interest, note the different location of the electrification warning flashes on the bunkers of the L1 locos in both pictures.

Happy New Year everyone!

[S.A.C. Martin]

I would say on the basis of the smoke deflectors, that the standby express engine there is an A1 - the smoke deflector appears longer and more curved at its top than if it were one of the A3s and their german-style deflectors.

My intial thought wasn't A1 though, but A2 - the chimney looks to me like a single chimney, which a few of the A2s sported to the end.

Then again, it could be Humorist with the Pepp A1 deflectors!!!

[stembok]

61070> Looking at the top tender line and at what can be seen of the front of the engine and the smoke deflectors - the top edges appear to be horizontal-this looks like an A1, or an A2 Pacific - Peppercorn or Thompson ,with double chimney.
Certainly it is well - ie over - coaled!
Grantham 34F did not have any A1s or A2s on permanent allocation by this time and main line pilots,usually - though there were exceptions - belonged to the parent shed, so it may be a borrowed locomotive from, say, Peterborough or a "foreigner" from another shed.

[giner]

Yes, I'm voting for an A1 or A2 also. Anyone any thoughts as to what is sitting partly obscured by various poles to the left of the shirtsleeved fellow fiddling around on the front of that B1? Looks like another 'dubber' to me.

[stembok]

61070:Can someone with better resolution -or eyesight - than myself say whether the Pacific at Grantham is carrying an electric light fitting on the top of the smokebox. It does not appear to be. It may be possible to narrow the identity down further using this.

[Flamingo]

After zooming and sharpening the number looks like 60504 to me, but that doesn't fit with the stated date of the photograph as Mons Meg was withdrawn in 1/61. 60502 lasted until 7/61 though so that one is a possibility. An A2/2 looks right as the engine has a v-fronted cab rather than the Peppercorn angled type or the flat fronted A3 type.

Any details available about the water softener tower in front of the nearest L1? I didn't know Grantham had hard water. For several years I had the job of feeding chemicals to one of those softeners, mine was a bit smaller than Grantham's though which looks a bit more modern and automated.

[stembok]

The date of the photograph 31/8/61 probably precludes 60502 w/d 3/7/61 and the Pacific in the photo definitely has full size deflectors, not wing plates as in the A2/2s. Also the tender pattern would appear not to fit 60502 which had beading on the upper top edge of its tender. Most -though not all -of the Peppercorn A1s and A2s retained electric lamp holders on the top of the smoke box, while the Thompson A2/3s seem to have been without, hence my question in the previous post. One possibility might be 60514 of 34E, though this engine carried a chimney without a lip until withdrawal, as carried by 60163 today, while the engine in the photo appears to be lipped.
It was LNER policy to provide treated water at main line depots and several depots had the facilities, irrespective of water quality in the area. I am not sure how far the scheme progressed and whether all depots were eventually covered.

[61070]

Many thanks to all for your advice on the pacific. Great service on a bank holiday! Sorry, I mistakenly omitted suggesting 'A2' – this was because I don't remember seeing many A2s at Grantham, but our visits were hardly frequent and clearly there were A2s around then.

I have just re-scanned the pacific detail from the original slide, and I've optimised it, on my scanner and in Photoshop, to bring out it as much definition as I can (this is an area of film that's only about 0.1" across). There are unsharpened and sharpened versions. I'll be interested to hear if this helps. I can't see any sign of an electric light fitting at the top of the smokebox. The coal in the tender looks to be nearly a foot higher than the rim of the chimney!

By the way, the pacific is on one of the roads which was part of the Grantham shed triangle (known to local railwaymen as the 'angle), so that it could be turned quickly (taken round the 'angle) if required to take over an up train.

Giner - I think you are spot on about the loco obscured by the poles being another WD. However, I believe that the chap in white shirtsleeves (who appears to be sweeping smokebox char from the footplating with a handbrush - I think you can see the cloud of dust in front of the buffer beam, to the right of the vacuum hose) is on the front of an O2 (Tango), not a B1 (Bongo [!]). I've re-scanned the detail and brought out as much definition as I can (again, unsharpened and sharpened versions). The number appears to be 6396x; if it's a Grantham loco, at that time I believe the x would be 0, 3 or 6. From the photo I think I'd go for 63963, but I don't think that it's really possible to say. Actually the last digit does look like a '1' - but so does the second digit, and it has to be a '3'.

Flamingo: sorry, I don't know where Grantham's water supply comes/came from. If it's Derbyshire (our water in Leicester came from there) it would be quite hard. I don't know either when the treatment plant was installed (but I'm told that the coaling tower dates from 1936).

[Flamingo]

Is there any room for doubt re the date of the picture? Using the latest enlarged scans the number looked more like 60502 but if it has smoke deflectors that or any other A2/2 is ruled out. The v-fronted cab seems clear enough and that eliminates most other possibilities including the A2/3s. The v-front cab together with smoke deflectors would also fit an A2/1 and the most likely candidate is 60508 which was a New England engine, but even that is ruled out if the August 1961 date stands as it was withdrawn earlier in the year. Otherwise that engine is a mystery.

[manna]

G'Day Gents
Sorry, but nothing on the Pacific, but do my eyes deceive me or it may be a trick of the light, but the Tango looks as if it has small snow plough blades fitted under the buffer beam????
manna

You know it's summer in South Australia when, your water bill is higher than your power bill

[giner]

On the A1/A2 conundrum, looking at the sharpened pic. I'm inclined to agree the the last digit on the number plate is an 8. However, the preceding digit doesn't seem to have enough 'character width' to be anything other than a 1. So, 60518.

As a standby express engine, and this is a long shot, it could possibly have come through my old neck of the woods, Stevenage. To this day, though , it's still not underlined in my Ian Allans and 60518 remained a bit of a holy grail for many of my fellow spotters.

[geoffshumba]

Can't add anything, but it is a fascinating picture.

[Flamingo]

Looking through old posts in the LNER Photographs section it seems that 61070 did show us this picture before (March 2009) and it was conclusively dated as 31/8/61. That being the case my suggestion of an engine with a v-fronted cab is definitely a non-starter since all the A2/1s and A2/2s had been withdrawn by that date.

I still don't think the cab looks like the Peppercorn type with angled front windows, so that means it's a flat-fronted cab and leaves 3 possibilities:
1. an A3; 2. an A2/3; or 3. 60113 Great Northern, not withdrawn until 1962 and an engine with a proven record of service as the Grantham pilot.

Might be worth contacting the LNER Pacifics Database to see if Tommy has anything on the movements of Giner's elusive 60518 and/or 60113 for the date in question.

[61070]

The 'mystery pacific': this is a fascinating bit of detective work. Given my limited expertise on distinguishing closely-related east coast pacific classes, and that I don't have ready access to the classic reference books, I was sure that I wouldn't get anywhere on my own with this one.

May I make an observation which may help - or it may be a complete red herring. I'm looking at the relationship between the cab front window and the rear end of the boiler handrail; the bottom edge of the cab window is above the handrail. Looking at various photos of non-streamlined pacifics fitted with full-length smoke deflectors, it appears to me, with the limited reference material available here, that this is a characteristic only of the A2/3 engines. They seem to have had quite a short cab front window, which appears to have been extended in depth on later classes to below the level of the handrail. Does this mean that the loco has to be an A2/3, or is my knowledge, or logic, flawed somehow?

If the loco is an A2/3, are 60513 and 60514 the most likely candidates in terms of allocation (both at New England)? Again, comments welcome.

Flamingo: (your most recent post came in as I was about to submit this, so some of what follows is redundant) In terms of the date of the photo, my dad seldom recorded a date against his colour photography, and this series of pictures has been removed from the card mounts, supplied by Kodak, which usually bore the month/year of processing. Through previous enquiries via this forum, including reference to Tommy Knox's pacific database, I've been able to assign 31/8/1961 to 8 slides, including this one, which were definitely all taken consecutively and on the same day. (grantham-pix-in-autumn-61-or-spring-62- ... 229s0.html) For the moment I am as certain of this date as I can be but, in this kind of circumstance, of course I'd be willing to review it if there's really strong evidence that this particular pacific loco couldn't have been around then. Incidentally, I see now that I posted the above photo during that discussion, in March last year, but it was not at such high resolution.

Also, re. your query about the water treatment plant at Grantham mpd, I've found that the Engine Shed Society has responded helpfully to the occasional query I've made: http://www.abrail.co.uk/ess.htm .

Manna: I see what you mean, but I doubt it's a snowplough on the O2 – perhaps it's the effect of the sunlight on a pile of smokebox ash that's lying on the track just in front of the loco, and on the dust rising from it as the footplating is being swept? By the way, if you've any snowploughs lying out of use in South Australia could you send them over please? We have 6" lying outside right now, and a warning of more for later today and tomorrow. Could be interesting on Monday when everyone goes back to work.

[stembok]

61070: I would plump for an A2/3 based upon the lack of a top electric lamp fitment plus the comments on the cab windows, though this is not totally conclusive, as for instance A1 60121 did not carry a top lamp fitment at the time in question. 60514? I don't think so, as this had a chimney without a rim and the locomotive in the picture definitely appears to have one. Other Peterborough A2/3s at this time were 60500 and 60513, the latter was however in Doncaster Works on 31/8/61 for a general repair. That leaves us with 60500, perhaps on loan, and A2/3s from Doncaster, York or Heaton or, less likely,60519, the one Haymarket example, though this too retained a rimless chimney. It could be that 34F was using a "foreigner" as stand by, or is the engine in question merely turning on the triangle,perhaps having worked in from the north. Re: Flamingo I do not think either the tender pattern or the smoke deflector plates support A1/1 60113 and by the time of the photograph 60113 had departed Grantham some years previously, as had its Peppercorn A1s. I think we have eliminated A3s, the tender and the smoke deflectors in the photograph appear to rule them out. Enjoyable post 61070, keeping the mind ticking over as the snow falls outside.