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London North Western
Railway:
Midland
Railway:
Stratford
Midland Junction Railway
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LMS Route: Nuneaton to Leamington
Kenilworth Station: lnwrk150
An unidentified LNWR 2-4-0 Improved Precedent class
locomotive is seen entering Kenilworth station at the head of an express
service circa 1908-10. There has been some debate about the date of this
photograph but colleagues from the LNWR Society were able to date the
photograph from the following information. Ted Talbot writes 'The date
has got to be after May 1895, because that is the date when the LNWR first
began to put coal rails on tenders. Passenger engines got them very soon, goods
engines more slowly, some not even by 1900. Another good dating feature is the
centre lamp socket on the bufferbeam, which first came into use when the LNWR,
along with many other companies, adopted the RCH headlamp code, from 1st
February 1903.
The engine is not of course a Newton (as originally
described). The Newtons were introduced by Ramsbottom in the 1860s. Webb
built a few more when he took over and then introduced the Precedents. From
1887 he replaced first the Newtons and then the Precedents with the Improved
Precedents. It has to be one of the latter in this picture - because only they
had the circular smokebox door and tender coal rails seen here. For fuller
details see Chapter Six of my book An Illustrated History of LNWR
Engines. Mike Williams adds 'I note you refer to "goods wagons"
(as the first five vehicles were originally described) being banned from
passenger trains, but unlike on some railways, all of these were classified as
passenger vehicles by the LNWR'.
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