LMS Route: Birmingham - Soho - Perry Barr - Birmingham

Handsworth Wood Station: lnwr_hw1522

Two LNWR locomotives storm out of the tunnel whilst at the head of an up train to Birmingham New Street circa 1900. The train consists of what is thought to be mixed coaching stock of six and eight wheel carriages together with more up to date coaches fitted with bogies. The train locomotive (the second) is an unidentified 2-4-0 'Jumbo' class officially known as the 'Improved Precedent' class designed by FW Webb, one of the 166 built at Crewe works between 1887 and 1901. These were in turn a development of John Ramsbottom's 'Newton' class locomotives. The pilot locomotive on the front with its distinctive single large driving wheel is an unidentified LNWR 2-2-2 locomotive. The late Victorian obsession with still building locomotives with a single driving wheel some fifty years after the first railways can be explained by a mistaken assumption that the couplings rods of multiple driving wheels would inhibit a locomotive's ability to run freely at speed. The application of sanding to driving wheels which created better adhesion enabled designers to build locomotives with single drivers for a very brief period.

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