LMS Route: Grand Junction Railway
LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Lichfield
LMS Route: Birmingham-Soho-Perry Barr-Birmingham

Aston Shed: lnwra22b

Close up of image 'lnwra22' showing LMS 4-6-0 Patriot class No 5515 'Caernarvon' and an unidentified tank and tender locomotive. Built by Crewe works in September 1932, No 5515 wasto remain in service until June 1962 when it was withdrawn from 26A Newton Heath shed. To its right is a locomotive half in and half out of the shed and which thought to be another ex-LNWR 0-6-2T 'Coal Tank'. The locomotive partly obscured by the coach and with just a Fowler tender visible is thought to be a member of the LMS' 4F 0-6-0 class. Designed by Henry Fowler the 4F for medium freight work they represented the ultimate development of Midland Railway's six coupled tender engines. The LMS' 4F 0-6-0 locomotive design was based on the Midland Railway's 3835 Class which was first introduced in 1911 with a total of one hundred and ninety-seven locomotives being built by the MR. The LMS design was only slightly modified, the primary difference being the adoption of left-hand drive in favour of right-hand drive. Their adoption by the LMS as a standard class locomotive was not because they were a superior locomotive but simply because at a key stage in the development of the LMS, which only came into being on 1st January 1923, Midland Railway officers and executives were more senior to those of the other companies absorbed by the new company.

Seniority was based upon years of service not capability or excellence and therefore the first decade of the LMS' existence was decidely patchy. The LMS constructed 530 of the locomotives between 1923 and 1928, numbered sequentially from where the Midland engines left off from 4027. The Midland Railway locomotives were notorious for the poor design of their axle-box bearings, which were prone to overheating. A further forty-five examples were reluctantly authorised by William Stanier in 1937 at the behest of the operating department. The missing numbers - No 44557 to No 44561 - relate to five locomotives built for the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway to the Midland Railway 3835 Class design in 1922, and taken into LMS stock in 1930. All locomotives entered British Railways stock in 1948 renumbered by British Railways by the simply expediency of adding 40000 to the running numbers of both the former MR and LMS locomotives. The first withdrawal commenced in 1959 and by 1966 all of the class had been taken out of service.

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