The North Eastern Railway

North Eastern Railway (UK)

The North Eastern Railway , was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854, when four existing companies were combined, and was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923...

 (NER) Class K classified as Class Y8 by the London and North Eastern Railway

London and North Eastern Railway

The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...

 (LNER) is a class of 0-4-0T steam locomotive

Steam locomotive

A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...

s designed for shunting

Switcher

A switcher or shunter is a small railroad locomotive intended not for moving trains over long distances but rather for assembling trains ready for a road locomotive to take over, disassembling a train that has been...

. It was designed by Thomas W. Worsdell and five of these tiny engines were built in 1890. These were numbered 559-63.

Description

The Class K design was not just small, it as diminutive and as class Y8 these were the smallest steam locomotives used by the LNER. They were fitted with steam and hand brakes only, never having vacuum brakes, and were unusual in having no bunker behind the cab for the coal, but rather having the small amount of coal required stored in a bin at the back of the footplate.

The Y8s were built with 'marine' type boilers

Fire-tube boiler

A fire-tube boiler is a type of boiler in which hot gases from a fire pass through one or more tubes running through a sealed container of water...

, ie. with a cylindrical flue into which the grate fitted. Between 1902 and 1904, they were all re-boilered with more traditional boilers similar to those fitted to the NER Class H

NER Class H

The North Eastern Railway Class H, classified as Class Y7 by the London and North Eastern Railway is a class of 0-4-0T steam locomotives designed for shunting.-Description:...

 locomotives.

Originally all of the Y8s were fitted with a single whistle

Steam whistle

A steam whistle is a device used to produce sound with the aid of live steam, which acts as a vibrating system .- Operation :...

 of the bell-shaped type. 560, 561, and 563 acquired the organ type during LNER ownership. 559 also had one of these whistles fitted, but after 1940. In 1942 LNER No.8091 (NER No.560) acquired the chime whistle from the Gresley A4

LNER Class A4

The Class A4 is a class of streamlined 4-6-2 steam locomotive, designed by Nigel Gresley for the London and North Eastern Railway in 1935. Their streamlined design gave them high-speed capability as well as making them instantly recognizable, and one of the class, 4468 Mallard, still claims the...

 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgewood when it was damaged during an air raid on York in 1942. By 1946, the original organ-pipe whistle had been restored.

Operation and preservation

The NER built the K class specifically to shunt the docks at Hull, and it was here that they performed for most of their lives. During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 No.559 was used both at Woolwich Arsenal

Royal Arsenal

The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, originally known as the Woolwich Warren, carried out armaments manufacture, ammunition proofing and explosives research for the British armed forces. It was sited on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in south-east London, England.-Early history:The Warren...

 and by the Royal Engineers near the mouth of the Humber Estuary, and No 8091 became Departmental Locomotive

British Rail Eastern Region departmental locomotives

In 1952, the Eastern Region of British Rail introduced its own series for departmental vehicles, including locomotives. Numbers were allocated from 1 to 1000, with blocks of 100 numbers allocated to specific types of vehicle. This page only lists the locomotives , which took the number 1 to 100...

 No. 55, and acquired a 50A shed plate, being the last of the class when finally withdrawn in June 1954.

All five K class locos survived into LNER ownership. However, the Depression-era

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 reduction in dock traffic and the increased use of Sentinel

Sentinel Waggon Works

Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd was a British company based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire that made steam-powered lorries, railway locomotives, and later, diesel engined lorries and locomotives.-Alley & MacLellan, Sentinel Works, Jessie Street Glasgow:...

 shunters (LNER Class Y1

LNER Class Y1

The LNER Class Y1 was a class of 0-4-0 geared steam locomotives built by Sentinel Waggon Works for the London and North Eastern Railway and introduced in 1925...

 and LNER Class Y3

LNER Class Y3

The LNER Class Y3 was a class of 0-4-0 geared steam locomotives built by Sentinel Waggon Works for the London and North Eastern Railway and introduced in 1927. They passed into British Railways ownership in 1948 and were numbered 68154-68185....

) led to the scrapping of three Y8s in 1936/7. Numbers 559 and 560 survived to the 1946 renumbering, and were renumbered as 8090 and 8091 respectively. Both survived into British Railways (BR) ownership, but neither survived long enough to acquire an updated '60000' number plate. 8090 was withdrawn in November 1948.

None of the original five survived into preservation. There have been rumours that a replica of this class of engine may be built for use at Beamish Museum

Beamish Museum

Beamish, The North of England Open Air Museum is an open-air museum located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, County Durham, England. The museum's guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early...

where its small size and marine type boiler are seen as perfect for the museum's short demonstration line.

Sources

• Ian Allan ABC of British Railways Locomotives, 1948 edition, part 4, page 46.