Locomotives of the Midland Railway

The small engine policy was, perhaps, carried on too long, giving rise to the derisive poem: M is for Midland with engines galore Two on each train and asking for more Prior to around 1900, the Midland's locomotives were not noticeably different in size or power to those of other British railway companies; what was more notable was the company's commitment to standardisation of a small number of related locomotive designs.

During the 1890s, a new phase in British locomotive development began with the arrival of 'large engine' designs to cope with rising average train weights for both passenger and freight traffic and demand for faster journey times.

Instead the Midland chose to continue production of its existing locomotive designs largely unchanged and thus adopted the 'small engine policy' for the 20th century.

Each engine was cheaper to build and run than a larger equivalent and while more locomotives were required, the Midland's Derby Works was able to achieve economies of scale.

This was deemed preferable to building a small number of large engines for the routes and duties that required them which did not fit into Derby's standardised production and risked being underutilised and incurring expensive running costs unnecessarily.

Indeed, the Midland's operations were often based around keeping even its small engines lightly loaded at a time when other railways were not only building larger, more powerful locomotives but working them to their maximum capacity with the heaviest trains possible.

This required that the standard workload had to be, to an extent, a 'worst case' scenario of a worn-out locomotive immediately due for overhaul, with the result that train loads were kept low and engines in good condition were not worked to their maximum.

This allowed the Midland to greatly improve its punctuality and timekeeping - which had been poor in the late 19th century and a source of bad publicity - since the timetables and train loads could be drawn to also assume the standard 'worst case' locomotive power available, while most of the engines actually in service were in better condition than that.

Smaller, less powerful engines also allowed savings in civil engineering upgrades as they permitted lighter-laid track and cheaper bridges to be retained for longer into the 20th century - thus there is an interaction with Route Availability - primarily based on axle loadings - although this concept was not formalised into classifications in Midland or LMS days (contrast to the Great Western Railway, q.v.).

Similarly, the Midland was unusual among British railways by continuing to favour roundhouses to stable and service its locomotives instead of the more common longitudinal shed.

While a shed could be relatively easy expanded and lengthened to accommodate larger locomotives, the roundhouses could not, further adding a secondary cost to adopting large engines.

The small engine policy was a contributing factor to two fatal accidents on the Settle-Carlisle Line, at Hawes Junction and Ais Gill.

The corporate management structure of the Midland, with the Operating Department overseeing the role of the Motive Power Superintendent, continued in a somewhat de facto fashion in the early years of the LMS.

Fowler oversaw the introduction of the Royal Scot class locomotives in 1927, which effectively ended the Midland small engine tradition - they were in fact built by the North British Locomotive Company which also had a large part in the design process, further assisted by plans of the Southern Railway's Lord Nelson class being provided to the LMS.

For further reading, see: Initially, the Midland concentrated on maintaining and improving the somewhat varied fleet that it had inherited, with the assistance of The Railway Foundry in Leeds.