Sorting through a suitcase full of photos belonging to my late in laws, I found this photo of a steam engine. My father in law and his father worked in Brighton as engine builders and other members of the family worked at the Battersea engine works.
Finished in 1922
I managed to find out that Remembrance was the last LBSCR engine to be built in Brighton and my husband’s grandfather (and possibly his father) is most likely to be one of the men in the photo. The engine was finished in 1922.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LB&SCR_L_class
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Perhaps somewhere out there a railway buff can answer a problem I have about the last trains built at Brighton Sheds. While travelling to school, 1950 to 1956, from Portslade to Brighton new engines would regularly appear from the sheds with numbers starting with 41. I think, a man on the train told me they were being made in Brighton. Can anyone clear this confusion with the title of the picture of ‘Remembrance’?
Phil, if you read the text, it states that it was the last LB&SCR engine to be built in Brighton. I missed out the LB&SCR in my title, I’m sorry.
I’m no railway buff at all Phil, but John Blackwell wrote (on this website): “With the formation of the Southern Railway in 1923, the works declined, but with the advent of war in 1939 they were re-equipped and locomotive construction recommenced in 1942.” So maybe Remembrance was, after all, the last LBSCR engine to be built in Brighton. From 1923 onwards they would surely have been Southern Railway engines.
The actual last steam locomotive to be built at Brighton Works was Standard Class 4 2-6-4 Tank no 80154, outshipped in 1957 for British Railways. Most of the class were built in Brighton, and though they served over most of the BR network they were universally known as the “Brighton Tanks”. Prior to that the Works had indeed built Maunsell and Bulleid designs for the Southern Railway, and many more Bulleids for British Railways, including the much-loved West Country and Battle Of Britain “spamcan” Pacifics and the infamous double-ended Leader. After closure of the Works the buildings were used for a brief period to assemble Isetta bubblecars, as recorded elsewhere in MyB&H: something of a comedown from the glory days. A story comes to mind. Ten years ago, for my 50th birthday, as a surprise my wife Sue bought me a half-day introductory footplate course at the Severn Valley Railway. When we got there we found that the diagrammed loco, a Great Western “Hall”, had failed and had been replaced with . . . a Brighton Tank, no. 80079 if my memory serves. I took pleasure in pointing out to my fellow trainees from all over the country that both it and I had been born in Brighton at around the same time. It was with great pleasure that I fired it from Bewdley to Kidderminster and drove it back to Bewdley, including parking it on the disposal way. Naturally, these remain my favourite locos and it’s good to see that so many have been preserved.
Altogether, 7 Class “L” or “Baltic” 4-6-4 tank locos were built at Brighton by the LBSCR. The prototype was a very unstable runner and the capacity of those splendid side tanks was reduced and a well tank fitted between the frames. After grouping and electrification, to make them more available over the Southern network, they were rebuilt as 4-6-0 tender locos classed N15X. Although they entered BR ownership, all had been scrapped by 1957.
Thinking about Phil’s question. In the early fifties the railways were obviously nationalised and in the hands of the recently formed British Railways Board. One of the challenges for the new board was to make good the ravages of six years of war and, in particular, to upgrade the locomotive and rolling stock. In order to achieve this a number of ‘standard’ locos were designed for a wide range of purposes – from relatively small tank engines to monsters designed to pull heavy freight trains. The great majority of these locos were designed under the guidance of the chief engineer named Riddles, and had five figure numbrs beginning with 7, 8 or 9. However, the new railway decided to continue to build a number of slightly smaller tank engines with a 2-6-2 wheel arrangement and that had been designed for the pre-nationalised London Midland and Scottish railway by their chief engineer Ivatt. After nationalisation former LMS engines were given numbers beginning 4…. and the Ivatts were 41… . I suspect that these are the locos you saw rolling out of the engineering works. I may be wrong and does that make me a railway buff? As June says, this was the London Brighton and South Coast Railway which existed before the Act of Parliament that consolidated the railways into four big companies (for us the Southern Railway – all very green, a point thankfully not lost on the current franchise holder).
I was a dedicated loco-spotter in the ’50s and we used to sit on the brick wall at the top of the hill opposite Brighton Loco Works looking down on the sheds and the station and works. Quite a dangerous location as the other side of this wall was a cliff approximately 60 ft high. When I left Brighton to start my apprenticeship at Vickers=Armstrongs near Weybridge, the standard Class 4 2-6-4 Tanks were up to about 8oo6?. They were “Pulled” out of the works by the little A1X 0-6-0 tank engine and distributed all over the country, hence so many of the class that are preserved.
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