CONTENTS
4 Introduction (read below)
28 Keeping the Past Alive.
30 Princess Royal Class 4-6-2
32 6201 Princess Elizabeth
42 Visitors to the works (1)
44 Princess Coronation Class 4-6-2
46 The Coronation Scot
56 Visitors to the works (2)
58 LNWR‘Super D’ 0-8-0
60 Standard 7 Class Britannia 4-6-2
62 Royal Scot Class 4-6-0
63 Class 6 Clan 4-6-2
64 Standard Class 8 Duke 4-6-2
68 LMS Jubilee Class 4-6-0
71 Looking Back
72 A Ministerial visit!
73 Monks Coppenhall Junction
74 LMS Black Five 4-6-0
77 Stanier Class 5 Mogul
78 LMS Ivatt Class 2, 2-6-0
79 Patriot Class, Baby Scots!
80 LMS 8F 2-8-0
82 Standard Class 9F 2-10-0
84 Hughes/Fowler ‘Crab’ 2-6-0
86 Visitors to the works (3)
87 Crewe built tank locomotives
88 Webb Crewe Works Charity Fund
– Great Gathering
92 Steaming on! LNWR Heritage Co Ltd.
94 Modern Traction
118 Visitors to the works (4)
120 Wheel arrangements,
as applied to steam locomotives.
122 40 Years on- The cost in human life
130 Railway Benefit Fund
Introduction
CREWE LOCOMOTIVEWORKS 150 YEARS OF ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE
More than 8250 locomotives were built at Crewe – they were all built with Pride.
 For more than 150 years, locomotive building and railway engineering has taken place at Crewe Works in Cheshire.
In September 2005 the charity organisation known as the Webb Crewe Works Charity Fund staged an event called The Great Gathering in order to celebrate and recognise the achievements of the many thousands of people who had spent their working years at ‘TheWorks’ .
Never since the end of steam in the UK (1968) had such an impressive collection of railway motive power been put on display at a locomotive works. It is now unfortunately a fact that the Cheshire ‘Railway Town’ is unlikely ever to figure again in the production of ‘new build’ locomotives,multiple units or other rail vehicles.
However, the Crewe site, now operated by the French Canadian company Bombardier, still figures prominently in some future plans to service and re-equip the modern railway industry. In 2006 the workforce occupying the site,which locals and railway enthusiasts still fondly call ‘The Works’, is by comparison a small one, numbering only 700 or so.This is a far cry from the period during and immediately after the SecondWorld War,when the workforce reportedly swelled to a staggering 20,000! To illustrate briefly the past value of the railways to Great Britain and to put into perspective the importance of Crewe Works, Government figures from a wartime (1943) railway census make fascinating reading.
There were at that time some 19,624 locomotives, 1,250,000 goods wagons, 45,838 passenger vehicles providing 2,655,000 seats, and some 10,000 horses collectively owned by the various railway companies. The total track-mileage including sidings was 50,958, of which 19,273 miles were logged as being route mileage, and they were controlled by 10,300 signal boxes. For suppliers the business potential was huge!
The modern-day Crewe Works is mainly engaged in what could best be described as peripheral railway rolling stock engineering work. In June 2006 Bombardier Transportation announced that it had been awarded two major contracts by the train operating company First Group.
Employing some 4000 staff at 24 centres in the UK, Bombardier values the new contracts at £53-million and £85-million respectively. The first contract calls for the refurbishment of 405 High Speed Train (HST) trailer cars and that work is to be undertaken at the firm’s sites in Derby and Ilford,with the newly completed refurbishment centre at Derby getting the lion’s share of the work – 294 vehicles compared with Ilford’s allocation of 111.
The second, and largest, contract has been awarded for the overhaul of HST bogies. First Great Western had (at the time of writing) a period of 10 years to run on its franchise and, during that time, the £85-million-worth of bogie work will, say Bombardier, be carried out at Crewe Works. Others intending to refurbish the originally Crewe-built HST power cars are the leasing companies Angel Trains and Porterbrook, but their plans do not include the works that developed the locomotives.They have declared their intention to spend £15-million to re-engine Great North Eastern Railways’ (GNER) high-speed train fleet.That work, which calls for the replacement of the original Paxman Valenta diesel engines with new units, is scheduled to be carried out at the Loughborough works of Brush Traction.
END OF PREVIEW • Written by Keith Langston • ©2006 Mortons Media Group Ltd |
150 Years of engineering excellence