page_title: Footplate
section_title: Details
hierarchical_section_title: Footplate / Details
caption_attribution_description: English: Ex-L&amp;Y 0-6-0 as a Crewe Works Pilot. Aspinall 27 Class 3F 0-6-0 No. 52441 (built 1890s, withdrawn 9/62) was employed in its final years as one of the several Crewe Works Pilots. [N.B.: I need help, please, with the precise location of my several images taken at Crewe Works, because I don't have a contemporary large-scale plan of the Works complex?] It's in an area sometimes known as the Stone Yard - Flag Lane water tower is visible behind.
context_page_description: The footplate of a steam locomotive is a large metal plate that rests on top of the frames and is normally covered with wooden floorboards. It is usually the full width of the locomotive and extends from the front of the cab to the rear of cab or coal bunker just above the buffer beam. The boiler, the cab, and other superstructure elements are in turn mounted on the footplate. The footplate does extend beyond the front of the cab on some locomotives, but is then usually referred to as the "running board/plate". The footplate is where the Driver and Fireman stand in the cab to operate the locomotive, giving rise to the expression of working on the footplate for being in the cab of a steam locomotive. The part of the footplate ahead of the cab is referred to by a variety of different names.
  Although today the steam locomotive has been phased out, the word footplate remains current coin. It is used to describe the act of travelling inside the cab of a locomotive, and in this context to the cab itself also.
context_section_description: The footplate has openings cut in it for various purposes.  The firebox always extends beneath the footplate.  The cylinders are beneath the footplate, and steam pipes pass through holes to them.  The reversing gear control for the valve gear also passes through, and in some locomotives part of the valve motion also extends through the footplate.  
   
  On British Railways Standard Locomotives the running plate was high enough to clear the wheels.  On earlier British locomotives, the tops of the wheels usually projected through slots in the running plate and were covered by "splashers" which are analogous to mudguards on a road vehicle.
caption: Splashers visible on a British 0-6-0 tender locomotive (note particularly those on the second axle)
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