Henry (Railway Series)

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## Henry

* Henry II
* Henry I (green)
* Henry I (blue)

**Henry** is a character in *The Railway Series*. He is a large mixed-traffic tender engine who works on the North Western Railway main line,

## History

Very little is known about Henry's origin and much of his background remains a mystery. It is unknown where he was built or who he was purchased from, but men who had crewed him claimed to have heard rumours of a scandal at Doncaster around 1919 over the theft of some drawings. Nothing was ever proven, but it was alleged that an anonymous locomotive builder with a grudge against Nigel Gresley had engineered a "leak" so as to steal a march on him. His spy, however, blundered and stole the wrong drawings. The mistake was discovered too late and Henry, when built, bore only a superficial likeness to Gresley's A1 Pacifics and displayed many faults, including an undersized firebox which resulted in shy steaming.

The thief was delighted to unload his "white elephant" on the first desperate customer to come his way in 1922: the Fat Controller. He had intended to purchase a Robinson Atlantic from the Great Central Railway, but was tricked into purchasing Henry instead and had no choice but to keep him, as the North Western Railway was facing a motive power crisis at the time and had to make do with any locomotive it could get.

Henry was vain when he arrived and came to a stop inside the Ballahoo Tunnel with a passenger train one rainy day, claiming that the rain would spoil his paintwork. After several attempts to move him out of the tunnel failed, the Fat Controller had Henry bricked up inside the tunnel and abandoned indefinitely. Henry was left in the tunnel for an undefined amount of time, between several weeks to a few months, until Gordon broke down while pulling the express. As Edward was unable to move the train alone, the Fat Controller approached Henry and offered to let him out of the tunnel if he helped out. Henry eagerly accepted and was finally freed from the tunnel.

Henry performed well and the Fat Controller rewarded him with a new coat of paint, as his old coat had been spoiled by his stay in the tunnel more than it would have been by the rain. Henry asked to be painted blue like Edward. However, he quickly learned that this resulted in people confusing him with Gordon, much to his annoyance. The matter was worsened after a visit to the Works, when he was fitted with a spare set of Gordon's buffers. These buffers were later removed when Henry - while boasting about them - ran into the buffer stop at Tidmouth and damaged them. To cheer Henry up after losing his square buffers, the Fat Controller offered him another repaint. Henry chose to be painted green again, finally putting an end to the confusion between him and Gordon.

Unfortunately, Henry was to suffer further humiliation after he was pushed out of a tunnel and later hosed down by a runaway elephant. After Gordon and James suffered humiliations of their own, and after all three became fed up with having to shunt their own trains, the three engines went on strike. The Fat Controller shut them up in the shed and had Thomas, Edward and Percy do their work, but eventually let them out once they had learned their lesson.

The poor engine and his system, which was already temperamental due to design flaws present when built, would only continue to worsen with time. Henry developed steaming issues and grumbled about it constantly to the other engines, but often found little sympathy from them, especially when it made his trains run late. To make matters worse, there were talks of the railway getting a new engine to replace him if he did not get better.

A period came when the main line engines were supplied with a delivery of poor quality coal, and Henry suffered the worst from it. He only had the strength to pull trains sporadically, in spite of numerous part replacements. Deciding to look into the matter personally, the Fat Controller rode with Henry's crew and asked for the opinion of his fireman, who told him that Henry's firebox was too small to burn normal coal sufficiently and suggested investing in high-grade Welsh coal for him. Although it was expensive, the Fat Controller agreed, wanting to give Henry a fair chance.

When the Welsh coal arrived, Henry's performance greatly improved. He no longer felt as short of breath as he did before, and was almost comparable to Gordon in terms of strength. He continued to use the Welsh coal until around 1935, when he collided with a goods train outside Killdane while pulling the *Flying Kipper*. He was sent to Crewe Works, where he was rebuilt into a Stanier 5MT. The Fat Controller had connections with William Stanier, and so this is possibly how he managed to have Henry rebuilt so quickly.