BR Standard Class 4 4-6-0
The British Railways Standard Class 4 4-6-0 is a class of steam locomotives, 80 of which were built during the 1950s. Six have been preserved. Background. The class was introduced in 1951. They were designed for mixed traffic use on secondary routes where the otherwise ubiquitous BR Standard Class 5 and their predecessors, the Black Fives, would be too heavy. They were essentially a tender version of the standard 4 2-6-4T, with similar characteristics to the GWR Manor Class, though unlike the Manors they were built to the  universal loading gauge. They used the same running gear as the tank engine (with the leading bogie from the Standard Class 5), and substantially the same firebox, smokebox and boiler, although the boiler barrel was increased in length by . Design work was done at Brighton by R. A. Riddles, with help from Swindon, Derby and Doncaster. Construction was at the BR Swindon Works. The engine weighed , was long, with diameter driving wheels. It had two cylinders of diameter and stroke operated at maximum boiler pressure of , to produce tractive effort. Its British Railways power classification was 4MT. It normally used  the standard BR2 or BR2A tender, which weighed and carried of water and of coal. In this configuration its route availability was 4, almost universal over the British Railways network. In service. The class was initially allocated to the London Midland Region (45) and the Western Region (20). The last 15 were allocated to the Southern Region. The Southern batch were built with BR1B tenders, which weighed , and carried of water and of coal. This reduced their route availability to 7, the same as the Standard Class 5. Preservation. Six members of the class have survived into preservation. Two members  of the class were purchased directly from BR for preservation (75027 & 75029); the remaining four engines were rescued from Woodham Brothers' scrapyard at Barry Island. No member of the class is presently main line approved but three of them (75014, 75029 and 75069) have worked on the main line at various points in preservation. 75029 was passed to work on the main line between Grosmont and Whitby with occasional visits to Battersby during galas. Model railways. Bachmann and Hornby have both recently released models of these engines in 00 gauge. Mainline Railways also released a OO gauge model of the  Standard Class 4MT 4-6-0 in the 1970s, although this is no longer in production. In 1983, Mainline's model was reintroduced to their catalogue as locomotive 75033 in BR lined black.