The Big City/Foreign Engine

The Big City/Foreign Engine, was depicted in the book 'The Eight Famous Engines', by the Rev W Awdry in the story titled 'Gordon Goes Foreign'. The engine was green with red stripes and had smoke deflectors which were used to keep the steam from the locomotives funnel from deteriorating the driver and fireman's view as they leaned out of the cab windows.

The engine was quite snobby, and had an argument with Gordon and Duck over the name of one of London's famous stations, in which Gordon had been talking about when he used to be young and green from his days on the London & North Eastern Railway. The model i have used to make him is a Hornby LMS 'Patriot' 4-6-0 locomotive with a face from the Wooden Railway model, i am unsure as to what number the engine was and wether it carried a BR early or late style crest to the tender.

The dark green paint was made using a mixture of Plasti-kote Garden Green and Humbrol Satin Black, which i mixed together to get the colour i wanted. I wasn't able to use the HMRS locomotive lining this time, so i used some Humbrol gloss red to paint the lines on the boiler bands, tender and the cabsides.

Overall, it is a nice model, and it has been test run on some new track, it's very smooth and looks the part.

Breif History of the 'Patriot' Class

These engines were LMS accountancy rebuilds of selected engines of the LNWR Claughton classs, which were inherited by the LMS at the Grouping of 1923. The Patriots were introduced between 1930 and 1934. The first two were built at Derby using the frames from the Claughtons. Another ten were built at Derby but new frames with a different wheelbase were used. The ones that followed were built at Crewe and they too received new frames. At the very first they were called rebuilt Claughtons but in 1934 when the first engine in the new number series was introduced, 5500 "Patriot", most people started calling the engines, the Patriots.

After a short while the LMS called them Patriots as well.The LMS power classification was 5XP, a midway point between a class 5 and a class 6 when used on express passenger but just class 5 when used on freight. The rebuilt engines were then classified as 6PWhen built all of the class were coupled to Fowler LMS tenders derived from an earlier design of Midland Railway tender. These had a water capacity of 3,500 gallons and had a wheelbase of 6'-6" + 6'-6". At first glance these tenders looked like the ones that the LMS used on the 4-4-0 4P Fowler compounds but they were quite different. The Compound engine's tenders had a longer wheelbase of 7'-0" + 7'-0". The number series changed during LMS days and this has caused a lot of confusion to the unwary. The first batch of numbers started at 5901 taking the numbers from the original Claughtons these engines replaced. The new engines were not as far as we can make out numbered to any order.

The numbers were mixed up in a very haphazard way and in 1934 the renumbering took place. The last ten engines were given the numbers 5542 to 5551 from new. The table below gives the new LMS number and the old LMS number.When the patriots were first built they were painted out in crimson lake and from 1946 most were painted out in LMS lined black. The lining was a mixture of straw and maroon lines. Some kept this style of livery in very early BR days with the name British Railways written in full on the tender. Some experimental liveries may have been applied to selected members of the patriot class for a short perriod, but this is beyond the scope of this information sheet. Later all of the class were painted out in BR's standard Brunswick green with orange and black lining.



Photos © Daniel Snell