#l.n.w.r. engines

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Cornwall not looking like a bastard at all

they wrapped some of the station poles with ribbon, lol. E for Effort.

[jobey-wan-kenobi]

@angryskarloey Okay, knowing you you have ALREADY LOOKED THIS UP and it's quite possible you already know more than me as I have not found a ton online. SteamIndex has the most complete information; indeed I haven't found anything elsewhere that wasn't already said there. (There are some books dedicated to the smaller lines that were absorbed into the F.R. but I haven't gotten my mitts on them... yet!) But, just in case (and as a warm-up for this writing session)...

Mars and Sirius were Hawthorn 0-4-2s, built 1857 — outside-framed, 14 x 20 cylinders, 5 ft drivers, smol 4-wheeled tenders, weatherboards in lieu of cabs, and (I can't find a picture, but perhaps you have pictures of this from other Hawthorn engines) they had the "peculiar dome casings, reminiscent of a large stew-pot with separate lid, even to the knob on the top," which apparently was a period-typical feature of many Hawthorn engines.

Altogether, they were so small (17 tons in working order) that SI expresses surprise that they lasted on the F.R. for as long as they did. In theory they were mixed-traffic, but could only take light goods and evidently there were not many such trains in their territory so, well. You do the maths.

The F.R. took ownership of them in 1866 and these engines, formerly Whitehaven & Furness Junction Railway Nos. 3 and 13 continued to work their old haunts as F.R. 44 and 45 until '82, which was longer than their siblings who were sent to the L.N.W.R. when the two railways divvied up the W. & F.J.R. stock upon absorbing the line.

Which brings us to their siblings. They had a pair of very similar elders built a year earlier, in 1856: W. & F.J.R. No. 1 Excelsior and No. 2 Hecla. Mars and Sirius remained on the joint lines under F.R. ownership but, as said, Excelsior and Hecla were sent to work on the L.N.W.R. They were scrapped in 1874 and '77 respectively.

So this will definitely crop up as part of a Nobby flashback story at some point: In 1866, the same year these four "Joint Lines" engines were separated, the original F.R. four also encountered tragedy, with Copper-Nob No. 1 suffering a fiery human error that led to her scrapping. Not long afterwards (the F.R. evidently being really attached to pairs of engines), No. 2 was sold to an unnamed colliery in Northumberland and is never heard of again...

NOT TO SPOIL ANYTHING, BUT. IF YOU DON'T THINK I WILL CONSCIOUSLY HAVE 3, 4, 44, and 45 FIND SOLIDARITY AND COMFORT AMONG THEMSELVES AND DECIDE TO JOIN THEIR TWO BROKEN FAMILY HALVES INTO A NEW WHOLE YOU'RE CRAZY. 😭😭

h/t ajax for the correction about sirius's number

sidenote - have i already mentioned on m-s-d that in the 1860s the f.r. inherited two engines named Mars and Sirius?

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

The nice thing is that you have all the other engines, who get to not be The Oldest Fuckin' Engine in This Joint once more and just be one of the gang, coz at Clapham the responsibilities of seniority fall to the big C's:

Cornwall (super up his own tender, luckily too superior to really bother with anyone but his own L.N.W.R. coterie)

Coppernob (insane, actually insane - but in like a chill way - all right, he's kinda terrifying when he startles out of his sleep thinking that they're all being bombed - but he does keep the L.N.W.R. lot in check, duzin'ee?), and

Columbine (stuck being the actual adult in the room, luckily she does it very well and rules them all with a light easy touch. stately and gracious, she keeps them in order enough to actually fulfill their public duties but lets them act out after-hours - and they all love her for it)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Why are Nobby and Cornwall always beefing?

Oh, anon.

Why it started is lost to the mists of time (as in, I haven't settled that yet - though the Furnessians probably provoked it tbh. They had an inferiority complex when it came to the L.N.W.R. as they ought.)

Why it was inevitable... well. He's just a fiery express engine who is full of himself, he's just a fiery goods engine who is equally full of himself. Can I make it any more obvious? ...

They're too alike, lol. They're both proud, competitive, dutiful, Company-loyal, and, well frankly, they're just kind of assholes. I will say that Coppernob did progress past the worst of this stage... he was lucky, I think, that his railway was small enough that, no matter how much fame and influence he acquired, he could continue to feel endless responsibility to the rest of the entire fleet. Cornwall hasn't really had that sort of external cause to develop Higher Consciousness or anything. That said, Cornwall is a very respectable engine and a good sort - if you're one of his own. He's flawed, and he isn't as heroic in some ways as Coppernob became, but he's not a villain.

Why it continues... well, there's a story there. Hang tight. I'll work on that and post it a.s.a.p. Might need to phone a friend for a Roast Consult, if I'm gonna tell the story right.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

The one thing that I want to know after reading about Nobby’s NRM friends is his relationship with the LNWR and midland engines.

Also I’m just imagining a funny what-if if he was shunting alongside Cornwall, Hardwicke, and 49395, and everyone prays that world war 3 doesn’t start lol.

I hate to disappoint, but ‘boringly realistic’ is as you know my brand I don’t see those relationships as being that spicy.

I can definitely see the NRM having a recurring theme where some kindly, enthusiastic, naive soul is like “hey! let’s put all the reeeally old engines next to each other for a while and they can reminisce about Victoria and Albert getting hitched, or whatever! :)” and despite warnings they do it and then all the Reeeeally Old Engines are just staring icily at each other in a sort of eight-way armed standoff, each knowing that the first one to speak is going to set off a relitigation of stale old politics and grievances (from both their working and preservation careers) they all know should be buried sixty years ago, except here they are, all kinda itching to fight ‘em again, but also There Are People Around, and, more importantly, There Are Young Engines Around. Wouldn’t want to set a bad example for impressionable young things like Gazelle and Truro.

But the atmosphere? It’s chilly.

That, however, is the reeeeeally old crowd. It doesn't even include the good-natured M.R. lot.

There is no feud between the Furness and Midland survivors. It was never that severe between them, anyway. In fact, back in their working days F.R. No. 4, Coppernob’s brother, would ramble about his admiration of the glamorous Midland 1757 ‘Beatrice’. Remembering his twin’s old fanboy crush, Nobby sank into a deep funk for two days when he heard Beatrice had been dismantled. (This was right before Grouping, and Nobby had no idea just how scrap-happy life was about to get.)

Back in Coppernob’s working days there was just the usual neighborly rivalry when you have two railways full of puffed-up steam engines. The M.R. loved when it finally had a rival company that they could look down upon for underpowered engines—it made such a nice change from their situation at all the other junctions ('The M is for Midland, with engines galore/Two on each train, and begging for more!'). The F.R. rolling stock resented the existential threat that the Midlanders represented, and resented some of their snubs and titters at their rather sorry ‘boat trains’ even more. But the whole thing largely simmered down sometime in the 1880s when the Furness directors firmly told the M.R. that they could pay them roughly six bajillion dollars for their company or they could fuck off, and the M.R. chose the latter option.

Coppernob and 158 are the only two still alive who even remember the thing. There is no grudge. 158 never even worked those regions, and even if she had it’s unlikely Nobby would hold it against her. He can be petty—but he’s not that petty. And 158 couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone stir up century-old bad blood. Among other things, it would be unsporting. There are a good few pre-Grouping Midlanders in the National Collection, and then there’s Nobby all by himself. That would just be mean.

So Nobby is on good terms with all the surviving Midlanders that he's met, and positively cozy with their composite six-wheeler. If he and 158 haven’t become friends, it’s largely down to the fact that, while they have a lot in common, it’s the sort of life experiences that are very painful and they just haven’t gotten round to opening up to each other in that way yet. Maybe give them another fifty years and we’ll see.

But then there’s the L.N.W.R., haha. The Midland just wanted to buy them out and take over their entire outfit, pah! You can fight that. What the L.N.W.R. did hurt way worse. The F.R. had to make a huge noise and fuss to get the 'old' North-Western to even notice them.

The keynote of the F.R.’s rivalry with them in the old days was that the London and North Western was one of the greatest railways in the world and the truth is that the Furnessians admired them very much. The F.R. took a lot of cues on how to do things from their great neighbors to the south (except—unfortunately, from the engines’ point of view—they never bothered to try to imitate the Crewe Works. But, for example, even Nobby’s preservation was itself a very ‘big North-Western’ move on their part). The scrappy, spirited Furnessians were hate-‘em-‘cause-they-ain’t-‘em. They aspired to be them, they never would be them, and whenever the L.N.W.R. noticed their existence they found the F.R.’s little attempts to compete with them entertaining. (You can maybe see why Nobby has a soft spot for James.) Nobby spent much of his first forty years running on pure spite of the ‘North-Western.’ He was always enormously (and not unjustly) proud of his life’s work in helping the F.R. expand and succeed—but that pride was always shattered bitterly whenever he ran into boastful L.N.W.R. stock, who never failed to remind him, with great heartiness, how poor and tardy and out-of-date their whole outfit was. It would throw his whole system out of order for days. He and the rest of his lot hated them—and they simply thought of the Copper-Nobs (when they thought of them at all) as quaint, funny, mildly annoying little things.

This sort of rivalry is just the worst.

The power imbalance has straightened out since 1900, though. Coppernob himself (against all expectations back in the 1840s, when the F.R. had like twelve miles of track and not quite as many coaches) was newsworthy by the time he was withdrawn, if from nothing but the sheer stubbornness of working what was at the time the longest career on British rails.

A quarter-century later, he and Columbine turned over a new leaf when they were put on display next to each other at the Wembley Exhibition—it was really nice for both of them to put away all the old nonsense and actually get to know each other, and they are penpals to this day. (They were also insufferably haughty about their good sense and deportment. The only reason it wasn’t on sight for the two of them was because Flying Scotsman and at least one of the Castles were there, already making a “scene.” Coppernob and Columbine bonded immediately as they basically pretended that they had never been so silly as that, and why were the new Big Four so eager to produce engines with more tractive effort than sense, and yes indeed, back in their day they knew how to express their differences with grace, and—)

It was at the Exhibition of ’25 that the world got to see Nobby’s “guest manner” in action. His whole crotchedy-grandpa-with-a-heart-of-gold shtick that he’d developed while stuck at Barrow Central proved a huge success. (The L.N.W.R. emeriti had mostly been departmental engines once withdrawn—they'd had to develop some public relations game too, but 'talking to visitors' hadn’t been literally their only duty they’d had to practice 24/7 for the past eighteen years.) It sure impressed the hell out of Columbine, and it inspired her to up her game—and to go home and make sure the rest of her railway elders did too. So yeah, ironically enough we did wind up in a situation where (for once! a-men) it was the proud Crewe engines who were scrambling to keep up with a Copper-Nob.

(It’s lucky that Nobby didn’t really grasp the scale of his success at Wembley and indeed the influence he had on the entire British preservation circuit until much later. By the time he did it was well after the Barrow Blitz and he was so famous that it didn’t really matter that his dome grew three sizes that day. Getting bombed? That wasn’t heroic, he didn’t bloody do anything. Becoming as popular as the entire L.N.W.R. lot put together? Now, that. That’s a proper ego boost!)

Most of Nobby’s London and North Western contemporaries—the ones with whom he ever had any real enmity, the ones who used to humiliate him and his—are scrapped. But there are significant strains on their modern truce. He and Cornwall, even though they Conduct Themselves Appropriately, have such a foul enmity poisoning the air between them that they are always housed in different museums. Hardwicke is a generation after all these grand old ‘C’s and perhaps would have been on neutral terms with Coppernob, especially due to their mutual friendships (including with Columbine) and to the sense, shared by all the M.R. engines, that it would be just vulgar to gang up on Coppernob when he’s a party of one… except Nobby once gossiped in Hardwicke’s hearing about the long-dismantled Lady of the Lake (“ ‘Lady of the Lake,’ pah. ‘Witch of the Lagoon,’ more like!” — h/t @houseboatisland) Understandably Hardwicke found this pretty disrespectful and came to the conclusion that Coppernob’s double-edged tongue makes two-or-three on one a perfectly fair match, in his case! While Hardwicke is not as deep in the feud as Cornwall, he does of course back up his old fleetmate and mentor whenever conflict breaks out.

Nobby had no grudge against the old Crewe saddletank on principle—he’d never even heard of her until the 1950s—it’s her personality that led to him rejecting her. (He’s not alone; she’s pretty widely disliked. 1439 has seen and participated in far more scrappings than any living being should and she is, to put it mildly, a little too quick to share a morbid memory.) ‘Pet,’ however—the other old Crewe shunter, the narrow-gauge one—is a much more personable engine and popular with just about everybody; she reminds Nobby in particular of Poppet.

Unlike Nobby’s great success with the M.R. coaches, the old Wolverton carriages maintain the old snobbery in full measure and do not deign to speak to any engines they consider inferior to the L.N.W.R. engines who used to handle them. They've even snubbed the Rocket (yes, the real one), so we can expect that quaint little Coppernob will be in that scorned category forever. (He hasn’t exactly lost sleep over it. I’m not 100% sure he’s even noticed the silent treatment—it took him decades to strike up a conversation with his friend the Midland composite. Engine classism ftw!)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

The Quick Lil Seagull Post: Part I (Overview of the Furness Railway 1/2 — The Ram$den Years)

@shinygoku suggested some while ago that I write up a post on the “various Seagulls” as sort of helpful background for fic writers.

I said I didn’t know enough.

… But in the end I wrote it anyway.

And then some. When I tried to write "a quick lil reference post" on the Seagulls, I wound up expanding it to cover all the Furness passenger engines. Then I figured people would also need some background on the railway itself. (Plus, I’m going to wind up adding some stand-alone posts on some of the non-passenger classes! Just my favorites. I definitely in no way will wind up with a series that covers every engine that ever ran on Furness metals... Right?)

However, I really need to disclaim, very loudly, that this is just me, “the person on tumblr who has read up on the most K2 breadcrumb trails, sharing their notes with the class.” Not “me, the expert,” coz I’m not. I still have most of my learning ahead of me (I hope!), and there *will* be errors in this summary of what I’ve got so far. My target audience is not train geeks but more TTTE fans looking for creative inspiration/guiderails.

So with that said, let’s start with some fun notes on the Furness:

The F.R. was a rather small railway whose territory hugged the coast and skirted the lakes of southern Cumbria and northern Lancashire counties.

Its 60-plus-mile-main line ran from Carnforth up to Whitehaven. But the heart and soul of the railway was Barrow. Yes, that Barrow. The port directly across the channel from the Island of Sodor Walney Island.

The Company began to transport “red hematite” iron ore mined from throughout the district of Furness to Barrow... which in 1846 was just a small hamlet on the seaside that had no idea of the amount of industrialisation that was about to hit it.

Red hematite ore was only in moderate demand—until the Bessemer process revolutionized steelworking, and also made the tricky-to-work red hematite more useful than ever before. Demand for the stuff skyrocketed overnight!

Apocryphal (but some contemporaries clearly believed it to be true): The Indian Red livery of the F.R. engines was a nod to the “red hematite” ore on which the railway had been founded.

From its origins as an isolated wagonway run by four little 0-4-0 tender engines in 1846, it grew over the next near-80 years to a modern, diversified railway 130-engines strong, with junctions and through trains with the L.N.W.R. and the Midland Railway. If its territory was small, and if it shared the M.R.'s "small engine policy" (mostly), it was nevertheless a thoroughly modern railway known for its “smart management” when it was absorbed into the L.M.S.R. at grouping.

This history can really be divided into two eras. The first approximately 50 years (right up to the 1900s) were the “mineral era.” This was decidedly before it was a first-class railway. During this era, the point was to ship red hematite and make bank! Period! When No. 3 (the now-preserved National Railway Museum engine known as “Old Copper-Nob”) hauled a directors’ special in 1848, it was for a bunch of rich industrialists to rejoice in a year of amazing dividends... and to congratulate each other for how few non-excursion passenger trains they had thus far managed to get away with running.

I’m sure the locals were thrilled.

Anyway, the F.R. in the 1800s—in this first era—was dominated by a man named Sir James Ramsden.

I’ve read a few of the more railhistory-minded TTTE fans claiming he is a very Sir Topham Hatt I figure. Decide for yourself:

James Ramsden had been an engineer with Bury, the famous locomotive builders, when he got the position as first Locomotive Superintendent of the new F.R.

In six years he had advanced to company secretary. He then spent just shy of 30 years as managing director.

Critics observed that the other directors were just figureheads who deferred to Ramsden on everything, making the railway a one-man show.

While managing the F.R., he also served six successive terms as Mayor of Barrow.

Somewhere during those terms, he was Sir'd.

While handling his Mayor and Knight and Railway Robber Baron roles, he was also managing director of Barrow Hematite Steel Company.

And a few other companies.

Not to mention managing director of the Barrow Shipbuilding Company. Which he founded.

So yeah. I don’t see the resemblance. Sir Topham was a slacker compared to this guy. Busy, busy, busy!

Speaking of a lack of resemblance(?)… he looked like this:

(Sidenote: Circa 1900, Barrow Shipbuilding Company underwent a change in ownership and became Vickers. Yes, Vickers as in one-half of the later Metropolitan-Vickers, who built such great ships. And such dubious diesel-electric type two railway engines. Yes, laugh at those ringlets and sideburns if you will, but we have him to thank for BoCo. Goddammit.)

What’s the point here? Well, Ramsden dominated the first era of the Furness, and withstood all critics and challengers… of which there were more than a few.

Mostly, he was criticized for investing millions of pounds over the course of his tenure into Barrow Docks. Y'know. New and ever-expanding docks in what was by then basically Ramsdentown. This was actually a sound investment for the F.R.—but malcontents observed that this was coming at the expense of, well. the entire rest of the network.

“We have priceless natural beauty spots that mass industrialization and unchecked mining are going to destroyyy!” “The only town in the whole district that gets decent service is *spits* Barrow!” You know, yadda, yadda. Buncha whiners.

Okay, but, seriously really are a remarkable amount of documented complaints about the F.R.’s anemic passenger service in this time. The timetables were, to put it kindly, unambitious. Nor were they often kept! One irate correspondent noted to a local newspaper that, when his train was late (as it so often was), he might be able to get to his destination faster by walking.

Let me offer a rare historical portrait that gives the discerning reader a glimpse into how much Ramsden probably cared:

However! The red hematite market could not favor the English forever! As the 1800s went on, the damned Germans and Spanish started to flood the market with cheaper stuff. (Whomp, whomp.) And every time there was a downturn in the hematite trade, mines and steelworks in the Furness district would shut down, while the railway’s finances would suffer.

In the 1890s, the F.R. began a transition to its second, “modern” era, where it set out to reinvent itself as a full-service railway. This meant, like, transporting people to places they wanted to go, in a timely fashion. Or something.

More seriously, it meant marketing the Lake District as a tourist spot—which worked so well that it remains one to this day—as well as upgrading its stock—which worked so well that we got big-ass Seagulls and gorgeous blue-and-cream corridor bogie coaches out of the deal!

Even Ramsden was slowly glancing in this direction... but it probably helped speed the change along when ill health finally did what no man had ever accomplished, and in 1895 forced him to freakin retire his control-freak ass already.

… but before we move on to the second era I first have to tell you some more Hatt-ian tidbits about this old bastard. I hafta.

He had one son. Ramsden Jr. became Superintendent of the Line in 1896, the year directly after his father retired—lest we think that, like, non-Ramsden people can run this place unsupervised. (Later he became a Furness and an L.M.S. director too. Granted, as far as I am aware, none of his progeny went into railway management.)

Ramsden the Elder seems to have started the Furness tradition of selling off their locos to smaller railways and industry. This is why we still have two of our three preserved Furness locos today—Nos. 20 and 25 escaped the L.M.S. enscrappening because they were safely employed at the steelworks! That’s nice and all, but at the time critics would sceptically enquire as to why he was selling locos still in good condition *cough* to companies he was also the managing director of (Barrow Hemelite Co., mostly). Ramsden would say that it was better for the F.R. to sell them while they could still command a good price, thank you so very much—and I’ll leave you to decide whether that convinces you or not.

Anyway, quite a number of Furness engines from this first era continued after their railway withdrawal date, and since they were often working for companies that were basically also the Ramsden personal brand I imagine there was a very “still family” feeling. No more than the distance between Mavis and Toby.

The F.R. got Alfred Aslett, who had a wonderful track record turning around the Cambrian Railway, as Ramsden’s… er, not-replacement.

For Ramsden, you see, was sooo larger-than-life in the annals of the Furness district that the railway made up a new job title for Aslett… rather than commit the sacrilege of ever naming another “managing director.”

*dartboard meme* I’ve had enough of this dude.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Next Time: Overview of the Furness Railway 2/2 — All Set with Aslett! (Wait, What Do You Mean We Are Going to War and Then You're Going to Amalgamate Our Railway with the Bloody Midlanders?!)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

The Quick Lil Seagull Post: Part II (Overview of the Furness Railway 2/2 — It's a New Century)

"The best years for the railways were clearly between 1894 and 1914." - Rev. W. Awdry

The second era of the F.R. covers approximately the last 25 years of the company, from the late 1890s to the 1923 Grouping.

The hematite ore and coal trades remained the railway’s bread and butter, but these markets were also not the vast field of moneybags they had once been. Furthermore there were no more “small lines” for the F.R. to absorb. It had already swallowed up just about everything else in the region, and now the game was negotiating details about through trains with the London and North Western and with the Midland.

New general manager Alfred Aslett was equal to the challenge. Taking the helm after Ramsden’s retirement in 1895, he put his previous experience turning around flagging railways to good use. And he was put to the test right away, for ‘96-’97 would see another depression in the hematite market.

But Aslett had already gotten the transition underway. In a word: tourism. To that end, he pushed through the purchase of six new passenger engines. Yep, these were the Larger Seagulls. And it should be noted that six engines in one go was a big order, by Furness standards. At first the board had agreed to start shopping for three, which was much more in line with the railway’s usual history of slow and incremental updates. But Aslett was looking for a blitz, not a trickle. Increase that order by 100%! Have a little faith! If we build it, they will come!

The simultaneous coach upgrade was just as, if not more, ambitious. The state of Furness carriages prior to this year is probably best left undescribed. New Locomotive Superintendent Pettigrew got to put his training and experience on the big railways to use by designing new bogie coaches. The order of the day was to make sure they were as good as what their passengers would have experienced on their way in via the L.N.W.R. or the Midland—or better.

Pettigrew aimed for better. Soon non-corridor coaches were no longer to be seen on the main line. Second class was abolished, third class was updated, steam heating was soon added, the lavatory doors automatically released pleasant scents whenever they were opened or closed, etc. You know. The works.

All F.R. coaches were also at this point given their famous blue-and-cream livery. This, when matched with the engines’ Indian Red, made for an aesthetic that slapped so hard that sixty years later some kooky clergyman in Cambridgeshire would borrow it when designing his Skarloey Railway trains.

Suffice it to say, the L.& N.W.R. stopped roasting the F.R.’s trains during their annual joint directors’ shindigs. (You think I’m making this up, and given my frequent humorous exaggeration I understand why, but I assure you the roasts were real; “Furness Railway: Its Rise and Development 1846-1923” literally quotes one of these little speeches. Apparently someone had to take minutes while the bigwigs were all getting drunk? I will never understand the corporate world.)

In short order, Aslett beefed up the timetables, increased the number of summer tours from four to twenty, authorized more orders of six new engines at a time (spendthrift days for the F.R.—let me tell you!), and in the early ‘00s acquired new paddle steamers and even a pair of steam railcars, to boot. He also furbished new attractions (think “Oliver’s Find,” honestly) and coordinated an intense marketing blitz, with tourist guides for the Lakeside region, newspaper advertisements, circulars, and postcards published en masse. The entire Furness district engaged in that thing that successful industrial zones always do sooner or later, and tried to reinvent itself as a cultural centre. As usual, results were mixed, but it sure saw much of its greatest success in this halcyon era.

Sure enough, passenger revenue increased roughly gangbusters percent. In ‘98 the hematite demand came roaring back too, while the passenger profits continued to climb, and so altogether the Company had a lovely year.

Nevertheless, there’s probably one pesky fact we should get out of the way right now: The steadily developing passenger receipts were great for helping the Company weather downturns in the mineral markets more gracefully than in it had in the past. But maintaining the “first-class railway” experience was expensive, and after 1900... shareholder dividends averaged 1-3% per annum. If you’re wondering, yeah, apparently this is a bad thing. Not disastrous, not like that time in the 1870s when a coalworkers’ strike resulted in a quarter of no dividends at all (even the usually teflon-coated Sir James had barely survived that meltdown), but… frustrating, if you’re a capitalist. Slow, steady, mild-to-moderate financial health. Nothing exciting.

Financially, the golden era for the F.R. is considered to be those first fifty years. Back then, things were more up-and-down, but there were enough quarters ranging from 7%-12% to keep the great capitalist dream alive. Oh, Ramsden! Can you not rise again from the dead to work your boom-and-bust miracles? Will no one think of the poor shareholders?!?

Anyway. Apart from that consideration, the truth is that it is this second era which is recalled again and again by both locals and visitors throughout the 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond with such fondness. These retrospectives are surely colored by nostalgia, but they are also consistent: This was the era when the lines were bustling with mixed traffic and the sky seemed to be the limit. The old Furness was a “friendly” railway, with “charm.” Management was “smart” and “energetic.” Employees were encouraged to take ownership and to give input on how operations on the ground could be improved. Working conditions were good—as good as they get, for a railway of this age!—and service was generally top-notch.

We cannot dismiss this nostalgia, for one because we are TTTE fans, and this yearning for the pre-Grouping days is absolutely the basis for Wilbert Awdry’s Sodor. But even if we wanted to dismiss it, there are also definite, objective facts that seem to support the general picture painted above:

People really did come to visit, they really did get transported around by F.R. boats and trains, and they really did come back. In impressive numbers.

Both local and visiting contemporaries did attest, loudly and frequently, to the smart appearance of the stations and stock. The stations must have been a new thing; in the Ramsden era anything apart from the big three (Carnforth, Barrow, Whitehaven) was often described in dire terms (the word “hovel” was sometimes thrown around). But the Company had always required that every engine to be turned out in spotless condition for each turn of duty, however humble.

Each goods guard in this era had his own dedicated brakevan, which displayed the name of its guard and depot on a handsome white nameplate.

There really was enough pride going around that two of the railway’s four original engines (who had been lovingly maintained—and sometimes vociferously defended —by Pettigrew’s predecessor) were still shunting and taking short goods out of Barrow at the turn of the century. In 1899, a railway enthusiast’s book identified Furness No. 3 as the oldest working engine in the country. When withdrawn the next year, the Company really did preserve her and mount her at Barrow Central. Admittedly, in sapient vehicle universe the ornate glass cage she was housed makes this sound more like a Kafkaesque nightmare, but in real life “Old Copper-Nob’s” lengthy preservation is rather unusual. (“But the L. & N.W.R. did lots of that sort of thing!”—Yes, they did! And, personally, I suspect that in the matter of No. 3 the F.R. took some cultural cues from its bigshot neighbor! Can’t prove it, though.)

The railway’s safety record really was commendable. (The Leven Viaduct incident of 1903, with 33 passengers injured, was its worst blot, and in all fairness that was a result of 100-mile-a-hour winds. Afterwards, the Company analyzed what had gone wrong and instituted a novel mechanical warning system that was then adopted by other railways.)

In the earlier days, national inspectors had sometimes noted that the F.R. was relying on notable numbers of *mock shudder* females (to operate some of the points, crossings, fog detonators, etc.) Their disappearance in the Aslett era is, alas, excellent evidence of the F.R.’s rising wages for workers.

In this second era, every worker who lodged at least one year of service really was eligible for a hundred-pound credit towards his continuing education.

Can you prove that a bygone place and era was “charming”? No. But the reports support each other, and “charm” absolutely was what Aslett was going for when he spent all that money to upgrade and tourist-i-fy the joint!

In the post-Aslett era, rolling stock really was first rate (albeit the F.R.’s transition to new steel-reinforced heavy bogie open wagons sadly came to a halt due to the war).

The engines from this era were excellent, too. Not that anyone should denigrate the Furness engines of the first era! During its first 50 years, the railway ordered its engines from standard-bog designs via Bury/Fairbairn/Sharp and Stewart (it was all the same Glasgow shop that James Ramsden himself had started at, just under different ownership and names; it later became North British Locomotive). They were basic, cheap, and hardy: nothing to write home about, albeit also nothing to disparage, for they were thoroughly reliable. Nevertheless, new Locomotive Superintendent Pettigrew, had worked under several first-rate builders including names such as Worsdell, Holden, and Adams before striking out on his own to Barrow, whose needs really never did fully tax his ambition!

Sometimes, indeed, I feel the F.R. could be criticised for overdoing the thing. Pettigrew’s first express engine design for the little railway—not the Larger Seagulls; the next bunch—was all but identical, inside cylinders aside, to the L.S.W.R.’s T9 Greyhounds! Absolutely extra. These big, handsome machines by rights deserved a line thrice as long as the one they had! (When it came time for the next iteration, twelve years later, even Pettigrew backed down from those six-and-a-half-foot driving wheels. The Furness main line is lightly graded for the most part—but the Lindal Incline does exist, y’know.)

And after the War they were right back at it! In 1920, apparently oblivious to their looming end, the Board authorized the building of yet another new engine class, and this time they were far and away the most innovative thing the F.R. ever made. More on that later, but for now, trust me, the Company was not stopping or even slowing down. When built in 1920, the Furness N1 class were the most powerful tank engines in the country, and they were unique as all hell. One can honestly imagine Stanier sending a snapshot on the group text and Gresley’s and Maunsell’s jaws dropping (first in jealousy, and then in confusion: “where’s the superheater?... WHAT DO U MEAN THEY’RE STILL USING SATURATED STEAM... WTF…”)

Backing up a little to survey the locomotive scene pre-war, tank engines had always been some of the quirky highlights of the Furness’s otherwise standard-bog fleet. Throughout the 1800s they inherited an eclectic collection of obscure one-offs when they absorbed smaller lines, ranging from baffling and useless to hidden gems that survived all F.R. attempts to modernize and passed into L.M.S. ownership. In the Pettigrew days, tank engines comprised some of his soundest work, including the introduction of his sturdy go-anywhere do-anything 0-6-2Ts, plus the conversion of some of the oldest passenger engines he inherited into tank engines for a second career on the branch lines (this is Albert’s backstory, if you care about that blatant, boring little Victorian-era Thomas-knockoff—though who does, really?)

But honestly the single most important engine to visualise on the F.R. were these:

This particular class, known as the “Sharpies,” were the smallest 0-6-0s the F.R. had—by size. Numerically they were the biggest class in the railway’s existence: 55 strong. All the other classes were practically footnotes compared to these fellas. (I did mention that the F.R. really didn’t like buying very many engines at once, right? In general F.R. classes seem to average about 4.5 engines!)

They were the epitome of “off-the-shelf” Sharp and Stewart design: basic, cheap, will last about a million years if you take care of it, easy to maintain and very popular with the crews. When Pettigrew came along, he saw fit to immediately supplement them with a modest number of heavier goods engines, but he also set about refurbishing, reboilering, and rebuilding the Sharpies. Virtually all were still in service at the cusp of World War I. Quite a lot became L.M.S. engines.

From the 1870s until the Great War, they were the backbone of the railway. Whenever you laid eyes on a Furness engine, there was a better than 1 in 4 chance that you were looking at a Sharpy.

While you are visualizing the railway’s blue-and-cream coaches, tank engines and Sharpies, I want you to add one other detail to your mental picture: boats. Barrow, the heart of the entire operation, was docked-up to the gills. (Ramsden had made sure of that!) Remember the whole point of building this railway had originally been: Get hematite on ships. Then Barrow also became a shipbuilding hub. People had always come in and out by ship, too; the F.R. was motivated to start buying 4-4-0s, not because it was dissatisfied with their predecessors on the full-line expresses, but because of the older engines’ struggles to handle the ever-growing “Irish boat trains.” The Midland Railway had wanted to buy out the F.R. mostly for its access to the Irish Sea, and in lieu of that purchase the two railways spent negotiation after negotiation working out the details of this traffic (as the final destination for most of the passengers from these boat trains was generally a Midland station).

Boats at Barrow and in the various lakes near the Coniston and Lakeside branchlines were also key to the second era’s tourism campaign and had an essential role in moving and exchanging passengers with the trains. The Barrow docks were crowded with ships from all over, but on the lakes the F.R. seems to have owned a majority of the paddle steamers; in fact, the railway owned a total of 29 ships over the course of its history. Another way to put that is they owned 20% as many ships as they did railway engines. I can’t offer a lot of detail because I don’t know much about them yet myself, but my point is that I should. We could probably all afford to spend more time integrating ships into our railway stories. (Awdry’s model Tidmouth layout featured two ships of his own creation that had some extensive lore/backstory attached to them. If it’s true RWS!Percy swears like a sailor, it seems to me that he came by it honestly!)

But we are in real-world history. Basically, anything Sir Topham Hatt did to increase tourism and traffic in Season 5 (except running from sentient boulders?), Alfred Aslett did in real life, only with more ships involved. When he retired after almost twenty years as general manager, he had increased gross receipts by 65% and passenger receipts by over 100%. Although the history books seem to dwell on his failure to please the board with dividends of over 5%, I personally feel that the steady but modest profits are a testament to his stewardship. He didn’t cut corners and he invested heavily and repeatedly in railway upgrades to an extent never seen in the first era. However, the railway never in fact ran in the red, and my dumb layperson ass sees little evidence of irresponsible spending. The entire Furness district thrived in this era. Railways are a public good and if you are profiting heavily off of it then your locals are suffering and your business model is unsustainable.

The F.R.’s new sustainability was severely tested by World War I (and specially low dividends in 1911-13 seem to reflect the Company’s preparations for the looming prospect of war). Barrow housed many essential contractors for the Royal Navy and Army, the coal mines and steel furnaces were again in the highest demand, and the War Office comandeered the country’s rails, with Barrow being one of the Admiralty’s special areas of interest. (Although the Admiralty did not in fact requisition a Furness locomotive, it did announce that it was helping itself to several of the F.R.’s ships.) The main routes for coal and supplies to France from the northern U.K. were heavily congested, and so many new foreign trains were re-routed through the Cumbrian Coast Line, during the war years; miles and miles of new exchange sidings had to be built. There was an acute wagon shortage, and an even more acute shortage in engines—quite a few borrowed from the L.&N.W.R. and the Marypont and Carlisle Railway.

Despite these troubles, the F.R. came through the end of the war nicely. They built themselves yet another dry dock at Barrow, as a little treat. (By this time, Ramsden’s son F.J. was serving his first peacetime year as chairman of the board. Coincidence? Maybe.) They also helped themselves to a new Locomotive Superintendent, Rutherford, who took Pettigrew’s plans for an entirely new breed of express engines and ran with it.

In short, even post-Aslett the Company was still investing in its railway, still energetically keeping up with the railway rat race that was the first half of the 20th century. The news of the Grouping Act of 1922 appears to have hit much of the board, and even moreso the laypeople served by the railway, as a bolt from a clear blue sky. (Frankly, if they had thought this would come down, the board could have treated themselves to some nice dividends, rather than investing in pricey new high-speed monster tank engines who, thanks to Grouping and standardisation, were then condemned to a service life averaging 14 years!)

As for the area after 1923, local historiam W. Gradon put it most genteely: “I am only one among many natives of the territory which the Furness served who feel that the area gained little by the Grouping.” Of course, the demand for iron and steel diminished rapidly after the war, and the Great Depression reduced rail traffic and fortunes generally. Nevertheless, I feel for Gradon’s position, as it appears Grouping really did bring the forward momentum of this region to an abrupt halt. Railway service was essential for the development and diversification of any region, but the L.M.S. simply declared the Furness section an “area of depression” and its timetables stagnated or were cut accordingly. Unsurprisingly these designations only worsened the area’s problems. No longer could enterprising local directors nimbly adjust to changing circumstances. After fifteen years, local agitation led to the L.M.S. institution of passenger service between Moor Row and Sellamont. That’s like a year of agitation for each mile. One can easily imagine a successor to Ramsden and Aslett being far more proactive. For instance, the altering and moving of stations to be closer to the villages they served would have kept the railway competitive with the fledgling bus service of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Naturally, the L.M.S. did not bother, but it is hard to imagine that “the old guard” of the Furness (which had after all already remade Barrow Station(s) to address similar shortcomings) would not have turned to such a program had they still the power to do so.

Ah well. We’ll always have Sodor to comfort us with the fantasy of what local management in a better world might look like.

In the meantime, for those who don’t know, Furness No. 20 (converted ages back into its original 0-4-0 form after serving 90 years as a saddletank in Barrow Hemelite Co’s steelworkers), the oldest operational steam engine in the U.K., is fresh out of overhaul this autumn and again offering rides at Ribble.

Go take a ride if you can. The Furness Railway Trust needs the funds to finish the restoration of other assets, including F.R. 25, a cute lil ex-Barrow Steelworkers diesel shunter, and (for some reason? but I’m not complaining) G.W.R. 4979 Wootton Hall.

Tune in Next Time for Part III: Pre-Gulls!