R30227 BR, Stanier 5MT 'Black 5' Caprotti, 4-6-0, 44755 - Era 4 (Web Exclusive)

The London, Midland and Scottish railway designed Black 5 was one of the most ubiquitous locomotives in service with the LMS and BR for much of the later steam era. While intended to be a standardised mixed traffic design there were many minor changes during the production of the class on almost a locomotive basis.

Their clockwork performance led them to become a test bed for certain potential innovations with one of the most striking examples being the fitting of Caprotti valve gear to 20 examples. Of these 21 examples, 18 had a standard Caprotti arrangement and 2 were fitted with a later type. This was not the first time that Walschaerts valve gear had been stripped from a Black 5 with Stephenson’s valve gear being fitted to 44767 a year earlier while under its LMS number, 4767.

Some of the most distinctive features of the Caprotti fitted Black 5s were the shaft-driven valve gear over the wheels, with large prominent steam pipes descending from the smokebox to enlarged cylinders. The boiler on Caprotti fitted examples were raised and the smokebox extended.

44755 entered service in April 1948 and was assigned to the Holbeck shed. Less than a week later the locomotive was moved to Derby and in a roundabout style found itself back at Holbeck within two weeks of arrival. The locomotive remained largely unchanged throughout its working life with the largest exception being the fitting of AWS in August 1960. The locomotive would go on to be withdrawn from the Stockport shed in the dying days of 1963 after spending a little over two years there and after a service life in excess of 500,000 miles.

Image copyright: IAN TURNBULL/RAIL PHOTOPRINTS