Yorkshire Engine Company - Mainline Engines

Mainline Engines

In common with many other private builders, YEC undertook orders for mainline locomotive for the UK and overseas countries.

Various locomotives were built for the Great Northern Railway, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the Great Eastern Railway.

In 1874, an order of 13 F class locomotives was dispatched to New Zealand. Two of these engines survived into preservation.

• F12 at Ferrymead Railway, in a derelict state,
• F180 "Meg Merriles" at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology, in static restored condition.

In 1901 4 locomotives were built for use on the Metropolitan Railway main line to Aylesbury. These were F Class 0-6-2Ts and survived for around 60 years. More orders from the Metropolitan Railway followed in 1915 and 1916 for larger G Class 0-6-4Ts. Unlike the F Class, the G Class locomotives passed to the LNER and only lasted in service for 30 years.

1928 saw the LNER get locomotives delivered directly from Sheffield. These 9 locomotives (LNER 2682 to 2690) were Class N2 0-6-2Ts for working suburban trains.

Along with a number of other private builders, YEC built a batch of GWR 5700 Class 0-6-0PTs in 1929/1930.

Between 1949 and 1956 50 GWR 9400 Class 0-6-0PTs were built for British Railways. The last of these, BR No. 3409 (YE2584 of 1956), was the last steam locomotive built at Meadowhall and the last BR locomotive to be built to a pre-nationalisation design. The order for these locomotives had actually been given to the Hunslet Engine Company in Leeds but as they were already busy, the work was sub-contracted to Sheffield.

Far bigger than anything built for use in Britain were the export locomotives. 2-8-2 and 4-8-2 tender locomotives for South America were, in the long run, the exception rather than the rule.