Locomotive Building Programme.

For main-line, long-distance haulage the trusty “Iron Horse” continues the most favoured power unit on the majority of the world's railways. In the railway locomotive works at Home there is at present marked activity in the production of new and more efficient steam engines, and a tour of the shops of the four groups–situated at Crewe, Doncaster, Swindon and Eastleigh respectively—provides abundant proof of the belief of the administrations that better days lie ahead. Week by week, railway revenues are steadily creeping up, and this improvement in business is a most heartening feature.

At our largest locomotive shops–those of the London, Midland & Scottish Company, at Crewe—there are being constructed twenty new streamlined locomotives of the “Princess Coronation” class, all named after cities on the L.M. & S. system. These engines are 74 feet long, and their weight in working order is about 165 tons. The tenders carry 10 tons of coal and 4,000 gallons of water. Painted in standard L.M. & S. red, with horizontal gold bands, they are being introduced into express working on the Anglo-Scottish main-lines immediately after being run in. From the equally famous Doncaster works of the L. & N.E. Company, come new locomotives of the V.2, 2–6-2 “Green Arrow” type, designed for mixed traffic working. The first three of these carry the names, “King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry,” “Durham School” and “Coldstreamer.” Swindon has recently turned out six new 4–6-0 engines of the “Grange” class, for working on the G.W. main-lines; while in the Eastleigh shops the Southern has been busy adopting a number of modifications to its 4–6-0 “Lord Nelson” class locomotives, including 6 ft. 3 in. driving wheels in place of 6 ft. 7 in. wheels for No. 859, “Lord Hood”; a boiler with a lengthened barrel for No. 860, “Lord Hawke”; and a larger boiler with a combustion chamber added to the firebox for No. 857, “Lord Howe.” In order to increase the steaming capacity of these locomotives, the smokebox arrangements have also been altered by fitting multiple-jet blast pipe caps and single double-coned chimneys of large internal diameter.