Lowering Locomotive Expenditure.

Grouping of the Home railways has been the means of saving considerable sums of money in the locomotive department. Each of the Home lines builds and repairs most of its locomotives in its own shops, and the economies effected by the L.M. and S. Railway in locomotive operation may be taken as typical of the achievements of the group lines generally.

The standardisation policy of the L.M. and S. Railway resulted in a lowering in locomotive expenditure in 1931 by £3,250,000, as compared with 1927. Since 1923 the number of different types of locomotives employed has been reduced from 393 to 261. Standardisation of renewal work has contributed materially to the 12 1/2 per cent. reduction which the Euston authorities have made in their locomotive stock, viz., from 10,316 in 1923, to 9,032 at the close of last year. In the meantime, the average tractive effort has risen by 12 per cent. Better organisation, and the fact that the latest engines can run larger mileages per day—as, for example, London to Carlisle, Crewe to Glasgow, or Carlisle to Aberdeen—has released for other duties some 250 locomotives, while a contributing factor to the smaller total number required has been the reduction of locomotives under and awaiting repairs at any one time. This number dropped to 383 in 1931, as against 1,958 in 1923, representing a saving on capital lying idle of many thousands of pounds.

In eight years the number of L.M. and S. engines fitted with superheaters has grown from 18 to 40 per cent. of the total stock. This has made possible the use of only one locomotive on heavy trains which formerly were double-headed. Double-heading, by the way, was at one time a feature of the locomotive practice page 29 on the Midland section of the line. As regards the 1932 renewal programme, it is worthy of note that the average tractive power of locomotives to be built this year will be increased by 30 per cent., while their cost of maintenance and coal consumption will be reduced by something like 24 per cent.