LNWR G2 lack of BR smokebox number plate?

• Friday at 08:58

• #1

B

billh

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7 Jan 2015

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There were still a number of these locos numbered 49XXX around in the early 1960s. Why did they not have the BR style number plate on the smokebox door?
I assume there was some engineering reason or was it a long standing tradition associated with the LNWR and Crewe?

 

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• Friday at 09:41

• #2

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Rescars

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Good question! There seems to have been no problem with fitting shed plates.

 

• Friday at 13:14

• #3

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etr221

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Crewe works was always reluctant over and delayed implementing some of those Midland inspired LMS policies, like painting locos red and putting numbers on the front of locos (on a smoke box door number plate or otherwise) - they were the Premier Line, why should they do what those upstarts from an inferior company, whose former chairman had been revealed as a bankrupt fraudster, said?

 

• Friday at 13:44

• #4

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6Gman

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Did other ex-LNWR locos gain smokebox numberplates?

Few, of course, lasted as long as the Super Ds.

 

• Friday at 18:16

• #5

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david_g

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A quick trawl through photographs shows no smokebox number plates on coal tanks and Webb 2-4-2s either. Not many examples but I didn't find any BR (or LMS) era photos with smokebox plates.

This photo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/72213853@N03/6726752257/in/photostream/ - shows the last train on the Heads of the Valleys line in 1958, double headed by a coal tank and a super D. Neither sports a smokebox plate.

 

Last edited: Saturday at 08:06

• Saturday at 09:15

• #6

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47296lastduff

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I asked the late Chris Hughes (of Eggheads fame) about this, and he reckoned that the smokebox doors were too thin to carry the weight of a number plate. A shed code plate was ok, being much smaller and lighter.

 

• Saturday at 21:14

• #7

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webbfan

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47296lastduff said:

I asked the late Chris Hughes (of Eggheads fame) about this, and he reckoned that the smokebox doors were too thin to carry the weight of a number plate. A shed code plate was ok, being much smaller and lighter.

Click to expand...

No conspiricy or complicated engineering. Simply that smokebox number plates were only useful in roundhouses, lnwr only had one so why fiit them