Streamlined locomotives
of the world
from The Wonder Book of Inventions
W1 class 4-6-4 LNER high-pressure compound
Designed by Mr H N Gresley (later Sir (Herbert) Nigel, knighted in 1936), 10,000 was built at Darlington Works in 1929 and was used for working express trains between York and Edinburgh.
10,000 was never named officially, although it was often referred to as the Hush-Hush because of the initial secrecy of the project.
A rather smashing book on the subject is Locomotive by Raymond Loewy, first published in 1937 by The Studio, and reprinted in 1987 by Trefoil Publications, London (ISBN: 0 86294 095 8). Loewy thought 10,000 was a 'most important experiment in streamlining' but felt that 'the entirely concealed smoke stack is disturbing' and that a 'horizontal treatment would have greatly improved this otherwise remarkable Hudson type engine'.
Rebuilt in 1937 as a 3-cylinder simple engine with a Stephenson-type boiler, it spent the rest of its days looking like the more familiar A4s, the two B17/5s & the P2s.
George Dillistone wrote to say:
'people who took pedantry to an even greater extreme than I did used to consider it to be a 4-6-2-2 rather than a 4-6-4 due to its two sets of trailing axles (which looked like a bogie but weren't)'.
Check out Richard Marsden's W1 page.