LBSCR E4 Class

Robert Billinton became locomotive superintendent of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in 1890 on the death of William Stroudley. He inherited a fleet that was famous for its livery and the elegance of its small Stroudley designs but was beginning to feel its age on the LBSCR's growing suburban traffic. Billinton's response was a series of new tank classes for outer-suburban and branch work, of which the E4 was the most numerous and the most successful.

The E4 was designed in 1897 as a 0-6-2 radial tank with the trailing radial axle borrowed from Adams' practice. The 0-6-2 wheel arrangement was relatively unusual on British main lines (more common in industrial use) but suited the LBSCR's mixed need: six coupled wheels for adhesion on freight, a trailing radial axle for steady riding through the Brighton main line's curves at outer-suburban speeds. The class was built at the LBSCR's own Brighton Works between 1897 and 1903, with 75 engines built in successive batches.

Marsh, who succeeded Billinton in 1905, saw the E4 as the most useful of his predecessor's tank designs and continued to use the class for the LBSCR's outer-suburban work. He superheated some examples experimentally in the early 1920s but the result was inconclusive and most of the class kept its original domeless saturated boilers throughout their working lives. From the Southern Railway period the E4 became a maid-of-all-work, allocated wherever its modest power and light axle load were useful.

The E4s spent their first thirty years on outer-suburban work in south London and Sussex, the duty for which they were designed. They handled the LBSCR's heavy commuter trains through Norwood, Forest Hill, and Croydon, the East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells West services, and Sussex coast trains as far as Hastings.

From the Southern Railway era the class was progressively pushed out to country branches as Maunsell's newer designs took over the suburban work. They became a familiar sight on the Bluebell line itself (the Lewes-to-East-Grinstead branch), the Cuckoo Line (Polegate to Eridge), and the Hawkhurst and Hayling Island branches. They were also widely used on the West of England transferred allocations during the 1950s, working from Plymouth Friary and from various Devon and Cornwall depots.

Withdrawals began in the late 1920s as Maunsell's newer types displaced the older LBSCR tanks, but the E4 was retained in numbers through the 1930s and 1940s because of its usefulness on light branches. The class was decimated through the 1950s as branch lines closed and the Beeching cuts of the early 1960s finished the rest. The last E4 in regular service was 32473 Birch Grove itself, withdrawn from Three Bridges in October 1962, and saved straight to the Bluebell.

473 Birch Grove (later 2473, 32473) is the surviving E4. Built at Brighton Works in 1898 as part of the second batch, it worked outer-suburban turns from New Cross Gate and later from Brighton, Tonbridge, and Three Bridges. After Southern Railway renumbering it became B473, then 2473 in the 1930s. Withdrawn from BR service in 1962 from Three Bridges depot, it was preserved by the Bluebell Railway in 1962, and has worked at the line ever since. After successive boiler overhauls it remains in working order at the Bluebell, currently allocated to Sheffield Park.

Several E4s were lost in service: 2455 Westcombe was destroyed in 1929 in the Forest Hill collision (a rear-end accident on the South London line), and 2467 Polegate was severely damaged in a 1944 air raid on Brighton, but was repaired and returned to traffic.

Many of the E4s carried place-names in the Stroudley/Billinton style: Birch Grove, Frant, Forest Hill, Lordswood, Westcombe, Holmwood, Polegate, Pevensey. The names were removed from most engines during the Southern Railway period as the LBSCR practice gave way to the SR's plainer numbering scheme.

The class was turned out from new in the LBSCR's splendid Stroudley umber-and-yellow lined-out livery, with full lining-out, brass fittings, polished safety-valve bonnets, and the engines' names on cast oval plates on the side tanks. Marsh succeeded Billinton in 1905 and changed the livery to the simpler Marsh dark umber, although many engines kept the older Stroudley scheme until major overhauls. The Southern Railway from 1923 painted the class in plain Maunsell green and later wartime black; British Railways from 1948 painted the survivors in lined mixed-traffic black with the early lion-and-wheel emblem. The preserved 32473 has carried both BR mixed-traffic lined black and a beautifully-applied LBSCR Stroudley umber-and-yellow Stroudley livery during its preservation career; it is currently in the LBSCR umber.