LNWR 1400 Bill Bailey Class

The LNWR 1400 Class, nicknamed the Bill Bailey Class, was a series of four-cylinder compound 4-6-0 express passenger locomotives designed by Francis Webb, Locomotive Superintendent of the London and North Western Railway from 1871 to 1903, and introduced at Crewe Works in 1903 as one of Webb's final compound locomotive designs. The Bill Bailey nickname derived from the popular music-hall song of the period, Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?, applied by LNWR footplate staff in characteristic railway humour to engines that had a habit of not going where they were supposed to — a backhanded tribute to the unreliability that plagued many of Webb's compound designs.

Webb had been an enthusiastic proponent of compound expansion — using steam first in high-pressure cylinders then re-expanding it in larger low-pressure cylinders to extract more work from the same steam — throughout his long tenure at Crewe, and the 1400 Class represented his final and most developed attempt to make the compound four-cylinder 4-6-0 work effectively in service. The LNWR had suffered considerably from Webb's compound experiments: earlier compound classes including the Teutonic and Jubilee 2-2-2-2 types had been unreliable and troublesome, and Webb's long dominance at Crewe had prevented any alternative approach from being tried.

In service the 1400 Class proved more competent than Webb's earlier compounds but still fell short of what was needed for the LNWR's demanding express working. When Webb retired in 1903 — effectively forced out after forty-one years at Crewe — his successor George Whale quickly rebuilt the Bill Bailey Class locomotives as simple-expansion engines, substantially improving their performance. The rebuilt versions gave useful service under Whale and his successor Bowen-Cooke. None was preserved in original Webb compound form.