LNWR Bloomers

The LNWR Bloomer Class was a celebrated series of inside-cylinder 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 express passenger locomotives designed by James Edward McConnell, Locomotive Superintendent of the Southern Division of the London and North Western Railway from 1847 to 1862, introduced from 1851 and named informally after the controversially emancipated fashion of the period. The Bloomer nickname — applied by LNWR staff with an admiring irreverence — derived from the Bloomer costume introduced by Amelia Bloomer around 1851: the short-skirted dress that scandalised Victorian society by exposing the ankles. McConnell's locomotives similarly exposed their inside motion and driving wheels, which most contemporary engines concealed beneath valances and side plates, giving the Bloomers an unusually open, clean appearance that railway men compared to the similarly uncovered legs of the Bloomer fashion.

McConnell designed the Bloomer Class specifically for the LNWR's Euston–Birmingham section of the West Coast Main Line, where the relatively level and straight main line suited high-speed single-driver express running. The large driving wheels — 7 ft on the standard Bloomers, 7 ft 6 in on the larger examples — were well suited to the fast, sustained express running between Euston and Birmingham New Street, and the Bloomers earned an excellent reputation for speed, achieving times on the Euston–Birmingham run that were remarkable by the standards of the 1850s.

The Bloomers were among the fastest locomotives in Britain during the 1850s and early 1860s, and they gave the LNWR's Southern Division (worked from Wolverton rather than Crewe) a locomotive tradition distinct from and in some ways superior to the Northern Division's fleet. McConnell's forced retirement in 1862 — he clashed repeatedly with the LNWR's management — ended the Bloomer era, and his successor John Ramsbottom replaced the Bloomers with his own designs. None of the original Bloomers survived into preservation.