LNWR Prince of Wales Class

The LNWR Prince of Wales Class was the most numerous 4-6-0 express passenger locomotive class built for the London and North Western Railway: 246 superheated locomotives designed by Charles Bowen-Cooke and built at Crewe Works between 1911 and 1921, representing the LNWR's attempt to build a mixed-traffic and secondary express 4-6-0 that could supplement the Claughton Class on principal duties while handling a wider range of express passenger and fast goods work across the LNWR's diverse network. At 246 examples, the Prince of Wales Class outnumbered every other LNWR express locomotive class by a considerable margin and made up the backbone of LNWR passenger power in the First World War years when new construction was severely restricted.

Bowen-Cooke designed the Prince of Wales Class in 1910–11 as a two-cylinder superheated 4-6-0 — simpler and easier to maintain than the four-cylinder Claughton — with Walschaerts valve gear on the outside, a Belpaire firebox, and the Schmidt superheater that he had successfully applied to the George V Class 4-4-0. The 6 ft 3 in coupled wheels were smaller than the George V's 6 ft 9 in, giving more tractive effort for starting heavier trains on grades but slightly less maximum speed on the level — a deliberate compromise suited to a locomotive intended for mixed-traffic as much as pure express work.

The First World War transformed the Prince of Wales Class's significance: with the Claughton's four-cylinder complexity proving a maintenance burden under wartime conditions, and with new construction severely limited by the demands of munitions production, the relatively simple Prince of Wales Class carried much of the LNWR's wartime passenger burden. Bowen-Cooke built 246 examples between 1911 and 1921, and the class worked everything from Anglo-Scottish expresses to fast goods trains, demonstrating the versatility that the mixed-traffic 4-6-0 configuration provided.

After the 1923 Grouping the LMS inherited all 246 examples and continued using them across former-LNWR routes, though the arrival of Fowler and then Stanier designs progressively displaced them. The last examples were withdrawn in the 1940s. None was preserved — a significant gap given the class's numerical importance and its role in keeping LNWR passenger services running through the First World War.