LSWR 700 Black Motor Class

The LSWR 700 Class, universally known as the Black Motors, was a series of 30 inside-cylinder 0-6-0 goods tender locomotives designed by Dugald Drummond and built by Dübs & Co of Glasgow in 1897, providing the London and South Western Railway with a capable and modern standard goods engine to supplement the Adams 0395 Class on the railway's freight workings across the south of England. Drummond had succeeded Adams at Nine Elms in 1895 and brought to the LSWR the same confident, somewhat aggressive approach to locomotive design that had characterised his time at the North British Railway and the Caledonian Railway — a style that produced powerful and effective engines but was not always easy on maintenance staff.

The Black Motors nickname reflected their standard plain black goods livery, applied throughout their long working lives without the lined passenger colours that adorned the LSWR's passenger locomotives. The class used a more modern boiler specification than the Adams 0395s, with higher pressure and slightly larger cylinders that gave meaningfully better performance on the LSWR's hillier goods routes in Hampshire and Dorset and on the heavier mineral and dock traffic through Southampton. Drummond also specified his own design of bogie tender with a six-wheel tender truck rather than the conventional four-wheel arrangements — a characteristic Drummond detail that gave the Black Motors a distinctive appearance.

The 30 Black Motors entered service in 1897 and gave long and reliable service on LSWR goods duties. After the Southern Railway absorbed the LSWR in 1923, the class continued under SR management on former-LSWR goods routes, and several survived to receive British Railways numbers at nationalisation in 1948. The last examples were not withdrawn until 1962 — 65 years after construction — giving the Black Motors one of the longer working lives of any British pre-Grouping goods locomotive class. One example, No. 30695, is preserved at the Bluebell Railway.