LSWR T14 Paddlebox Class

The LSWR T14 Class, universally known as the Paddleboxes, was a series of ten four-cylinder simple-expansion 4-6-0 express passenger locomotives designed by Dugald Drummond and built at Nine Elms Works from 1911, representing yet another instalment in Drummond's troubled LSWR four-cylinder 4-6-0 programme that had already produced the G14 Class with its poor valve design. The Paddlebox nickname derived from the enormous, box-like splashers that Drummond fitted over the driving wheels to hide the valve gear on the outside cylinders — a design feature so striking that Nine Elms staff immediately christened the locomotives after the paddle-wheel covers of the Thames river steamers that were a familiar sight on the river near the works.

Drummond was in his final years as LSWR CME when he designed the T14, and his insistence on four cylinders for his express locomotives remained unshaken despite the G14's poor service record. The T14 used a revised cylinder and valve arrangement compared with the G14, with the four cylinders now driving the same coupled axle rather than separate axles, and Drummond claimed to have addressed the steam passage problems that had hampered the G14. In practice the T14 proved marginally better than the G14 in service but still fell well short of what the LSWR needed for its principal express workings, and the class never achieved the speeds or reliability of the contemporary LNWR and GWR express types.

Drummond died in 1912, shortly after the T14 Class entered service, and his successor Robert Urie immediately set about addressing the deficiencies of the LSWR's four-cylinder 4-6-0 fleet. Urie rebuilt the T14s with his own two-cylinder arrangement from 1915, removing the troublesome four-cylinder layout and substituting the outside-cylinder configuration he had developed for the N15 King Arthurs. The rebuilt T14s gave considerably better service as simple two-cylinder engines, and several survived into the Southern Railway era. None was preserved in original Drummond four-cylinder form.