NER Class T2 (LNER Q6) 0-8-0

Wilson Worsdell, locomotive superintendent of the North Eastern Railway from 1890 to 1910, and his successor Vincent Raven, faced a steady increase in mineral traffic from the Durham coalfields throughout the 1890s and 1900s. The NER's standard 0-6-0 freight classes (J21, J24, J25) were limited to around 600-ton trains on the easier grades; the new generation of 1,000-ton coal trains being run from Stanhope and Tow Law to Tyne Dock demanded a heavier and more powerful engine.

The Q6 (NER classification T2) was Worsdell's response, designed in 1913 just before his retirement and developed through to 1921 by Raven. The 0-8-0 wheel arrangement gave eight coupled wheels for adhesion and the necessary tractive effort, while a Belpaire firebox, Schmidt superheater, and 180 psi boiler pressure represented modern thinking for an Edwardian heavy freight engine. The class was built superheated from new, an unusual step at the time and a reflection of Worsdell's and Raven's commitment to the technology.

120 engines were built between 1913 and 1921, all but a handful at the NER's own Darlington Works, with a small batch from Armstrong Whitworth's Newcastle works during a period of high demand. The design proved durable: most of the class was retained virtually unchanged through to withdrawal, with only minor modifications (revised cab fittings, new tender pattern) over fifty years of service.

The Q6s spent their entire working lives in the North Eastern coalfields, hauling the long mineral trains from the Durham collieries to the docks. They were a familiar sight at Tyne Dock, the heavy mineral terminus on the Tyne where coal was transhipped to ocean-going colliers, and at West Hartlepool, the equivalent on the Tees. A typical day for a Q6 driver in the 1950s might involve taking a train of 50 mineral wagons from Beamish or Stanhope down to the coast, returning empty, and repeating the cycle: monotonous in the way only colliery work can be, but on engines that crews respected for their reliability and pulling power.

The class outlasted almost every other LNER heavy freight type in regular service. The contemporary LNER J38 and J39 0-6-0s were retired progressively through the 1950s and early 1960s, but the Q6 remained the preferred type for the heaviest North Eastern mineral work. Even the BR Standard 9F 2-10-0s of the 1950s, designed specifically for heavy freight, did not displace the Q6s entirely from their NER coalfield work.

Withdrawals began in 1963 and accelerated through 1966 as the Beeching cuts and the diesel programme reached the North Eastern Region. The last Q6 in regular service was 63395 itself, retired from Sunderland in September 1967 with the end of mineral steam in the region.

2238 (later 3395, 63395) is the surviving Q6. Built at Darlington Works in October 1918 as part of a wartime batch, it spent its entire working life in the North Eastern coalfields, allocated to West Hartlepool and Tyne Dock for nearly fifty years. After withdrawal in September 1967 it was preserved by the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group, restored to working order, and has since been a regular performer at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, where it is an authentic representative of the steam-era heavy mineral working it knew in service.

2196 was the engine destroyed in the Hawes Junction crash of 1910, although the date suggests this is from a sister NER class rather than the Q6 itself. Several Q6s were involved in lesser collisions and runaways during their long working lives but the class was generally regarded as safe and reliable.

The Q6 was the LNER's standard heavy mineral 0-8-0 and was preferred over the LNER P1 Mikado of 1925 (which was less reliable) for the great majority of NER mineral work. It outlasted the P1 by twenty years and was effectively the LNER's answer to the LMS 8F, although the two classes never worked side by side in any quantity.

The Q6 was painted from new in NER plain black, with NER white-lined-out cabsides and tender. The LNER from 1923 painted the class in plain black with the LNER company crest. British Railways from 1948 painted the survivors in plain unlined black with the early lion-and-wheel emblem; from 1956 the late ferret-and-dartboard crest was applied at general overhauls. The preserved 63395 has carried both NER plain black and BR plain black during its preservation career and is currently in BR plain black with the late crest.