The London and North Western Railway (LNWR) Class A was a class of steam locomotives. From 1893 to 1900, Crewe Works built 111 of these engines, which had a three-cylinder compound arrangement, and were designed by Francis Webb. According to the LNWR Society, 110 were built between 1894 and 1900.
Construction and numbering A prototype, no. 50, was built in 1893, and used in trials against the two-cylinder simple-expansion 0-8-0 no. 2524, which had been built the previous year. After the trials, no. 50 was renumbered 2525 and a further 110 of the compound design were then built in several batches between 1894 and 1900, as follows. + LNWR Class A orders Quantity Crewe numbers Running numbers Entered service 1 3471 50, later 2525 September 1893 10 3546–55 2526–35 November 1894 – February 1895 20 3661–80 2536–55 August–December 1896 20 3806–25 1801–20 October 1897 – January 1898 10 3826–35 1821–30 April–May 1898 10 3836–45 1831–40 July–August 1898 10 3846–55 1841–50 October–November 1898 10 3888–97 1851–60 February 1899 10 3898–3907 1861–70 May 1899 10 4025–34 1871–80 April–May 1900
Rebuilding Like the other Webb compounds, they proved problematic, so in 1904 George Whale began rebuilding these to simple expansion engines. Fifteen were converted to Class C between 1904 and 1906, 62 to Class D between 1906 and 1909, with the remaining 34 rebuilt by Charles Bowen Cooke to Class C1 between 1909 and 1912.
All Class D locomotives were later rebuilt to Class G1. Some of them, rebuilt to Class G2A, were still running in 1962.
Classification The LNWR letter classification system for 8 coupled engines (A, B, C, etc.) was introduced in 1911.
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