Bulleid Royal Navy Class light pacifics

Some years ago when I volunteered at the Mid Hants Railway an gentleman driver who started a long railway career as a cleaner at Nine Elms just after the Second World War (and as much as I try I cannot remember his name all these years later) told me that at the time of the very first Bulleid Light Pacifics being build; it was said that the class was to be called, very logically, to follow on from the heavy Merchant Navy class pacifics as ‘Royal Navy class’ light pacifics.


He said that they were told/rumoured that they were to be named, much as the later BR diesel hydraulic Cl.42/43 and diesel electric Cl.50 after British (and perhaps Empire/Commonwealth?) warships and ‘heros’. I have never been able to find any reference to this possible class name and thought I would see if anyone one else on NatPres has ever heard this before?


I must say I have always liked the idea of the ‘RN class light pacifics’ and without running through 140 possible names for the RN class, perhaps the odd locomotive would still be familiar as for example 34051 could still have been named Winston Churchill as he was PM, Minister of defence and a former First Sea Lord.

 

Indeed...and quite a few would be repeated from LMS 'Jubilees.'

 

Wern't a few 'Lord Nelson' names repeated on Jubilees?

 

No - some of the Lord Nelson names were repeats of much earlier LSWR locos. There may have been Jubilees with the same names, but since they were from a different company with its own naming traditions, you can’t really say the one repeated the other.

Tom

 

Fair point. It's all hypothetical anyway

 

Prefer the West Country names they were actually given personally

 

Seventy names of significant places in the South West part of the LSWR was really pushing it. Braunton/Saunton are more or less the same place, Lydford, Calstock, Brentor, Whimple, are these places of any real significance other than to their residents? I'd have thought Port Isaac was a curious omission though, also High Willhays, the highest point on Dartmoor. Maybe they should have expanded out to Hampshire or mixed it up a bit with Kings of Wessex.

 

Or Bournemouth

 

It couldn't possibly have happened that the Senior Service would have lesser locos named for it than the Merchant Navy. Not a hope. I never even heard of it being proposed

 

At least one of the original Eastleigh Drawings refers to the "West County" class. Presumably a typo, as the class already had West Country names by the date of that drawing.

 

I understand that there was never a West Country pacific named Bournemouth because up until 1974 the town was in Hampshire and that county is not considered the 'West Country' however Dorset is and when the town was moved from Hants to Dorset as part of a local government rejig it now looks like it was missed out of the class naming.

Always thought it would be a great April fools day to rename a air smoothed light pacific 34111 Bournemouth and swap the nameplates to a rebuilt one the next year.

 

So by that logic, how do you justify 21c141?

Tom

 

I wonder if approval would have been given to use warship names for any class of locomotives by the Navy at that date; so soon after the war inclusions and omissions might have been too liable to cause controversy or distress.

 

Didn't stop the SR naming locos after squadrons etc. to do with the B of B. Not squadrons all were included, not even all of those flying form airfields in SR territory.

 

There's a lighthouse at 34101.

 

When I got my first combine as a lad and saw all the magical names of the West Countries, I imagined in my youthful naivity that the places they were named after were beautiful bustling towns with typically English architecture set in a landscape of rolling fields and hedges under a blue sky with white fluffy clouds, with the occasional Arthurian ruin atop a rise. Some places I'd heard of, like Exeter and Salisbury, but most of them were strange and mysterious. The West Country must have been a vast area, much bigger than it appeared on the maps to hold such a large number of marvelous towns and cities and still have room for the miles of rolling landscapes.

It was only later that I realised that most of these 'towns' consisted of no more that half a dozen cottages and a bus stop.

A marvellous job of PR.