Hornby OO R30410 SR 302 T9 Class 4-4-0 Southern Lined Green

Dugald Drummond designed the successful T9 Class 4-4-0 locomotive for express passenger work on the London and South Western Railway, using the experience he gained from designing the less than perfect C8 Class by incorporating large fireboxes and Stephenson link valve gear to improve performance.The first fifty of the class were confidently ordered straight from the drawing board and constructed between 1899 and 1900. Twenty were built at the LSWR's own workshop at Nine Elms in London, with thirty being built by Dübs & Company in Glasgow, all supplied with six wheel tenders.

In all, a total of sixty six Class T9s were built, a further fifteen were outshopped from the Nine Elms Workshop between 1900 and 1901. These locomotives incorporated some modifications which included a wider cab, revised wheel splashers and the fitting of cross-water tubes inside the firebox, along with the connection of the Drummond 'watercart' eight wheel tender to enable longer running. The previous batches were later retro-fitted with the same modifications. The 66th and final T9 was built by Dübs & Co in 1901 for the Glasgow Exhibition of that year.

Built specifically for the highly competitive express train services from Plymouth to London, they quickly came into their own. Popular with their crews, their high turn of speed soon earned them the nickname of 'Greyhounds' as the comparatively short frames and light axle weight particularly suited the tighter curves of lines on the West Country routes.Upon Drummond's death in 1912, his successor, Robert Urie, modified some of the class with superheaters, but their sterling performance as a class precluded any further major modifications, apart from the removal of the cross-water tubes, an enlarged smokebox, addition of a stovepipe chimney and an increase to the cylinder bore.

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