The Book of the Stanier Three Cylinder 2-6-4-Ts 42500-42536

The LMS employed innumerable 2-6-4Ts, evolving from parallel boiler Fowler engines through updated Stanier taper boiler versions through to Fairburn's final development. Between them they amounted to over 600 in total. The first Stanier engines were wholly different in having three cylinders; moreover they were (most unusually) restricted to one particular stretch of line. Apart from the war years when they were all temporarily transferred away, they could always be found working passenger services over the former London Tilbury & Southend system from Fenchurch Street to Southend and Shoeburyness, until ousted by electrification in 1962. As the information board alongside the preserved 2500 in the National Railway Museum at York pronounces: 'Possibly the finest suburban tank engines that ran in this country'.