SIX-COUPLED EXPRESS ENGINES FOR NORTH·EASTERN RAILWAY .

“For some years past, and especially since so remarkable an impetus was given to Anglo-Scottish travel by the competitive "acceleration " to Aberdeen-which we are forbidden to call a " race "-of 1895, the difficulty of running to time the increasing loads has steadily grown on the North-Eastern Railway as on the Great Northern.

For not only has the number of passengers to be conveyed mounted up with surprising rapidity, but so no less has the dead weight, owing to the additional comforts so generously recorded now-a-days by most of the leading railway COmpanies to their customers, while these latter grow yearly more exacting in their demands upon the accommodation for their luggage.

Even the latest type of standard engines built by Mr. Wilson Worsdell for the main line service, those numbered 1871-1880, 1901-1910, and 1921- 1930, in spite of their great power, with cylinders 19t in. by 26in., 7ft. coupled wheels, 175 lb. steam pressure, and a weight of over 50 tons, have often been overpowered by the loads they were required to haul a.t very high speeds

over gradients by no means easy. That is to say, they were overpowered to the extent of being compelled to take "pilots," and this involves a. costly anomaly. The loads were too much for one of these engines at the booked speeds and over the existing gradients. But they were not nearly enough to form a sufficient paying load for two engines.

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This is the problem the able superintendent of the North-Eastern Railway has set himself to solve...”