In the 164 years that a rail line has run through the Longsight District, you can imagine that a wide variety of locomotives have pulled passenger and freight trains along that lines. As early as 1912 the Longsight Depot was home to more than 200 locos. In the late 1950s steam started to hand over to diesel and electric and by 1965 that process was complete at Longsight.

Some of the most dramatic changes in locomotive design occured during the reign of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. In 1932 Sir William Stanier joined the L.M.S. from the Great Western Railway as the Chief Mechanical Engineer. Prior to Stanier's arrival the railway operated a wide variety of locomtives and carriages which added to the cost of servicing them. He brought an end to this by introducing a standardization programme that by 1938 reduced the number of locomotive types from 404 to 132. This drastically reduced costs, repair time, and the number of locomotives required to work the system, and produced an annual saving of some £2 million. Stanier provided the motive power that the LMS needed, immediately improving train services. He also embarked on the mass-production of new corridor carriages that for space and comfort were considered to be the best in the country.

In 1937 the streamlined locomotive, Coronation Scot, was introduced, followed by others. Stanier built numerous and highly successful Class 5 4-6-0 mixed traffic locomotives, (known as Black 5s), which later formed the basis for a standard British Railways design.

Between 1934 and 1936 the L.M.S. introduced 91 new 4-6-0 passenger locomotives to work express trains. They were designed by William Stainer. This Jubilee Class continued in service until the 1960s. Longsght Depot had 15 Jubilee Class locos.

Longsight had 5 Britannia Pacifics. Shown above 70000 - Britannia and below 71000 - The Duke of Gloucester ready to pull The Royal Scot.

There were 5 locomotives of the Royal Scot Class. Shown above is 6201 Princess Elizabeth

One of the workhorses of the railway were the Hughes and Stanley Moguls. There were about 20 of them based in Longsight.

Steam was phased out at Longsight in the 1960s and the diesel and electric units replaced them.






Credits

The information about the London Midland Scottish Railway history came from Mike's Railway History Page. For a much more in depth account of the LMS please click on the link to go there.

Some of the photographs on the Longsight Station site came from an excellent site that appears to no longer exist. It was called the "The Tony Dunkley Collection, A Railway Collection Containing 30 Years of Photographs". The site was maintained by John Daniel and contains a wonderful collection of photographs taken by his late friend Tony Dunkley. They are shown here with John's permission.