The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was a pretty big deal. They styled themselves
as "the Business Line," and they meant it. It was one of the densest rail networks in Britain. They
served the industrial powerhouses of the north of England, and if you had a railway, the north of
England was where the money was. Even today, their station at Victoria in Manchester demonstrates
that this was a company with money. They were one of the first companies to embrace electrification.
The backbone of their wealth was freight. Coal, steel, cotton, textiles, wool, iron, grain,
fish, meat, dairy produce, goods for import, goods for export - if Britain needed it, the Lancashire
and Yorkshire carried it, and lots of it. They could even boast the largest fleet of ships of
any railway company before 1923, so their reach extended even beyond these shores. They could
field a fleet of powerful steam locomotives for freight, and indeed for passengers,
but that's not what i'm talking about today. I'm here to talk about their smallest,
perhaps their most niche and ironically, what might be their most well-known locomotive:
the class 21s. Better known as the pugs. The company had a need for a small shunting engine for
their many docks and yards. As an experiment, in 1886 they ordered three small saddle tank engines
from the Vulcan Foundry. John Aspinall, the railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer, thought the
idea was good, but they could do better. He came up with an engine that had the same qualities,
but more so. This engine had a short wheelbase of five feet nine inches, a water tank that extended
all the way to the front of the loco and a boiler pressure of 160 psi. These wooden blocks are
known as "dumb buffers," but they're actually rather clever, because they enable the engine
to get around tight curves without the buffers locking with those of the wagon behind. What
this translated to was an engine that could get around even the tightest curve, smaller than most
of the wagons it would have to haul, with plenty of weight available for traction. They quickly
acquired the nickname of "pugs," which seems to have been common for classes of small saddle tank.
57 were built in six batches between 1891 and 1910. They were initially allocated to Goole,
Liverpool, Salford and Fleetwood. Clearly, the railway thought they had a winner on their hands.
I should emphasise that while they were good at what they did,
they were only really suitable for shunting. They didn't have the power or range for anything else.
In fact, when they were transferred between yards (a much greater distance than they were used to),
their axle boxes would often run hot. The whole consist would have to stop until they cooled down.
One unorthodox duty they performed was as an improvised cooker - their crews discovered that
they could use the dome as a potato oven. The Lancashire and Yorkshire amalgamated with the
London and North Western Railway in 1922 and only a year later, they were grouped with a number of
other companies to form the London, Midland and Scottish railway. The LMS sent the pugs
even further afield, to places as far-flung as Bristol, Swansea, York, Bangor, Crewe and London.
When the LMS had no further use for them, industrial railways were more than happy to take
them off their hands, and nine of them found new homes this way. In 1948, the railways of Britain
were nationalised and 23 pugs were taken into British Railways ownership. BR began a programme
of abolishing steam, so the now quite elderly pugs would have to go. But there was nothing
small enough to fill their niche. BR had to order a class of diesel shunter especially to take over
their duties: the Yorkshire Engine Company's class 02. The last of the pugs, number 51218,
was withdrawn in 1964 after 63 years of service and went to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
The other survivor, number 19, had been sold into industry, and at the time of recording this is at
the East Lancashire Railway. Both are owned by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Trust. These are
popular locomotives with enthusiasts, I suspect because they're quite cute as locomotives go.
Many enthusiasts discovered them through the world of model railways. The Kitmaster company produced
an inexpensive plastic kit from 1960 onwards. This was taken over by Airfix and in fact is
still available under Dapol, who have revived the Kitmaster brand. For hundreds of young modellers,
this was their first locomotive kit. In the 1980s a ready-to-run version was produced by,
again, Dapol, and this is now manufactured by Hornby. This is a popular model with young and
old alike, and in fact was my introduction to the class. The pugs enjoy a level of celebrity
that seems disproportionate. They were the humblest of engines, they were rarely seen
outside of a few locations, even now they have limited use on heritage railways. Number 19 here
only hauled its first passenger train on the 18th of June 2022 at the ripe old age of 112,
and watch it struggle to start with only a short train. But there's something plucky and relatable
about them. Maybe it's their size, maybe it's the fact that they survived so long, maybe it's
the very fact that they're such a niche class. But they certainly couldn't be called obscure.
Well, I do hope you enjoyed today's video, which I literally made because I had the
footage of number 19 and it's just so gosh-darned adorable. If you enjoyed it,
please do leave a like and consider subscribing for more.
I have footage of another elderly steam locomotive, which may merit its own video
in future if that's something you'd like to see. I'd like to thank my donors on Ko-Fi and Patreon,
you are the dome cover to my baked potato. And I'll see you all again very soon. Cheerio!
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