SECR K and SR K1 classes
The SECR K class was a type of 2-6-4 tank locomotive designed in 1914 by Richard Maunsell for express passenger duties. The class replaced obsolete 4-4-0 passenger locomotives in an SECR fleet standardisation programme. They were rebuilt as 2-cylinder SR U class and 3-cylinders SR U1 class 2- 6-0s following a railway accident at Sevenoaks, Kent in 1927. They continued in service with British Railways until the last was withdrawn in 1966. One K-class rebuild is preserved on the Swanage Railway in Dorset and still operational today.
About SECR K and SR K1 classes in brief
The SECR K class was a type of 2-6-4 tank locomotive designed in 1914 by Richard Maunsell for express passenger duties on the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. The class replaced obsolete 4-4-0 passenger locomotives in an SECR fleet standardisation programme. They were rebuilt as 2-cylinder SR U class and 3-cylinders SR U1 class 2- 6-0s following a railway accident at Sevenoaks, Kent in 1927. They continued in service with British Railways until the last was withdrawn in 1966. One K-class rebuild is preserved on the Swanage Railway in Dorset and still operational today. They operated over the Eastern section of the Southern Railway network and were given the names of rivers, being referred to as the River class from 1925. The SECR was unable to follow a coherent strategy to reduce the number of locomotive types inherited from the two constituent railways. Despite increased passenger and freight traffic between London Charing Cross and the Kentish coast during the first decades of the 20th century, the Operating Department had to use mismatched classes of underpowered and obsolete 4/4/0 and 0-6/0 locomotive classes. The K- class was one of the earliest to use the 2-4 wheel arrangement in Britain. It had only been used once before for standard gauge locomotive configuration in 1914, on the Great Central Railway’s 1Bclass freight locomotive of 1914, because the SECR’s configuration was ideal for the Great Britain at this time, because of the poor track quality in north Kent.
The locomotive was the only one of its kind in use in Britain at the time, and is the only example of a locomotive that is still in service today. It was replaced by the K1-class in 1925, which was designed to suit a narrower loading gauge, and was the last of the K-classes to be used in the UK until the end of the Second World War. It has been preserved at the National Railway Museum in London, where it is on display along with a number of other examples of SECR locomotive locomotive design from the 1920s, 1930s, and the 1950s. It is the last surviving K-Class locomotive from the Great Western Railway, which is now a museum in Derby, and has been restored to full working order. It will be on display at the Museum of Rail and Transport, along with two other examples from the 1930s and 1950s, until the museum opens in the summer of 2015. The Southern Railway K1 class was a three- cylinder variant of the K class, designed in 1925 to suit the narrower loading gauge of the Southern Railway and was the first of its type to be used in express passenger duties. It operated between London and south-east England and was known as the ‘Rolling Rivers’ because of its instability when travelling at speed.
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This page is based on the article SECR K and SR K1 classes published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
