Rail Transport

Merchant Navy Class Locomotive

Thirty of these 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotives were built at Southern Railway’s Eastleigh Works between 1941 and 1949 and were named after the Merchant Navy shipping lines involved in the Battle of the Atlantic.


As originally designed by Oliver Bulleid, the boiler was encased in an air-smoothed sheet steel casing, not for the purposes of streamlining, but as a way of clearing exhaust gasses. This was removed, and the engines rebuilt to a more conventional appearance as shown here, between 1956 and 1960 under British Railways.

One notable feature that was retained was the distinctive Bulleid Firth Brown driving wheels which were lighter and stronger than conventional spoked wheels and these were also used on later Bulleid designs.


Cutaway technical illustration for the National Railway Museum.

FS 880 Locomotive

This class 880 is a 4-axle tender locomotive with a superheated steam-driven front axle and 2 external cylinders.

The steam locomotives of the 880 group were designed for use on branch lines, developed from the previous 875 group, moving from saturated steam to superheated steam , which caused the distribution boxes to be replaced with distribution cylinders.

These locomotives were very suitable for service on flat lines with passenger and freight trains with modest numbers of wagons .

They were used in service in almost all of peninsular Italy and the largest number of examples were assigned to the depots of Cremona, Novara and Cuneo .

The last continuous use of this locomotive dates back to 1978 on a Piedmontese freight railway line.

FS Class 740 Locomotive

The Ferrovie dello Stato (Italian State Railways) Class 740 is a class of 2-8-0 ‘Consolidation’ steam locomotives.

The FS Class 740 locomotives were designed as a simple expansion and superheated version of the earlier FS Class 730; the first locomotives were built in 1911 and production continued through to late 1923.

In total, 470 were built, making the Class 740 the most numerous locomotive to be built for the Ferrovie dello Stato.

Built for heavy freight work, the Class 740 saw service across the whole FS network, with virtually any locomotive shed having had some of them assigned to it at some point; other than freight trains, they were also usually employed for passenger services on secondary lines.

The Class 740 remained in active service until the end of regular Italian steam in the 1970s.

Rowe Hankins iWFL

Rowe Hankins’ wheel flange lubrication system (iWFL).


iWFL is an on-board dispensing system, which applies precise amounts of biodegradable lubricant. Engineered for both national rail networks and urban tram services, the iWFL improves safety by greatly reducing noise, wheel and track wear.


It uses geographical location based dispensing of flange lubrication. Its intelligent design senses the location and intensity of track curves using a combination of GPS signals, speed and inertial sensors. The unit processes the data and applies lubricant precisely at the location required.



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