I take requests. Only 3 rules:
#1: If a locomotive suck in 1 County, but was useful in another, the problems was fixed (like Duke of Gloucester), or any problems were caused because of nature like fog, it doesn't count, and will not be on this book...
I had been wondering: "If Sir Nigel Gresley made LNER A1s, A3s, and A4s, then, are there any A2s, and if so, why aren't they talked about as much as their cousins?" Well, I found out, and, while I couldn't find any built by Sir Nigel Gresley, I did found 5 A2s that aren't too good.
The LNER 4-6-2 "Pacific" A2s...
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No, not those A2s, but you're close....
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Try again....
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Yes, those A2s.... where built by Vincent Raven (whose name I never heard of) between 1922 and 1924. Only 5 were built: 2 in 1922, and the rest in 1924. They were numbered and named, in order of built date, #2400 "City of Newcastle", #2401 "City of Kingston upon Hull", #2402 "City of York", #2403 "City of Durham", and #2404 "City of Ripon."
The performance of the locomotives was adequate for the needs of their intended use on the East Coast Main Line between York and Edinburgh but disappointing and with higher coal consumption compared to the A1 class. They also suffered from a long wheelbase 40 ft 5 in (12.32 m) which limited their route availability elsewhere.
Sir Nigel Gresley actually tried to save the A2s by giving "City of Ripon" an A1-style taper boiler in 1929, reducing the boiler pressure to 180 psi, or pound per square inch, but not even he could save these engines.
The A2s worked until 1936 and 1937, in which they were all scrapped because of heavy repairs. Not 1 has survived today. According to the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society survey of the Locomotives of the L.N.E.R. 'the design was an unhappy swan-song to the North Eastern locomotive development - it was their biggest, but somewhat below the best that Darlington could do.'
To add insult to injury, #2400 "City of Newcastle" was converted to a stationary boiler at Darlington Works in 1937, only for it to be scrapped in May 1939. It looks like that they weren't even good enough to be stationary boilers.
Not to mention, these engines were supposed to show that Vincent Raven could make better designs than Sir Nigel Gresley and to compete with the soon to be famous A1s. This is very embarrassing.
So, how do I fix these A2s? Well, I think that all we need is to shrink the wheelbase a size or 2. It'll also help if the A2s had a boiler and/or firebox that didn't consume as much coal.
