Sir Vincent Raven

Sir Vincent Litchfield Raven, KBE (3 December 1859 – 14 February 1934) was chief mechanical engineer of the North Eastern Railway from 1910 to 1922.

Vincent Raven was born the son of a clergyman at Great Fransham, Norfolk and educated at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. In 1877 he began his career with the North Eastern Railway as a pupil of the then Locomotive Superintendent, Edward Fletcher. By 1893 he had achieved the post of Assistant Mechanical Engineer to Wilson Worsdell who was then the Locomotive Superintendent. In this post he was involved for the first time with an electrification project, as the N.E.R. was electrifying the North Tyneside suburban route in 1904. This was a third rail system at 600 volts DC.

In 1910 he became Chief Mechanical Engineer on Wilson Worsdell's retirement (The title of the post had changed from Locomotive Superintendent in 1902). Raven developed some of Worsdell's designs for steam locomotives, like the T2 0-8-0 freight locomotive, as well as introducing designs of his own. In particular he favoured a 3-cylinder design with the locomotives driving on the leading coupled axle. This was applied to a series of locomotives, class S3, a mixed traffic 4-6-0, class Y, a 4-6-2T tank engine for freight work, class D, a 4-4-4T tank engine for passenger work, class Z, a 4-4-2 'Atlantic' for express passenger work, and the LNER Class A2 4-6-2, a 'Pacific' for express passenger work. The most memorable of these was the class Z Atlantics which had a reputation for speed and good riding on East Coast Main Line expresses north of York.

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