WD ex-LMS Fowler Class 3F

The War Department ex-LMS Fowler Class 3F consisted of 8 LMS Fowler Class 3F 0-6-0T steam locomotives requisitioned in 1940 from the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS).

The Class 3F 0-6-0Ts were selected by the War Department to be their standard shunting engine. Eight engines were prepared and exported to France during the Phoney War and were used to support British forces there. In an attempt to standardise locomotives were chosen from the 1928 batch built by William Beardmore & Co., with the exception of one Hunslet-built engine, No. 7589. Two are thought to have been destroyed by retreating British forces during the chaotic retreat of the Fall of France photographic evidence exists showing one such example at Berlin-Tempelhof station in 1953 with Wehrmacht markings and had recently been in service, overhauled at Cottbus in 1944. The remaining known five were left behind and were subsequently pressed into SNCF service as their 030.TW class on Région Nord.

It was later (1943) decided to adopt the Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST as the War Department's shunting steam engine, so no more were required.

After the liberation of Europe, the surviving five were returned in August and September 1948, by which time the LMS had been nationalised into British Railways, and they assumed their original numbers within the ex-LMS Fowler Class 3F 0-6-0Ts, albeit with the addition of 40000 standard to most ex-LMS locomotives.

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Wikipedia