Background
The basis of the Leader originated from a 1944 review of the Southern Railway's steam locomotive fleet, resulting in a Southern Railway design brief which called for a high-powered locomotive requiring little maintenance to replace the ageing fleet of M7 class tank engines. The brief also stipulated that the locomotive would be used on both passenger and freight trains, requiring high route availability. Bulleid proposed an initial design based on his SR Q1 class locomotive, which had proved easy to maintain in service. As the proposal progressed, Bulleid saw that certain tasks required with conventional steam locomotives could be eliminated by adopting some of the features of the contemporary Southern electric locomotives. However, one of the subsequent designs of a 0-4-4-0 wheel arrangement had an unacceptably high axle-loading of 20 tons (20.4 tonnes), which increased the risk of damaging the Southern Railway's track. By developing the proposal further, Bulleid settled for a 0-6-6-0T design of bogied locomotive, which spread the weight more evenly over the rails and reduced the axle-loading.
Read more about this topic: SR Leader Class
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