James The Red Engine - James's Prototype

James's Prototype

James is based on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway "Class 28", an 0-6-0 mixed-traffic tender engine of 1912/13, designed by George Hughes and based on the earlier Class 27 designed by John Aspinall. According to the Rev Awdry, the Class 28s were powerful goods engines but had a tendency to be nose-heavy, especially when used as relief engines on excursion trains, as they often were, and driven at speed.

In the book The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways, Awdry explained the difference in James's appearance from a Class 28. James was built by Hughes as an experiment to see if the nose-heaviness could be counter-acted. The locomotive was fitted with larger (5' 6") driving wheels and a pony truck, making it into a 2-6-0 wheel arrangement. (The real Class 28 has 5' 1" wheels.) James is also missing the prominent front sandboxes fitted to the Class 28s. The improvement was not as great as hoped for, and after the grouping, the LMS sold James to the Fat Controller's North Western Railway. As with most of the early Railway Series characters, which were not so closely based on real locomotive classes, Awdry's explanation is a case of retroactive continuity.