SR Merchant Navy Class - Numbering and Naming The Locomotives

Numbering and Naming The Locomotives

For details of Merchant Navy class locomotive names, see: List of SR Merchant Navy class locomotives

Bulleid adopted a new numbering scheme for all his locomotives based on Continental practice, following his experiences at the French branch of Westinghouse Electric before the First World War, and those of his tenure in the rail operating department during that conflict. The Southern Railway numbers followed an adaptation of the UIC classification system of using letters and numbers to designate the powered and unpowered axles, together with a running number. Thus the first 4-6-2 locomotive became 21C1 – where "2" and "1" refer to the number of unpowered leading and trailing axles respectively, and "C" refers to the number of driving axles, in this case three. The remainder were numbered 21C2-21C19. The scheme was abandoned by British Railways in 1949 and the existing locomotives were renumbered under the British Railways standard system in the series 35001-35019; the final batch appeared in traffic as 35020-35029.

The Southern Railway considered naming the locomotives after victories of the Second World War, to the extent that a mocked-up nameplate River Plate was produced. In the event, when early successes for the British proved few and far between, the chairman of the Union Castle Line suggested naming them after shipping companies which had called at Southampton Docks in peacetime. This idea resonated in 1941 because the shipping lines were heavily involved in the Atlantic convoys to and from Britain during the Second World War.

A new design of nameplate was created, featuring a circular plate with a smaller circle in the centre. The inner circle carried the colours of the shipping company on a stylised flag, on an air force blue background. Around the outer circle was the name of the locomotive, picked out in gilt lettering. A horizontal rectangular plate was attached to either side of the circular nameplate, with "Merchant Navy Class" in gilt lettering. This acted as a class plate, as indicated on the nameplate photograph, right.

During their operational career, the class gained several nicknames; the most obvious, Bulleid Pacific, simply denoted the designer and wheel arrangement. The colloquial name Spam Can arose from their utilitarian appearance, enhanced by the flat, boxy air-smoothed casing, and the resemblance of this to the distinctive tin cans in which SPAM was sold. The nickname Packets was also adopted by locomotive drivers, as the first member of the class was named Channel Packet.