SR 'Ellerman Lines' 4-6-2 Merchant Navy Class sectioned steam locomotive, No 35029

Steam locomotive and tender (sectioned), No 35029 ‘Ellerman Lines’, Merchant Navy Class, 4-6-2, designed by O V Bulleid for the Southern Railway, built by British Railways at Eastleigh in 1949, rebuilt to current form in Sept. 1959, withdrawn in 1966. Length over buffers: 72'; width 8' 7"; height 12' 9"; weight: 97 ton, 18 cwt; driving wheel diameter 6’ 2”.

Ellerman Lines is a Merchant Navy class steam locomotive, a type introduced by the Southern Railway’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, Oliver Bulleid, in 1941. Ellerman Lines was built by the recently nationalised British Railways in 1949. It is one of a class of 30 powerful locomotives designed to haul heavy trains at high speeds. They were named after shipping lines that called at Southampton Docks, many of which were involved in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War.

Bulleid’s design included several new and unconventional engineering features, such as chain-driven valve gear enclosed in an oil sump, all-steel welded fireboxes, thermic syphons to improve water circulation, electric lighting and flat-sided external casing. In this form, the class inspired the design of 110 slightly smaller and lighter locomotives, of which Winston Churchill is an example. However, the Merchant Navy class proved heavy on maintenance and British Railways engineer Ronald Jarvis oversaw the rebuilding of all 30 to a more conventional design from 1956.

Ellerman Lines – the locomotive – was named by the shipping line’s chairman, A. F. Hull, at Southampton Docks in 1951. The shipping line was founded by John Ellerman in the early twentieth century, and large portions of its fleet were requisitioned by the British Government for war service.

The locomotive was rebuilt in 1959 and withdrawn from service in 1966, subsequently spending time at Woodham’s scrapyard in Barry, South Wales before being acquired for the new National Railway Museum. In 1974 it was carefully sectioned on its right-hand side to reveal the internal construction and workings of a modern steam locomotive and complements a sectioned replica of Robert Stephenson’s Rocket. The museum’s Explainers use Ellerman Lines when giving talks about how a steam locomotive works.