The Class 1532 was designed by Samuel W. Johnson for the Midland Railway (MR) and 65 locomotives were built at the MR#s Derby Works between 1881 and 1886. Tank engines with a 0-4-4 wheel formation were the Midland#s principle suburban and branch line passenger locomotive and so the 1532s were joined by several other very similar classes; by 1900 the railway had a fleet of more than 200 0-4-4Ts of comparable types.
The Class 1532s were built across five batches and two of the batches included locomotives fitted with condensing gear, in total ten examples were equipped in order to work through the Metropolitan Railway tunnels around London. Other locomotives were fitted with push-pull gear, evidenced by the additional apparatus fitted to the smokebox and the extra vacuum pipes adorning the bufferbeams, along with cab roof fittings that allowed the whistle to be controlled remotely.
Upon Grouping in 1923 the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) inherited 62 locomotives which they classified as 1Ps. Two examples had already been withdrawn by the MR and a third was sold to the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway (SDJR), this would be absorbed into LMS stock in 1930.
Modifications were made to the locomotives throughout their careers, with the fitting of different chimneys, smokeboxes and smokebox doors, but a major change occurred under LMS ownership when they began fitting Belpaire boilers in place of the original round-top versions. As a result, the cab fronts were rebuilt with the cab windows moved higher up, and the new boilers were complemented by new domes and safety valves.
Whilst the condensing locomotives were concentrated in and around London, the rest of the fleet found use across the Midland Railway network, and their geographical spread continued under LMS and then British Railways (BR) ownership. The 1532s were withdrawn gradually by the LMS and at the time of Nationalisation in 1948, just 14 members of the original 65 Class 1532s remained. By this time however, some of the MR#s similar designs had become collectively known as 1532s, so in total BR inherited 62 1Ps from the LMS, of which 34 were considered as 1532s. Withdrawals continued under BR until the final 1P was retired in 1959 and sadly none were preserved.
- Equipped with a Next18 DCC Decoder Socket
- Length 142mm (over couplings)
Detail Variations Specific To This Model
- Round-Top Boiler
- Enlarged Side Tanks with Ventilation Gaps
- Rivetted Side Tanks and Bunker
- Low Cab Front Windows
- Flared Bunker with 4-Bar Coal Rails
- Double Height Lamp Irons
- Johnson 3# 1# Chimney
- Smooth Smokebox
- Johnson Dished Smokebox Door
- Condensing Gear Fitted
- Curved Dome Lever
- Small Vacuum Exhauster
- Clack Valves Fitted in the Rearmost Position
- Sandboxes Fitted Forward of the Driving Wheels
Sound
- Speaker installed in all models for optimum sound reproduction
- ESU Loksound Micro V5DCC Sound Decoder fitted to Sound Fitted versions
- Sound files produced specifically for the Bachmann Branchline Midland Class 1532 (1P) using recordings from real locomotives
- Sound Fitted models operate on DCC and Analogue control as supplied
