Nameplates on steam locos

[rodent279]

LMS in particular, but I guess the question applies to any of the 4. I know there would usually be 2 per loco, but how many would be cast? Would just 2 be cast, or would a couple be cast as spares?

It would make sense to me for a couple of spares to be cast at the same time, as even a small accident, say a van door swiping the side of an engine, could damage a plate. Plus of course they could be damaged or dropped whilst being removed from a loco in works.

Edited September 9, 2020 by rodent279

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Apart from the occasional copy for presenting to whatever group the nameplate represented, I don't recall ever hearing of spare nameplates being cast. There wouldn't seem to be much point to me, since it would be easy enough to get replacements made from the original patterns, which would have been retained.

[Wickham Green too]

17 hours ago, Jeremy C said:

Apart from the occasional copy for presenting to whatever group the nameplate represented, I don't recall ever hearing of spare nameplates being cast. There wouldn't seem to be much point to me, since it would be easy enough to get replacements made from the original patterns, which would have been retained.

Some railways produced specific patterns i believe, and some used a former with interchangeable letters ........... but a certain well-known railway serving parts of Wales and the west of England ( by way of a Great Way Round ), 'never' cast nameplates at all ! : their plates were steel backed with brass letters riveted on.

[Steamport Southport]

On 09/09/2020 at 22:25, Jeremy C said:

Apart from the occasional copy for presenting to whatever group the nameplate represented, I don't recall ever hearing of spare nameplates being cast. There wouldn't seem to be much point to me, since it would be easy enough to get replacements made from the original patterns, which would have been retained.

 

Yes. They kept the patterns in storage. ISTR there are a few in the NRM.

 

 

Worth considering there wasn't really that many named locomotives at any one time. Mostly it was the LNWR and GWR (and the GWR method is above). Then later the LMS and LNER had a few. But you are only talking about a few hundred plates.

 

On most other railways that named their locomotives they were painted.

 

 

 

Jason

[Compound2632]

Painted names seem to crop up wherever there was some Stroudley and Drummond influence at work, although Dugald the Great eschewed names when he moved south. LNWR plates were chiselled and stamped in brass. So it does look as though cast plates were a post-Grouping thing, when there were serious outbreaks of naming in places that hadn't seen them before.