Wigan Album

A great picture for railway enthusiasts, the locomotive is standing on
what is now Cricket Street Business Park near the low 9ft 6 ins bridge
on Prescott Street.

Brill picture

Breyer Peacock, locomotive builder’s, wasn’t their works in Gorton, Manchester?. I believe that they constructed locomotives to a world market.

The 'Lanky' - the best railway on Earth.

My great grandfather,Robert Yates Halsall worked for the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway as an engine driver for over 40 years from the early 1880’s. I know very little about his life on the railway but I have the letter of thanks he wrote to the members of the Wigan Aslef branch after he had been presented with a chair for his long service. I presume this is the kind of locomotive he would have worked on?

not sure its prescott st that depot looks bigger than 27d no rail lines to southport on other side of the wagon far end of picture.
according to consenus re these locos they where poor tools quite a number where modifed to be saddle tanks which made them very useful locos

Looks like Newton Heath to me.

This loco was allocated to Wigan (LYR) shed in 1908. The structure of the building makes me fairly certain that it is the Prescott St shed. It was cut back substantially in later years due to subsidence. It is definitely not Newton Heath as that was built of brick whereas Wigan was wood on low brick walls. These engines were actually very successful, and replaced a lot of smaller older engines. Traffic was increasing so much that they were in turn replaced by more powerful locos, but they were too good to cut up and so 230 of them were converted in the 1890s to saddle tanks for shunting and local goods, and 50 remained as tender engines. Wigan was was of their main stamping grounds and they became known as 'Wigan pigs'. This particular engine remained as a tender loco until it was scrapped in 1956.