LSWR 348 class

The LSWR 348 class was a class of passenger 4-4-0 steam locomotives designed by W. G. Beattie to replace his father's 2-4-0 classes on the Salisbury to Exeter expresses of the London and South Western Railway. It proved an abject failure and ended Beattie's career in December 1877. It was his only original design, with his own divided firebox and piston valves and ungainly continuous splashers. No prototype was built: twenty were ordered from Sharp, Stewart and Company in June 1876 straight from the drawing board and numbered 348 to 367. Delivered from March to June 1877, they lacked steaming capacity and were unsteady at speed, and by December only four of the twenty were serviceable. William Adams rebuilt some with Jubilee class boilers, and all were withdrawn and scrapped between 1889 and 1905.