No. 83 pulls away with a morning Belfast to Dublin train on 12 June 1954.
No. 83 was a Compound V Class 4-4-0 locomotive built in 1932 by Beyer Peacock & Co., Manchester. It worked express passenger trains on the Dublin - Belfast line, the main line which links Ireland's two biggest cities.
The compound V Class locomotives brought much interest from the railway press when they were built. The first three-cylinder engines in the whole of Ireland, they weighed 103 tons 11 cwt including tender. For the time they were also unusual in having round-topped boilers and Stephenson's valve gear.
The V Class engines were ordered from Beyer Peacock (without tenders, which were built in Dundalk) and delivered at weekly intervals between April and May 1932. They carried the numbers 83-87 and were named after birds of prey: Eagle (83), Falcon (84), Merlin (85), Peregrine (86), and Kestrel (87). As built, No. 83 and her four sisters were unlined black, but the famous GNR(I) sky blue livery presently carried was applied from the mid 1930s.
The main dimensions of the LMS design (one of which, No. 1000, is preserved at York) included 6 ft 9in driving wheels, a 19in x 26in high-pressure cylinder and two 21in x 26in low-pressure cylinders. The working pressure was 220 psi with a tractive effort of 22,649 lb. However, the Great Northern design ultimately had 6 ft 7in driving wheels, a 17¼ in x 26in high-pressure cylinder, 19in x 26in low-pressure cylinders and 250 psi working pressure, which produced a tractive effort of 23,762 lb. Both designs had the coupling rods outside the connecting rods. The compounds - or 'Pounders' as they became known by crews - were built during the Depression and cost £5,847. That was £3,000 cheaper than the same railway's SG3 Class 4-4-0, built between 1920 and 1922.
In October 1958 the former GNR, by then the Great Northern Railway Board or GNRB, was split between Northern Ireland's Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) and the Republic's Coras Iompair Éireann (CIÉ). Nos. 83, 86 and 87 went to the UTA and Nos. 84 and 85 to CIÉ. The letters 'UT' or 'CIE' were stenciled on the front buffer beams. UTA withdrew steam traction in 1960 and Nos. 83, 84, 86 and 87 were all scrapped. No. 85 Merlin is the only survivor of this class.