Leaderless - The Story of the SR Leader Class

Hello all! :D

Often considered one of the most bizarre steam locomotives ever designed, and from outward appearance looked more like a diesel, the Leader Class came about due to Oliver Bulleid's desire to create a machine that would cut out many of the problems associated with single-direction tender locomotives by combining the functional aspects of a diesel with the latest in his experimental valve gear and propulsion systems.

Sadly, the Leader seems to have been far too overengineered for the roles it was intending to perform, and that Bulleid was attempting to fit far too many novel features into the machine at once, thus culminating in a disjointed and highly unreliable engine that was unpleasant to drive and fire for engine crews, with the sole operational unit never hauling a revenue earning train, while all five proposed examples were cut up for scrap before the middle of the 1950s.

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References:
- Key Model (and their respective sources)
- Southern Railway E-mail Group (and their respective sources)
- Wikipedia (and its respective references)