George Whale (7 December 1842 – 7 March 1910) was an English locomotive engineer who was born in Bocking, Essex, and educated in Lewisham, London. He worked for the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Career In 1858 he entered the LNWR's Wolverton Works under James Edward McConnell, and when in 1862 the LNWR Board decided to concentrate locomotive construction and repair at Crewe Works under John Ramsbottom, Whale was one of around 400 workers transferred from Wolverton to Crewe. In 1865 he entered the drawing office at Crewe Works, and in 1867 joined the LNWR running department under J. Rigg. In 1898 he was made responsible for the running of all LNWR locomotives. Francis William Webb, the LNWR Locomotive Superintendent, gave twelve months notice of retirement to the LNWR Board in November 1902. On 22 April 1903, the Board announced that Whale had been chosen to succeed Webb, who was to retire at the end of July 1903. Webb's health was failing, and Whale soon took up some of his duties, and began signing official documents on 25 May; by 30 May, Webb was too ill to work. Webb's compound locomotives were generally considered a failure and Whale commenced the programme of converting some of these to simple-expansion locomotives, and replacing others. In 1904 he introduced the 4-4-0 Precursor class, an entirely new design which was in production within nine months of Whale's appointment; by June 1906, there were 110 in service. The Precursors were able to keep time when handling greater loads than their predecessors. They were followed by the 4-6-0 Experiment class, and these two formed the basis for several subsequent LNWR locomotive classes. Locomotives Whale introduced four new classes of locomotive; a fifth design was ordered by Whale but not delivered until after his retirement. The Precursor class was developed by C.J. Bowen Cooke into the George the Fifth and Queen Mary classes, whilst the Experiment class was developed by Bowen Cooke into the Prince of Wales class. Webb had built 282 freight locomotives of the 0-8-0 wheel arrangement. All except the first one were compounds, which were of two types: there were 111 with two high-pressure cylinders outside the frames and a single low-pressure cylinder between the frames, which were known as Class A from 1911; and there were 170 with two outside high-pressure cylinders and two inside low-pressure cylinders, which were later known as