The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway(L&YR)Class8 was a four-cylinder 4-6-0 express passenger locomotive designed by George Hughes introduced in 1908. Design and construction The increased weight of trains in the early 1900s and need for improved power on Liverpool—Manchester—Hull expresses and Leeds—Fleetwood boat trains indicated a need for an engine more powerful than the Aspinall's 4-4-2 Atlantic of 1899. Hughes described the requirement in a paper read to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers thus: Hughes created a design with a boiler producing saturated steam, slide valves and Joy valve gear. The first examples came out of Horwich Works in June 1908, and the original batch of 20 was completed in by March 1909. Around the time of their construction, they were nicknamed "Dreadnoughts" on account of their large size, after the then-new Royal Navy battleship . The locomotives proved "sluggish, poor runners and poor steamers". They were subject to a number of modifications to improve steaming, including enlarged blast pipes and an air duct running to the front and rear of the ashpan in order to improve combustion. The high maintenance demands of the class saw a queue needing attention building up at Horwich Works during World War I. Remedial modifications were restricted but five were fitted with replacement modified boilers to keep them in service. 1919 rebuilding From 1919 to 1920, fifteen were rebuilt with superheaters, piston valves, Walschaerts valve gear and slightly larger cylinders. The nominal tractive effort of the rebuilds was which made these engines for a time the second most powerful in Great Britain (to the Somerset and Dorset 2-8-0s dating from 1914) until 1922 when the Gresley Pacifics appeared. The rebuilt locomotives were reported to be "a good workman-like engine" and "an engine thoroughly master of its work", although still with a coal consumption on the heavy side. Later batches Improved performance of the rebuilt locomotives and favourable test comparisons with the LNWR Prince of Wales Class and LNWR Claughton Class in 1921 and published in The Engineer were a trigger for the L&YR to order more of the type. Deliveries of the ten locomotives in Lot 80 commenced in August 1921 with the last two being delivered after the amalgamation of the L&YR into the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) in 1922. Deliveries from the 25 locomotives Lot 81 commenced in November 1922 with only four built before grouping and creation of the London,