BJR Pool Class

The Birkenhead Junction Railway Pool Class was a class of two heavy goods engines built for the Birkenhead Junction Railway in 1911.

Locomotives
Two locomotives were built, to an 0-8-2 wheel arrangement, and were used on heavy goods trains from Birkenhead Docks along the BJR Main Line to Chester, Ellesmere Port Docks, Hull amongst others, and along the BJR-CWR Link line at Birkenhead Laird Street, then the Wirral Railway to Hoylake, where the Dee Bridge Railway diverged to Wales.

In keeping with the BJR tradition, the locomotives were named after places on the peninsula, in this case the natural pools of water that flow into the Mersey on the east coast. The two locomotives were named:

Wallasey Pool- After the larger of the two basins, flows into the Mersey between Birkenhead and Wallasey.

Bromborough Pool- The smaller pool, the basin formed by the River Dibbin, reaches the Mersey between Bromborough and Bebington.

The locomotives were built by the Vulcan Foundry to a design by P.T.Tennant, chief mechanical engineer of the BJR, who, following his retirement from the railway, went to live in Cumbria, where he worked on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, helping to design their locomotive 'River Irt', based in part on the Pool Class. They were both painted in BJR lined black, although in 1915, due to a lack of paint, the lining was removed, and was not restored following the end of hostilities. The Pool Class are very similar visually to the BJR engine 'The One O'Clock Gun', which itself inspired the R&ER 'River Esk'.