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- Weather Board
- A vertical sheet added to the rear of the firebox and fitted with two glass portholes to provide some protection for the locomotive crew. They first began to appear in the 1850s. A further refinement was to place a weather board behind the crew as well. Finally developed into the full cab, when a roof joined the two weather boards.
- A thin strip of metal joining two thicker strips. Examples include the narrow central section of bullhead rail or the central section of fluted coupling and connecting rods.
- Webb Buffer
- Type of buffer devised by F.W. Webb and used on locomotives built under his regime. Identifiable by the short cast-iron non-tapered body with prominent “collars” mounted on a thick wooden pad, mostly with heads 13in diameter. All LNWR loco buffers had a round base.
- Webb Compound
- A steam locomotive compound system in which two outside high-pressure cylinders exhaust into a single inside low-pressure cylinder.
- Webb, Francis William (1836—1906)
- Chief Mechanical Engineer for LNWR (1871–1903).
- Weigh Bridge
- A machine for weighing vehicles, set into the ground to be driven on to.
- Well Tank
- Some steam locomotive carry their water supply in a tank set between the locomotive frames. As this greatly restricts the tank size, many locomotives with well tanks also had small side tanks.
- Well Wagon
- A wagon for carrying loads which, if loaded in an ordinary wagon, would foul the loading gauge and so designed with a low floor and usually mounted on bogies.
- Nickname for the LNWR itself. In LMS and BR days men employed on the former LNWR lines were known as “Wessie Men”.
- West Coast Main Line
- The modern name for the London (Euston) - Crewe - Carlisle - Carstairs - Glasgow route.
- West Coast Postal
- The popular name given to the Up and Down Night Mails which ran between London and Glasgow/Aberdeen (with vehicles for Edinburgh, Manchester and Liverpool as well). These trains consisted entirely of postal vehicles, and mail which was sorted en route was both picked up and set down while the train was running at full speed by means of line side apparatus. This practice continued until 1971. For many years mail was sorted and then transferred from one train to another one following (with a different final destination) by means of the line side apparatus, for example from the Postal train, which left Euston at 8.30 pm, to the Irish Mail, which ran 15 minutes later.
- Western Extension
- Additional departure platforms (platforms 12-15 before the post-electrification rebuilding) at the west side of Euston station used, once built, for most of the major expresses. Passenger access to these platforms was originally by a separate entrance, which caused considerable confusion, with complaints such as “You have turned Euston into a Waterloo”. In Victorian times Waterloo station was notorious for its chaos, referred to, for example, by Jerome K Jerome in “Three Men in a Boat”.
- The manufacturers of the air brake adopted by many railways. The reason why the LNWR clung for so long to the chain brake and then chose the vacuum brake may have been Webb’s outrage at a suggestion from Westinghouse that he would find it financially rewarding to adopt the air brake.