Great Western: Large Wheeled Outside Framed 4-4-0 Tender Locomotives: Atbara, Badminton, City and Flower Classes

By David Maidment

This volume covers all the large wheeled outside frame classes of 4-4-0 tender Locomotives, that once ran on the Great Western Railway.The book has full details on each of the classes with good quality pictures, diagrams names, and number lists.This work is also very useful to model makers, giving full details of mechanical and livery changes that took place from the 1900s through to the early 1930, when all except the preserved 3440, City of Truro, were withdrawn and scrapped.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781526700964

David Maidment

David Maidment was a senior manager with British Railways, with widespread experience of railway operating on the Western and London Midland Regions culminating in the role of Head of Safety Policy for the BRB after the Clapham Junction train accident.He retired in 1996, was a Principal Railway Safety Consultant with International Risk Management Services from 1996 to 2001 and founded the Railway Children charity (www.railwaychildren.co.uk) in 1995. He was awarded the OBE for services to the rail industry in 1996 and is now a frequent speaker on both the charity.

Book preview

PREFACE

This is the second ‘Pen and Sword’ locomotive portfolio about Great Western double-framed 4-4-0s that emerged at a critical changeover period with William Dean overlapping with George Jackson Churchward at the helm of GW locomotive design and practice. The previous volume covered the mixed traffic engines with 5ft 8in coupled wheels – primarily the ‘Dukes’ and ‘Bulldogs’, designed initially for passenger work in Devon and Cornwall after the conversion of the last broad gauge route, before multiplying as the allpurpose secondary engines all over the system. The Dean/Churchward combination also tackled the need for express passenger locomotives required to haul the heavier loads being encountered at the turn of the century, and the 6ft 8in 4-4-0s emerged from Swindon Works at the same time – the ‘Badminton’s of 1898, the ‘Atbaras’ of 1900, the ‘Cities’ of 1903 and finally the ‘Flowers’ of 1908.

In that first decade of the century these locomotives made a huge impact, but within that same period train loads increased significantly again, so that Churchward’s standard express passenger 4-6-0 designs made their domination of GW express traffic short-lived. The later standardisation by Collett building on Churchward’s policies made them all superfluous by the late 1920s, with all being withdrawn by the early 1930s with just one example preserved, the celebrated 3440 City of Truro.

I am therefore very reliant on previous transport historians and the libraries and photographic archives of the Great Western Trust at Didcot, the Manchester Locomotive Society in Stockport and the Model Railway Club at Kings Cross, for both text and photos. In particular I have valued the RCTS GW locomotive history books and the two volumes of O.S. Nock’s books on the subject written in the 1970s and published by David & Charles. Access to early copies of the Railway Magazine and the locomotive performance articles by Charles Rous-Marten and Cecil J. Allen at the MLS library has been very useful and helped to flush out a rounded picture of the performance of these engines on the road. The Society photographic archives have been a mine of mostly previously unpublished photographs and have been extremely valuable. Finding the best photos has been facilitated by Laurence Waters at the GW Trust Archive and Paul Shackcloth at MLS in particular, and I owe them, and Mike Bentley for making available his personal collection, a great debt of gratitude. Not only have they made the splendid photos available but have allowed me to use them free of any publication charge or at a significantly reduced fee, as again the royalties are being donated to Railway Children, the charity I founded in 1995 to support street children at transport terminals in India and East Africa and runaway children in the United Kingdom.

Last and by no means least, I acknowledge the constant support and help from the Pen and Sword staff, particularly John Scott-Morgan, Transport Commissioning Editor, Carol Trow, the editor of my books, Juliet Arthur, the book designer, and Jodie Butterwood and Janet Brookes who had overall editorial and production responsibilities for the ‘Locomotive Portfolio’ series and other transport history books.

David Maidment

September 2016

CHAPTER 1

THE ‘ARMSTRONGS’

DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION

The Great Western Railway’s final conversion of broad to standard gauge was undertaken in the West of England and was completed by May 1892. The first track rebuilding to standard gauge took place in the 1860s and locomotives for both broad and standard gauges were being produced simultaneously by the GWR engineering works at Swindon and Wolverhampton. William Dean succeeded Joseph Armstrong as Chief Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent at Swindon in 1877, whilst George Armstrong managed the construction of standard gauge locomotives at the Stafford Road Wolverhampton Works until 1892. Dean was in charge of design and production of locomotives for both broad and standard gauges from his appointment at Swindon. His most significant designs until the late 1880s were the long-lived ‘Dean Goods’ 0-6-0s of 1883 and his substantial improvements in rolling stock. Little development of locomotives for the broad gauge took place as its demise was imminent.

Dean’s 1884 7ft 8in 2-2-2 rebuild of the unsuccessful 4-2-4T, No, 9. (GW Trust)

In 1881, he had built a curious standard gauge 4-2-4T with 7ft 8in driving wheels which did little work as it was prone to derailments – he rebuilt it as a 2-2-2 tender engine with 18in x 26in cylinders in 1884. In the mid 1880s, he experimented with the design of a number of engines intended for passenger work. No.7 was a 7ft 0½ in wheeled 2-4-0 compound locomotive built in 1886 for the standard gauge with 23in low pressure cylinders, but it ran few miles, was difficult to maintain because of its inaccessible inside motion and was laid aside in 1890. No.8 was of similar design to No.7 but ran on the broad gauge as a ‘convertible’. However, it suffered from the same defects as No.7 and never entered regular service.

The rebuilt 4-2-4T, then a 2-2-2, was given the number,’9’, and after a chequered career, was rebuilt again in 1890 to the successful Joseph Armstrong ‘Queen’ 2-2-2 class, and named ‘Victoria’. These standard gauge 2-2-2s had been built between 1873 and 1875 with 7ft single driving wheels and 18in x 24in cylinders and had operated successfully on the main standard gauge routes to Swindon and Gloucester and to Wolverhampton via Oxford. They were withdrawn between 1903 and the start of the First World War in 1914, most of them running over a million miles in traffic.

Then, in 1886, he built an important engine, a 2-2-2 , No.10, with 7ft 8in driving and 4ft 6in front and rear carrying wheels, intending to equip it with Joy’s valve gear. However, No.9, before rebuilding as a ‘Queen’ class, was having problems with this gear, and Dean therefore built No.10 with slide valves located under the cylinders and Stephenson’s link motion, a piece of machinery invented by Stroudley on the London Brighton & South Coast Railway. This was the first GW locomotive with that valve gear and motion, which Dean then applied to his subsequent designs. Dean also increased the maximum travel of the valves of the Stephenson link motion from Stroudley’s and Holden’s 3⅞in to 4⅝in with generous port openings as the gear was linked up – this seems to have been one of the factors that gave Dean’s express engines their reputation for speed (though for some reason evaded in the rebuilding of the four ‘Armstrongs’ to be discussed in a few paragraphs’ time). He reconstructed No.10 in 1890 with 7ft instead of the larger diameter single driving wheels, in similar fashion to No.9 and the ‘Queen’ class and the rebuilt locomotive was named ‘Royal Albert’. It was withdrawn from service in 1906. In 1888, Dean built two further experimental 2-4-0s for the Broad Gauge, but as ‘convertibles’, both of more conventional ‘simple’ rather than compound steam propulsion, numbered 14 and 16.

No.9, further rebuilt in 1890 and named Victoria in line with Joseph Armstrong’s 7ft diameter 2-2-2 express passenger locomotive No.55 Queen which gave its name to the class. (GW Trust)

No.9 at work, piloted by a Joseph Armstrong 2-2-2 No.158, on an express at West Drayton, c.1900. (GW Trust)

As built in 1886, Dean’s 2-2-2 No.10, the prototype Dean 7ft 8½ in express engine using the Stroudley designed valves and arrangement of the Stephenson link motion that became a standard element of the later Dean 4-4-0 locomotives. (GW Trust)

Dean was, however, developing the 2-2-2 wheel arrangement for his express passenger engines, similar in general arrangement to the Joseph Armstrong 2-2-2s. His first production passenger engines, using the valve gear concepts he had developed on No.10, were large wheeled ‘singles’, 2-2-2s, numbered 3000-3030, built in 1891-2. 3021-3028 were actually constructed as broad gauge ‘convertibles’ and were indeed rebuilt for the standard gauge in 1892. 3000-3020 and 3029-30 were built for the standard gauge.

A further photo in traffic of Dean’s 2-2-2 No.10 with 7ft 8½ in driving wheels as built, c.1889. (GW Trust)

Dean’s reconstruction of No.10 in 1890 in similar form to the Joseph Armstrong ‘Queen’ class with 7ft driving wheel, and named Royal Albert. (GW Trust)

A further photo of No.10 in traffic at Swindon station, c.1895. (GW Trust)

No.10 Royal Albert, in its final rebuilt form as a 7ft 2-2-2 of the ‘Queen’ class, at Swindon, 24 May 1905. (GW Trust)

No.10 Royal Albert in