GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill - Grouping Period Locomotives: gwrbsh3065

Great Western Railway 4-6-0 49xx (Hall) class No 4979 ‘Wootton Hall’ with a class B lamp headcode stands with a full head of steam on the down through main line at Birmingham Snow Hill on 24th April 1937.

The Great Western Railway ‘Hall’ class proved to be a most successful mixed traffic locomotive and the class eventually totalled 330 locomotives built between 1928 and 1950. They were developed by modifying the 29xx (Saint) class two cylinder express passenger design by the replacement of the original six foot, eight-and-a-half inch coupled wheels with smaller six foot wheels. They had a standard No 1 boiler operating at 225 lb which developed a tractive effort at 85% of 27,275 lbs (Power Group D). The maximum axle weight was 18 tons, 19 cwt, which limited the locomotives to main lines and a few branch lines (Route Classification Red), but they found both freight and express passenger work in abundance. For more information about locomotive classification on the Great Western Railway see 'Route Map'.

No 4979 was built in February 1930 at Swindon Works as part of lot 254 and was initially allocated to Laira shed (LA). In July 1934, No 4979 was allocated to Tyseley shed (TYS) and remained there until being allocated to Canton shed (CDF) in Cardiff just before nationalisation. In December 1963, No 4979 was withdrawn from Oxford shed (81F) having travelled a recorded 1,233,801 miles. The locomotive was sold for disposal to Woodham Brothers Ltd in Barry Docks from where it was purchased for preservation in 1986 and moved to the Fleetwood Locomotive Centre in Lancashire. Under the ownership of the Furness Railway Trust, No 4979 was initially stored at the Lytham Motive Power Museum in 1994, where it resided until 2007 when it was moved to the Appleby Heritage Centre and then to the Ribble Steam Railway workshop in Preston for restoration.

Robert Ferris

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