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GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton
Harbury Cutting and Tunnel: gwrhc3917
Great Western Railway 4-6-0 40xx (Star) class No 4033
Queen Victoria heads an up express through Whitnash Cutting. The
photograph is undated, but believed to be from the mid 1920s.
Locomotive No 4033 was built at Swindon Works in November
1910 as part of lot 180 and the ten locomotives in this batch were all given
the names of English Queens. These four cylinder express passenger locomotives
were designed by Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) George Churchward, who
incorporated the French De Glehn cylinder arrangement as a simple with two sets
of valve gear. As such they were the forerunners of the 'Castle' and 'King'
classes and handled the elite expresses of their day. No 4033 was built with a
14 / 84 superheater arrangement (14 tubes / 84 elements) in a fully coned
standard No 1 boiler (type D4), which operating at a pressure of 225 lbs
producing a tractive effort at 85% of 25,090 lb. This classified the
locomotives in power group D, while their maximum axle weight of 18 tons, 12
cwt restricted them to main lines and a few branch lines (colour code Red). For
more information on the Great Western Railway locomotive classification system
see 'Engine Map'. Shortly after
construction top-feed apparatus became standard. This extended boiler life by
removing impurities from the boiler water by spraying the cold feed water into
the steam space over a removable sloped tray. One additional safety feature was
the provision of brakes on all wheels including the bogies, but these bogie
brakes were complicated to maintain and as their application was deemed to
provide little extra braking benefit, they were removed from November 1923.
Outside elbow steam pipes were fitted to No 4033 in April 1940. No 4033 was
initially allocated to Old Oak Common shed (PDN) outside Paddington and
withdrawn from Bath Road shed (82A) in Bristol in June 1951.
The first coach is a fifty-seven foot long, toplight luggage
van with gangway. Officially termed a Passenger Brake Van (PBV). This has been
built to the early K18 diagram, as this coach has wooden panels with raised
mouldings. The later diagram numbers were of similar length and layout, but
they all had flush steel panels. The table below details all the fifty-seven
foot PBV by lot number, with diagrams, completion date and running numbers. It
will be noted that sixteen of these were rebuilt from Ambulance cars that had
been returned to the company at the end of World War One.
Lot No |
Diagram |
Completed Date |
Quantity |
Running Numbers |
1204 |
K18 |
December 1912 |
Three |
247, 248 and 249 |
1241 |
K19 |
August 1914 |
Five |
250, 251, 252, 253 and 254 |
1253 |
K22 |
April 1915 |
Two |
255 and 256 |
1281 |
K22 |
April 1922 |
Ten |
257 to 266 |
1288 |
K22 |
June 1922 |
One |
267 (Ex Ambulance car) |
1301 |
K22 |
July 1922 |
Twenty five |
1129 to 1153 |
1344 |
K34 |
February 1925 |
Two |
1156 and 1164 (Ex Ambulance cars) |
1344 |
K35 |
February 1925 |
Two |
1154 and 1155 (Ex Ambulance cars) |
1344 |
K36 |
February 1925 |
Seven |
1157 to 1163 (Ex Ambulance cars) |
1345 |
K34 |
February 1925 |
Three |
1166, 1167 and 1168 (Ex Ambulance cars) |
1345 |
K37 |
February 1925 |
One |
1165 (Ex Ambulance car) |
The second coach is a seventy foot long, brake third
corridor coach. These were termed South Wales stock as the first
seven coach sets were originally built for the Paddington to Swansea route in
1923. The coaches had four third class compartments, a toilet, guards
compartment and large luggage compartment with three double doors on each side.
Diagram allocations depended upon which side the corridor ran and the earlier
version (diagram D82) was bow ended at the compartment end. The table below
details the right hand brake thirds:
Lot No |
Diagram |
Completed Date |
Quantity |
Running Numbers |
1309 |
D82 |
May 1923 |
Two |
3518 and 3519 |
1321 |
D82 |
July 1924 |
Four |
4613, 4615, 4617 and 4619 |
1321 |
D84 |
July 1924 |
Six |
4601, 4602, 4605, 4607, 4609 and 4611 |
Robert Ferris
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