GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Lapworth Station: gwrl3896

Ex-Great Western Railway 4-6-0 60xx (King) class No 6007 ‘King William III’ on the 2:35pm Birkenhead to Paddington express (indicated by the ‘375’ reporting number) thunders through Lapworth Station on the up main line at about 6:15pm on Friday 11th July 1958. No 6007 was built at Swindon Works in March 1928 as part of lot 243 and was allocated to Old Oak Common Shed (PDN). These King class locomotives were the most powerful passenger locomotive in the country when built, with a tractive effort at 85% of 40,300 lb. The locomotives' large boiler resulted in a maximum axle weight of 22 tons, 10 cwt which restricted them to the Paddington to Plymouth and Paddington to Birmingham / Wolverhampton main lines and even this required many bridges on these routes to be strengthened (see bridge tests on new quadrupled lines at 'gwrwm1592' and 'gwro1578').

Locomotive No 6007 was involved in a serious collision at 5:24am on 15th January 1936, while hauling nine coaches with 100 passengers aboard. This was the 9:00 pm Penzance to Paddington Express which was travelling at almost 60mph, when it collided with five loaded coal wagons and a brake van. These had broken away from a mineral train and come to a halt on the main line near Shrivenham Station. One lady passenger and the driver of No 6007 (Mr. EA Starr) were fatally injured and ten other passengers were seriously injured. The accident report identified that the new Great Western Railway coach design had contributed to the comparatively low incidence of casualties. It was found that several rules had been broken by company staff; the guard had failed to protect the detached portion of his mineral train with detonators, and two signalmen had given the express permission to proceed, because they had failed to notice that the mineral train had passed their boxes without the required tail lights (an indication that the train had parted). As a result of the collision the locomotive had overturned and sustained serious damage to its frames, valve and reversing motions, cab, bogies and brake gear. It was decided that No 6007 was uneconomic to repair and the engine was condemned on 5th March 1936. Officially a replacement locomotive was built as a renewal at Swindon Works under Lot 309 and this was given the same name and number on 24th March 1936, but it is believed that the majority of the parts came from the original locomotive. The replacement locomotive like its predecessor was allocated to Old Oak Common Shed (PDN).

Following draughting experiments in the early 1950’s all the King class locomotives were fitted with longer and narrower chimney liners and a smaller diameter blastpipe. This was followed by more draughting experiments that proved that further improvements could be obtained by reducing the exhaust pressure. This was accomplished by fitting a double chimney, which No 6007 received in September 1956. In March 1959, No 2007 was allocated to Laira Shed (83D) at Plymouth and then in September 1959 was allocated to Stafford Road Shed (84A) near Wolverhampton. No 6007 was withdrawn from here in September 1963 and sold for scrap to Cox & Danks of Langley Green. When withdrawn the combined mileage of the original and replacement locomotives was recorded as 1,830,728.

Robert Ferris

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