GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Leamington Spa - GWR Locomotives: gwrls2079

GWR 4-4-2 No 103 'President' stands at the head of an up Wolverhampton to Paddington express in the early 1920s. The locomotive was one of two ordered by the GWR in 1905 following an initial order in 1903. GJ Churchward, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the GWR, was given authority to purchase three French de Glehn-du Bousquet four-cylinder compound locomotives, in order to evaluate the benefits of compounding. The first locomotive, No 102 La France, was delivered in 1903. Two further locomotives, No 103 and No 104, were purchased in 1905. These were similar to the Paris-Orleans Railway's 3001 class, and slightly larger than the first locomotive delivered to the GWR in 1903. As with No 102, these were built by Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques. They had two high pressure cylinders fitted between the frames, and two low pressure cylinders outside. The high pressure cylinders drove the front driving wheels while the low pressure cylinders drove the rear driving wheels. An external steam pipe was mounted just in front of the dome, looking rather similar in appearance to a top feed. In 1926, the three locomotives were based at Oxford shed. In practice, they did not provide any significant improvement in either performance or economy compared to No 171 Albion, Churchward's prototype 4-6-0, which was converted to a 4-4-2 specifically for comparison with the French locomotives. However elements of their design, in particular the bogie, were adopted by other CME's such as Stanier on the LMS and Thomson on the LNER. The locomotive completed some 750,000 miles, much of it on the Wolverhampton to Paddington route, before it was withdrawn in March 1927 from OX Oxford shed.

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