GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Leamington Spa Shed: gwrls3906

Ex-Great Western Railway 4-6-0 68xx (Grange) class No 6879 ‘Overton Grange’ leaving Leamington Spa General Station on the up main line on Saturday 31st October 1964. The single head-lamp on the right of the buffer beam indicates that this is a freight train stopping at intermediate stations (class 9 or old class K train), see misc/headcodes for more information on these head-lamp codes.

In the mid 1930s the Great Western Railway’s Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) Charles Collett was responsible for designing two new classes of 4-6-0 locomotive to replace the 2-6-0 43xx class mixed-traffic locomotives. The new designs were a smaller wheeled version of the Hall (49xx) class, which was called the Grange (68xx) class and a lighter Manor (78xx) class. They were to be classified as rebuilds of the 43xx class locomotives and serviceable parts recovered from withdrawn 43xx class locomotives were to be utilised in their construction (in practice this meant reusing the five foot, eight inch diameter driving wheels and motions). In December 1935 an order for one hundred Grange class locomotives (lot 308) was issued and this was followed in April 1936 with an order for twenty Manor class locomotives (lot 316). Although all the Manor class locomotives were completed, No 6879 was the last Grange class locomotive to leave Swindon Works in May 1939 (officially using parts from 43xx class No 8387, which had been condemned in March 1939). By now however war clouds were gathering over Europe and rebuilds were not seen as a priority, so the remaining twenty Grange class locomotives were initially postponed and then in April 1941 deferred. The Grange class had the standard No1 boiler operating at a pressure of 225lbs, which gave a tractive effort at 85% of 28,875lb (Power group – D). The maximum axle weight was 18tons, 8cwt which restricted the locomotives to main lines and a few branch lines (Route colour – Red). See 'Engine Map' for more details about the Great Western Railway’s method of locomotive classification. No 6879 was initially allocated to Oxley Shed (OXY) north of Wolverhampton. In April 1960 No 6879 was allocated to Tyseley shed (84E) and was withdrawn from there on 16th October 1965.

Normal practice was to marshal vacuum braked wagons directly behind the locomotive where they could assist with the train’s braking and which therefore allowed faster running. The first three columns of the following table from the British Railways (LMR-western lines) Freight Train Loads Book dated April 1964 indicate this. The fourth and fifth columns are a summarised extract from the Regional Appendix dated October 1960, which have been added to allow comparison with the pre-1960 train class system:

The first wagon is a vacuum braked flat wagon specifically designed for containers (conflat). It carries a British Railways Condor liveried large (BD type) container. The Condor (derived from ‘Container – Door to door’) overnight express service ran between London and Glasgow from March 1958 until 1964, however development of new metal containers which were easier and quicker to load resulted in the introduction of Speedfreight services in 1961. These could only operate between specific depots provided with purpose built gantry cranes, so the earlier wooden containers were still promoted by British Railways for unit loads to any customer’s premise (see misc/containers). This changed in 1963, when the ‘Beeching Report’ saw the future as fast freight ‘liner’ trains delivering containers in bulk to 55 purpose built terminals and investment in handling of other container traffic ceased.

Robert Ferris

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