GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Rowington Junction & Troughs: gwrrj1775

An unknown Great Western Railway 4-6-0 four cylinder 40xx 'Star' class locomotive with a modest five coach up-express takes on water at Rowington troughs during the journey to Paddington. The roof of the Rowington water supply tank is just visible above the carriages. The date is thought to be 1929 and this is probably the ex-Snow Hill 19:50, which stopped at Leamington and Banbury, arriving at Paddington at 22:05. At Banbury three extra coaches were added, including two slip coaches working their way back to London.

The locomotive was one of the ‘Star class’ built after June 1909 as it has the more graceful curved front end framing, which was first introduced in Lot 178 and the relatively long name on the name plate may indicate that this was one of ten locomotives built between October 1910 and March 1911, under lot 180, all of which carried the names of British Queens. The ‘Star class’ locomotives were all built with a fully coned, domeless, Standard No 1 boiler with a belpaire firebox (type D4). From 1910 these locomotives were being built with superheater elements and all existing locomotives had also received them by 1913. At about the same time the cylinder diameter was increased to fifteen inches and with a boiler pressure of 225 lbs the tractive effort at 85% was 27,800 lb, which placed the locomotives in power group D. The distinctive Swindon topfeed apparatus, which was combined with the safety valve appeared in June 1911 and became a standard feature on all coned boilers. Topfeed increased the boiler efficiency by introducing the cooler feed water into the steam space at the top of the boiler. Any solid matter in the feed water was captured on sloping perforated trays directly below the topfeed arrangement and this reduces the build up of harmful sludge. The shortened pattern safety valve became standard on all coned boilers from 1926, but the locomotive in the photograph still has the early tall pattern safety valve. The whole ‘Star class’ was fitted with Automatic Train Control (ATC) by 1927. Most of the ‘Star class’ received outside steam pipes in later life. There were two designs of steam pipes depending upon the type of cylinder; the Castle class design was generally fitted in the 1930s to those with the new pattern cylinders, while an elbow design was generally fitted in the 1940s to those with the original pattern cylinders.

The first coach is a 57 foot long, steel panelled, ganged corridor brake third, toplight carriage with large luggage compartment, a guard's compartment and three third class compartments. Several lots of these carriages were built between 1914 and 1920 to diagram D 56 and an additional number were also repurchased from the Government between 1920 and 1924 having been originally supplied as part of the World War One ambulance trains. These latter coaches required rebuilding and it is likely that this coach is one of these as there are no toplights visible.

The third coach with the clerestory roof is an early restaurant car. The roof vents indicate that the kitchen is centrally positioned, which corresponds to the diagram H 7 layout. Four 56 foot long, ganged composite (originally three class) restaurant cars were built to this diagram at a cost of £1,770 each and were ready for service on 1st January 1903 (lots 1010 and 1011) for the Paddington – Newport - Cardiff and Paddington – Torquay / Exeter services. After 1907 these four restaurant cars were renumbered 9518 to 9521. They could seat eight first class and eighteen other class passengers in separate saloons. They were replaced by more modern coaches with the last of these four restaurant cars being withdrawn in 1936. No 9518 (previously No 7580) was recovered for preservation and is currently in storage with the Great Western Society at Didcot.

The other three coaches are all newer Collett designs with steel panelled bodies and roofs. It was quite common to see a mix of coaches of different ages and designs on the Great Western Railway during this period.

Robert Ferris

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