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GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton
GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line
Birmingham Snow Hill - Pre-grouping locomotives:
gwrbsh1194
GWR 4-4-0 County class No 3828 'County of Hereford' is seen
arriving at Platform 7 and 8 whilst working an up express service to London in
early 1914. Built at Swindon works in January 1912 as one of the last batch of
Counties to be built, No 3828 was to remain in service until March 1933 when it
was withdrawn from Oxford shed to be scrapped at 1933 Swindon works. Know to
railwaymen as 'Churchward's rough riders', the 'County' class of locomotives
looked very much like a shortened version of the 'Saint' class. The locomotive
seen above has been given the name of the very county that had initiated
Churchward to design the class.
The reason for the design was to work the cross country
services on the Shrewsbury to Hereford line, a line which was jointly owned by
the GWR and the London and North Western Railway. The LNWR refused to allow
4-6-0 locomotives on this line and so Churchward designed an engine with enough
power in reserve should the need arise for it's use on other lines, but as Sir
William Stanier noted that 'Churchward was not going to be instructed by Webb,
the Locomotive Superintendent of the LNWR, and designed an engine that had
plenty of power to run the service but which had a front end too powerful for
the wheelbase'. Courtesy of the
Great Western Archive.
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