GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill - Grouping Period Locomotives: gwrbsh1228

GWR 4-4-0 '3521 class' No 3529 is seen arriving at Snow Hill ready to take forward a local stopping train to Hartlebury and Severn Valley. The 3521 class were originally designed in an 0-4-2T configuration for both Broad gauge and Standard gauge, with No 3529 being one of the twenty locomotives built for Standard gauge. Because of unsteady running the class were all converted to 0-4-4Ts by 1891 but even this configuration proved wanting because on 13th April 1895 No 3521 and No 3546 derailed near Bodmin Road.

Three years later another of the class, No 3542, derailed at Penryn and rolled down an embankment, killing the driver. Following these accidents all forty 0-4-4T locomotives of the class were rebuilt as 4-4-0 tender locomotives between 1899 and 1902. Two locomotives, No 3521 and No 3546, were transferred to the Cambrian Railway in 1921 to replace locomotives destroyed in the Abermule accident. They were allocated Cambrian numbers 82 and 95 respectively but these were never carried, the two locomotives being returned to the Great Western Railway with their original numbers when the two railways were grouped together in 1922.

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