GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill - British Railways Period Locomotives: gwrbsh1955

A GWR 4-6-0 Castle Class locomotive leaving the north end of Snow Hill station with a Paddington to Birkenhead express. It is thought that the locomotive is No 5056 'Earl of Powis'. The winter of 1946-7 was particularly harsh with freezing temperatures and heavy drifting snow falling from 21st January. The snow continued to fall on almost every day in February and levels of recorded sun light were less than half the normal average, with no sun at all recorded at Kew for twenty days from 2 February.

Locomotive No 5056 was built in June 1936 at Swindon Works as part of lot 303. Originally this locomotive carried the name ‘Ogmore Castle’ but this was changed in September 1937 when it was decided to transfer the Earl names which had been initially allocated to 4-4-0 32xx class locomotives.

The Castle class locomotives were introduced in 1923 as the premier passenger express locomotive of the Great Western Railway. With four cylinders and a superheated long coned standard No 8 boiler operating at a pressure of 225 lb to produce a tractive effort (at 85%) of 31,625 lb, the engine was claimed to be the most powerful in the British Isles at the time and was classified in power group D. The locomotive's maximum axle weight of 19 tons, 14 cwt was just within the maximum 20 ton axle load permitted on the permanent way, restricting these locomotives to main routes and a few branches (Route colour – Red).

Locomotive No 5056 was initially based at Old Oak Common shed (OOC) to haul express services from Paddington and was known to be allocated there in December 1947, prior to nationalisation. No 5056 was finally withdrawn in November 1964 from Oxley shed and sold to Cashmores at Great Bridge.

Robert Ferris

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