GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill Station: gwrbsh69b

Close up of image 'gwrbsh69' showing an unidentified GWR 39xx class 2-6-2T locomotive, one of a class of twenty converted from 0-6-0 Dean Goods engines, standing at the head of an up local passenger train to Leamington. On the platform are numerous milk churns and other parcel traffic being transported, once the staple traffic of railways and found at both local stations where farmers delivered their supplies and at major stations where merchants of milk and dairy products would collect them for distributing around the town or city.

Robert provides further information on the class from the Part 5 of the RCTS' series of books on GWR Locomotives, "Twenty 2301 class 0-6-0 Dean Goods were converted to 2-6-2T locomotives between February 1907 (No 3901 - ex2491) and January 1910 (No 3920 - ex2502) by Swindon Works under Lot 104. The aim was to provide a more powerful suburban tank for the Birmingham Area without adversely impacting the extensive new engine build programme at the Works which was occurring at that time. Existing cylinders, rods, motion and coupled wheels were reused to avoid the principle bottle necks in the production programme, but it still took three years to complete the twenty engines in the class.

The class received superheaters between 1914 and 1917, but the engine in the picture does not have this. The majority of the engines in the class operated in the Birmingham Area until 1923, when some movement to South Wales and West Country occurred. By 1929 they had been displaced from their Birmingham duties by the new 2-6-2T large prairie tank locomotives. Withdrawals started in 1931 and the whole class had gone by November 1934. The last engine to go was No 3916 - ex2494."

back