GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Henley in Arden - New Station: gwrha1410

Two Great Western Railway 2-6-2T 5101 class large prairie tank locomotives seen standing at Henley-in-Arden’s up and bay platforms in the early evening. This view of the station was taken in 1947, the last year of the GWR's independence before being nationalised and becoming the Western Region Division of British Railways. The 5101 class, introduced in 1929 was an updated version of the 31xx (later 51xx) class, the first of which had been built in 1903. Externally the 5101 class differed from their predecessors by having curved drop ends, flanged motion plate and outside steam pipes. The cab roof was lowered and the coal bunker extended to hold four tons. The superheated standard No 2 long coned boiler operating at 200 lbs produced a tractive effort at 85% of 24,300lb, placing the locomotive in power class D. The maximum axle weight was 17 tons, 12 cwt, which limited the locomotives to main lines and some branch lines, route colour – Blue. See 'Engine Map' for more details of the Great Western Railway locomotive classification system. The power, speed and particularly the acceleration of these locomotives made them ideal for the Midlands suburban passenger duties where there was a requirement for frequent stops with heavy loads. As a result many of the 5101 class were allocated to the Wolverhampton division, but their useful life was curtailed by the introduction of DMUs in the late 1950s.

The train on the left standing on the up through platform is an early evening Stratford-on-Avon to Birmingham service, believed to be hauled by No 4147 which was allocated to Tyseley Shed at the time. The single lamp on the buffer beam of this locomotive should really have been placed on top of the smokebox to denote a Class B ordinary passenger train headcode (see 'headcodes'). No 4147 was built in September 1946 at Swindon Works as part of lot 335 and was originally allocated to Tyseley Shed (TYS). No 4147 moved to Stafford Road Shed (84A) in October 1952 and was allocated to various sheds before returning to Tyseley Shed (84E) in July 1965, from where No 4147 was withdrawn in October 1965.

The other 5101 class locomotive on the right in the bay platform is in the process of replenishing its 2000 gallon water tanks from the platform water crane (see also 'gwrha1394'), before backing on to the carriages of the passenger train which it had brought from Moor Street earlier and deposited in the bay platform. The locomotives lamp headcode indicates a class D empty coaching stock train, which was timetabled to leave Henley-in-Arden at 6:35pm and arrive at the Tyseley Carriage Sidings at 7:08pm. Only the first three digits (411..) of the locomotive’s four figure number is visible on the buffer beam, so the locomotive is probably either 4111 or 4116 both of which were allocated to Tyseley Shed (TYS) at this time. These two locomotives were both built at Swindon Works in October and November of 1936 respectively as part of lot 292. No 4111 was withdrawn from Tyseley Shed (84E) in September 1965 and No 4116 was withdrawn from Gloucester Shed (85B) in September 1962 after recording a mileage of 718,220 miles.

back