GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Leamington Spa - GWR Locomotives: gwrls209

GWR 4-6-0 40xx 'Star' class No 4050 'Princess Alice' pauses at the up platform for the driver to check the locomotive. One of a batch of fifteen 'Princesses' built at Swindon in the summer of 1914 to Lot 199 No 4050 was built in June of that year. All ‘Stars’ were built with a long cone tapered Standard No 1 boiler and this batch had four 15 inch cylinders, which raised the tractive effort to 27,800lb. The 'Princess' locomotives had special fluted steel alloy coupling rods, but these were later replaced with the standard pattern. They were also the first engines to be fitted with the new four cone ejector braking apparatus. Ejectors are required to release the vacuum brakes after application, but the increased length of passenger trains made an enlarged ejector necessary and a new ejector with four cones combined in one casing was designed. This was placed outside the firebox with an exhaust pipe running along the boiler to the smokebox as can be seen in this photograph. Prior to the introduction of the ‘Castle’ class the bulk of the ‘Star’ class were stationed in London and Plymouth for use on the prestigious West of England expresses, but in the 1920s and 1930s they were gradually displaced to the secondary expresses from Bristol, Swindon, Weymouth, Wolverhampton, Landore, Oxford and Tyseley. Allocated to Old Oak Common Shed in 1934 No 4050 was withdrawn in February 1952 from 87E Landore Shed in Swansea to be scrapped at Swindon shortly afterwards.

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