GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Wood End Platform: gwrwe2844

GWR 0-4-2T 517 class No 544 is seen just after leaving Wood End Tunnel at the head of an up Birmingham to Bearley Auto train made up of two auto-coaches circa 1920. 0-4-2T ‘517’ Class No 544 was built at the Great Western Railway's Wolverhampton Works (Lot F, Works No 98) as a short wheel base saddle tank in March 1869. This locomotive was one of the last of the class to be fitted with side tanks during a rebuild at Swindon in April 1899, at which time the engine was also reboilered, converted to a long wheel base and given an enclosed cab and coal bunker. This locomotive was fitted with Auto apparatus between 1904 and 1923 and is known to have been shedded at Wolverhampton in 1921. No 544 was withdrawn in October 1928. Photographer Salmon L Henry

The first auto trailer is a 70 foot diagram L trailer with 9 foot coil spring bogies, of which eleven were completed in 1906. This is No 43, which one of the second batch (lot 1127) completed in December of that year. The second trailer is either a diagram L or P and has 9 foot American bogies indicating a later build date. The diagram L trailers could seat 76 passengers in two compartments either side of a vestibule area. The smaller compartment being set aside for smoking. At the end nearest to the locomotive was a luggage compartment (note the bared windows), while at the other end was a driving compartment for when the train operated in the reverse direction. The livery indicates that the photograph must have been taken post summer 1922, when the Great Western Railway reintroduced their fully lined brown and cream livery. Trailer No 43 was condemned in June 1955 and passed into service stock becoming a classroom at Carmarthen until June 1960.

Robert Ferris

Photographer Henry L Salmon

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