LNER Route: Leicester to Marylebone

Rugby Central Station: gcrcs207

Ex-Southern Railways West Country class 4-6-2 No 34042 'Dorchester' on a football cup special passes Rugby Signal Box in March 1963 on its way to Nottingham. Built as 21C 142 by Brighton Works in October 1946 it was rebuilt by British Railways and renumbered as No 342042 which it remained until October 1965 when it was withdrawn from 70D Eastleigh shed. The West Country and the Battle of Britain class were collectively described as Light Pacifics or informally as Spam Cans and were classes of air-smoothed 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive designed for the Southern Railway by its Chief Mechanical Engineer Oliver Bulleid. They introduced a number of new developments in technology to British steam locomotive construction including being amongst the first British designs to utilise welding in the construction process, and to use steel fireboxes, which meant that components could be more easily constructed during the wartime austerity and post-war economy.

They were designed to be lighter in weight than their sister locomotives, the Merchant Navy class, to permit use on a wider variety of routes, including those in the South-West of England and the Kent coast. They were allegedly a mixed-traffic design, said to equally adept at hauling passenger as well as freight trains although their 4-6-2 wheel configuration meant that they were not as sure footed as a 4-6-0 design. They were therefore used by the Southern Railway and its successor the Southern Region on all types of services, frequently far below their capabilities. In total 110 West Country and the Battle of Britain locomotives were built between 1945 and 1950 being named after either West Country resorts or Royal Air Force subjects associated with the Battle of Britain. Due to problems with some of the radical features of Bulleid's design, such as the Bulleid chain-driven valve gear, sixty locomotives were rebuilt by British Railways during the late 1950s. This produced a locomotive design highly similar to that of the rebuilt Merchant Navy class. The classes operated until July 1967, when the last steam locomotives on the Southern Region were withdrawn from service. Although most were subsequently scrapped, twenty locomotives avoided this fate and instead found new homes on heritage railways in Britain.

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