Great Western: Eight Coupled Heavy Freight Locomotives

Chapter 1

OVERVIEW

The Great Western Railway (GWR), fostered by its own effective publicity department, became best known for its glamorous expresses to Devon and Cornwall, its high speed services over Brunel’s superb route from London to Swindon and Bristol, and for the Brunswick green, copper-capped locomotives that the travelling public became familiar with. But the bedrock of the profitability of the company was freight and, for the Great Western, freight meant coal. Coal from the largest coalfield in the United Kingdom.

Between the years 1880 and 1913, Britain’s annual coal output grew from 147 million tons to 287 million tons, an increase of 95 per cent. The South Wales pits, third in output behind the north-east and Lancashire in 1880, outgrew them to increase from 21.2 million tons a year to 56.8 over the same period, an increase of nearly 168 per cent. Because of the high quality of Welsh steam coal from the Cardiff and Newport Valleys, exports grew to meet the demand for steam power, which was required by heavy industry, railways, commercial shipping companies and navies throughout the world. The older ports of Newport, Cardiff and Swansea were augmented in the 1880s by the creation of Barry Docks, specifically for the coal export trade, and investment to increase South Wales dock capacity took place over the following thirty years. By 1913 nearly twenty per cent of South Wales’s coal output was being exported through Barry Docks. The Cardiff/Barry Docks complex was the largest coal-exporting port in the world. South Wales boasted 609 open pits, just over a quarter of the number of coalmines in Great Britain at that time.

Faced with this rapid growth, the Great Western’s new locomotive, carriage and wagon superintendent, George Jackson Churchward, appointed by the GW board in January 1902 and taking up the position at the end of May, included a heavy freight locomotive among the first three of his new standard locomotives that were built in 1903. It was No.97, a 2-8-0 that became the prototype for the highly successful and long-lived 28XX class, alongside No.98, a 4-6-0 that became the ‘Saint’ class and No.99, the first of the many 2-6-2 tanks that were to be found everywhere on the Great Western throughout its existence. By the outbreak of the First World War, fifty-six of the 2-8-0s had been built, along with forty-one of the 42XX 2-8-0 tank engines that Churchward designed and had built from 1910, to cope with the heavy flow of coal from the valleys to the docks, over short but steeply graded routes, averaging about twenty to twenty-five miles in length. Until then, much of the colliery short distance traffic to the docks had been handled by the myriad types of 0-6-2 tanks built by the Taff Vale and Rhymney railway companies in particular. At the turn of the century, the Barry and Port Talbot Railways had acquired a few 0-8-2 tanks and 0-8-0 tender engines, but most had gone by the end of the 1920s.

As a result of the use of the main line larger locomotives, freight train mileage fell by fourteen per cent in the first decade of the century, whilst tonnage conveyed rose by thirty-five per cent and express vacuum-braked goods and perishable trains were introduced in 1905. Other services started as the number of brake-fitted vehicles increased, and forty- or sixty-wagon trains, with at least a third braked, could average 35mph, with a maximum of 45mph.

The outbreak of war made the movement of coal even more imperative and the Great Western found its capacity to move this wartime traffic stretched to — and beyond — its limit. Not only did it have the movements within South Wales and to English docks on the Channel to cover, but coal for the British Navy in Scapa Flow had to be transported over the North & West route to Chester, Warrington and Scotland — the ‘Jellicoe’ specials, as they were nicknamed. During the war the GWR moved ninety per cent of the coal required by the country’s armed forces (the navy burning six million tons of coal a year in addition to that required for the wartime industries). The GWR acquired twenty ROD 2-8-0s, the 1911 Great Central Robinson ‘8K’ class (LNER O4) at the end of the war, and a further eighty-four from the Railway Operating Division of the Ministry of Transport between 1919 and 1922, although many were stored and then scrapped as the General Strike of 1926 and the Depression of the 1930s cut the output of the South Wales coalfield significantly.

Churchward did not ignore the other, more varied, freight traffic, and in 1919 he designed a very specific locomotive for the Great Western’s general merchandise that needed overnight delivery between London and the West of England and to and from the industrial West Midlands. The 5’ 8" wheeled 47XX, a class of only nine engines, saw regular overnight use between Paddington Goods, Bristol, Plymouth, Birmingham and Birkenhead and, in the post-war years, was seen regularly on holiday traffic from London and Bristol to South Devon on summer Saturday peak services.

Churchward’s successor, Charles Collett, made detailed alterations but continued to have Swindon turn out more 2-8-0s, the ‘2884’ class, and more heavy freight tank engines, the ‘5205’ class, though the Depression caused him to rebuild some of the latter into 2-8-2 tank engines class 72XX, to make them more versatile over longer distances and not confined to the dwindling valley coal traffic, which was then but a third of its 1913 output. The South Wales mines and steelworks were badly hit by a lack of orders and, at its worst, thirty-six per cent of the working population of South Wales was unemployed.

The Second World War reversed the trends in coal flows once again, and despite the GWR having 114 of the ‘2800’ and ‘2884’ 2-8-0s, 50 RODs and 205 heavy 2-8-0 and 2-8-2 tanks by September 1939, this was insufficient for the freight tonnages required, even though much of the British Navy was by then oil-fired. There was also heavy general merchandise traffic to and from the South Wales and Channel ports, London and the West Midlands. Initially, in 1941, the immediate shortage was met by twenty-five 2-8-0 LMS 8Fs being loaned to the GWR along with thirty Robinson O4s from the LNER and fifteen 4-6-0s from the Southern. In 1943 Swindon Works was required by the Ministry of Transport to build eighty Stanier 8F 2-8-0s, which were loaned immediately to the GWR. Then, in the same year, a shipment of S160 USA-built 2-8-0s began to be received in the UK for eventual movement to Europe after D–Day. In the meantime many of these 175 locomotives were used by the GWR to bolster its freight locomotive fleet and, as they left for the Continent, they were replaced by the WD 2-8-0s, many of which stayed in operation on the Western Region of BR along with the 8Fs, as well as the RODs and the true GW engines, of which forty-three more in the 38XX series were built during the Second World War period.

In 1945, in the immediate post-war period, the GWR piloted oil-firing on some of its steam passenger and freight locomotives and twenty 28XX and 38XX were rebuilt as oil-burners and renumbered in the 48XX series. The initiative was short-lived, due to the government having a balance of payments problem that made it impossible to import sufficient oil, and all had been converted back to coal-firing by 1948. In August of that year the newly formed British Transport Commission tested a number of passenger and mixed traffic locomotives from each Region, and the WR ‘2884 class’ was selected for trial on performance and economy against the ex-LMS 8Fs, LNER O1s and the WD 2-8-0 and 2-10-0s. No.3803 ran on the East Coast Main Line and its own region and 3864 was subsequently tested with its preferred South Wales coal on the Western Region (WR) test route. These 1903-designed engines (though built between 1938 and 1942) performed very creditably against their much younger competitors, and 3864 provided the best results of any when using the fuel for which it was designed. It is rumoured that the WR management sought permission to build more of the 38XX shortly after nationalisation, rather than receive any of the new ‘Standard’ freight classes, but their request was refused. Engines of the 38XX series lasted until the end of steam on the WR in November 1965, and members of the 2-8-0 and 2-8-2 tanks lasted until July that year.

This book will describe the design, construction and operation of the Churchward and Collett 2-8-0s and heavy freight tank engines and the twenty-seven that have been preserved, including the eight currently in operation on Britain’s heritage railways. However it will not ignore those engines loaned to or acquired by the GWR during the last thirty years of its existence; these will be described in lesser detail. As well as providing a comprehensive overview of the steam freight power the GWR and its successor, BR’s Western Region, used to sustain their profitable freight traffic over half a century, it is hoped that the description, and the many black and white and colour photos, will assist those who wish to model these locomotives or adapt the admirable commercial models of the GWR 2-8-0s and 2-8-0/2-8-2 tanks, RODs, 8Fs and WDs that are now available on the market.

Chapter 2

FROM DEAN TO HAWKSWORTH

Four Great Western engineers oversaw the motive power requirements of the profitable heavy freight traffic during the first half of the twentieth century; however, the main architects of the locomotives included in this book are the two ‘middle’ ones: George Jackson Churchward and Charles Benjamin Collett, who covered the period from 1902 to 1941. The increasing development of the South Wales coalfield was mainly in the hands of William Dean’s reliable 0–6-0 goods engines and a variety of Welsh company 0-6-2 tanks, but, by the 1890s, something more powerful was needed and Dean, with able support from his chief assistant, Churchward, built two experimental 4-6-0 freight engines, and also some 2-6-0s (the ‘Krugers’), from which were developed the more successful ‘Aberdare’ moguls, with 4’ 7 ½ coupled wheels, two 19 by 28" cylinders, and an 180lb working pressure boiler.

By the late 1890s William Dean, though a very respected engineer and citizen of Swindon, was becoming increasingly plagued with ill-health and was obliged to pass work more and more onto Churchward, who used the responsibility he had been given to update Dean’s designs, to research developments elsewhere (particularly in the USA and France) and to prepare the ground for the standardisation of the GWR locomotive fleet. He undertook many of Dean’s responsibilities for two or three years with great diplomacy as the superintendent’s health was fading fast. Dean had been an outstanding individual and was much revered within the railway industry.

William Dean, 1840–1905, Chief Locomotive Engineer of the Great Western Railway, 1877–1905. (GW official photograph)

Churchward was born in 1857 in Stoke Gabriel, on the River Dart between Kingswear and Totnes. He joined the South Devon Railway at Newton Abbot in 1873 and, after the South Devon was absorbed by the GWR in 1876, he transferred, aged just nineteen, to the Swindon Drawing Office. After a few rapid promotions he was appointed Carriage and Wagon Works Manager in 1885. Ten years later he became the manager of Swindon Works and identified as Dean’s successor when he became his chief assistant in 1897 at a salary of £900 a year. Although he was not appointed Locomotive Superintendent until 1st June 1902 – with his salary increased to £2,500 – he had been developing his ideas within the scope given him by Dean, and by January 1901 had already written a paper on a scheme for a limited number of ‘standard’ locomotive designs, among them a powerful 2-8-0, as the ‘Aberdares’ were not able to handle efficiently the huge tonnages then flowing out of South Wales for English destinations.

George Jackson Churchward, 1857–1933, Locomotive Superintendent (1902–1916) and Chief Mechanical Engineer (1916–1922) of the Great Western Railway. (GW official photograph/NRM Collection)

Churchward’s 1901 paper outlined a scheme for six standard locomotive classes, the aforesaid 2-8-0, two 4-6-0s, a 4-4-0, a 2-6-2 tank, and a 4-4-2 tank. All had 18 by 30 cylinders with 8½ diameter piston valves and two standard boilers, a 15’ barrel for the tender engines and an 11’ 2 barrel for the tank engines. The first 4-6-0 was built within a month of Churchward’s formal appointment and the 2-8-0, No.97, the second standard locomotive to emerge from Swindon Works, was built in June 1903. By 1905 Churchward had amassed sufficient experience of these prototypes to proceed with confidence and the standard 4-6-0s, 2-8-0s and 2-6-2 tanks began to be built in quantity. He then finalised his plans for the full range of standard locomotives to meet all the GWR’s needs, which, as well as the passenger locomotives, included the 2-8-0 tank, the 4200 class, the 2-6-0 mixed traffic 4300 and even an 0-8-0 pannier tank (see appendix), although the latter did not progress beyond the outline design stage. His designs were remarkable for their simplicity, robustness and practicability, and his locomotives enjoyed a reputation of great reliability.

Churchward interested himself in locomotive, carriage and wagon matters, leaving the rest to his chief assistant, F.G. Wright. Churchward selected bright young engineers, involved them in frequent discussions, talked regularly to the draughtsmen and was active in seeking the views of practical men in the works and the running sheds, as well as maintaining his interest in developments overseas. The 1950s Western Region Chairman, Reggie Hanks, himself an apprentice at Swindon Works in 1912, recounted a couple of anecdotes about Churchward’s hands-on involvement. On one occasion on Frome station he observed the fireman leaning far out over the cabside to see the injector overflow. He promptly had the overflow pipe moved from behind to the leading edge of the cab steps, so that the fireman would not have to lean out so far. On another occasion he was discussing some detail of design with his chief draughtsman and one of the younger office staff who had prepared the detailed work. The chief draughtsman began to answer Churchward’s questions, but was told brusquely to ‘Shut up — let the young man speak for himself. He did the work!’ In such ways, Swindon design developed step by step and it put the GWR a decade or more ahead of any other railway in the country, as far as locomotives were concerned.

Churchward had an even temperament and a dignified bearing suggesting a ‘country squire’, a persona strengthened by his interest in country pursuits, especially fishing. But he was also a good administrator and a leader of men. He drew out the best from his staff and created a culture of good teamwork. In 1916 his title was changed to that of Chief Mechanical Engineer, he was awarded the CBE at the end of the war and, in October 1920, became the first honorary freeman of Swindon, of which he had been the first mayor in 1900.

It is well known that his life ended when he was run down by one of his successor’s engines whilst crossing the line from his home to Swindon Works nearly twelve years after his retirement. He retained his interest to the end and kept himself abreast of developments without obviously interfering with the policies and decisions of his successor. Upon his retirement in 1922, Railway Magazine had published a tribute which included the words, ‘It would be invidious to suggest that Mr G.J. Churchward CBE, who retired from the position of Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, is the greatest locomotive engineer in modern British practice.’

Behind this reputation were a number of significant facts. He had established a fleet of 888 new locomotives, his passenger and freight locos had been compared against those of other railways and had been shown to shine in both performance and economy, influencing design within the other major companies. Locomotives to his basic designs were still being built more than a generation later and were at the forefront of Western Region power at nationalisation in 1948. Nor had he rested on his laurels: as late as 1919 he had produced the