Masterclass: GWR ‘County’
A detailed look at Hawksworth’s GWR ‘County’ and its revolutionary design.
The impact of the Second World War on Britain’s railways should never be underestimated. It changed everything and its shockwaves would be felt for decades after hostilities ceased.
Gone were the railway’s glamour days. The ‘Big Four’ were battered and broke. Manpower, materials and money were all in short supply and it was a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ the Government would take them over.
The war’s impact was felt in the drawing offices of the ‘Big Four’s’ main works, changing the output of the chief mechanical engineers. Gone were names of the 1930s. Gresley, Stanier, Collett and Maunsell had overseen glamorous express locomotives, some streamlined, a railway of luxury and a healthy workforce. Their post-war counterparts had a very different world to contend with.
H.G. Ivatt’s locomotives were all high running plates, exposed motion and labour-saving devices; his brother-in-law Oliver Bulleid was producing slab-sided machines with revolutionary valve gear and electric lights. At Doncaster, Edward Thompson was dividing opinion with handsome mixed traffic designs but some frankly hideous express locomotives in an attempt to replace Gresley-holcroft conjugated valve gear with something more simple.
And what did Swindon Works produce after the war? That’s right, a 4-6-0 with a copper cap chimney…
Charles Collett is often accused of letting Great Western locomotive development stagnate. That’s a debate for another time, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the already solitary Collett withdrew into himself even further following the death of his wife Ethelwyn in 1923, and he indulged his interest in the paranormal and spiritualism far more than engineering as the 1930s progressed. Swindon spent its time filling in gaps in the fleet rather than getting on with the pioneering work with which it had made its name in the 1910s and 1920s under the inspired leadership of George Jackson Churchward.
SWINDON AT WAR
Collett was persuaded to retire in 1941 and the chief mechanical engineer’s post was filled by former chief locomotive draughtsman Frederick Hawksworth. It was not the ideal time to take office.
GWR locomotives were complicated machines to build. The frames were a mixture of traditional British plate and US bar. Machining tolerances were to a standard that was much higher than other works demanded.
Wartime restrictions made life hard work at Swindon, while poor coal and lack of maintenance hampered performance out on the road to locomotives with low-degree superheating that were designed to be fired on the best Welsh coal. Hawksworth had to design to wartime needs and the immediate post-war world. Evidence of this appeared in March 1944 when a new ‘Hall’ was outshopped from
Above: No. 1021 County of Montgomery leaves Teignmouth with a Paignton-liverpool service on July 26 1955. The ‘Counties’ wider tenders also required wider cabs, which meant that enginemen couldn’t access the smokebox by sliding along the running plate under the cab. A front step was provided under the bufferbeam, however, somewhat unhelpfully, on one side only. NORMAN PREEDY ARCHIVE/RAIL PHOTOPRINTS
Left: The ‘County’s’ boiler pressure was reduced to 250lbs/sq in in 1956 and, from 1957, the threerow superheater was replaced with a four-row affair. The extra lubricator pipework was often hidden underneath an additional cover on the driver’s side, as illustrated by No. 1006 County of
Cornwall at Plymouth Laira shed on April 29 1962. DAVE COBBE COLLECTION/RAIL PHOTOPRINTS
Pioneer ‘County’ No. 1000 County of Middlesex shows off its original double chimney, with distinctive lip, at Laira shed on July 24 1949. No. 1000 didn’t receive a standard double chimney until 1958. NORMAN PREEDY ARCHIVE/RAIL PHOTOPRINTS
Swindon. No. 6959 may have looked like the previous 259 examples, but closer inspection revealed some radical departures from the Churchward/collett way of doing things.
The main frames were plate throughout. Traditionally, GWR cylinders were cast in two halves and each half included part of the smokebox saddle. In the modified ‘Hall’, the cylinders were bolted to the main frame with a centre stay forming the smokebox saddle. Gone was the superb but complex de Glehn bogie; in its place was a simple plate frame affair. The Standard No. 1 boiler looked outwardly similar but had a revised arrangement of tubes and a three-row superheater.
Swindon would build a further 70 ‘Modified Halls’ for both the GWR and BR.
But with No. 6959, later named Peatling Hall, Hawksworth and his team were working on something more radical.
Churchward had been responsible for Britain’s first 4-6-2 in 1908 but the GWR had found that the 4-6-0 suited its
Bear requirements well. However, during the war years, Hawksworth and his team started to investigate what a post-war GWR ‘Pacific’ might look like. They didn’t get very far as wartime restrictions forbid the development of new express passenger designs. So the team switched its attention to a new 4-6-0, incorporating some of the ‘Pacific’s’ features.
A January 1944 drawing shows what a radical departure this new design could have been: outside Walschearts valve gear and a high running plate that gave a foretaste of the BR Standard types.
What eventually emerged from Swindon in August 1945 was a curious mixture of conventional and the radical. It was bigger than a ‘Hall’ but smaller than a ‘Castle’. It had all the hallmarks of a GWR locomotive: long, taper boiler and firebox, safety valve bonnet, prominent cylinders, curved running plate under the smokebox and cab, and a Collett cab.
Yet everything was different. The boiler was new, dubbed No. 15, and it had a shorter barrel and larger firebox than the ‘Castle’s’. Jigs used at Swindon to build wartime Stanier ‘8F’ boilers were reused for the new locomotive.
A similar level of superheating as The Great
the ‘Modified Hall’ was employed but the boiler was pressed to a whopping 280lbs/sq in. In another first for Swindon, sitting atop the longer than standard smokebox, was a double chimney. Beneath the running plate were features found on the ‘Modified Hall’; plate frames throughout and the plate frame bogie.
The wheels were 6ft 3in, another departure from standard GWR practice.
Arguably the most eye-catching features were the single-piece splashers and straight nameplates. Apparently, the design was produced under great secrecy at Swindon, but news had leaked to the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society, whose house magazine, The Railway Observer,
reported on the splashers!
Behind the locomotive was a new type of tender. Key dimensions were akin to previous GWR tenders but the body was of welded
construction, with flush side raves and it was designed to be self-trimming. Even the toolboxes were in a new position.
Pioneer No. 1000, built in August 1945, went new to Old Oak Common shed on September 9 that year. Nine more,
Nos. 1001-1009, would follow, Nos. 1010-1022 being built in 1946 and Nos. 1023-1029 in 1947.
SPREAD FAR AND WIDE
It was not until March 1946 that the naming theme was unveiled. The class would resurrect the theme of counties; county names had already been applied to Churchward’s outside cylinder 4-4-0s of 1904. No. 1000 would become County of Middlesex, just as the pioneer Churchward ‘County’ had been.
The ‘Counties’ were initially allocated to sheds that served the GWR’S principal main lines: Bristol Bath Road, Newton Abbot,