In August 1923 the first GWR ‘Castle’ class emerged from Swindon Works. Andrew Wilson explains how few people at the time realised the influence that the design would have on the drawing offices of the ‘Big Four’.
What was it about the ‘Castle’ class that made it so appealing? For me as a young schoolboy it was a combination of the copper-capped chimneys, brass safety valve bonnets, cast name and numberplates, green paint with its orange-black-orange lining, and those often strange but evocative names. Not content with just recording numbers, I carefully wrote down the names – Aberystwyth Castle, Caerhays Castle, Carn Brea Castle, Harlech Castle, Treago Castle, Caerphilly Castle, Coity Castle and many more – all to be checked in my Observer’s Book of Railway Locomotives of Britain. Only later when sat on the platforms at Royal Oak station with my father and holding my Western Region ABC as we watched the comings and goings into and out of Paddington, did I begin to appreciate that the ‘Castles’ were something special.
As early as 1919 G J Churchward began planning improved ‘Star’ and ‘Saint’ class 4-6-0s despite neither design being found wanting. Contemporary reports from locomotive inspectors show that both classes rarely had to be worked at maximum steaming/evaporative rates and at this time the wartime constraints on schedules was still in force. Once restrictions were lifted, Churchward realised that timi
