Talk:Locomotives of the Great Western Railway

Talk page for Locomotives of the Great Western Railway! Please talk! Dunc|&#9786; 18:31, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

identify this engine: 9700 Class ?
Am I right? Is this a 9700 class ? Dunc|&#9786; 18:33, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I thought 97xx locos were part of the GWR 5700 Class, but may be wrong. Our Phellap 19:09, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, well according to http://www.eclipsehistory.org.uk/steam8.htm#Steam basically "GWR 7700 Class engine with ide tanks fitted", and 7700 are 5700s. Also http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/m_in_060_5700.htm "One small separate series within the class were numbers 9700 to 9710 as these were locomotives fitted with condensing gear for working the meat traffic over London's Metropolitan line to Smithfield market. A prototype was built in 1932 from engine number 8700 with pannier tanks of reduced length so that the recirculating Weir pump and associated pipework could be installed. After a year on trial, the only modification needed for the production of the small class was an increase in the water capacity. The shape of the tanks was altered to join with the running plate at the rear increasing capacity to 1250 gallons. The prototype was modified to this design and renumbered 9700. A replacement for 8700 was built in 1934 by GWR Swindon" so, I guess so, it's just I've never seen one before. Dunc|&#9786; 19:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok makes sense. Might be worth putting all 77xx and 97xx under the 5700 Class for now to save having lots of short articles. They are basically all the same thing - just like the different sub-classes for modern day diesel/electric locos. Our Phellap 22:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

517 Class
My ABC of GWR Locomotives (1945? edition) shows three locos in this class: 3574/3575/3577; notes show them to have been built at Wolverhampton 1895-7 Peter Shearan 16:15, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Constituent companies' locos
As I have put at the head of the list, my ABC is dated c1945, and many of the earlier locos are obviously not included here. Where there are some longer lists (eg TVR) there are gaps in the numbering system where locos had been scrapped, presumably. Peter Shearan 18:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

What's this, then?
From The Story of the Cambrian, by C. P. Gasquoine, 1922, Project Gutenberg eText 20074. Extra marks for identifying theother locos in that publication. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Merger from GWR article
The Great Western Railway article is pushing towards GA status but is now rather long. One of the sections that could be easily moved is that dealing with the history of GWR locomotives, which would find a natural home here. It would make this more of an article and less of a list, but my only concern would then be the length of this article! Geof Sheppard (talk) 13:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Armstrong Locomotives
Things have gone awry in this article as regards the list of the locomotives built by the Armstrong brothers, Joseph and George. In fact, George doesn't even get a mention (though he does elsewhere, including his own stub-length article).

George worked independently at Stafford Road, Wolverhampton after Joseph's departure to Swindon in 1864, and right up to his retirement in 1892. He should have a section to himself before Dean (section 2.4), headed George Armstrong (Wolverhampton 1864-1892). Among the designs that should be attributed to him not Joseph are the 517 and 645 classes. There are doubtless others; I will write again when I have the full information to hand.

The 517 and 645 have their own articles, which need correcting. Delete 'Joseph', insert 'George'.

By the way, Joseph Armstrong was my great-great grandfather!

Tim Roberts 8474tim (talk) 19:31, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Articles on 517 & 645 classes amended. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:32, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Armstrongs again
More on the same subject: in addition to taking Wolverhampton engines out of the list of Joseph Armstrong's 'narrow gauge' list of locos, there are some important classes that have been omitted, i.e. his 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 express engines (some of which do at least get mentioned in the text).

Thank you for your interest!

8474tim (talk) 20:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Table of locomotives - Joseph Armstrong
At the bottom of the article is a coloured table of Great Western engines of all periods. Here again Joseph Armstrong's work is only very partially represented - in fact only his broad gauge engines (the least important part of his work) are listed. His standard-gauge engines from both Wolverhampton (1854-64) and Swindon (1864-77) are entirely missing. Perhaps this was a typing error? - two whole lines of information seem to be missing.

This table is of course reproduced in all the articles on individual classes - with the same mistake.

Does the author/editor of this article want me to try and supply this information? Unfortunately I do not have my railway books to hand but I can try and go to the British Library to sort all this out.

For a good account of GEORGE Armstrong's work (though unfortunately without locomotive numbers), see

www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk/Museum/Transport/Trains/GA.htm

Thank-you

8474tim (talk) 21:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The table is generated by a template, Template:GWR Locomotives. This template may be edited like any other Wikipedia page. At upper left of the table you will see the cryptic message "". These are three links, where: v=view, where you may view the template page; d=discussion, that is, the talk page associated with the template; and e=edit, which is a direct link to the "edit" tab of the template.
 * If you're at all uncertain as to how the template is built up, it's probably best to make your suggestions on the template's talk page.
 * The best work on GWR locos from the pre-Churchward era is the 14-part series "Locomotives of the Great Western Railway", published between 1951 and 1993 by the RCTS, particularly parts 1-7,12-14. Unfortunately, most parts are now out of print (with future reprints being unlikely), and few libraries keep even one volume. Even my set isn't complete - I don't have the original covers or endpapers for part 4 "Six-wheeled Tender Engines". -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:32, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

3900 series 2-6-2t engines
I cannot see these in the GWR Locomotives article. THere are pictures of these in warwickshirerailways web site under BIRMINGHAM SNOW HILL photographs with some explanation of these twenty locos. They were rebuilds of DEAN GOODS engines it says. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.173.147.255 (talk) 17:43, 20 August 2013 (UTC) EMail johnwendyjim@aol.com raised this query 86.173.147.255 (talk) 19:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Page GWR 3901 Class has been created. Verbarson (talk) 11:38, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Holden's 101 class
I have added a section on Holden and his experimental oil-fired loco. Can anyone clarify his dates at GWR? The best data on the loco suggest 1901-2 for build, but Holden's page has him leaving GWR before then. John M Brear (talk) 11:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Replied at Talk:James Holden (locomotive engineer) and Talk:GWR 101 Class; note that per WP:MULTI having more than one discussion on the same topic can be confusing. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:21, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I have removed the Holden section and moved 101 to Churchward. As in GWR 101 Class, my authority is Haresnape (1976), but there may be more information to come from the relevant RCTS volume (see Talk:GWR 101 Class) --Verbarson (talk) 19:21, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Expand list satisfied?
I think that this article is now fairly complete as far as GWR engines in the 20th century is concerned. Is it also complete for the 19th century? If so, the first Expand list can be removed.--Verbarson (talk) 16:34, 21 September 2021 (UTC)


 * There being no replies, and with no 'obvious entries' missing, I have removed Expand list from the article. Verbarson (talk) 14:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)