BR_ Castle Class_ 4-6-0_ 5013 'Abergavenny Castle' - Era 5

Last crawled date: 9 months, 3 weeks ago

By the time Charles Collett took over from George Churchward as Chief Mechanical Officer of the Great Western Railway at Swindon in 1921, holiday traffic from London to Devon and Cornwall was demanding heavier trains and the GWR management were devoting proportionally more money and resources to West of England services, from Paddington, than to any other routes. Collett's solution was to take the basic 4-6-0 layout of the existing Star Class, keeping the same frame layout and wheel spacing and adding a newly designed No.8 boiler which was both larger and lighter.The result was the GWR Class 4073, or ‘Castle’ Class, with which Collett could both supplement the Stars and replace them on the heaviest expresses. The Castle's tractive effort was 31,625lbs at 85% boiler pressure compared to the Star's 27,800lbs, whilst the grate area was increased to 29.4 ft2 in the Castle, from the 27.07 ft2 in the Star. The bar-frame bogie was of standard Swindon design, the superheater was the No.3 ty