Maidment - Great Western Moguls & Prairies: profile of GWRs large & small 2-6-2 tanks, 2-6-0 43XX Moguls and other Prairie tanks and Moguls that operated on the GWR between 1922 and 1965

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Pen & Sword Transport
An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright David Maidment, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47382 744 8
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47386 932 5
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47386 931 8
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47386 930 1

All royalties from this book will be donated to the Railway Children charity [reg. no. 1058991] [www.railwaychildren.org.uk]

The right of David Maidment to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor by way of trade or otherwise shall it be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Previous Publications:

Novels (Religious historical fiction)
The Child Madonna, Melrose Books, 2009
The Missing Madonna, PublishNation, 2012
The Madonna and her Sons, PublishNation, 2015

Novels (Railway fiction)
Lives on the Line, Max Books, 2013

Non-fiction (Railways)
The Toss of a Coin, PublishNation, 2014
A Privileged Journey, Pen & Sword, 2015
An Indian Summer of Steam, Pen & Sword, 2015
Great Western Eight-Coupled Heavy Freight Locomotives,
Pen & Sword, 2015

Non-fiction (Street Children)
The Other Railway Children, PublishNation, 2012
Nobody Ever Listened To Me, PublishNation, 2012

Cover photo:
Small Prairie 4566, built in October 1924 and now preserved in BR plain
black livery, operating on the Severn Valley Railway in 2014, shown here
ex-works in BR lined green livery at Truro, 22 July 1960. R.C. Riley

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

M any people have been generous in supplying information and photographs for this book. As all royalties are being donated to the Railway Children charity, many have given their contribution as a donation or charged a nominal fee. I wish in particular to acknowledge the enormous contribution made by John Hodge, who allowed access to his huge collection of photographs and use them free of charge, and the permission given by John Copsey and David Andrews to use the prolific research for articles and books they have written about the Prairie tanks and GW Moguls respectively.

I wish to offer grateful thanks too for access to the photographic collection of R.C. Riley, made available to me by his widow, Christine, and friend, Rodney Lissenden; to Paul Shackcloth and the Manchester Locomotive Society, their photographic archive and the collections of members, and to Laurence Waters of the Great Western Trust at Didcot, who helped find many of the historic photos included in the book from the trusts extensive archive. And not least, the support given to me by John Scott-Morgan of Pen & Sword, in helping me find the contacts I needed and for the general advice on the layout and plan for the book. Every effort has been made to contact the copyright owners of the photos used. If we have overlooked anyone, please contact the publisher who will enable me to rectify the situation. Finally, I wish to thank my daughter, Helen, for the great help she has given me in scanning and preparing many of the photographs for publication in the book.

I repeat, all royalties from the publication and sale of this book, including any advances after photographic fees have been paid, will be donated to the Railway Children charity, which I founded in 1995 with the support of many in the railway industry, to protect, support and rehabilitate street and runaway children found on railway and bus stations and the streets of India, East Africa and the United Kingdom.

David Maidment

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

W hen the accomplishments of Churchward and the golden era of the Great Western Railway are spoken of, it is the dramatic and startling introduction onto the British landscape of the Saints and Stars and the exploits of the Cheltenham Flyer and the Cornish Riviera Limited that immediately come to mind. Many books have been written on subjects such as these. When I perused the well-stocked bookshelves of my local railway society, which is devoted to Great Western motive power, I found it was full of books by such luminaries as O.S. Nock and Cecil J. Allen on Kings and Castles, Saints and Stars and even the Dean Singles and 4-4-0s, or the locomotives of the Broad Gauge. However on the lesser lights, out of the gaze of the Great Westerns publicity machine, there was little. Even the books on the great engineers concentrated on their front-line passenger engines, and it was only the Railway Correspondence & Travel Societys admirable books on the history of Great Western engines that was comprehensive in its scope, giving a treasury of factual data on which others can draw with confidence.

With such gaps in mind, I researched and wrote about that other Churchward masterpiece, the 2800 class heavy freight 2-8-0 and its derivatives, the eight-coupled tank engines serving the GWRs lifeblood, the coal from the South Wales mines that formed the basis of the Companys profitability. Now in the second of the locomotive profile series that Pen & Sword have commissioned me to write, I am turning my mind and hand to the story of a group of other locomotives that were such a common sight throughout the Great Western territory and its successor, British Railways Western Region, that they were just taken for granted, part of the background, so to speak; the Churchward Moguls and the myriad types of Churchward and Collett Prairie tanks, both large and small.

When I was a trainspotter, like so many other youngsters in the late 1940s and 1950s, these engines were but mere underlinings in my Ian Allan ABCs. It was the namers that took our attention, not those 61ers dashing into Paddington half hidden by the Arrival Signalbox. Or on holiday in South Devon in the early 1950s, Id crave runs to Goodrington or Teignmouth or Dawlish behind Castles, or even Halls or Granges, and common engines, like 4176, 4582 or 5557, at the head of my stopping train were met with disappointment. I look through the photos that I took then with my simple folding Kodak camera and its all Kings and Castles, the odd Grange or Hall or Manor at Newton Abbot or along the sea wall at Teignmouth. I look in vain for other classes two photos of a 38XX, one blurred; one of 5557 departing in the early morning from Paignton, the photo ruined by the out of focus parapet of the bridge that got in the way; one photo of 5158 and a group of engines waiting to pilot Castles over the South Devon banks; a 51XX somewhere in the background of a photo of a 45XX on a goods by accident; and one solitary photo of 4547, camera squinting into the sun, at Moretonhampstead, when, after a hot and fruitless family ramble searching for Fingle Bridge, any train was welcome.