GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill Station: gwrbsh1748

Ex-West Midland Railway 2-4-0 ‘106’ class No 111, as Great Western Railway 2-4-0 ‘Q’ class No 201 stopped on the track adjacent to the tubular beam, which is part of Great Charles Street bridge and the original Birmingham North Signal Box. This photograph was taken after 1903 and prior to the station reconstruction work in 1908. The original Birmingham North Signal Box had sixty switch and signal levers and was opened before 1884. It survived until 1910. A second temporary timber Birmingham North Signal Box with twenty-five levers on a three bar frame was constructed during the Snow Hill Station reconstruction and operated between 1908 and 1909. Both these Signal Boxes were replaced by the Siemens power Signal Box, which opened on 31st October 1909. Below the open window at the left of the Signal Box is hanging a round ‘S’ plate, which indicated that the Signal Engineers were required to attend. Note also the early rotating type ground signal in the foreground. The locomotive was one of six 2-4-0 locomotives built by Beyer Peacock & Co. (Makers No 272), which were delivered to the West Midland Railway in 1862.

The locomotive was numbered No. 111. It originally had a wheelbase of six foot, six inches + seven foot, ten inches and the wheel diameters were three foot, six inches (leading) and six foot (coupled). When the West Midland and the Great Western railways amalgamated in the following year (on 1st August 1863) a total of 131 West Midland Railway locomotives were absorbed into Great Western Railway stock and these were renumbered. In February 1879 this locomotive now No. 201 was renewed at Wolverhampton’s Stafford Road Works as an express 2-4-0T side-tank engine with 1,000 gallon capacity and condensing apparatus. The leading wheels changed to four foot and the wheelbase lengthened to eight foot + eight foot, six inches. Two other locomotives from the original six were similarly modified in the following two years. In March 1884, No. 201 was returned to a tender locomotive configuration and in November 1905 the wheel were changed again, with their diameters increased to four foot, one-and-a-half inch (leading), and six foot, two inches (coupled). The locomotive received a variety of different types of boilers; in February 1895 a boiler with a raised firebox casting and centrally placed dome (R3 type), in August 1903 a boiler with a belpaire firebox and a forward positioned dome (B2 type) and finally in January 1910 a boiler with a belpaire firebox and a rear positioned dome (B4 type). The locomotive was withdrawn in May 1917.

Robert Ferris

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