GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Leamington Spa - GWR Locomotives: gwrls208

GWR 4-6-0 29XX 'Saint' class No 2909 'Lady of Province' on an up express to Paddington. No 2909 was one of the batch of ten ‘Ladies’ built at Swindon in May 1906 (Lot 164). The ‘Ladies’ differed from the previous members of the class by having two 18 1/8 inch cylinders, which resulted in a tractive effort of 23,382lb. The cylinders were later standardised at 18.½ inch producing a tractive effort of 24,395ib. The ‘Ladies’ were the last batch of ‘Saints’ to be built with straight drop ends. No 2909 was built with a long cone tapered Standard No 1 boiler and was superheated in May 1911.

When the new cut-off route to Birmingham was opened in 1910, a comprehensive independent study of the running speeds of thirteen express services was made by A V Goodyear. This included one by No 2909 Lady of Province with a load of 390 tons. The journey from Birmingham to Paddington took a total of 92 minutes 30 seconds, which included a scheduled stop at Leamington of 2 minutes 15 seconds and slowing to release a slip coach at Banbury (85 tons).

The advent of the ‘Castle’ class gradually displaced the ‘Saints’ from front line duties, but these were useful engines and withdrawal was protracted, governed by condition rather than age. No 2909 was the third of the ‘Saint’ class engines to be withdrawn. The last allocation was Wolverhampton Stafford Road Shed (SRD) in November 1931 and the engine was scrapped at Swindon shortly after.

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