GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Rowington Junction & Troughs: gwrrj1773

Great Western Railway 0-6-0 322 (Beyer) class locomotive No 354 heads a northbound local freight train (class K - denoted by the single red head lamp code on the right of the buffer beam) over the Rowington troughs circa 1925.

Behind the unidentifiable Private Owner (PO) wooden open wagon (which has both side and end doors), is a steel bodied 10 ton low sided open wagon, which appears to be a new Tarmac wagon. One hundred of these wagons were built by the Birmingham RC&W Company at Smethwick in 1925 (see image 'misc_brc&wc144'). The company collected furnace slag, which when blended and mixed with a binding agent produced an ideal material for road surfacing. It was however a difficult material to handle and was normally transported in private owner wagons. According to the Railway Clearing House Station Handbook of 1929, Tarmac had one private siding in Warwickshire, at Kingsbury (MR).

Locomotive No 354 was built in March 1866 by Beyer Peacock & Company at their Gorton Factory in Manchester as part of an order for ten 0-6-0 goods locomotives placed by the Great Western Railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer, Joseph Armstrong. This followed an order for twenty identical locomotives two years earlier. The locomotives had double plate frames curved over the axles with open splashers. Originally the wheels were five feet in diameter. A parallel barrel boiler with large dome operated at 140 lb pressure providing a tractive effort at 85% of 13,313 lb.

In August 1884, No 354 was rebuilt at Wolverhampton Works and given a standard parallel (type W3) boiler with large brass dome. The locomotive was one of the few in the class to retain the original 17 inch cylinders, but larger 5 foot, 2 inch diameter wheels were fitted. In addition the splashers were covered over and a cab provided. In May 1901, a domed boiler with a belpaire firebox (B4) was fitted. This boiler operated at 150 lb providing a tractive effort at 85% of 15,115 lb (Power Group – Ungrouped). The maximum axle weight was 13 tons, 10 cwt, which meant there was no restriction on where the locomotive could travel (Route colour – Uncoloured).

In January 1934 No 354 was known to have been paired with standard Churchward pattern 2,500 gallon tender No 1434, which had been built in 1903 under lot A44. This had replaced the original Beyer Peacock & Company built 1,700 gallon, high sided tender.

No 354 was initially allocated to Birkenhead shed (BHD). In January 1921 the locomotive was known to have been allocated to Tyseley shed (TYS), but the following year had moved to Leamington shed (LMTN) from where the locomotive was withdrawn twelve years later in August 1934 after having travelled in excess of 1,500,000 miles.

Robert Ferris

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