The Power Of The Castles: Power Series

A welcome new addition to this popular and collectable series provides a detailed photographic portrait of this famous and successful class of GWR 4-6-0 steam locomotives. Drawn largely from the photographic library of R.C.Riley, and supplemented by the work of other well-known photographers, the development and operational history of the type is examined. The illustrations cover the period from the first in service to the last ones built under British Railways, with many images being published for the first time. 238 b/w photos. 112 pages. Hardback

Table of Contents:
In 1922 Charles B. Collett succeeded Churchward as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway. Almost immediately, he was faced by the need to design and build a new class of locomotive that was much more powerful than the existing classes of 4-6-0 express passenger locomotive already available to the GWR. The result was the 'Castle' class, the first of which - No 4073 Caerphilly Castle - emerged from Swindon Works in July 1923 barely 18 months after Colletts' appointment. Between then and 1950 a total of 179 were built. Of these the majority were brand new locomotives, but a small number were rebuilt from older examples. As befitted the fact that Collett had been Churchward's principal assistant, the new class represented a further development of the standardised design pioneered by the older man, but achieving an increase in power of around 10 percent over the earlier 'Star' class through increasing the diameter of the cylinders and modifying the boiler. As such, the 'Castle' class came to dominate the GWR's express passenger services and were to remain dominant on most duties, despite the later 'King' class, until the final elimination of Western Region steam in the early 1960s. One of the more curious aspects of the OPC 'Power Of' series was that, despite the obvious bias towards the GWR and BR(WR) evinced by many of the earlier titles, no volume covering any of the primary ex-GWR classes had featured. This book, therefore, starts to rectify this omission. Drawn largely from the collection of R.C. Riley and supplemented by the work of other photographers, the book examines the development and operational history of the class through around 250 mono photographs. The illustrations cover the full time span of the class's period in service, from the background to the type's development, through to the modifications undertaken by BR in the 1950s, such as the fitting of double chimneys, and ultimately withdrawal in the early 1960s.