GWR 1000 Class

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1009 County of Carmarthen at Bristol Temple Meads, 1960.

1019 County of Merioneth at Bristol Temple Meads, 1960.

The Great Western Railway 1000 Class or County Class was a class of steam locomotive. 30 were built between 1945 and 1947, but all were withdrawn and scrapped in the early 1960's. A replica locomotive is under construction.

These locomotives were the result of a development project by the Chief Mechanical Engineer Frederick W. Hawksworth. He was working on a design for a new 4-6-2 Pacific Express locomotive for the Great Western, and the County Class was a testbed for a number of the ideas he wanted to incorporate into the Pacific. There was talk of them at one point having outside Walshaerts valve gear which would have been a major break from traditional designs of the GWR. In the event the favoured inside Stephenson link motion of the GWR was used, but the 1500 class, also designed by Hawksworth used outside Walschaerts, the only locomotive designed by the GWR to do so. Innovations also included double chimneys on certain members (the only GWR class ever to have double chimneys fitted by the GWR) and a high boiler pressure of 280psi (though this was later reduced for fear of the increased pressure causing damage to the track through 'hammer blow'). Modified double chimneys were fitted to all the class from 1956. They also pulled Hawksworth slab-sided tenders, as fitted to some of his modified halls and retro-fitted to many earlier designs, however the County tenders had a water tank six inch wider than the tenders built for the halls and earlier designs.

The running gear of the County was almost exactly the same as Hawksworth's earlier Modified Hall Class. The boiler however was a minorly modified version of the LMS 8F boiler, Hawksworth being able to study this design closely when 8Fs were being built at Swindon as part of the war effort.

The Counties were a successful free steaming design, well suited to express or freight work and a fitting finale to GW two-cylinder 4-6-0 development. Unfortunately in the immediate post war period when the Government run Railway Executive controlled Britain's railways Hawksworth was not allowed to build his Pacific, as there was no need for further express passenger locomotives. Hawksworth was forever bitter about this, as in the darkest days of the war the Executive had given the Southern Railway permission to build its Merchant Navy class as Bulleid the designer had claimed them to be for mixed traffic work.

After the formation of British Railways in 1948 the 30 strong class of Counties continued to do useful work throughout Western Region Territory, working with Castles on expresses to and from Paddington, as well as more menial freight and parcels tasks. The locomotives were given names and numbers of an extinct class of 4-4-0 tender locomotive that were part of George Jackson Churchward's locomotive standardisation programme in the early days of the 20th century.

Although not as popular as Castle or Kings amongst GW enthusiasts, they were known as very easy to identify because of their unique full length splasher over the wheels rather than a seperate splasher for each wheel. These were a unique feature to the Counties. Hawksworth no doubt got the idea from the streamlined experiments on a Castle and King in the 1930's which carried similar splashers.

BR gave them the power classification 6MT.

[edit] Names

Named as follows:

[edit] Preservation

None of the original locomotives survived. However a replica is being built at the Didcot Railway Centre, home of the Great Western Society. When completed it will take the name and number of No. 1014 County of Glamorgan in recognition of the late Dai Woodham's Barry Scrapyard in Glamorganshire from which many 'scrapped' steam locomotives were saved for preservation. Also Glamorganshire County Council donated the frames and boiler for the project. The replica will have the frames from Hall Class No.7927 Willington Hall and the boiler from LMS Stanier 8F No. 48518. The boiler from the Hall will be used in the replica Grange project at the Llangollen Railway. It will also have a number of smaller original parts off scrapped County locomotives including the chimney from No.1006 County of Cornwall.

[edit] External links

Locomotives of the Great Western Railway v • d • e
	Broad gauge locomotives
Brunel:	Haigh Foundry - Mather, Dixon - Sharp, Roberts - Charles Tayleur - Hurricane - Thunderer
Gooch:	Ariadne - Banking - Bogie - Caesar - Firefly - Hercules - Iron Duke - Leo - Metropolitan - Premier - Prince - Pyracmon - Star - Sun - Victoria - Waverley
J. Armstrong:	Hawthorn - Rover - Sir Watkin - Standard Goods - Swindon - 1076 Class
Dean:	3001 Class - 3501 Class - 3541 Class - Experimental locomotives
	Standard gauge locomotives
Dean:	Dean Goods - Aberdare - Dean Single - Duke - Bulldog - 3600 - Badminton
Churchward:	The Great Bear - 1361 - County Tank - 2800 - Saint - 3100 - City - County - Star - 4200 - 4300 - 4400 - 4500 - 4700
Collett:	1366 - 1400 - 2251 - 2884 - ex-ROD 2-8-0 - Earl - Castle - 4575 - Hall - 5101 - 5205 - 5400 - 5600 - 5700 - 5800 - King - 6100 - 6400 - Grange - 7200 - 7400 - Manor
Hawksworth:	County - 1500 - 1600 - Modified Hall - 9400
Locomotives of:	BR (steam) • LMS • LNER • Southern