Power type Steam Builder GWR Swindon Works | Designer William Dean Frame type Inside, plate | |
Gauge 4 ft 8 ⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge | ||
GWR 1854 is a class of tank locomotive designed by William Dean and constructed at the Swindon Works of the Great Western Railway. The class used similar inside frames and chassis dimensions to the 1813 Class of 1882-4. In this they differed from the intervening 1661 Class, which had reverted to the double frames of the Armstrong era. Thus the 1854 Class belongs to the "mainstream" of GWR 0-6-0 tank classes that leads towards the larger GWR pannier tanks of the 20th century.
Contents
Production
The 120 1854s were built in six batches between 1890 and 1895:
Rebuilding
The engines were rebuilt during their working lives with various forms of boiler and saddle tanks, and they were also rebuilt as pannier tanks between 1909 and 1932 as Belpaire fireboxes were fitted. Most of the class worked in the GWR's Southern Division, the majority of them in South Wales. Two examples were to be found in the GWR London Division at time of nationalisation. Numbers 907 and 1861 were allocated to 81E (Didcot) in August 1950. All achieved one million miles (1,600,000 km), and 23 of the class passed into British Railways stock in 1948, the last of them being withdrawn in 1951.