Great Western Star Issue No 2

Page 55

Table 2 Colour-coded routes

Colour Geographic Percent Notes miles Hatched red 522 14% All engines are allowed Red 1280 34% All engines allowed except King class Dotted red 285 8% Red engines (see below) are permitted at speeds no more than 20 mph (32 km / h). Blue 320 9% Dotted blue 150 4% Blue engines are permitted at speeds no more than 25 mph (40 km / h) Yellow 695 18% Unpainted 495 13% The shaded reds routes included Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads, via both Bath and Badminton; Reading to Devonport via Newbury; Bristol Temple Meads to Taunton; and Paddington to Wolverhampton Low Level via Bicester. Further routes were raised into this category after nationalization: from Wolverhampton to Chester via Shrewsbury; and Bristol to Shrewsbury via Abergavenny. Up to two coloured discs were painted on the cab of GWR steam locomotives and some classes of Western Region diesel locomotives to show that the maximum axle load of the engine must not exceed a certain value, the absence of such circles means that the restrictions on the locomotive were as shown in Table 3. As with the power classifications, the locomotives provided for the GWR during World War II were given GWR weight limit

colours. For example, Class J25 LNER engines that had route 3 availability on this line were placed in the Yellow GWR route constraint. Corrections were made from time to time based on operating experience; for example, the 5700 class (which had an axle load of 17t) had a weak hammer blow, so it did less track damage than other engines with their axle load; accordingly, in 1950 they were reclassified from “blue” to “yellow”.

Table 3 Locomotive colour coding Colour Symbol Axle Load Double red OO 22.9 t Red O Up to 20.3 t Blue O Up to 17.9 t) Yellow O Up to 16 .3 t) Unpainted Up to 14.2 t)

Examples of classes of locomotives 6000 (King) 4700, 4900 (Hall), 9400, Class 42 2884, 6100 2251, 4500, class 22 1366, 2301

A New Bow Street Runner! Transport for Wales is delighted to announce the opening of the new Bow Street station. The first train stopped at the station in Ceredigion, mid Wales, at 9.12am on Sunday 14 February, providing a link to the national rail network for the community of Bow Street for the first time since the former station was closed in 1965. It is the first station to open in Wales since Pye Corner in December 2014 and Transport for Wales’ first since taking over the Wales and Borders network franchise in 2018. January/February 2021

GREAT WESTERN STAR MAGAZINE

55


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From My Bookshelf

3min
pages 117-118

Western Star

2min
page 116

News from the World of GWR Modelling

9min
pages 112-115

Sanspareil Integrated Casting Services

2min
page 111

Railway Societies in Profile – No.1 The Branch Line Society

5min
pages 106-107

The Churchward 4-4-0 Counties – The First Modern British 4-4-0 - David Bradshaw

13min
pages 100-104

Comes Home to SVR

11min
pages 96-99

Worcestershire Parkway Station

2min
page 105

A Night Owl Emerges from the Dark – Part 2 - Paul Perton

6min
pages 92-95

Spotlight on Vintage Trains

13min
pages 87-91

Preservation Scene Heritage Railways Association News

7min
pages 85-86

The Abermule Disaster – January 26th 1921

14min
pages 81-84

Tales from Wales – Andrew Dyke

10min
pages 77-79

Getting a Bigger “Byte” into Devon

3min
page 80

The King and I – Leo Brown

10min
pages 74-76

A Locoman’s Tale – Bob Barnett

3min
page 73

Percy Hanniford

12min
pages 70-72

Farnworth

20min
pages 63-68

Preserving Another of Brunel’s Success Stories

16min
pages 57-62

A New Bow Street Runner

2min
page 55

Sleuths of the GWR Works

3min
page 56

Great Western Railway Power and Weight Classification

4min
pages 53-54

Taking the GWR Act to Parliament

24min
pages 46-52

A History of The Great Western Railway Being the Story of The Broad Gauge - George Augustus Sekon

15min
pages 42-45

Editor’s Thoughts

50min
pages 3-19

Undergoes a Major Restoration

12min
pages 20-25

Inside What Was the World’s Longest Railway Tunnel - Alex Watkins & Max Jones

21min
pages 32-41

Transport for Wales and Alun Griffiths host virtual ‘Bridge to Schools’ events across South Wales

3min
page 30

Rail 919: Welsh report shows that building roads is not the only or best option – Christian Woolmar

7min
pages 28-29

The Barmouth Bridge - a scale model in O Gauge Barmouth and Barmouth Junction

3min
page 26
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