An 8F into a County will go!

Soon (ish) we will have a new Grange, a County, a Saint and then we have a set!  There will be an example of every design of GWR 4-6-0 design in existence. I, for one, never saw a Saint on the network, although I do have memories of the odd Grange and County but if you are younger than ooh, er, 60 ish, it is not about bringing back memories at all.  It is a new machine to fire, drive, look at and admire.

So, job done on the GWR front?  All memories repaired and locos accounted for?  Well, not really. It just depends where you draw the historical line.  Maybe the GWS will press on and build a 4-4-0 County or the tank version of it.  But I would love to see a Bulldog and I know we have ‘Truro’ and the Dukedog but what about the Atbaras and Flowers?  Or an Aberdare?  And if you are going way back, how about one of those lovely Dean singles and Armstrong 4-4-0s?

Or, more simply and cheaply, how about retro rebuilding one of the numerous 57xx panniers that have survived into a Saddle Tank or one of the earlier Wolverhampton built panniers? In fact, couldn’t you rebuild a pannier into a Dean Goods. Bigger wheels, I know, but how different were they?  Come to that, a 44xx can’t be too hard. Just take a 45xx, cast new smaller wheels and adjust to fit.

I might be getting silly now but the point is still valid.  A lot of the momentum in our wonderful preservation movement comes from ingenuity, restless innovation and moving forward, dragging the past with us.  Tornado (like it or loathe it) has been an incredible boost to the whole movement so let’s get really ambitious and seize pole position back from those Apple Green upstarts: Let’s build The Great Bear V2 i.e. a proper GWR pacific, the like of which Mr Hawksworth might have built had he taken acid in the 1960s!  Now that would be something for Didcot to get its teeth into!!

Happy dreaming. Let us know what you would like to see built next.