The Churchward 4-4-0 Counties – The First Modern British 4-4-0 David Bradshaw With the 41st Churchward County 4-4-0 now under construction - 3840 County of Montgomery - it is perhaps a good time to take a closer look at this often maligned class and clear up some of the historical misapprehensions together with an outline what has been achieved so far and what is planned for the future
The Original Counties
The first Great Western County class, the Churchward 4-4-0’s, did not have the glamour of their larger cousins, the Saint Class 4-6-0’s and, by comparison with many GW engines, had a shorter operational life. Nevertheless, as a class of 40 engines, they made a significant contribution to the efficient operation of the Great Western Railway over 30 years. Notably they were the first really modern 4-4-0’s produced in Britain. Built as part of Churchward’s grand standardisation plan, the ‘Counties’ were in stark contrast to the Dean/ Churchward double frame 4-4-0’s which were being built and developed by Churchward at the same time. O.S Nock commented that ‘history had written off the 4-4-0 Counties as one of Churchward’s failures’ but he believed that this was not accurate and there is strong evidence that they were excellent locomotives on the road, despite being on the rough side, something which was attributed to their short wheelbase and long stroke outside cylinders. The Counties, possibly because of their relatively early demise, were always something of an enigma. It has even been suggested that they were built simply because of the availability of standard parts. Nothing could be further from the truth and they clearly filled an important niche in the general pattern of GW motive power for nearly thirty years. The Counties were Churchward’s Edwardian engineering solution to the requirement for a passenger locomotive of medium power and provided a radically different approach to that of his predecessor William Dean, who was responsible for the classic Victorian lines (though not the boilers) of the double-framed 4-4-0’s. The County was directly comparable to the Dean/Churchward City Class because both
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GREAT WESTERN STAR MAGAZINE
One of the original batch - No 3476 County of Devon at Plymouth Laira
carried Churchward’s excellent no 4 domeless tapered boiler along with the standard 6feet 8½” driving wheels. The design of the Counties followed exactly the pattern of Churchward’s other standard classes, save that a prototype was not considered necessary. By the time they were built, Churchward had established his arrangement of Stephenson link motion, which gave GW locos their renowned hill climbing ability, and other standard features, so they went straight into volume production. They were fitted with the standard No 4 boiler, which was also fitted to the 3150 2-62T’s, the Aberdare 2-6-0’s, the Cities, the 42XX 2-8-0T’s, the 72XX class 2-8-2T’s and the 4300 class moguls, all of which proved to be very successful designs. Given that the County shared its major components with these designs, it is inconceivable that their performance would have been in any way inferior. The class was constructed in the same manner as the other standard engines, using plate frames which ended forward of the front coupled wheelset to which were attached forged extension frames. The cylinder block, formed of two back-to-back castings, was then attached to this to form a very strong front-end assembly. The driving wheels, bogie and cylinder block were identical to those of the Saint. The first batch, Nos 3473 to 3482 subsequently renumbered 3800 and 3831 to 3839, appeared between May and October 1904 and were named after English and Welsh
January/February 2021
