4073 Caerphilly Castle arrives by road at Swindon from Didcot Railway Centre where it had been placed after being pulled from The Science Museum in London.
Finally, it flashed by - and I caught the name "Cearphilly Castle" on its namplate.
Next time I saw the engine was maybe thirty years later - it was standing cold and static in the big loco hall of the Science Museum in South Kensington.
Those were the only two times, so far as I know, that I saw the loco.
When I was a little kid, I had a book that had a chapter about this loco and its exchange trials with the LNER. One day I was walking home, over the bridge at Radipole Halt, on the line from Weymouth to Dorchester. I saw a train coming up the gradient from Weymouth,its loco working hard and throwing glowing cinders high into the evening sky. As the locomotve got nearer, I could see it was a Castle class loco, from its curved steam pipes.
Finally, it flashed by - and I caught the name "Cearphilly Castle" on its namplate.
Next time I saw the engine was maybe thirty years later - it was standing cold and static in the big loco hall of the Science Museum in South Kensington.
Those were the only two times, so far as I know, that I saw the loco.
v8pilot 3 years ago
When I was a little kid, I had a book that had a chapter about this loco and its exchange trials with the LNER. One day I was walking home, over the bridge at Radipole Halt, on the line from Weymouth to Dorchester. I saw a train coming up the gradient from Weymouth,its loco working hard and throwing glowing cinders high into the evening sky. As the locomotve got nearer, I could see it was a Castle class loco, from its curved steam pipes.
v8pilot 3 years ago
Its a great oity that 4073 has never run in preservation :-(
Steam1989 4 years ago