#4-2-2

This is No.8 - a four-cylindered tandem compound locomotive. She was built to resolve the motive power crisis on one of the expresses to the West of England. This train, when returning to London from Cornwall, would leave from Bristol at 3 o' Clock, and proceed Up to Paddington. It was run inbetween the Dutchman and the Zulu - the 3rd Class passenger was prohibited form those trains, but was allowed in the train which forms the subject of this post. It was often run with north of nine coaches, and it would take two 8ft 4-2-2s all of the passenger's natural lifetime to drag it up the 1-in-100 gradient through Box Tunnel on the London-bound leg, sometimes stalling all-together. One of these 8fters was invariably returning to London having worked a newspaper train to Bristol, and the pilot was usually taken from Bristol shed. Sometimes this Bristol-based loco was not an 8fter at all but a 'Hawthorne' 2-4-0 or a '2015' class:

Hawthorne Class 'Bury':

8ft Single 'Lightning':

It was decided that an engine with coupled wheels should be used to permanently head the train in place of the London 8fter and the aforementioned 'Hawthorne' Class 2-4-0 was generally employed. Three of these had also been kept at Swindon for pilot duties, doing about a mile and a half a day in pairs - the other engine of the three kept spare - and this had been no problem for them, but now, assigned a daily regular express turn, the usually placid expressions of the drivers (the oldest on the GWR!) began to wear a very worried look. The Swindon-based Hawthorne would take over the newspaper train from the London 4-2-2 at Swindon, and go Down to Bristol - then work the 3 o' Clock Up express back again. In reality - they generally had to requisition the service of a Bristol pilot to double-head the train with the Hawthorne class engine, so that matters were not far improved. In answer to this - Swindon constructed No.8.

One fateful day, Driver Jones, on Hawthorne Class 'Acheron' collected a west-bound train at Swindon, and proceeded to Bristol. He coupled up to 3 o' Clock Up Express and requested pilot assistance. He was told to proceed to Bath. Upon arrival there, he found No.8, which was attached to the front of the train - to his great disgust. They set off, and all was quite well for a few miles. Mr Jones was told only to give 'Acheron' enough speed to keep going - leave the work of pulling the train to No.8. They were just approaching Box Tunnel when it happened. A couple of small explosions were heard, and the train entered the tunnel in a roar of escaping steam. Shards of metal rained down, being sent up by No.8, hitting the tunnel roof and ricocheting back upon the unfortunate enginemen. Nobody dared shut off steam, for if the train stalled then there was no way the 'Acheron' could have restarted the train single-handed. It turned out No.8 had shattered 3 of her 4 cylinder covers and pistons - and was running on one of her two high-pressure cylinders - both low-pressure ones were non-functional. They crawled out of the tunnel, and No.8 was removed at Chippenham, then towed home an in ignominious fashion. Mr Jones describing compound engines was described as a thing very much worth hearing after that date! No.8 was tried again later with better material in its pistons, but for whatever reason the fault recurred. She was 'rebuilt' into the far more elegant standard gauge No.8 'Gooch' and thence worked very successfully.