Firstly, allow me to extend a welcome to all the existing collectors and new fans of What Happened To Steam (WHTS) to the disposal amendments covering the former GWR locomotives as published in The Great Western Volumes and SR Locomotives published in the Southern Region Volumes.
This information, along with the disposal amendments appertaining to the former LMS, LNER and BR locomotives in the remaining WHTS booklets, is free of charge. At the very least I owe this obligation to my customers for the simple reason, as the author of WHTS, it should be my responsibility and mine alone to rectify mistakes in my books.
The overwhelming majority of withdrawal and sales dates allied to the GWR disposal amendments are taken from The National Archives records at Kew and as a consequence I have taken the opportunity to update these records.
All in all there are some 130 wrong disposal entries plus queries concerning a further 100 or so, many of the latter being attributed to The National Archives, which, in some respects has provided more questions than answers, hence the Q for Query in the pages that follow. With reference to the amendments, in so far as I can ascertain they are correct.
Assuming that all of the queries become ‘wrong disposals’ data, which I do not think for one moment is likely to happen, the sum total of 230 plus only relates to around 7% of the GWR locomotives included in WHTS.
However, on their own the amendments and queries with reference to disposals are all well and good for those who already own the WHTS books, but of no help whatsoever to those who do not. Therefore a decision has been made to publish the disposal locations of all the locomotives listed in the entire series, commencing with the GWR series. Volume One (2‑8‑0’s) is now online and all the disposals information listed within this specific booklet are free to the reader.
I am extremely grateful for the support of my WHTS series by many of my former customers, in particular: Barry Bull (Severn Valley & Chasewater Railways), Keith Jones of Mountain Ash, Peter Kellett (Dunfermline), David Williams (SVR News) and Tony Wakefield from Dronfield Woodhouse, and last but not least, Patrick Evans (Shed Master Archives) whose wealth of scrapyard, sheds and works records have proved invaluable in my quest for accuracy. I would also like to acknowledge the use of facts I have utilised from various aspects of the railway media.
BIGGEST MISTAKE: With reference to the dates of storage and disposals included in the series, in hindsight, a wonderful but most useless word, I should have stated from the very beginning that all of the same were ‘approximate.’
Note: If you wish to contact ‘Shed Master Archives,’ write to Patrick Evans, Kirkholm, Sanday, Orkney KW17 2AY – enclosing a stamped addressed envelope.
Peter Hands