GWR 4073 Class 7028 Cadbury Castle

Number 7028 "Cadbury Castle" was a Great Western Railway Castle Class or GWR 4073 Class 4-6-0 locomotive built at GWR's Swindon railway works on 19 May 1950. The Castle Class locomotives were built as express passanger locomotives on the GWR. The Castle Class locomotives were to replace the earlier Star Class or GWR 4000 Class locomotives. They were designed by the railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer, Charles Collett. "Cadbury Castle" cost £10,546 and an extra £1,094 for her Hawksworth tender.

7028's working life

"Cadbury Castle" was based at Landore, Swansea for 11 years. She worked normal passenger express trains around GWR's network. On the 31 October 1961 she was moved to Llanelly and fitted with a double chimmney and a 4 row superheater. She worked at Llanelly for a further two years before being withdrawn on 28 December 1963. By this time in her 13 years of service her mileage was 624,626 miles. On 19 March 1964, she was scrapped by Balborough Metals Ltd, Briton Ferry, Swansea. It is worth noting that although "Cadbury Castle" was of GWR design, she only served with BR, as she was built 2 years after the railways were nationalised.

The Western Pullman

"Cadbury Castle" formed part of a Hornby model railways train set, "The Western Pullman". In this set "Cadbury Castle" was featured with four Pullman carriages and part of Hornby's Track Pack system. This set has ceased production now and has been replaced by "Whittington Castle" in the new DCC set.

References

* http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/m_in_cas_castle7.htm
* http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/railwayana-a-gwr-brass-cabside-numberlat-1-c-gd0etzk6ev