Ex-GWR ‘Castle’ Class 4-6-0 No. 5029 ‘Nunney Castle’ darkens an already threatening sky as it struggles to reach the summit of the 1 in 42 Hemerdon bank out of Plymouth with the return leg of the ‘Cornishman’ railtour from Bristol to Par and return on 10th July 2011. Introduced by Collett in 1923, the ‘Castle’ Class was the Great Western Railway’s general purpose main line passenger locomotive, examples of which were still built after nationalisation in 1948. The 8 coachs it is hauling here was the maximum load permitted unassisted up this bank for this class of locos in the days of regular steam, but even so its progress here was very slow, reaching the summit at only 8 mph.

©Steam Library 2015