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Answer to 165 - Page 93, March/April 2013 ‘Journal’, Negative 22570.

0-6-0 4557 is seen at Wellow on the Bath Extension of the Somerset and Dorset Railway with a Bath to Templecombe train probably about 1934. Wellow station was located some 6¾ miles from Bath Green Park. The station opened on 20 July 1874; was closed to goods 10 June 1963 and to passengers on 7 March 1966. The canopy of the station building can be seen to the left of the picture, situated on the up platform beyond the metal shed which was used as a lamp room. The station building was constructed of grey limestone and since closure has been extended to make a private residence.

Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway No. 57, Armstrong Whitworth 468 of 1922 was delivered from Newcastle via the Lickey Incline in April 1922. At Wellow it is in the LMS 1928 livery but still retains its tall Fowler chimney although it has been re-boilered having lost its original Ramsbottom safety valves for Ross pop valves. The prominent piston valve tail covers were removed generally during the 1930s.

The smoke box shed allocation plate is numbered 8 and would have changed from 8 to 22C (Bath Green Park) in 1935. From 1930 to 1935 Bath came under shed code 8 which included all sheds in the Bristol District. In lists engine allocations were identified as M8 but the engines only carried 8 plates. Under the 1935 scheme they became 22A Bristol Barrow Road and 22C Bath.

It became 4557 with the absorption of the SDJR locomotive stock in 1 January 1930 and remained so until renumbered 44557 in February 1950. LMS 4556 had been delivered from Crewe in December 1928 so it was convenient to renumber the SDJR locomotives 57-61 as 4557-4561 after the 1928 batch and before the 1937 and later examples. Strictly speaking they should have been numbered after 3986 which was the last of the Armstrong Whitworth batch for the Midland Railway. 44557 was withdrawn in September 1962.

The SDJR never changed to the Railway Clearing House lamp codes and retained the distinctive lamp at chimney and left hand buffer for passenger and chimney and right hand buffer for goods trains until closure. Occasionally when the ‘Pines Express’ headboard was carried, the standard BR express head code would be reverted to as the chimney lamp bracket was used for the headboard.

The rolling stock looks like a standard SR Maunsell 3 coach set plus an 8 compartment non-corridor coach with a high arc as opposed to elliptical roof. This could be one of the 48 foot long all 3rd carriages built by the Midland for the Birmingham district in 1908-1909.

The photograph is from the W.A. Camwell collection.

Reponses and information supplied by Brian Dotson, John New, Gerry Nichols, Allan C. Paterson and R. Wood are acknowledged with thanks.