GWR River Class

The 69 Class designed by William Dean for the Great Western Railway consisted of eight 2-4-0 tender locomotives, constructed at Swindon Works in 1895-7. Nominally they were renewals of eight engines of the 2-2-2 wheel arrangement that carried the same numbers, these themselves having been renewals by George Armstrong at Wolverhampton of 2-2-2s designed by Daniel Gooch as long ago as 1855.

In truth the Dean engines were in effect new engines, the only re-used parts being some recently fitted boilers of Swindon pattern. They had 6'8" driving wheels and 17" x 24" cylinders. 2-4-0s, being mixed-traffic engines, were not usually named on the GWR, but all of the 69s did carry names, as follows:

• 69 Avon
• 70 Dart
• 71 Dee
• 72 Exe
• 73 Isis
• 74 Stour
• 75 Teign
• 76 Wye

The "Rivers" were originally allocated to Oxford, and later moved to the Bristol division. They were not long-lived as 2-4-0s, the last being withdrawn in 1918.

Source

• F. J. Tabor (1956), Locomotives of the Great Western Railway, part four: Six-coupled Tender Engines, RCTS