GWR 302 Class

Between 1854 when the Shrewsbury and Chester and Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railways were absorbed by the Great Western Railway, and 1864 when he moved south to Swindon Works, Joseph Armstrong occupied the post of the GWR's Locomotive Superintendent, Northern Division, at Wolverhampton Works. For ten years the task of providing new locomotives for the GWR's newly acquired standard gauge lines fell jointly to Armstrong and to his superior Daniel Gooch, the railway's principal Locomotive Superintendent who was based at Paddington.

This article deals with the new locomotives designed by Armstrong during his Wolverhampton years. For his later, Swindon locomotives, see the individual articles as listed in the table of GWR Locomotives at the foot of the article.

At the start of his GWR career (1854-8), Armstrong was concerned principally with keeping the motley collection of S&CR and S&BR locomotives in working order, and with enlarging Wolverhampton (Stafford Road) Works. He eventually began new construction there in 1858/9. These were the four classes of locomotive newly built at Wolverhampton during the Joseph Armstrong years:

These were three differing types of 2-2-2 engine (initially of the Jenny Lind type), though they are recorded as a single class in the GWR diagrams. Nos. 7 and 8 (6 ft 3 in or 1,905 mm driving wheels) were built in 1859, Nos. 30 (6 ft 6 in or 1,981 mm wheels) in 1860, and the fourth, No. 110 (6 ft 0 in or 1,829 mm wheels), in 1862. These, Armstrong's first new locomotives, already show a strong independence from Gooch's ideas, and reflect Armstrong's work with Thomas Gray at Hull and Brighton. Holcroft discusses a fifth 2-2-2, No.32, but since this was regarded entirely as a renewal of an S&CR locomotive, Tabor does not treat it as part of this series. Nos. 7 and 8 were withdrawn in 1876 and 1883 respectively, but in 1883 and 1887 Nos. 30 and 110 were nominally renewed under George Armstrong as 2-4-0s, officially as members of the 111 class (see below).

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