Great Western: Moguls and Prairies

Book excerpt: “Traces the bloodline of its 2-6-0 and 2-6-2T classes . . . a comprehensive history of the classes from Churchward to BR days, with excellent photographs.” —Steam Railway Great Western Moguls & Prairies is a volume in Pen & Swords series, Locomotive Profiles. It describes the conception, design, building and operation of the fleet of Prairie 2-6-2 tank engines and the Mogul 2-6-0s designed by Churchward in the early part of the twentieth century and perpetuated by his successor, Charles Collett, in the 1920s and 1930s. These engines formed the backbone of the GWR locomotive fleet for secondary passenger and freight work for over half a century and were some of those that remained to the end of steam traction on the Western Region of British Railways. The book also covers some of the lesser known Moguls developed in the Dean/Churchward transition at the end of the nineteenth century and briefly looks at the Mogul and Prairie designs proposed by Churchward, Collett and Hawksworth but were never built. The book is copiously illustrated with over 250 black and white and 60 colored photographs and is a comprehensive record of a group of locomotives found throughout the Great Western and its successor, the Western Region, for over fifty years. “Lavishly illustrated in both colour and black and white, with pictures from the archive and the modern day, there is much here both for the beginner and the seasoned enthusiast, with the book presenting a structured and fresh view of a popular subject.” —Railway Magazine