Class 58s down to 10
WITH the recent scrapping of exported Class 58s in France, (see June issue and Stock Update this month on page 94), the once 50-strong Class 58 fleet is now down to 10 members – and one of those is no more than a frame. At the time of going to press, Nos. 58025/27/41/50 were intact at Albacete in Spain, with No. 58044 at Metz in Spain. Five others are preserved in Britain: Nos. 58012 and 58048 at the Battlefield Line, having the same owner and bought at the same time as No. 58023 at UKRL’s Leicester depot; firstpreserved No. 58016 is also at Leicester; while No. 58022 has donated its frames to the Ivatt Diesel Re-creation Society.
Appeal for Collett gravestone
THE Friends of Swindon Railway Museum have launched a fundraising campaign to place a headstone on the unmarked grave of the Great Western Railway’s chief mechanical engineer Charles Benjamin Collett OBE. Following extensive research, the creator of the GWR’s‘King’and‘Castle’Class locomotives was found to be lying in an anonymous plot in Wimbledon. He passed away on August 23, 1952 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Gap Road Cemetery. The appeal aims to raise enough for a gravestone as one of his famous creations, the‘Castles’, reach their 100th anniversary. See also pages 27-47 this month for our extensive coverage of the class.