GWR 61XX class 2-6-2T No 6168 leaves Southall with an up suburban train for Paddington on May 6, 1956.
Peter Kerslake says "One of fourteen of the "6100" class allocated to Old Oak Common at this date and doing a good job of polluting the air over Southall, 6168 the penultimate of the class of seventy, as it heads away bunker-first homeward bound to Paddington with this suburban local service, its appropriate single lamp neatly housed within the recessed section of its bunker, a necessary feature as the class spent a lot of their time running bunker first!
This class of heavy 2-6-2 tank engines was developed principally and for exactly what 6168 is rostered upon here, the London area suburban "all stations" services with the first entering service in 1931, the class being more powerful than the earlier 5100s.
Apart from Old Oak's 14 , there were also 14 at Reading in 1956,7 at Southall and 6 at Oxford, all mainly working local services to and from Paddington, iand also some at Newport, Tyseley and Bristol Bath Road.
The first to be condemned was appropriately the first of its class with 6100 ending its days in 1958, and just one was preserved, 6106 withdrawn from Oxford in 1965 and now at Didcot, that being the final year for the survivors of the class."
Photo: J.F. Davies//Rail Archive Stephenson