Great Western Railway Armstrong 'Queen' class 2-2-2 No. 1120. Built at Swindon in 1875 and withdrawn prior to WW1.
Restored from a woebegone print, this fine image at the south end of Birmingham Snow Hill in the 1880s (before being rebuilt in 1906) has 'scrubbed up' remarkably well. The strange marks on the tender are made by cleaners using tallow on their cloths. For some 30 years the 'Queens' worked expresses on the London-Swindon-Gloucester and London-Wolverhampton routes. In effect they were predecessors of William Dean's larger 'Singles'. The class prototype No. 55 'Queen' was designated the GWR's 'Royal' engine for many years. Most of the class had mileages exceeding one million!
