For almost 20 years after the Second World War express trains and many local services on the former Southern Railway lines in Devon were hauled by Oliver Bulleid’s West Country Pacific locomotives. I remember seeing them working trains to the West Country through Andover Junction in 1964 not long before diesels took over. It’s 75 years next month since the first of these so called “Light Pacifics” rolled off the production line at Brighton works.
“Light” because they were designed for the routes to Padstow, Bude and Ilfracombe through Okehampton and Barnstaple where the earlier Merchant Navy class engines would have been too heavy for the infrastructure. In all 110 were built. Many were named after West Country places served by the Southern while others (earmarked for use in Kent) were named in honour of the bases, squadrons and airmen involved in the Battle of Britain. When built they had many novel design features. The most visible was the air-smoothed casing that gave them the nick-name “Spam Cans”.
Sixty light Pacific engines were rebuilt in the late fifties into a more conventional design losing their casing and chain-driven valve gear. The transfer of lines west of Salisbury to BR Western Region and the Kent Coast electrification scheme marked the end and withdrawal began in 1963, just 12 years after the last West Country entered service. The steam hauled Atlantic Coast Express ran for the last time in September 1964 and Exmouth Junction shed (which at one time looked after more than a dozen West Country locos) closed to steam in June1965.
Today twenty have survived into preservation although not all are running.
