GWR 4073 Class 4079 Pendennis Castle

Great Western Railway No. 4079 Pendennis Castle is a 4-6-0 express passenger steam locomotive of the Castle class, designed by Charles Collett and built at Swindon Works in 1924 for the Great Western Railway. Named after the castle at Falmouth in Cornwall, it was the seventh of 171 Castles built in 1923 and 1924 and worked long-distance expresses from Old Oak Common, later under the Western Region of British Railways. It became famous in 1925, when the company lent it to the London and North Eastern Railway for comparative trials against the new A1 Pacifics such as Flying Scotsman, and it proved more economical in coal and water. Retired in 1964 after about 1.75 million miles, it was bought for preservation, shipped to Western Australia in 1977 and 1978 to work excursions on the Hamersley Iron railway until 1994, then returned to Didcot Railway Centre in 2000, where volunteers restored it to steam in 2021.