GWR 6000 Class

"To build the most powerful 4-6-0 in Britain” was the mandate given to Charles Collett, Churchward's successor as the GWR CME, by the then General Manager, Sir Felix Pole. This presented a great number of engineering challenges for Collett, his assistant Stanier and draughtsman Hawksworth. The existing loading gauge of the system would not permit such an engine to operate – it would simply be too big and too heavy. Certain engineering compromises were reached and the result was a very non-standard locomotive that was permitted to run over the West of England line as far as Penzance and, later, the northern line to Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Keith Wilson's career of model building was in full swing when he was commissioned to build a batch of 7 1/4” gauge GWR King 4-6-0s, which would take some 8 years to construct. Later, a second batch was constructed bringing the total to nine. These nine kings were all built to Swindon drawings, to a scale of 1.54 inches to the foot with 4 cylinders, making them both large and powerful.