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driving wheel appeal hits £30,000 mark.

£40,000 driving wheel appeal hits £30,000 mark

WE are delighted to announce that our £40,000 appeal to pay for the casting of the four coupled wheels for No. 3840 County of Montgomery and their assembly onto their axles, is just £10,000 away from reaching its target.

The ‘Forty 4-4-0s Club’ was launched in March 2019 as a long-term appeal allowing supporters to ‘adopt’ one (or more) of the original 40 ‘County’ 4-4-0s. These locos were all named after British and Irish counties with which the GWR had connections, albeit obscure ones in some cases. Each loco can be adopted for a £1,000 donation, and if all 40 ‘Counties’ are adopted the CCT will have reached its target. The three-quarter milestone was reached in mid-August when No. 3822 County of Brecon became the 30th ‘County’ to be adopted.

Funds raised through the ‘Forty 4-4-0s Club’ to date enabled the first two wheels for the rear wheelset to be cast by Trefoil Steel in Sheffield during April using the pattern kindly loaned to the CCT by the Great Western Society, which had previously been used to cast the wheels for ‘Saint’ 4-6-0 No. 2999 Lady of Legend. The second pair of wheels will be cast after the pattern has been modified to increase the size of the centre boss. The original Churchward ‘Counties’ had two different designs of wheel; the leading driven wheels having a 5¾in centre boss and the rear wheels a 4¾in centre boss. The pattern as loaned has the smaller boss, hence the need to make the alteration.

Membership of the ‘Forty 4-4-0s Club’ is set at £1,000 (payable in one lump sum or in eight payments of £125 by standing order), and comes with a string of incentives including:

• An invitation to the launch of County of Montgomery
• A seat on the locomotive’s first train
• A special certificate acknowledging the ‘County’ being adopted
• A framed and mounted photograph of the ‘County’ being adopted
• A mounted print of No. 3840 by Jonathan Clay or Stuart Black
• Your name on Roll of Honour
• Life membership of the CCT

The 10 remaining ‘Counties’ available for adoption are:
3803 County Cork
3804 County Dublin
3805 County Kerry
3806 County Kildare
3809 County Wexford
3810 County Wicklow
3813 County of Carmarthen
3818 County of Radnor
3823 County of Carnarvon
3838 County of Glamorgan

Further information on the ‘Forty 4-4-0s Club’ and how to join can be found by clicking the ‘Adopt a County‘ link or by writing to:

The Treasurer
Churchward County Trust Ltd
c/o 4 Green End Barns
Ramsey Road
St Ives
Cambridgeshire
PE27 5RH

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