What was it about the ‘Castle’ class that made it so appealing? For me as a young schoolboy it was a combination of the copper-capped chimneys, brass safety valve bonnets, cast name and numberplates, green paint with its orange-black-orange lining, and those often strange but evocative names. Not content with just recording numbers, I carefully wrote down the names – Aberystwyth Castle, Caerhays Castle, Carn Brea Castle, Harlech Castle, Treago Castle, Caerphilly Castle, Coity Castle and many more – all to be checked in my Observer’s Book of Railway Locomotives of Britain. Only later when sat on the platforms at Royal Oak station with my father and holding my Western Region ABC as we watched the comings and goings into and out of Paddington, did I begin to appreciate that…