The GWR "City" Class No. 3440 City of Truro is a Great Western Railway (GWR) 3700 (or 'City') class 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive, based on the 'Atbara' class designed by William Dean, and built at Swindon Works in 1903 under then CME George Jackson Churchward. (It was given slight rebuilds in 1911 and 1915 and renumbered to 3717 in 1912).
City of Truro also developed the official name for the type of GWR steam locomotive (similar to the Iron Duke Class), as well as being one of the very first major, mass-produced, types of steam locomotives that was standard-gauge as opposed to broad or wide-gauge.
It is also one of the contenders for the first steam locomotive believed to travel in excess of 100 miles per hour (160.9 km/h). Its maximum speed has been the subject of much debate over the years. Because this was never officially recorded with a dynamometer car or a speedometer, the claim has been celebrated and dismissed ever since. However, it's because of this debate, that it ensured the locomotive's survival into preservation. The GWR didn't think that the locomotive had any significance for preservation, but ironically, the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) did, as they ended up preserving it at the old railway museum in York, England, which later became the base for the National Railway Museum. Ever since then, City of Truro has spent decades on and decades off between service and static display as part of the National Collection.
In fiction[]
City of Truro appeared in the 1957-8 serial "Will o'the Whistle" in the D.C Thomson comic " The Wizard". In this comic, it was home to resistant fighters after the Kushanti invasion of Britain. City of Truro also appeared in the "Domeless Engines" story in the Railway Series book Duck and the Diesel Engines by Wilbert Awdry, as well as the episode "Gordon and the Famous Visitor" in Thomas & Friends.
Trivia[]
- New York Central No. 999 is also one of the first ever locomotives to travel at a speed of 100 mph.
- City of Truro was painted in BR Black (lined on one side and plain on the other), during a trial after its restoration in 1985.
- It had three periods of active preservation (1957–61), (1985-1992), (2004-2013); during two of which she ran on the main line.