Talk:GWR Firefly Class

Early notes

There are two articles relating to this class. This one is the one shown in the broad gauge loco lists, the other mainly relates to the Firefly replica at Didcot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geof Sheppard (talk • contribs) 13:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

No reference to bracketed dates

All the locomotives listed have bracketed dates associated with them. There is no indication as to what these dates represent or to their source. I am presuming they are construction and scrapping dates. Can this be confirmed? Anotherbigal (talk) 19:26, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Available records from the time being incomplete, the dates that have been given are likely to be those that the best-kept GWR records show: probably the accountant's asset register. Thus, the first date is probably either the delivery date or the date that it was taken into stock (these would also have been the year of construction, except for some of the January deliveries); the second will be the date either of replacement or withdrawal. Scrap dates were not often recorded, and could be some years after the actual withdrawal from traffic. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:22, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Cerebus or Cerberus

In the list of locomotives we have:

Cerebus

1841–1866. Built by Fenton, Murray and Jackson. Cerebus was a character in Greek mythology and the name was later carried by a Hawthorn class locomotive.

Should that be Cerberus? Cerberus was a character in Greek mythology. Cerebus the Aardvark is a comic book character. The article on the GWR Hawthorn Class gives the name of the later locomotive as Cerberus, and the earliest version of this article also uses Cerberus. The change seems to have been made by @Geof Sheppard when merging from the former article Fire Fly. -- rbrwr^± 12:06, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, Geof Sheppard has given the GWR broad gauge some serious study, off Wikipedia as well as on. But Reed (1953), p. B14, does state Cerberus.

On a related matter, a number of GWR broad-gauge locomotives had names with unusual spellings. It has been suggested (by L.T.C. Rolt, in Red for Danger) that the instructions were communicated verbally to the person in charge of making nameplates, rather than being written down, with the result that unintended names were occasionally used. Hence, there were Estaffete (for Estafette); Goliah (for Goliath); Lagoon (for Laocoön); Python (for Phaethon); and Sampson (for Samson). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:18, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

The spellings of early locomotives can be difficult, but the correct version of this one (given on an 1857 document) is Cerberus. Geof Sheppard (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! -- rbrwr^± 16:52, 27 April 2025 (UTC)