Earlier this year (2010) whilst musing over a book about Great Western Railway locomotives a plan was hatched (In the pub, where else!!) to attempt to ring a series of methods named after the famous Castle Class Great Western Locomotives. The Castle Class was the work horse of the Great Western Railway from the 1920's to the end of mainline steam in the 60's and were regularly seen pulling passenger Locomotives across the County and down into Cornwall. 100 of the locomotives with names such as Launceston Castle, Ludlow Castle, Earl of St Germans and of course Isambard Kingdom Brunei bore engine numbers between 5000 and 5099, so the challenge was set not only to ring a new method to the name but a peal with the exact number of changes to match the engine number. This has provided a particular challenge both in finding unrung methods and compositions to match the length required and for Tim our resident conductor to call as invariably most are one part compositions with variable hunt starts and in the future endings. It is also interesting that having started the project, this little piece of history has sparked much interest, comment and memories of a bygone era in the pages of Ringing World as the peals are published. It is anticipated that this will be an ongoing project for some time as not only are we also ringing a Treble Bob series but fitting in other methods to help particular individuals.

GWR Launceston Castle No.5000