Railway Archive Magazine, Issue 27

From 'The Broad Gauge at Gloucester, 1844-1872' : A magnificent portrait of a Victorian locomotive crew with their charge, posed on Gloucester viaduct in the mid 1860s and photographed again by R.H. Barrett. Cambyses was another of the 'Standard Goods' Class, part of the '6th Lot Goods' series, built at Swindon in November 1854. The six engines of the Pyracmon' Class built in 1847-8, along with the eight similarly dimensioned engines of the 'Caesar' Class built in 1851-2, were to be followed by the 102 engines of Gooch's 'Standard Goods' Class, which again were not dissimilar in appearance. As a result, in a general redesignation of the classes by Swindon during the 1860s, all of these engines were grouped together in the 'Caesar' Class, members of which were to become synonymous with Gloucester shed during the broad gauge era. No less than twelve different members of the class were allocated there in 1860, along with a further two at Bullo, whilst three more have been identified at Gloucester from the photographs. With the retrenchment of the broad gauge from the late 1860s and early 1870s, many of these engines led relatively brief lives and Cambyses was withdrawn after exactly twenty-three years service, in November 1877. Note that Cambyses' tender is quite different to that behind Lagoon, having a much shorter wheelbase but with a deeper tank