One of the star exhibits in the Rewley Road Visitor Centre is 'Castle' class 4-6-0 locomotive No.5080 "Defiant", on loan to ORS from the Birmingham Railway Museum, Tyseley. It was built by the Great Western Railway in May 1939 at GWR Swindon Works, and was one of a class of 171 locomotives used to haul express passenger trains between Paddington and South Wales, the West Country and the West Midlands.
It is one of the first exhibits you see when you enter the Centre, and you cannot fail to be impressed.
Visitors are able to look into the cab from adjacent steps, and on most Steaming Days we have a Steward on board able to tell you all about life on the footplate.
