Between 1854 when the Shrewsbury and Chester and Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railways were absorbed by the Great Western Railway, and 1864 when he moved south to Swindon Works, Joseph Armstrong occupied the post of the GWR's Locomotive Superintendent, Northern Division, at Wolverhampton Works.
For ten years the task of providing new locomotives for the GWR's newly acquired standard gauge lines fell jointly to Armstrong and to his superior Daniel Gooch, the railway's principal Locomotive Superintendent who was based at Paddington.
Holcroft discusses a fifth 2-2-2, No.32,[2] but since this was regarded entirely as a renewal of an S&CR locomotive, Tabor does not treat it as part of this series.
Finally, after years of building only tank engines, Wolverhampton added another six entirely new locos to the class in 1889, Nos.
Some of the later engines were allocated to Hereford, and the class subsequently worked further south, on the Gloucester and Oxford routes.
In early days these engines worked from Wellington and Croes Newydd sheds, but later some migrated to south Wales, Swindon, and the London area.
[9] Since 1864 was the actual year in which Joseph Armstrong transferred to Swindon, and George took over at Wolverhampton, it does not seem possible to attribute the 17 and 302 classes to either of the brothers with absolute certainty.
Holcroft discusses the classes in his chapters on both brothers,[10] while Tabor simply indicates that the relevant engines were built at Wolverhampton, without specifying their designer.