An early colour shot of 73050 in BR days, shown here with kind permission of David Christie. The location is near Farnborough on the Southern Region mainline to/from the south-west.  This picture is dated August 1964, at which time the loco was allocated to Shrewsbury shed and so is a long way from ‘home’.

The Western Region, having taken over the Somerset & Dorset line north of Templecombe in 1958, adopted a policy of re-routing the North-South through trains away from the Bath-Bournemouth route.  

As a result, the demand for passenger locomotives at Bath Green Park fell away and the more modern classes were moved elsewhere. Older classes went to the scrapyard.

At first, 73050 was retained by the Western Region and found herself briefly at Llanelli in West Wales and then started a 2-year spell at Shrewsbury.