Will

**Will** (short for **William**) is a elderly World War veteran who served his country in both conflicts. He isn't a big talker and is normally very quiet. He always wants to carry his WWII black livery and WD number as a remembrance to the fallen. During WWII, he was known as "Black Iron Death".

## Bio

William was built by Swindon works for the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1897 for medium goods traffic. In World War One, he and 61 of his classmates were called in for action on the Western Front, in the hope of ending the war. Will transported heavy weaponry and even pushed railway artillery to their positions where needed on the battlefield. During this time, he met Olivia (built in 1917 by Swindon) and Erika, who was escaping due to fear of being destroyed.

By the time the war ended in November 1918, Will was returned to the GWR and began to adapt to peacetime life again, after spending three years on the front line in enemy fire. He brought Erika to the UK and found her a home on an industrial facility in Cornwall, which dealt with shunting china clay to the mainline. When WWII broke out in September 1939, Will felt that he didn't need to serve for the army (since his time was over) and he could only warn the young men going to war that they would face, since he served in the Great War. Sadly, for him, he was acquisitioned from the GWR by the War Department, the same War Department (WD) that operated narrow gauge trains on the Western Front in WWI, for military service.

In order to escape Britain and give the enemy a "thrashing", Will enlisted in the Steam Reserve Corps and became the commander of a platoon made from eleven other locomotives from across the UK, which would be known as the 119th Platoon. Will's time commanding in Asia was a disaster when the Japanese were somehow "able to flank their position and surround the platoon", leading to them being reallocated to North Africa, where fighting on the ground was heating up again. Will's first battle with the Germans since WWI was the First Battle of Al Alamein in July 1942. His tactics with artillery proved a help for the Allied soldiers against the Afrika Corps, which in charge was field marshal Erwin Rommel, aka "Desert Fox" to the Allies.

His work with other platoon leaders was a difficult one since almost all the other platoon leaders were young and were either built somewhere between 1930 and 1941, making Will the only SRC platoon leader to have served in WWI and causing him to have arguments with them, with the only exceptions were Knight of St Patrick (commander: 19th Platoon) and City of York (commander: 91st Platoon). His WD black and skills from the First World War became feared by German locomotives fighting his platoon, earning the Dean Goods the nickname "Black Iron Death", which he took as a compliment and it later became his May 1943-end of WWII radio codename. After his platoon was disbanded in 1945, Will was returned to the Great Western and helped in recovery efforts for his now-battered and bomb damaged country.

Shortly after returning to Britain, Will was placed as a reserve locomotive by the GWR and was nearly withdrawn, but was kept on when he was repainted in 1949 by the newly founded British Railways (BR) to BR unlined black. He was finally retired from operational service by BR in 1957 and sent to Swindon Works for disposal. He protested that this "isn't the way a honoured veteran of the World Wars dies! We get sent off in full honour!" but was ignored by staff for over five years, when a locomotive not local to the region, an ex-LNER Gresley O2/3 "Tango" 2-8-0 (Capulet) was picking up King James I following the large ex-GWR's locomotive's withdrawal. Capulet spotted the Dean Goods and requested to have him added to the train since "Hughes was getting to the end of a boiler ticket, since Horwich forgot to do his boiler correctly."

Will was restored in just under two years into WD black, as a sign for the other and younger locomotives to respect him as a war vet. His first MSR duties were pick-up goods and snow clearing (the latter he hated thanks to the snowplough).

## Livery

Will is mostly seen in War Department (WD) WWII unlined black with the number '101' and the letters 'W' and 'D' in yellow. Before, he would have worn different shades of GWR green, BR Unlined Black and for his WWI service, ROD Khaki.

## Basis or real locomotive

   Will is based on the real GWR No. 2533. This was one of the last members of the GWR 2301 or "Dean Goods" class 0-6-0s designed by William Dean. From 1883-1899, over 260 Dean Goods locomotives were built by Swindon Works and they became the mainstay of the Great Western's goods fleet (until the arrival of the heavy goods locomotives by Churchward). 62 were used by the ROD in WWI and the WD used fewer in WWII. Withdrawals started in 1929 and the last one wasn't retired until 1957, which lead to only No. 2516 being the only survivor.

No. 2533 was built in 1897 and was one of 62 Dean Goods locomotives sent to France in WWI plus one the few locomotives of the class be used by the War Department in WWII. Its fate appears to be unrecorded and possibly scrapped or destroyed in WWII.

## Trivia

   Will's operational models are made by Oxford Rail. His scrap condition model is a repainted, weathered and demotored Hornby Dean Goods.

* In total, Will has four models plus his scrap condition.

Shane Sowter's reason for having this locomotive in the series was because of the good reviews the model got and it being a pre-Churchward era GWR locomotive, a type that is rarely modelled.

Will is named after his designer, William Dean.

Will's War Department number (101) in a reference to a GWR 0-4-0T designed by William Dean's assistant, James Holden. It was built in 1901 as an experimental oil-fired locomotive but converted to coal firing in 1905. It served at Swindon Works before being possibly scrapped in 1911. 101 is also the real No. 2533's WD number.

Will was the first Dean Goods taken from the GWR for military requirements during WWII.

* WWII also left a mark on Will's language, use to his consistence usage of yelling "SHUT THE HELL UP!".

Will is nicknamed "Black Iron Death" by the Germans during WWII. This was inspired by Simo Hayha, a Finnish sniper who was nicknamed by Soviet forces as the "White Death". He has the highest recorded sniper kills, which totals in at 542 confirmed and 705 unconfirmed. This makes Simo the world's deadiest sniper.

* All of these kills were done in the Winter War of 1939-1940.

* Simo became the inspiration of song by Swedish heavy metal band 'Sabaton', which was titled 'White Death' for their album 'Coat of Arms'. This song is track nine.

It's unknown when the real No. 2533 was withdrawn since Shane Sowter's regular source website, Rail UK, didn't have anything for GWR No. 2533, not even under the 2301 class. This could mean that No. 2533/ WD No. 101 was scrapped before Nationalisation in 1948.

Will is the first character introduced to the series that suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is shown through his nightmare of the death camp facility of Kreendonk, which he and his platoon liberated in December 1944.

Will is the second GWR locomotive owned by the MSR. The first being King James I.

In 'Stories from the Wars', Will mostly serves as its main character, as he appears in almost every episode in that series.

It's known that Will hates Germans following the wrong person, Japanese and Communists.

* Will's hatred towards anyone or anything from Japan comes from the fact that Japan was one of the Axis Powers that Britain was fighting against in WWII.