Can you tell these apart?  Which class - all 4 are different ...

1.


2.


3.


4.

 
No1 = Class 33

 
No 2 - class 27

 
No. 4 - BR Class 24

 
Classes 26/27 being Scottish-based were foreign to me.  Even once I'd seen a few it was only when I saw one peeping over a wall (it, not me!) with just the top of its cab windows showing that I saw the resemblance to a 33.

That class 24 brings back memories of being hauled by pairs of them on Merrymaker excursions in the 1970s. Happy family day trips to a remarkably wide range of places - Chester, York, Llandudno, Shrewsbury and many more including mystery tours where I sometimes suspected the mystery destination was chosen on the day by where a loco broke down or the relief crew hadn't turned up - then the journey home nodding off in a steam-heated compartment; no fractious days out cooped up in a car for us with non-driving parents.

 
No 3 Cass 31

 

Sorry - class 31 looks like this:

 
3. Class 24

 
In the late seventies, BR would provide a loco and coaches for certain events in Aberystwyth and I'm just wondering if it would be one of those four types I can recall. In the last carriage of one of these trains as it climbed the slopes after Cemmaes Road, the train ran gradually slower until progress felt to be down to around 10 mph and passing through a small settlement - at which point a group of children turned evil for the afternoon and using a lineside vantage point, threw a bucket of water in through the last carriage door's droplight. A bit unwise as they'd have been very easily identifiable...

Mark

 

Close, but no.

 
No one else appears to have said class 25 yet for number 3, so here goes...

3. Class 25

 

Yep, it is.  My recollection is that there were two subclasses with different "eyes" and this is one of them - probably the earlier one being similar to class 24.