Quarry Hunslets
Richard Foster guides you through the history of these ruggedly simple yet charming machines.
Richard Foster guides you through the history of these ruggedly simple yet charming machines in ‘Loco Spotlight’.
November 1967: high-speed summer dashes on the Southern Region main line are now just a memory and the Bulleid ‘Pacifics’ are dead and cold, languishing in sidings awaiting the scrapman. Tebay shed is weeks away from closure, ending steam banking on the West Coast Main Line. Steam’s sphere of influence was shrinking. In a tiny corner of Wales that November, a world away from the north-west’s grubby ‘Black Fives’, a tiny 0-4-0ST was eking out its last days, high on a mountainside. When the fire was dropped in Hunslet Holy War, it not only ended the little locomotive’s 65-year career, but brought to an end over 100 years of railway history. Holy War became the last steam locomotive to work in a Welsh slate quarry. The cute little 0-4-0STS, collectively called ‘Quarry Hunslets’, were Victorian dumper trucks. The Leeds locomotive maker had developed a winner, a simple yet rugged design that formed the perfect link between blasting slate out of the ground and roofing buildings across the Empire. Hunslet didn’t just arrive at the ‘Quarry Hunslet’ straight off the bat. It built its first narrow gauge locomotive for Dinorwic Quarry in 1870, six years after the company was formed. Charlie was followed by several fellow ‘prototypes’ before the first true ‘Quarry Hunslet’ appeared in 1883. The design was hugely popular, and it replaced the rather awkward-looking de Winton vertical boiler locomotives as the first choice for quarry owners in North Wales. What’s more remarkable is that the last ‘Quarry Hunslet’ built for a Welsh quarry was completed in 1932, and it was virtually identical to that 1886 machine. Dinorwic Quarry, across Llyn Padarn from Snowdon, was a major user, as was its main competitor, Penrhyn Quarry, near Bethesda on the north side of same range of mountains. The third major user was Pen-yr-orsedd Quarry, in the Nantlle Valley. There were others, as well as granite quarries on the North Wales coast. However, none of these machines survived and are beyond the scope of this article. Although built for use in Wales, ‘Quarry Hunslets’ can now be found throughout the UK. Of the Hunslets used at Dinorwic, Penrhyn and Pen-yr-orsedd, only one was scrapped and even a replica of that is under construction. New ones have been built too, by the current owners of the Hunslet brand. At first glance they all look similar, but they’re not, so here is an at-a-glance guide to help you identify these distinctive and characterful narrow gauge machines.