When rail legend steamed in for the night
A TRAIN enthusiast has shared photos of a very special overnight visitor who stayed in Rochdale in 1980.
On May 21, 1980, an old steam locomotive built in 1881 spent the night on a low loader lorry parked behind the Rochdale town hall. It was en route from the Worth Valley Railway at Haworth in West Yorkshire to Rainhill for the 150th Anniversary of the famous steam locomotive trials won by Stephenson’s revolutionary design ‘Rocket’.
While on Manchester Road at Sudden the lorry suffered a puncture and local children had a grandstand view as the wheel was changed.
Richard Greenwood MBE, from Rochdale, who is now in his eighties, took the pictures.
He said: “The first intercity railway to open was between Liverpool and Manchester, and at the time they had not developed steam locomotives at all. To see if they could rely on steam, they organised a competition, and there were half a dozen entries.
“Stephenson’s Rocket was the winner by a long way, so he was the father of the steam locomotive.
“That competition took place in 1830.
“150 years later in 1980 British Railway decided to have a celebration of the event and the competition, and they held the event over the same stretch of track they had used before, which was Rainhill. They gathered together about 50 steam engines.
“This engine that is seen in the picture is the second oldest steam engine. It was built in 1881. It was parked up in Rochdale so people could see it.
“That engine is now on the East Lancashire Railway, and it sometimes comes up to Heywood.”