Newest main liner heads home to 24D
It was on October 30 1980 that I first saw No. 76084. We’d set off early from North London: my dad, his mate Les, myself, and a former engineman whose name I sadly forget. We were on a pilgrimage, and Les was soon pointing his imported Datsun towards South Wales. The ‘4MT’ was at the front of a row at Barry - distinctively salmon-coloured after someone clearly painted it to fend off the Bristol Channel’s salt-ridden air. Red-brown and rusty, ‘8F’ No. 48173 and ‘Black Fives’ Nos. 44901 and 45491 stood alongside. None looked like they’d steam any time soon - if ever - and none of that other trio yet has. Almost 13 years had already gone by since No. 76084 left BR service in late 1967 - and more than another decade since it had started its career at Lower Darwen, just south of Blackburn. Since then though, another 36 years have passed - during which it was first rescued by a private individual in 1983, and then underwent long-term restoration by the 76084 Locomotive Company, culminating in the Horwich engine’s steaming in 2013. So imagine the significance when the BR ‘Mogul’ heads out of Blackburn on February 4, and up past the site of the former 24D it called its first home. Other than running over the little stretch between Sheringham and Cromer, it will be the ‘4MT’s’ first public main line train since it was withdrawn. “We are looking forward to returning to the main line ‘proper’, especially on our home turf,” company secretary Eric Bond says. “Going out of Blackburn is a climb. She will be working hard as she goes past her former home, and we do have the option of two whistles blasting!” That’s a reference to the fact that as well as its standard BR whistle, the 2-6-0 now has a chime, added at the North Norfolk Railway. Yet, whichever the driver reaches for as No. 76084 thumps along what is now single track, past the trees that mask the site of the former LMS shed, it’s sure to be an electrifying moment. The planned train actually starts not in Blackburn, but at Manchester Victoria, and Nigel Dobbing of promoter the Railway Touring Company tells me it will effectively make two circuits from ‘Vic’, the first taking in Rochdale, Todmorden, Copy Pit, Blackburn and Bolton; the second heading to New Mills, Chinley, Buxton, Whaley Bridge and Stockport. Final details, including pricing, are still to be nailed down - as are plans for a hoped-for follow-up trip to take No. 76084 back south to East Anglia. The ‘4MT’ is expected back in time for the North Norfolk’s Spring Gala, which starts on April 21.
Imagine the significance when the BR ‘Mogul’ passes the site of the former 24D it called its first home