GER ‘G58’ (LNER ‘J17’) No. 8217
It’s interesting to note that all three of the National Collection Great Eastern locomotives are to James Holden’s designs, reflecting his importance as a successful locomotive engineer at the time. No. 1217 was built in May 1905 at Stratford Works with a Belpaire firebox from new as class ‘G58’. Essentially a goods version of the famous ‘Claud Hamilton’ 4-4-0s, they shared a number of common components. As an example of a long-lived and successful 0-6-0 tender locomotive, it was selected for preservation in 1962, by which time it had become the last of its class in service as British Railways No. 65567 and, as such a celebrity, hauled a railtour organised by the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society in the Norwich area. Under the LNER, the locomotive carried various
numbers – 1217E, 8217 and 5567 – and was initially restored to the former condition as No. 1217E but then stored at Preston Park, Brighton. It moved in the 1970s for display at Bressingham Steam Museum, but was transferred in 1990 to the National Railway Museum in York, where it took the guise of No. 8217 in the Great Hall. It remained on display there until late 2008 when it was transported to Barrow Hill Railway Centre in Derbyshire, where it remains. Anthony Coulls says: “It is a delightfully unaltered goods 0-6-0, and is also essentially as withdrawn, apart from a couple of coats of paint.”