MODERN HISTORY
What was an Adams ‘Radial’ doing in the Great Western Railway’s famous workshop in the 1970s? PAUL CHANCELLOR explains.
An Adams ‘Radial’ at Swindon
The Bluebell and Middleton Railways can both lay claim to being the oldest preserved standard gauge railways.
While the Bluebell’s development is possibly the best photographically recorded of any line, occasionally images surface which prompt the remark ‘I don’t remember that’. Resorting to the internet quite often provides the answer to these, but on occasions it draws a blank, particularly where the subject in question pre-dates Steam Railway’s first issue in 1979. A few steam locomotives received attention in BR workshops after the end of steam, and one of those was Adams 4-4-2T No. 30583, née LSWR No. 488, which was recorded in Swindon works on December 10 1972. One of the famous ‘0415’ trio (Nos. 30582-4) that worked over the Lyme Regis branch decades after their classmates were made redundant, No. 30583 was withdrawn in July 1961 and moved to the Bluebell. Although BR steam was still active, a condition of sale was that any purchased locomotive had its nationalised crest and running number removed or disguised, and so some – particularly Bluebell Railway locomotives – were repainted into a 1960s interpretation of an earlier livery.
What became No. 488 already had an interesting story to tell. Built by Neilson & Co. in 1885, it was the first member of the class to be withdrawn when sold to the Ministry of Munitions in 1917, and worked as No. 27 at Ridham salvage depot, near Sittingbourne.
Its stay was short-lived. In 1919 it was sold to the East Kent Railway, becoming its No. 5.
All other class members on the Southern Railway had been withdrawn by 1927, with the exception of Nos. 3125 and 3520. Their survival was owed entirely to the need for short-wheelbase locomotives on the Lyme Regis branch in Dorset.
The Southern belatedly decided that two engines were not enough and the former No. 488 was bought back in 1946 and numbered 3488. Various trials of replacement engines took place over the years, but it was the Ivatt ‘2MT’ tank engines that eventually found favour after some minor track adjustments. With the writing finally on the wall for No. 30583 – the most original of the three – a rescue attempt was successfully realised by the fledgling Bluebell Railway Preservation Society, and a reincarnated No. 488 was put into service shortly after arrival on July 12 1961.
By 1972 it needed an overhaul and the locomotive was dispatched to Swindon works – the only Bluebell locomotive to receive such treatment in Wiltshire. Finally laid aside in 1990 after three operational spells, including a stint in its BR lined black condition, it is now nearly 30 years since the ‘Radial’ last steamed and it is thought to require a new boiler barrel, among other significant repairs, if it is to ever make a comeback.