‘Lizzie’s’ first preservation home
Where to put 159 tons of locomotive when you have nowhere to run it? PAUL CHANCELLOR explores Princess Elizabeth’s first preservation home.
When railway preservation was in its infancy the focus was naturally on saving locomotives, and while many schemes foundered, others succeeded. However, success brought its own challenges, one in particular being where to put the newly acquired locomotive. Having scraped together every penny to acquire an engine, there were frequently only meagre funds available to buy or rent a site on which to put it – and the possibilities of acquiring somewhere with enough land to give an engine sufficient space to be put through its paces were extremely limited.
Thus a small number of steam centres sprang up, with just enough track to store the engines and give them a run up and down a siding… if you were lucky.
One such was the Dowty Railway Preservation Society’s yard at Ashchurch in Gloucestershire, on the former Midland line from Bristol to Birmingham. Dowty was an engineering company making, among other things, retarders for the rail industry, but had only been the owners of the site since the 1940s; the sidings being originally put in place by the Midland Railway to serve its horse provender store before subsequently being used for fruit packing and custard production. The most famous occupant at the Ashchurch site was ‘Princess Royal’ No. 46201 Princess Elizabeth, purchased directly from British Railways following its withdrawal from service in October 1962, initially keeping its BR lined green paintwork.
In due course, other engines joined ‘Lizzie’, which some might forget were based at Ashchurch.
These included two engines now resident at Didcot: ‘56XX’ 0-6-2T No. 6697 and ‘Manor’ 4-6-0 No. 7808 Cookham Manor; both also purchased directly from BR. Perhaps less well known was the later arrival, Maunsell ‘Q’ 0-6-0 No. 30541, which had been saved from the Barry scrapyard of Dai Woodham. The first item to arrive at Ashchurch was Avonside Engine Co. 0-4-0T Works No. 1977 of 1925, Cadbury Bournville No. 1, on March 9 1963. This was followed by GWR Centenary Stock Dining Car No. 9635 arriving on July 5, six weeks before No. 46201.
The ‘Princess’ travelled in steam from Carlisle to Saltley, where the connecting rods were removed so that the ‘Pacific’ could be towed dead to Ashchurch.
The sight of main line express power confined to a fenced-off yard brought mixed emotions to enthusiasts, grateful that the engines had been saved but depressed by their confinement to short sidings.
Both Nos. 7808 and 46201 did occasionally escape from their compound, making at least three appearances at Bristol Bath Road open days but, gradually, the large engines at Ashchurch moved away.
With the opening of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, the Dowty Society operations were transferred to Toddington, and the Ashchurch site was closed in 1983.