ROYAL GEORGE 0-6-0 REPLICA PLANNED FOR ‘S&D 200’
Proposal made to recreate 1827 locomotive for Stockton & Darlington bicentenary in 2025.
Areplica of Britain’s first sixcoupled freight locomotive, Timothy Hackworth’s 1827-built Royal George, could steam at the 200th anniversary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 2025.
Darlington Borough Council has sponsored a feasibility study into building Royal George, which is being carried out by Transport Trust chairman Rob Shorland-Ball on behalf of the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, one of the partner organisations involved in the S&DR bicentenary celebration plans for 2025. The report is expected to be finalised in July, after which invitations to tender will be sent to various engineering firms.
Group spokeswoman Caroline Hardie told Steam Railway: “We recognise the importance of Royal George in terms of locomotive development and would like to see a replica used to promote the S&DR and the bicentenary events as part of a wider locomotive display or carnival in 2025. We also hope it will be possible to use the project to inspire young engineers.”
She added that funding is “not yet decided” as the group still needs to get estimates in terms of cost, and that “if it’s going to visit other railways as we have planned, then it needs to be able to have proper passenger-carrying ability”, which would necessitate the provision of a braking system, as the original did not have either vacuum or air brakes.
Should the project be given the formal go-ahead, construction is likely to start in spring 2021 following six months of additional research into the locomotive, and it is estimated it could take 2-2½ years to build it, with an aim of having it complete by 2024.
The National Railway Museum has also indicated it would be happy to host Royal George at its Shildon site; Ms Hardie said: “We hope that the recent tensions between Locomotion and Darlington Borough Council [SR502] will not create a stumbling block and, so far, both parties have been very helpful.”
Royal George was designed by S&DR locomotive superintendent Timothy Hackworth and intended to supplant the line’s unsatisfactory Stephenson locomotives, of which Locomotion was one. It was built using the boiler from Robert Wilson’s unsuccessful four-cylinder 0-4-0 ‘Chittaprat’ of 1825 and featured a return-flue boiler, which greatly increased heating area and thus improved steam-raising, and vertical cylinders driving directly via a piston rod onto the crankpins, which was a novelty in the 1820s.
The engine was more powerful and reliable than its Stephensondesigned predecessors and the world’s first six-coupled freight locomotive, one of the most common designs in Britain.
Ms Hardie added that the proposed Royal George replica was “one of the many things we are trying to achieve before 2025, including a heritage-led economic regeneration programme along the main line route of 1825 and various conservation, interpretation, access and educational projects. We are also starting fundraising in a very small way by developing a range of Royal George products, but this is in the early stages.”