LIVING WITH... ‘QUARRY HUNSLETS’
An in-depth look at one of Britain’s greatest narrow gauge designs
Remarkable. If you could only use one word to describe a ‘Quarry Hunslet’, it’d have to be that. Remarkable because these quaint, Victorian workhorses toiled away for nearly 100 years in some of the harshest conditions known in these islands, and were among Britain’s last narrow gauge steam locomotives still in commercial use; because they remained in production, albeit with minor modifications, for over 60 years; because today they routinely perform feats for which they were never designed on preserved railways across the country.
In fact, it is easy to forget just how well these hardy little saddle tanks have fared since their working days at the Dinorwic and Penrhyn slate quarries ended in the late 1960s. From Cornwall in the west to Norfolk in the east, from Hampshire in the south to Lanarkshire in the north (and yes, their native Caernarvonshire too); there is hardly a narrow gauge railway in Britain that has not played host to at least one ‘Quarry Hunslet’ in the last 50 or so years.
What’s more, all but a handful of those built for Dinorwic and Penrhyn have – incredibly – survived and proved to be reliable, adaptable and surprisingly powerful little engines, and cornerstones of Britain’s narrow gauge preservation scene.
150 years after their introduction, now is the ideal time to celebrate these remarkable engines and find out just why they rank among Britain’s greatest narrow gauge locomotive designs.
GENESIS OF A LEGEND
In 1870, Doncaster Works outshopped the prototype of one of the Great Northern Railway’s most celebrated and enduring designs – the ‘Stirling Single’, one of the most elegant locomotives ever to grace a British railway.
In the same year, but at the other end of the scale, the Hunslet Engine Company of Leeds turned out the first of what would prove to be one of its most celebrated and enduring designs: the ‘Quarry Hunslet’. Appropriately named Dinorwic, the little 1ft 11½in gauge 0-4-0ST was the first of many similar locomotives built for an industry with which they will forever be associated – the slate quarries of North Wales. But, while the thoroughbred ‘Stirling Single’ racehorses would only have a useful service life of around 30 years before they were superseded, the workhorse Hunslets would continue doing the same job, day in, day out for nearly a century, almost outlasting main line steam itself.
Before we continue, let’s get one thing out of the way: the name ‘Quarry Hunslet’ does not describe one single design but is rather an umbrella term encompassing a number of different, albeit related, designs and classes. Take the Ffestiniog Railway’s examples for instance; the ‘Penhryn Ladies’ Blanche and Linda, Lilla, Hugh Napier, Velinheli and Britomart are all classed as ‘Quarry Hunslets’, yet each of them is different – sometimes wildly – from the other.
Likewise, the pioneer Dinorwic of 1870 was built to different dimensions and specifications than its series production successors; according to its entry in the Hunslet order book, which survives in the Statfold Barn archives, it was Order No. 670, Works No. 51. It had 7½in by 14in cylinders
and four-coupled wheels 2ft in diameter, making it slightly larger than the later ‘Large Quarry’ type but smaller than the likes of unique Lilla and the ‘Mills/Tramroad’ engines Jerry M and Cackler that ultimately replaced it.
First tried in steam on October 14 1870, Dinorwic was built for use on the Padarn-Peris tramway, which linked the slate mills at the base of the Dinorwic quarry inclines at Hafod Owen, along the shores of Llyn Peris, to the transhipment sidings at Gilfach Ddu, where slate trucks were loaded onto transporter wagons and taken over the 4ft gauge Padarn Railway to Port Dinorwic for onward shipment. It proved successful and, in 1877, the quarry ordered a second similar locomotive – originally named George but later renamed Minstrel Park – for use on the same line, as well as a smaller 0-4-0ST named Louisa for shunting up on the quarry galleries themselves.
All three locomotives were very much prototypes but they nonetheless established the basic ‘Quarry Hunslet’ blueprint: four-coupled wheels of roughly 2ft diameter, a low-pitched boiler, outside frames and cylinders, a saddle tank and open cab.
Hunslet went on to build a further 19 ‘Quarry Hunslets’ for Dinorwic and 14 for Penrhyn – plus three larger variants for the latter’s ‘main line’ to Port Penrhyn – as well as further examples of varying specifications for other industrial concerns, including neighbouring slate quarries, making them one of Britain’s most prolific narrow gauge locomotive designs.
BALA BONANZA
While Dinorwic, George and Louisa established the basic formula, it wasn’t until 1883 that the design principles would be distilled into a distinct class, with multiple examples built concurrently to the same design: the ‘Penrhyn Ports’. This trio of Gwynedd, Lilian and Winifred were a success and laid the groundwork for the various sub-classes which followed in their wake, none of
which strayed far from the tried-and-tested ‘Penrhyn Port’ pattern.
For many, however, the quintessential ‘Quarry Hunslets’ are the ‘Alices’. In fact, of the 40 surviving ‘Quarry Hunslets’, over half are ‘Alices’ or variants thereof – 11 genuine Dinorwic examples, a pair of all but identical ‘Early Ports’, four Penrhyn ‘Small Quarries’, and four ‘Alice’-pattern locomotives built for the Dorothea and Pen-yr-Orsedd quarries.
Introduced at Dinorwic in 1886, they were designed primarily for shunting up on the quarry galleries, performing the same duty for which 1877-built Louisa had been intended. With a wheelbase of just 3ft 3in, they could negotiate 21-foot diameter curves, making them ideal for the tight confines and uneven trackwork on the quarry face. They were also basic and robust; very few of them had cabs, in order to accommodate the tight loading gauge of the rough-hewn rock tunnels in the quarries, so the men working them had to be as hardy and used to working in all weathers as the engines themselves. The ‘Alices’ (and their equivalents) were, as Julian Birley describes them, “Victorian dump trucks.”
Julian knows about ‘Alices’ more than most; not only does he own 1902-built Works No. 780 Alice (which, confusingly, is not the engine from which the class derives its name), but the Bala Lake Railway where Alice is based – and where Julian is chairman – is also home to three others: Works Nos. 680 George B, 779 Holy War and 822 Maid Marian. These, in addition to ‘Penrhyn Port’ Works No. 364 Winifred (also owned by Julian) and Rob Gambrill’s ‘Small Quarry’ Works No. 704 Nesta, make the BLR one of only three places where you can see so many ‘Quarry Hunslets’ in one place.
However, working continuously over four miles and hauling passenger trains is way beyond Bala’s ‘Quarry Hunslet’ fleet’s intended sphere of operation. In fact, “they’re working far harder now at Bala than they ever were at the quarry,” says Julian, “but the only modification we have made is mechanical lubrication, because when they were up in the galleries, manual lubrication was the order of the day.”
There’s a famous tale from the BLR’s early days. In 1970, the line’s founder and chief engineer George Barnes wrote to Hunslet to get a quote for two new ‘Quarry Hunslets’. The firm responded, requesting details of the proposed railway over which the new
On the run on a normal service train, you only need to tickle the fire about three times in each direction JULIAN BIRLEY
engines would run, so George provided them with the length of the line, gradient profiles, the weight of trains they would be expected to manage and so on. Upon receipt of this information, Hunslet replied saying it wouldn’t supply an engine of that size to the railway as it would not be suitable for the intended duties. How wrong it was!
Despite their apparent limitations and Hunslet’s misgivings about their supposed suitability, the BLR’s Hunslets are “perfectly suited to Bala’s operations,” insists Julian. “They can handle six coaches over four miles between Llanuwchllyn and Bala on gradients of up to 1-in-70 quite easily. You just fill them up with 100 gallons of water and one-and-a-half hundredweight of coal and you’re off. They’re very free-steaming and very responsive.”
That said, they do have their foibles – a legacy of their original design parameters. Explains Julian: “They’re very easy to fire but you’ve got to be careful when firing out on the road. Because they’ve got no brick arch, you let all the cold air in and that can knacker the tubes, so you definitely don’t fire on the bank when the engine’s working hard.
“You’ve also got to fire on your hands and knees; they were designed for one-man operation and intended to be coaled standing still between shunting moves, hence the doors in the rear cab sheet. Because we run on a standard gauge trackbed, we’re not restricted by loading gauge, so when you’re on your hands and knees, you can hang your legs over the side!
“On the run on a normal service train, you only need to tickle the fire about three times in each direction; you can fill the ’box up before you leave and do the trip in one go, but you won’t have much of a fire left by the time you get to the other end. It all depends on the type of coal you’ve got really, but they’re just so satisfying to fire; I actually prefer firing them to driving.”
“You don’t want the blower on all the time and you’ve got to be careful on a hot day, if you’re standing idle, that the water in the tank doesn’t get too hot, otherwise the injectors won’t work.”
Had Covid-19 not intervened, Alice would have returned to steam this year following overhaul sporting a traditional riveted boiler, built at Bridgnorth
on the Severn Valley Railway, replacing its previous, 1990s-built welded example.
Says Julian: “Alice’s old boiler barrel was made from a bit of North Sea pipeline so the steel was thinner than on an original boiler. It steamed on a candle, whereas Winifred’s boiler is an original example – taken from Lilian in 1952 I believe – and it’s thicker, so it takes longer to get up to steam.
“Alice responds quicker and is easier to drive and fire, whereas Winifred’s a grand old lady and must be handled with great respect.”
Winifred, Julian believes, also holds the record of having the longest service life of any ‘Quarry Hunslet’, having worked almost continuously – with minor breaks for overhauls and repairs – from delivery in 1885 until withdrawal in 1964. Indeed, it worked at Port Penrhyn, for which it was specifically designed, for 70 years and only moved to the quarry galleries themselves in 1955.
“For any piece of industrial plant to have lasted that length of time is remarkable,” says Julian.
‘A REAL CRACKER’
If you were to line up all 11 genuine ‘Alices’ side by side, you’d notice many differences between them, even though they are ostensibly built to the same design. There’d be different styles of chimney, some with cabs, some without cabs, some with sprung buffers, some with dumb buffers and some with no buffers at all, plus a whole host of other detail differences too innumerable to list comprehensively here.
One, however, would stand out in particular: Velinheli. Outshopped in 1886 as Works No. 409, Velinheli is the prototype ‘Alice’ and is one of the few Dinorwic engines not named after either racehorses or members of the quarry’s owning family; its name is a corruption of Y Felin Heli, better known by enthusiasts as Port Dinorwic, to where the quarry’s slates were delivered by rail for onward shipment. But what really sets it apart from its classmates is that it is the only ‘Alice’ to sport a dome, which gives it some unique characteristics.
Velinheli wasn’t built with a domed boiler and would have looked very much like its 1888-built successor, King of the Scarlets (originally named Alice, thus giving the class its name) when delivered to Dinorwic in 1886. It assumed its current form in 1952, when it was fitted with the domed boiler and saddle tank from Works No. 822 Maid Marian, which had been uniquely built from new with a domed boiler for use on the Allt Ddu Tramroad – sometimes known as the Dinorwic village branch – which connected the main Dinorwic workings with outlying quarries and featured gradients as steep as 1-in-60. However, the design has a significant drawback.
“It’s a pig of a boiler when you’re on a gradient and working chimney-first because it’s much more prone to priming than a standard Hunslet boiler,” explains James Evans, who now owns Velinheli.
James has been intimately acquainted with Velinheli since 1965, when he persuaded his father, Armstrong, to rescue both it and Dinorwic Bagnall 0-4-0ST Sybil for £700. Only a year or so earlier, a ‘Quarry Hunslet’ could be bought at scrap value – “about £30 for six imperial tons of iron, perhaps double if brass and copper were considered” – but since American antiques dealer C.B. Arnette had bought six locomotives from the neighbouring Penrhyn
It’s a pig of a boiler when you’re on a gradient and working chimney-first JAMES EVANS
quarry in early 1965 to sell at auction in the United States, prices for an engine shot up overnight.
James first clapped eyes on Velinheli in 1963, when he and his younger brother, Robert, were shown around Dinorwic’s workshops at Gilfach Ddu by Thomas Morris, the chief engineer at Llanberis, who was instrumental in the preservation of many of the quarry’s locomotives. Inside the workshops – now the National Slate Museum and home (bizarrely) to ex-Pen-yr-Orsedd ‘Quarry Hunslet’ Works No. 873 Una – James and his brother could scarcely believe their eyes. Assembled inside were an array of locomotives – Avonside 0-4-0T Elidir, Bagnall 0-4-0ST Sybil and ‘Quarry Hunslets’ Cackler, Jerry M, Red Damsel… and Velinheli.
“It was at the back of the workshop, covered in dust and looking very sorry for itself. The others clearly had been gone over with an oily rag at some point and looked more presentable, but there was just something about Velinheli, with its brass dome.
“I wasn’t aware at that time it was the oldest ‘Alice’, but she just looked so quaint; it was love at first sight.
“I asked Mr Morris, ‘Surely someone must have asked to buy this one and save it from being scrapped?’. He said, ‘No. You can have this one if you want’.” The rest, as they say, is history.
An engineer all his life, James knows Velinheli better than anybody else alive today and is all too familiar with its idiosyncratic boiler: “It’s got a smaller diameter barrel than other Hunslets, so in order to have enough tubes, they’ve got to be sited fairly high up in the barrel, which means the water level is correspondingly higher, so you’ve got a smaller steam space above,” James continues.
“On any engine, it’s better to have the dome near the front of the boiler so that, when you’re working uphill, it’s high above the water level, but Velinheli’s dome is near the back, and as most of the steam is generated over the firebox, the water level there is two-to-three inches higher than elsewhere because of the bubbles.
“As the regulator valve is also over the firebox, you can get water carry-over if the water level is too high. For instance, when we took her to the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, when we left Killington Lane chimney-first for the [1-in-50] climb to Woody Bay, I made sure there was less than an inch showing in the glass, so it was fine.
“I met one of the old quarrymen at a Ffestiniog gala once who worked on Maid Marian when it had its domed boiler, and I asked which way they ran up the gradient on the Dinorwic village line. Unsurprisingly, he told me it was bunker-first!”
Another notable aspect of Velinheli’s appearance that sets it apart from its classmate is the brass chimney top. Its shape and design bears more than a passing resemblance to those carried by the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway’s Manning Wardle 2-6-2Ts and, given James’ love for the North Devon narrow gauge line (he was instrumental in the construction of the FR’s 2010-built replica No. E190 Lyd), it would be easy to assume that Velinheli’s chimney is modelled upon these, but not so.
“When we bought her, she had a very elegant Hunslet chimney top, like all the Dinorwic engines had – some of the Penrhyn engines had some very ugly chimney tops for some reason. It eventually became rusted through, so I got in touch with a friend of mine – Jack Warden – who was spinning tops for traction engines and road locomotives, and I fancied a brass one to match the dome and safety valve cover.
“I actually had three made: one for Holy War at Bala and another for Covertcoat, which Nigel Bowman ruined by running it into the bridge, forgetting it wouldn’t fit.
“I made a bit of a mistake with the drawings and the tops were all slightly too small. I shrank Velinheli’s chimney down in diameter a bit to make it fit properly, so her chimney’s not quite the right size.”
But what about maintenance? Surely, with an engine so small and compact, oiling up must be a nightmare, particularly for places without a pit?
“You don’t need a pit at all,” insists James, “because you can reach pretty much everything by putting your head underneath the boiler.
“In the quarries, they never really went over a pit. These engines were designed to last forever; Velinheli had a very hard life and was probably never properly lubricated – or she was, albeit with slate dust and rainwater! However, they’re incredibly robust, and when she’s properly looked after, there’s very little wear and tear. I’ve never had to replace the brasses; they’re still in quarry condition. You just need a bit of oil so they don’t run dry and they’ll last forever.
“Velinheli might be the oldest ‘Alice’, but she’s a real cracker; she’s a delight to drive. The only real downside is the short chimney – if you don’t hunker down in the cab, you’ll get a load of smuts in your eye.”
‘JUST LIKE A MAIN LINE LOCO’
As outlined earlier, half of the ‘Alice’-type ‘Quarry Hunslets’ aren’t genuine ‘Alices’; instead they are all-but identical engines built to more or less the same design.
One person who knows these ‘Quarry Hunslets’ better than most is Nigel Bowman, owner of 1883-built ‘Penrhyn Port’ Lilian (Works No. 317) and co-founder of the Launceston Steam Railway in Cornwall. Not only was Nigel one of the first people to privately preserve one, but Launceston is also home to two pretenders to the ‘Alice’ crown – ‘Early Port’ Works No. 679 Covertcoat and No. 673 Dorothea – and was also for many years the home of aforementioned ‘Alice’ Velinheli.
Like many of those who eventually preserved the Penrhyn and Dinorwic locomotives, Nigel’s interest in
the slate quarries was piqued by a nowfamous report on the Tonight programme by legendary Scottish broadcaster Fyfe Robertson, screened on January 4 1965, about the imminent closure of Penrhyn quarry – the same report that prompted C.B. Arnette to purchase six locomotives from the quarry.
Around the same time, Nigel, then aged just 19, visited Penrhyn and the famous scrap line at Felin Fawr with a friend, Tom Gibson, son of Sir Donald Gibson who had famously rebuilt most of Coventry after the war.
“There was Lilian and I instantly fell in love,” recalls Nigel. “I then wrote a letter to the quarry enquiring whether I could buy it, and got a very courteous reply back saying yes, but apologising that it was rather expensive – £60 – because it had a copper firebox. I only just had about £60 to my name!” Despite the cost, Nigel bought it and it has remained in his care ever since.
During his time in North Wales, Nigel also visited the nearby Dorothea slate quarry and happened upon 1901-built ‘Quarry Hunslet’ Dorothea, which is owned and was restored by his wife, Kay.
“When I saw it at the quarry, I thought it’d never steam again, but it was as if an angel tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Not only will it steam again, but you’ll be married to the woman who’ll own it!’.”
Though Dorothea is, to all intents, an exact copy of the Dinorwic ‘Alices’, there are some subtle differences, mostly to do with gauge. Although all the Welsh quarry lines were nominally 2ft gauge, there were many variations. For instance, Dinorwic was 1ft 11½in gauge whereas Penrhyn was 1ft 10¾in – a fact that would result in ex-Penrhyn ‘main liner’ Linda famously coming to grief during its early days on the 1ft 11½in gauge Ffestiniog Railway in 1962, when it jumped the rails and was only prevented from tumbling down an embankment by the coupling between it and George England 0-4-0STT Prince.
“What Hunslet did,” explains Nigel, “was they kept the frame plates, cylinders, wheels and so on the same, but altered the frame stretchers, axles and axlebox centres to match the specific gauge the engine was built for. Even though many of the components are standard, you can’t necessarily take something from, say, Covertcoat and transfer it onto Lilian and vice versa.”
Lilian is a typical open-cab ‘Quarry Hunslet’, but it differs from its Launceston stablemates in one notable aspect. “She was one of the last wrought iron-built locomotives,” says Nigel. “The frames, motion and boiler barrel are all made from wrought iron, which is wonderfully robust. Covertcoat and Dorothea, being later-built engines, are virtually all steel.
“In terms of operating them, there are slight differences between Lilian and Covertcoat and Dorothea. She’s slow to get steam up because she’s got such small tubes, but once she’s up to pressure, she’s a cracking little engine; no snags at all. You could almost drive her standing on your head.
“On Dorothea, because we opened up the tubes a little bit, she can have steam up before breakfast! Sometimes though, when you’ve got four coaches on or if the fire’s a bit rough, you have to sacrifice the water a bit, but otherwise, she’s a very good steamer.”
As mentioned earlier, Launceston was also home to Velinheli, from 1987 until February 2018, when it departed for the Ffestiniog Railway where a new, domeless boiler is under construction.
James recalls: “We had problems when we first started running her at Launceston. She was fine pulling a load but running light you’d get a warm box, so I decided to convert Velinheli to underfeed lubrication, Great Western style!”
Despite the initial lubrication problems, Launceston – like Bala – has allowed its ‘Quarry Hunslets’ to show what they’re really capable of and has been wedded to them since it opened.
James says: “At Launceston, you could get one Hunslet to haul all the trains all day on just 3½ hundredweight of coal, and we just thought ‘these things are brilliant, they’ll steam on an oily rag’. We did some indicator tests using a laptop and the traces were just like a main line locomotive – just for a little shunting engine. Hunslet really knew what they were doing when they built these things.
“My father and I jokingly wrote to Hunslet in around 1970, praising them on their design and saying that we wouldn’t be claiming on the warranty. They actually wrote back, saying they were pleased we were satisfied, but thought we were pushing it if we planned on claiming on the warranty after 80 years!”
TICK THE OPTIONS
Another of the little ‘Quarry Hunslets’ worth looking at is Works No. 707 Britomart. The former Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry locomotive is one of six ‘Quarry Hunslets’ based on the Ffestiniog Railway (the FR matches Bala in having six ‘Quarry Hunslets’ in one place; only Statfold, with seven, has more) and has been part of the fleet since 1965. It is co-owned by a consortium of FR members, of whom Rob Coulson – one of the FR’s drivers and fitters – is one. In fact, it was his father who first purchased the engine from Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry for £200 in 1965.
Ironically, “My dad and his mates originally wanted Lilla but the quarry wanted £450 for it, thanks to C.B. Arnette pushing the prices up, so they got involved with Tony Hills and his group who were after the Pen-yr-Orsedd engines,” recalls Rob.
“Funnily enough, Dinorwic offered them Cackler for £200 and Jerry M for £365, but they’d just spent all their money on Britomart. It’s probably just as well, as I have a horrible feeling they’d have been turned into 2-4-2 tender engines with superheating or something like that to make them useful FR engines had they come here!”
An ‘Alice’ in all-but name, Britomart might be small compared to the other Hunslets on the FR’s books (we’ll cover those in Part Two), but it can hold its own. “She’ll happily do 17mph all day,” says Rob, “though we have got her up to 20mph on occasion. The Hunslet
advertised starting weight for Britomart on level track is 150 tons – I’ve beaten that at 155, with a full rake of Welsh Highland coaches plus one of the Garratts.
“You know when you’re trying too hard on Britomart because the regulator goes floppy.”
Britomart is ostensibly a standard ‘Quarry Hunslet’, but it nonetheless incorporates some unique little features. “Pen-yr-Orsedd clearly ticked all the boxes on the Hunslet option list when they bought it,” says Rob.
One such feature was an iron box on its tank top used for drying sand before it was put into the sand pot – a sophisticated embellishment for an engine designed for shunting. Another can be seen on the rear of the saddle tank sides, in the form of a rectangular bolted plate.
“People often confuse it for a patching plate,” says Rob, “but it’s actually the cover for the strainer for the injectors, because up in the quarry they were taking water off the hills and from streams, which obviously had all these bits in it which kept clogging the injectors.”
‘SOMETHING MAGICAL’
How to sum up the ‘Alices’ then? Over to James: “The bottom line is that they’re very small but they’re real working engines. They’re more or less the smallest ‘full-size’ industrial engines you can get and yet they do proper work.”
For Nigel: “They’re nice to look at! They’re also very easy to work on, the boilers enjoy a high degree of safety and they’re small enough that the cost of replacing things like boilers is not astronomical – certainly nothing like it is on standard gauge locomotives. Plus, the engineering was very sound throughout.”
“They’re just characterful little things,” says Rob. “They’re not designed for going very far very fast but look what they’re capable of. They’re doing things they were never designed to do.”
Julian perhaps sums them up best of all: “First of all, it’s the design of them. You’ve only got to look at them; they’re one of the most attractive locomotive designs ever built. They’re so simple and they’re the real McCoy – they’re not miniatures or anything like that – they were designed to work and pull anything, and they’re very reliable. They are absolutely enchanting and the epitome of Victorian design and construction.
“Of all steam locomotives, they’re the most sustainable, most manageable and absolutely reliable. They bring together the basic elements of earth, air and fire and instil them into something magical.”