Bahamas weathers the storm as steam locomotive returns to rails
IT WAS a day to remember for railway enthusiasts.
A locomotive took to the rails again in North Yorkshire for the first time in more than 20 years.
Storm Erik failed to steal the show from locomotive 5596 Bahamas, a Jubilee Class engine built in 1934, as it puffed out of Haworth Station on Saturday following an overhaul that has taken five years.
Rail enthusiasts and onlookers lined the platform to see the steam train on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway during its first rail tour from Oxenhope to Carlisle.
She will resume mainline operations later this month.
It was a spectacular sight and a rich reward for those who have been involved with the restoration of Bahamas, which has local and national significance.
It was the last steam engine used in British rail experiments to improve the performance of steam engines and then Bahamas was withdrawn from service by British Rail in 1966 and deemed for the scrap-yard.
The historic locomotive was nearly sold to a scrap merchant in Hull before a group of enthusiasts scraped enough money together to buy her for preservation.
She was restored and repainted in her original LMS livery at the Hunslet Engine Works in Leeds before being moved to a railway museum in Derbyshire.
Bahamas did haul some special excursion trains in the 1970s and 80s, and in 1990 its owners relocated her to the KWVR’s Ingrow West station.
Her mainline permit expired in 1994, and she carried on running on heritage lines until 1997, when she went into storage after the engine’s safety ticket expired.
In 2011, an appeal was launched to restore her again to meet modern safety standards, with work on the overhaul beginning in 2013 after funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund was approved for the Bahamas Locomotive Society.
The works have been carried out by volunteers.