Worksplate appeal launched by loco restoration group

THE group restoring a 91-year-old former colliery 0-6-0ST has launched a hunt for one of its original worksplates to match the other it already owns.

Owen Hayward, spokesman for the group, said the plate was sold for £100 in, it is thought, April 2002 by Kidlington Railwayana Auctions, which is now part of the Great Central Railwayana group, but the identity of its current owner is unknown.“we would love to find this plate and reunite it with the engine,”owen said.

The locomotive, named Newstead ,was built by Hunslet of Leeds in 1929 (works No. 1589) and worked at Woolley Colliery in West Yorkshire until withdrawal in 1970. It was saved for preservation but disappeared from public view and was thought to have been scrapped, but re-emerged in 2016 and is being restored at the Spa Valley

Railway in Tunbridge Wells.

Owen said the restoration had made steady progress since the engine arrived at the Spa Valley in October 2018, and it was hoped that the boiler would be lifted within the next month or so. Mike Soden, who was auctioneer at Kidlington and is now Great Central’s auctioneer, said records for Kidlington did not go back as far as 2002, but said he hoped that the plate’s current owner could be tracked down and may be willing to sell it to Team Newstead, the restoration group.

If you own the plate sold at Kidlington in 2002 (see photograph of the plate from the other side that is owned by the group) and are willing to consider selling it to the group, please contact the locomotive’s owner, Alex Alder, on contact@thelostengine.co.uk or telephone 07710 750366.