‘Green Dragon’ returns for Railway Children celebrations
THE long-awaited reappearance of traffic on the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 0-6-0 No. 957 to Keighley & Worth Valley Railway took place in late August, celebrating its starring role in the 1970 film The Railway Children.
Restored in the fictional Great Northern & Southern Railway green livery it wore for its role as the ‘Green Dragon' in the production, the Barton Wright Class 25, built by Beyer Peacock in 1887, ventured out for a round trip on the KWVR on August 27, double-heading a service train with Midland Railway 4F 0-6-0 No. 43924.
Mike Curtis, who has led the ‘Ironclad's' recent overhaul, said: “All the bearings remained cool, and the loco in general performed well. There are quite a number of jobs still to do on it, of course.”
It then took part in the KWVR's belated 50th anniversary celebrations of the filming, held on the August 28-30 bank holiday weekend – a year later than intended, having been cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Philip Shackleton, who hails from the same family as explorer Ernest and who leads KWVR staffing and volunteering, said: “It's been a long five-year task to carry out the complete overhaul of 957 and it's been a real team effort.
“We found that 50% of the work was on the boiler, led by Ralph Ingham, and 50% on the lower end of the locomotive, led by myself.
“One surprising discovery was that while we knew the wheels were made
of cast iron, we thought the side rods were made of steel. We sent these to Keighley Labs for crack detection, who found by x-ray that these were wrought iron, and so will be original.
“Importantly, we have also now built in a steam heating system for the first time so this locomotive can operate on the railway in winter.
“We were very much up against the clock to finish the overhaul in time for the event. The bright green livery was simply a result of our having to find an ‘off the shelf ' colour and not attempt any modern colour matching, for which no technical records exist.”
The two other principal features of the event were the re-enactment cameo of ‘new' Railway Children flagging down and stopping the train, and the assembly of an allvintage rake of coaches, two of which had also appeared in the original film.
The cameo re-enactment of the film's famous ‘landslip' scene was staged just downhill from Oakworth station. KWVR volunteer Eileen Denning persuaded teenage relatives Katelyn and Bethany to dress in Second World War period costumes (the new sequel to the original film is set in the 1940s) and perform the twice-a-day stopping of two different trains under the safe care of stationmaster Richard Ashworth.
The vintage train consisted of two L&YR six wheelers, the 1912 L&YR Club coach and two of the Vintage Carriages Trust's Metropolitan Railway coaches, as used in the original film.
Trust chairman Trevor England said: “The star item in our museum, the GNR six-wheeler used in the original film, was not used but we did specifically repaint one of our Metropolitans in Railway Children livery, maroon and cream.”