Cecil Raikes to be displayed in town’s new transport museum
MERSEY Railway 0-6-4T No. 5 Cecil Raikes is to go on display in a transport museum planned for Birkenhead.
The 5000-square metre Transport Shed, as it has been provisionally titled, will be part of the Dock Branch Park, an area of urban parkland to be developed on the site of the former Dock Branch railway line.
It will house some of the 250 artefacts in the transport collection of National Museums Liverpool, including Cecil Raikes, which has not been on display since the late 1990s.
The locomotive was built by Beyer Peacock in 1885, with condensing equipment for working the tunnel under the River Mersey. It was made redundant in May 1903 when the Mersey Railway became Britain's first steam-operated line to be electrified.
Cecil Raikes was sold the following year to Shipley Colliery of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, where it worked for the next 50 years. It was preserved by the British Railways Board at Derby Works and presented to National Museums Liverpool in 1965.
Australian relative
It was last on public display outside the Museum of Liverpool Life in the late 1990s, following a 20-year stay at Steamport Southport from 1978 until that centre closed in 1998.
Although it is a unique survivor in the northern hemisphere, sister engine No. 1 The Major survives at the New South Wales Rail Transport Museum in Thirlmere, Australia, having been one of four sold to J&A Brown, of New South Wales.
The new museum is being funded as part of Birkenhead's Town Deal funding bid from the Government, through which Wirral Council received £25 million for regeneration projects. Work on Dock Branch Park is expected to commence in 2022 and will take two years to complete.