RSH 0-6-0ST No. 7031/1941

Britain’s steel industry faced another crisis in spring

2019 when British Steel went into liquidation, threatening the future of Scunthorpe, Skinningrove and Teesside steelworks. For the town of Corby, 40-year-old memories came bubbling to the surface once again.

The same vein of ironstone that was fed into Scunthorpe works was also dug from the ground around the small Northamptonshire village of Corby. Stewarts & Lloyds, which, since its founding in 1903, was one of Britain’s largest steelmakers, decided to move steel production closer to the ironstone workings it already managed. Work started on the Corby site in 1933 and it produced its first steel in 1935.

Corby steelworks was vast, with four blast furnaces, sinter plants, Bessemer converters and coking ovens. No wonder it became known as ‘Steeltown’. But all good things come to an end. The nationalised British Steel Corporation struggled financially through the 1970s and, in 1979, it was announced that Corby would close. When the final coil came off the mill in May 1980, the site had produced some 2½ million tons of steel.

Corby’s steelworks had an extensive railway network and RSH No. 7034/1941 was a Corby locomotive all its life, until it was retired in 1969.

It’s now based at the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel & Wakes Colne in Essex. Conversion to Thomas has meant that it now sports the Thomas-profile side tanks but linked by a low saddle tank. Sadly, this hides a curious S&L trait.

Stewarts & Lloyds was another customer loyal to one locomotive builder. In this case, it was Manning Wardle. When MW folded in 1922, fellow Leeds builder Kitson took over MW’S assets and S&L started to order Kitson products.

But Kitson also got into financial difficulties. The company survived but it stopped producing locomotives in 1938. All its patterns and drawings, including those inherited from Manning Wardle, were acquired by Robert Stephenson & Hawthorn.

No. 7034 was built in 1941 and yet it looks as though it’s emerged from the Victorian era. That’s because Stewarts & Lloyds insisted on following Manning Wardle design practice, including the raised firebox, which prevented the saddle tank from sitting flush against the cab!

This makes No. 7031 a rare survivor

– an RSH locomotive built to a Manning Wardle design.