TALES FROM BARRY
Reminiscences flowed as two engines from Dai Woodham’s famous scrapyard were officially launched into service.
80097 and 6989 restoration memories
How can you lose a steam engine on a low-loader?” asks Keith Savory. “Well, we did!”
As BR ‘4MT’ 2-6-4T No. 80097 was officially launched into service at the East Lancashire Railway on March 2, Keith – a founder member of the Bury Standard 4 Group – was remembering the locomotive’s eventful journey to the line in 1985, after the society rescued it from Barry scrapyard.
The group had first set eyes on the 2-6-4T – with the
heart-rending plea ‘Don’t Let Me Die’ painted on its bunker – at Christmas 1984. Recalled Keith: “There were three of them left, and 80097 was the best because it had a cab roof! “80072 had no roof and a cut bogie wheelset, and 80150 had a bad report on its boiler.” Having had to outbid the East Kent Railway, which also had a reservation on the engine, the group handed over the cheque for £9,000 plus VAT and No. 80097 became their property on May 1 1985.
The first working party was held on Sunday May 19, jacking the ‘4MT’s’ wheels up in the frames to make sure they would turn freely, in preparation for getting it onto the low-loader – a task that occupied the whole of the following day.
The lorry with its precious cargo set off for the ELR on the Tuesday, and Keith continued: “The driver said he was going to stop overnight at Knutsford services, but decided to carry on to Bury.
“We got to Bury ahead of it and there was no engine – so after waiting in the pub we went to the police station and told the ladies on reception: ‘We’ve lost a steam engine on a low-loader’.
“They told us to come back in an hour, but they’d sent a car to the services, phoned around and nobody had a clue where it was! “On the Wednesday morning, it arrived outside the market hall in Bury and the low-loader got a puncture
– so it was famous! It brought Bury to a standstill and everyone was late for work.
“It turned out it had been parked up in Heywood for the night at a pub called the Seven Stars – presumably because the driver was out of hours on the tachograph.”
When the Standard was finally unloaded at the ELR’s then headquarters of Castlecroft yard, he added: “The idea was that we’d have her running in four years.”
In truth, he concluded: “It’s been 35 years’ work, cost £350,000 and caused a lot of worry – but it’s been well worth it.”
FRIENDS REUNITED
The Standard tank became the 149th locomotive from Barry scrapyard to return to steam when it moved under its own power for the first time in October; and two months later, ‘Modified Hall’ No. 6989 Wightwick Hall set the milestone of the 150th, when it steamed at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre after a 40-year restoration.
Appropriately enough, these two locomotives were officially launched back into traffic on the same weekend, and in the same order they had steamed, with Wightwick Hall’s event taking place on March 3.
Once again, the sight of the gleaming, freshly outshopped machine brought forth happy memories. Sixty years after first ‘copping’ the Hawksworth 4-6-0, Jill Lewis was there to see it return to public service.
She remembers seeing the ‘Modified Hall’ as a teenager in the 1950s, watching Western Region steam from the vantage point of her grandmother’s house, which backed onto the GloucesterSwindon main line at Stroud.
She recalled: “I went spotting all over the Western with my father, and there weren’t many ‘Halls’ that I never saw – but I remember my father being quite excited about ‘Wightwick’ because it was a bit of a rarity in the Gloucester area.”
The Hawksworth 4-6-0 was allocated to Hereford and Worcester during the 1950s, but Jill was working in London by the time it was based at Gloucester Horton Road in the early 1960s. However, in a remarkable coincidence, she moved to Quainton in 1974 – just a stone’s throw from the BRC which would become home to No. 6989 following its departure from Barry in 1978.
Watching the ex-works ‘Modified’ about to move off shed for its first revenue-earning passenger train in preservation, she concluded: “It’s like watching an old friend come back to life.”