BACK IN THE SADDLE
L&Y ‘23’ No. 752’s remarkable story
On April 25 1968, a spectral apparition from another age appeared in the yard at Bolton’s dying steam shed. Among the grimy ‘8Fs’ and ‘Black Fives’ eking out their final days working from the Lancashire depot, its tall chimney, riveted saddle tank and gracefully curved cabside sheets were a vision from a bygone era.
“It seemed totally out of place in 1968,” writes Bolton enthusiast Steve Leyland. “Though much of it was painted a ghostly white, the locomotive was real enough.”
The phantom that Steve and his fellow unofficial engine cleaners had seen on ‘their’ shed was not only real, but something very special indeed – and its bright coat of white-grey primer was the first sign that, unlike most of the surrounding locomotives, it had many more years of life ahead.
It was Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 0-6-0ST
No. 11456, which had arrived at Bolton’s 9K shed on an epic journey into preservation. At around 5am the next day, ‘8F’ No. 48773 – one of the few Bolton engines that would escape the final cull of BR steam later that year – left the shed, towing the ancient machine eastwards towards Yates Duxbury paper mill at Heap Bridge near Bury, where its new owners, the L&Y Saddletanks Fund, would begin the process of restoring it to working order.
52 years later, after an enigmatic preservation career that has included 15 minutes of fame as part of the ‘Rocket 150’ cavalcade, but also a much longer spell out of the limelight as a dismantled kit of parts, it has been brought back to life once again – close to where that second life in preservation began, at Bury.
SECOND CHANCE
It is the latest twist in the tale of a very lucky locomotive, to which the fickle hand of fate has dealt wildly differing cards throughout its preservation career – right back to the start when, in the words of Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Trust volunteer Dr John Sagar, it was only saved “by default”.
For the trust, then titled the L&Y Saddletanks Fund, did originally set out to preserve an example of this design, the Aspinall Class ‘23’ – but not this one.
Rochdale solicitor Richard Greenwood, and a group of fellow L&Y enthusiasts, set up the fund with the aim of saving No. 11305 – the final example on BR’s books. Finally withdrawn on September 5 1964, it was the last survivor of five that had been retained as shunters at the former LYR Horwich Works – the others being Nos. 11304/24/68/94 – famously still carrying their LMS numbers more than a decade after nationalisation.
But, like so many other preservation groups in those pioneering days, they couldn’t gather sufficient funds to secure the prize. “The price was about £980, I think,” recalls Richard (around £20,000 in today’s money).
As history records, like so many other preservation pioneers, they had to settle for something smaller – the tiniest L&Y tank engine of all, in fact. ‘Pug’ 0-4-0ST No. 51218 was secured for £450 upon withdrawal – coincidentally in the week ending the same day that No. 11305 was condemned – and became the first locomotive to arrive at the fledgling Keighley & Worth Valley Railway on January 7 1965.
However, that was not the end of the group’s efforts to save ‘Lanky’ saddle tanks – for there were still survivors in industrial service, and this provided the second chance to acquire a Class ‘23’.
Also still bearing its LMS number despite a latter-day application of green and red paintwork, No. 11456 was still in the ownership of the National Coal Board, at
Parsonage Colliery near Leigh. But though it was out of use by the time it came to the fund’s attention in 1966, the NCB was at first reluctant to part with it.
The trust’s website recounts: “The L&Y Saddletanks Fund (predecessors of the trust) negotiated with the NCB for over two years. One interesting facet of the negotiations was that the NCB had serious concerns that the new owners would fail to restore 752 and profit from its scrap value, thereby depriving the NCB of legitimate income, 752 being scheduled for scrapping at the time.”
Happily, somebody at the NCB seems to have had a change of heart, for when the fund did eventually obtain No. 752 in 1968, it was an outright donation.
RELAY RUN
The group did some initial work at the colliery to smarten up their new acquisition – “we got rid of the rust, put the primer on and started rubbing it down,” remembers Richard – before what he describes as “an incredible journey” by rail to its new home.
The trek began on Wednesday April 24 1968, when No. 752 left the Parsonage Colliery line at Howe Bridge West Junction, marshalled into a coal train behind a BR Sulzer Type 2 (Class 25) diesel for the first leg of the trip to Ellenbrook.
Here, it returned to NCB metals, and the following day, NCB ‘Austerity’ 0-6-0ST Harry (named after the coal board’s traffic manager Harry Tweedie) hauled it to Linnyshaw Moss exchange sidings for a BR locomotive to pick up the baton again – this time a steam engine, in the form of Bolton’s ‘8F’ No. 48026. The Stanier 2-8-0 shunted the L&Y saddle tank into another coal train, taking it to Kearsley exchange sidings and thence back to Bolton shed for one night’s layover.
Its destination of Heap Bridge was now only about eight miles away – but to get there, a circuitous journey was still required. The ‘8F’ hauling it,
No. 48773, would have been on the Castleton pilot turn – “the only pilot job in that direction that Bolton covered on a regular basis by the end,” says Steve Leyland, who has comprehensively documented 9K shed’s decline in British Railways Steam 1968: The Final Chapters – but this diagram entailed taking No. 752 past Heap Bridge Junction and a further four miles or so eastwards to Castleton.
Explains Richard: “Traffic into Yates Duxbury via Heap Bridge Junction was not worked by the Castleton pilot but by the Rochdale pilot, a Newton Heath working, at that time sometimes steam, sometimes a Sulzer Type 2. En route to Heap Bridge from Rochdale, it would have called at Castleton to collect 752.” The motive power for the final leg of the journey, he adds, was ‘Black Five’ No. 44709 from Carnforth – until June 1968, engines from 10A shed had a regular turn to Castleton’s rail welding plant with trains of new rails from Workington steelworks.
With No. 752 in remarkably good order, the main task was a boiler re-tube and a repaint into shiny LYR lined black. Says Richard: “It was in the course of stripping off many layers of paint from the cab upper panels that we proved the original LYR goods locomotive livery had two lines. Contemporary photographs, being orthochromatic and blind to red pigments, had never been sufficiently clear on this point before.
“The NCB had a number of workshops in the Wigan
It seemed totally out of place in 1968. Though much of it was painted a ghostly white, the locomotive was real enough STEVE LEYLAND
area, of which Parsonage itself was one – and they’d done a mechanical overhaul on it, but never got round to doing the boiler.
“When we first went to look at it, everything on it was nice and tight – it wasn’t like most NCB engines that were clattering and banging.”
Nonetheless, the engine was destined never to be steamed at the mill, for eventually, as Richard puts it: “Yates Duxbury said it was time we moved on.”
By now it was November 1971, and with the
East Lancashire Railway still some years in the future, its next venue was the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway – but once again, this required a movement in the wrong direction…
FROM LANCS TO YORKS
For a second time, the locomotive was moved eastwards from Heap Bridge to Castleton’s permanent way yard, where it was transferred to a low-loader for the rest of the journey. But, as Richard explains: “This was before the link road from Rochdale to the M62 was completed, and they’d only finished one carriageway.
“We got permission for it to go the wrong way up that carriageway – but nobody had told the road workers. They were quite surprised to see it bowling along and they were all shaking their shovels at it!”
Having arrived safely at the KWVR, No. 752 made its preservation debut on the wet evening of Saturday July 22 1972, heading down the valley from Haworth to
Ingrow and Keighley with a GWR ‘Toad’ brake van and ‘Weltrol’ wagon in tow. After that, it went into occasional passenger use, but the highlight of its first period of service was not to come until May 1980, with the ‘Rocket 150’ cavalcade marking a century and a half since the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. During the road journey to the stabling point at Bold Colliery, it returned to Rochdale – where most of the L&Y society lived – to be displayed outside the town hall.
“We weren’t invited to the ‘Rocket 150’ do!” recounts Richard. “We offered it ourselves, and the organisers said it could come, provided we paid.
“Afterwards, Bernard Staite of SLOA (the main line Steam Locomotive Operators’ Association) contacted us asking if we’d had to pay, and then SLOA made us a donation – but we never got anything from BR, which was the organiser!”
As Richard points out, No. 752 was the oldest privately owned locomotive taking part in the spectacular gathering. Originally constructed as a Barton Wright Class ‘25’ 0-6-0 by Beyer Peacock in 1881, and rebuilt to saddle tank form at the LYR’s Horwich Works in 1896, it was a full decade older than the nearest private contender at Bold – the Scottish Railway Preservation Society’s NBR ‘J36’ 0-6-0 Maude, dating from 1891.
Unfortunately, No. 752’s appearance is remembered not so much for this, as for the fact that it collided with the preceding locomotive in the cavalcade – LNWR ‘Improved Precedent’ 2-4-0 No. 790 Hardwicke.
Richard, who was on No. 752’s footplate at the time, says that “a lot of things combined to make it happen” but the main factor was that “people along the track were all waving like mad at us to speed up… and the driver did!
“But it caused no delay, and the locomotives all returned to the colliery yard as planned.”
Though describing it as “a slight collision”, John Sagar confirms that the accident still “did a certain amount of damage” to the Webb express engine, “but being an L&Y loco, 752 wasn’t affected.”
Further underlining how solidly built LYR engines are, he describes the new rear guard irons that have been fitted to No. 752 to replace the lost originals: “I’ve never seen such heavy-duty ones in my life – they’d shift a tree!
“We’ve gone on photo evidence – they may need trimming…”
Richard continues: “BR’s Longsight depot repaired Hardwicke’s wooden bufferbeam, but 752 has a massive steel one, so it was undamaged.
“Shunting engines are built to withstand a heck of a lot of bumping and banging…”
After the cavalcade, the unscathed No. 752 made its way light engine over BR metals to Manchester’s Liverpool Road station, where ‘The Great Railway Exposition’ was being held as a follow-up to the ‘Rocket 150’ event. It stayed at the former Liverpool & Manchester Railway terminus, today part of the Science & Industry Museum, for a few more months, giving rides in a replica L&MR coach.
END OF THE BEGINNING
Back at the KWVR, No. 752 continued to make sporadic appearances, particularly for enthusiast events, but its first stint of preservation service was now drawing to a close.
You know an engine’s been out of action for a very long time when you have difficulty pinning down the year, let alone the exact date, of its last steaming. We variously found 1982, 1984 and 1985 mentioned in different sources, before Richard confirmed: “The KWVR records say the last time it ran was July 18 1982.”
It was not until late 1997 that work finally began to overhaul it, with the help of a £90,000 grant from the then Heritage Lottery Fund. The locomotive was dismantled and sent to Ian Riley’s then Bury workshops, the boiler being the component that required the most attention; thanks to the latter-day NCB overhaul and the locomotive’s relatively light use since, the bottom end remained in good order, and “the only other thing we needed was a new saddle tank,” says Richard.
At a later date, with Ian Riley’s order book growing,
No. 752’s boiler moved to H.A. McEwens of
Cowling, where a new steel firebox was fitted – although, says John, the original copper ’box has been retained and “is in nowhere near as bad a condition as was first thought – it is reusable.”
The boiler was transferred to McEwens, continues Richard, because “we hoped to speed it up, but that didn’t happen because of a change of personnel” and with the rest of the locomotive back at Haworth, work gradually petered out as the 21st century rolled on.
The initial grant, explains Richard, “was to cover the work dismantling and assessing it – we fulfilled that, and there was enough to start work on the boiler” – but the engine slipped down the line’s priority list: “People at the KWVR were concentrating on maintaining the core fleet of ‘bread and butter’ locomotives and carriages.”
And so, says John, No. 752 “was mouldering away under the canopy next to Haworth shed for more than a decade – but all credit to Richard, because he’s kept the pot simmering for it for years.”
BACK TO BURY
Finally, No. 752 headed back west over the Pennines from White to Red Rose county, arriving back in Bury on July 20 2016.
“It was going nowhere, and we felt it would have a better chance of being overhauled within a reasonable timescale,” says John, explaining the reasons behind the move to the ELR. “And it’s come home to a proper L&Y setting.”
Although the LYR Trust remains very active on the former Midland Railway Oxenhope branch, not least in restoring its stunning rake of ‘Lanky’ coaches, John adds: “A lot of the members are still Lancashirebased – but remember that when people in the north of England were preserving these things, it was the Worth Valley or nothing!”
The initial plan was for No. 752 to be overhauled with the assistance of the Bury Standard 4 Group (owners of BR 2-6-4T No. 80097 and Ivatt 2-6-0
No. 46428) in the shed at Bury Bolton Street belonging to that organisation. In the event, with
No. 80097’s restoration ongoing, it was a couple more years before the decision was made for the overhaul of the ‘Lanky’ tank to be done under ELR auspices, and work started in earnest.
Callum Porter, the ELR’s 21-year-old fitter who has managed the project, takes up the story: “I started on it in November and December 2018 as a fill-in job over the Santa season, with a few odd jobs like overhauling the front sandboxes. This then progressed into a discussion on the condition of the loco, and after a few days measuring, cleaning and examining, we realised that with a little work it would be more than suitable for use.”
Again, this was thanks to that last heavy overhaul carried out towards the end of its NCB career. With the frames lifted off the wheels on March 15 last year (SR491), the pleasant discovery was made that “the axleboxes were, for the most part, quite good” and only required a little additional whitemetal and machining to bring the side play back to specification, meaning that the frames could be re-wheeled a mere 17 working days later, on April 10!
“Then came the motion re-assembly, which also took a matter of days,” Callum continues. “We decided to paint the inside motion gloss white after finding traces of white lead when we started to strip it. We found that early locomotive motion was painted in white lead to reflect the light of oil lamps while oiling in the dark.”
It is such small things that serve as a reminder of just how old, and valuable, this engine is – and while on that subject, we must correct some duff information we received a couple of issues ago, about the cab ventilator being thought to be new to the class. Callum and Richard confirm that it did have one throughout LYR, LMS and NCB days – the front section of the original ‘Ironclad’ cab being retained with an extended
roof to the bunker – although the new roof fitted at this overhaul has a slightly larger ventilator to allow more light onto the dark footplate.
One detail that “wasn’t thought about,” says Callum, “was that the oil pot lids needed a way to keep water out. After a clean, it was discovered that the lids should have a leather seal riveted onto the inside.
“After a few phone calls to various places (including a saddlers which was very confused as to why a railway wanted to buy a single sheet of leather), one of the trust members came to the shed with a piece of leather he’d cut out of the back of his old sofa!”
BRAKING POINT
But the remarkable historic fitting that really makes No. 752 stand out from the crowd is its brakes. The locomotive retains the old ‘simple’, non-automatic vacuum brake – probably the only working engine in the world to do so, reckons Richard.
With the automatic version, the creation of the vacuum releases the brakes and the admission of air to the train pipe applies them – but the simple system works in the opposite way, the vacuum applying the brakes and the air releasing them.
After the Armagh disaster of 1889, an Act of Parliament made it illegal to run passenger trains without the automatic brake – but the simple system was still permitted on goods and shunting engines. Although other Class ‘23s’ received steam or automatic vacuum brakes, No. 752 was one of those that retained the simple system throughout the remainder of its main line career – then into its NCB days, and preservation.
However, the locomotive can still safely work a passenger train, thanks to the ingenuity of its designer, Sir John Audley Frederick Aspinall, chief mechanical engineer of the LYR from 1886 to 1899.
“Aspinall invented many things,” says Richard, “and he designed a very clever brake valve that simultaneously acts as simple vacuum on the locomotive and automatic vacuum on the train.
“One or two other inventors were tinkering with it – but it was Aspinall who did most of the work.”
Richard continues: “None of us have ever seen a photo of one of these engines working a passenger train in L&Y, LMS or BR days – but there is evidence that they did.
“Eric Mason [a former Horwich Works apprentice who went on to become a prolific writer about the LYR] refers to them working the Horwich-Blackrod shuttle trains, which would be done by any locomotive that had been recently outshopped from the works.
“Eddie Stock, a KWVR volunteer, lived near Rochdale station as a kid in the 1940s, and he and his friends would go there after school to see the 4.35pm Rochdale-Blackpool Central train, hauled by a Hughes ‘Dreadnought’ 4-6-0 – the crew would let them shovel some coal onto the fire!
“He says that every evening, a saddle tank would come in on a passenger train between 4.15pm and 4.30pm– we think it was from the ordnance depot on the old Whitworth branch, but it never appeared in the public timetable.
“A lot of people in the factory were from Wigan, so we presume it then became the 5.15pm all-stations to there, with another engine.
“Eddie knows his engines – so there’s no possibility he’s wrong.
“There were several of the class allocated to Bury in steam days, and they were used on goods trains to Rochdale and the pilot duty there.”
COATS OF MANY COLOURS?
As you’ll have spotted in the photos by now, at some point before or during its journey into preservation in 1968, some wag adorned No. 752 with a BR ‘double arrow’ logo and the number ‘51456’. Adding 40,000 to its LMS number of 11456, this would have been its BR identity, had it survived to become part of the nationalised railway’s stock – the gap never being filled by another Class ‘23’ in the Ian Allan ‘Abc’ books.
That the freshly painted, BR-liveried No. 752 will once again carry that number heading eastwards from Bury past Heap Bridge, and one day to Castleton, is therefore historically authentic. In a way.
Later, John assures us, “it will go into L&Y livery”, and that’s not the only change of guise that it may undergo. While still wearing the BR emblem, says Richard, “it might change to one of the Bury-allocated numbers” and later, as well as a choice of plain or lined LYR black, he points out “there are two different styles of LMS livery it could carry”. Tantalisingly, when asked if the NCB green and red could also be reapplied at some point, he says: “Possibly.”
One or two other inventors were tinkering with it – but it was Aspinall who did most of the work RICHARD GREENWOOD
Perhaps the most appropriate makeover of all, however, is a planned renumbering as the classmate that started it all – the Horwich Works shunter, No. 11305. When this engine was scrapped, its smokebox door is believed to have been acquired by a Newton Heath fireman, though its subsequent fate is unknown; but its chimney is thought to have ended up on No. 752 in preservation, though its deteriorating condition meant that at this overhaul, it had to be replaced by a new casting, made in a joint order with two more for the Bowers 957 Trust and Andy Booth, for their respective LYR 0-6-0s – Class ‘25’ No. 957 and Class ‘27’ No. 52322.
As John explains, Harvey Scowcroft, another enthusiast from Bolton, “made a very generous donation towards repainting the engine, but specifically requested that it appears as 11305.
“All the photos we had showed 11305 with the earlier Barton Wright smokebox door, secured by a dart, instead of the Aspinall one with ‘dogs’ that 752 has.
“Richard got short shrift from the rest of the team when he suggested changing it, because it would entail all sorts of modifications to the front end – but then Callum bought 20-odd photos of the class at a Manchester model railway exhibition in December.
“Our first observation was that no two were the same! But then there was a picture of 11305 at Horwich, with the same smokebox door as 752 – so we don’t need to change it, and we’ll keep Harvey happy!”
Even before its entry into service, or any change of identity, No. 752 has been bringing back happy memories – quite by chance. Says John: “Richard bumped into someone who helped with its restoration at Heap Bridge while he was at school – so years later this chap, having forgotten all about 752, found himself being interviewed next to it for the filming of Britain’s Steam Railways!”
A VINTAGE DECADE
“I feel honoured to have managed it,” Callum concludes happily. “Here’s to 2020, and to ten years of L&Y running!”
He’s not just referring to No. 752 there. When
Steam Railway last ran a full feature on the locomotive (In the Works, SR266, January 2002) we pointed out that one of the potential highlights of its return to steam would be a working reunion with its one-time classmate, the ‘Ironclad’ at Keighley.
Little did anyone know then that this would take the best part of two more decades to achieve – but with No. 752 finally in steam, and No. 957 nearing the end of its own extensive overhaul, it really could be on the cards before long.
That’s not all, for as we report this issue, there is much more in prospect to delight L&Y fans. Not only Nos. 752 and 957, but the possibility of engines returning to the site of Horwich Works, and both surviving ‘Pugs’ in steam; not forgetting the engine that has single-handedly carried the torch for the company in recent years, No. 52322, and the trust’s own vintage train at Keighley.
A century after it merged with the LNWR and was then swallowed up into the LMS, the ‘Lanky’ will be brought back to life like never before in the 2020s, and humble No. 752 will be one of the stars of the show.