Embsay kick-starts Midland carriages restoration
THE Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway (EABSR) has begun the restoration of two 100-year-old Midland Railway corridor third bogie carriages – their survival being down to having crossed the Irish sea during the Second World War.
Bomb damage on the Northern Counties Committee network, operated by the LMS, the Midland’s successor railway company, meant an urgent need for carriages in Northern Ireland in 1942. This was solved through the deployment of a number of second-hand carriages from the British mainland, which received new 5ft 3ins bogies.
Nos. 238 and 241 are the only two survivors of the six sent to Northern Ireland at the time. They were saved by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland in 1975, returning ‘home’ to MR territory in Yorkshire in 2004.
The EABSR has now launched a £100,000 appeal to restore the pair. No. 241 is listed by the Vintage Carriage Trust’s coach register as ‘exceptionally important’.
Both carriages were recently moved from Bolton Abbey to undercover storage at Embsay by Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0ST Illingworth. No. 241, which will be completed first, has been placed in the workshop and is now drying out, as is No. 238, which resides in the carriage sheds.
For more details, visit www. embsayboltonabbeyrailway.org. uk/century-appeal