West Lancs. Railway - A short visit.

On the Sunday of the Windmill Farm Gala I took an hour off and drove the seven miles to the north to Hesketh Bank for a ride on the two foot gauge West Lancs. Railway. Kerr Stuart, Stanhope was in steam bearing its painted Tattoo name on the saddle tank. I watched it prepare a train and took the first train to Delph and back before returning to the WFR. For prospective and exisiting customers - this will appear in our annual Steamin' Around on the Narrow Gauge DVD, later in the year, along with shots of Statfold, Amerton, Golden Valley and other narrow gauge lines visited in 2007. Al. n.b. all these episodes plus WLR now on a DVD for a fiver plus £1.25 p/p see www.pmvideo.co.uk for details. Locomotives The West Lancashire Light Railway as previously noted has eight steam locomotives on site; Irish Mail, 0-4-0st, Hunslet 'Alice' class, Ex. Dinorwic Slate Quarry, Wales, Operational. Joffre, 0-6-0t+wt, Kerr Stuart 'Joffre' class, Ex. WW1 French Artillery Railways, Under Restoration. Montalban, 0-4-0t+wt, Orenstein and Koppel, Ex. Minas de Utrillas, Spain, Operational. Utrillas, 0-4-0t+wt, Orenstein and Koppel, Ex. Minas de Utrillas, Spain, Operational. No. 45, 0-6-0t+wt, Chrzanow 'LAS' class, Ex. Polish 2ft. Gauge, Static Dislplay. Stanhope, 0-4-2st, Kerr Stuart 'Tattoo' class, Ex. Penrhyn Slate Quarry, Wales, Operational. No.47, 0-8-0t, Henschel, Ex. WW1 German Feldbahn, Awaiting Restoration. No.48, 0-4-2t, Fowler, Ex. Sena Sugar Estates, Mozambique, Awaiting Restoration. There are also numerous IC locomotives including products from; Hudson Hunslet Ltd. Ruston and Hornsby. Motor Rail Ltd. F. C. Hibberd and Co. R A Lister and Company. Hudswell Clarke. E.E.Baguley Ltd. The railway also has two electric locomotives on site; Greenbat, 0-4-0 Battery-Electric, Greenwood and Batley, Ex. R.A.F Fauld, Operational Welsh Pony, 0-4-0 Overhead-Electric, British Electric Vehicles, Ex. Llechwedd Slate Quarry, Wales, Awaiting Restoration. Stanhope was manufactured by Kerr Stuart & Co. of Stoke on Trent in 1917 as works number 2395. It was the first "Tattoo" class locomotive to be fitted with Hackworth valve gear, and as such was illustrated in the contemporary maker's catalogue. It was sold to Holloway Brothers of Inverkeithing for use on construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard at Rossyth and afterwards also the Sidcup bypass. In 1930 the loco was sold to Durham County Water Board for use on the Weardale reservoir contract. It is here that it received its name, from a local village. In 1934 the loco was sold to the Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales, where it was modified by lowering the boiler by 6 inches to improve stability. By 1948 the loco was out of use, and remained on the scrap siding for a considerable number of years. Many of the parts were removed for use in the restoration of other locomotives. In 1966 the loco found its way into preservation, but deteriorated even further until, after several owners, the restoration of the remaning parts began in 1994 at the premises of the FMB Engineering Company. The enormity of the project will be realised by the following brief (!) inventory of missing parts: wheels, motion and valve gear, boiler, smokebox, saddle tank, injectors, brake systems, springs, controls and a whole host of detail parts. In late March an agreement was reached with Alan Keef Ltd., Light Railway Engineers of Lea Line, near Ross on Wye, to complete the remaining work to return Stanhope to working order. This entailed Stanhope being stripped down to enable remedial work to be carried out on the wheels and axleboxes. After this, all motion work was re-fitted. Lost motion has been fitted to the brake mechanism to allow the installation of a steam brake. Recently manufactured items are the rivetted saddle tank, blast pipe and ash pan, safety valves and clack valves. After just over five years restoration and more than fifty years since she last ran, Stanhope finally steamed back into life in early September, in time to make a special appearance at the Alan Keef open day on September 11th. The eventual aim is to operate the locomotive at the new site of the Moseley Railway Trust, however in the meantime it is based at the West Lancashire Light Railway at Hesketh Bank, where it arrived on 20th November 1999.