Tornado

Oh dear...if I had a few million I'd be building one. I think it would be in great demand. There was something about the J50, which I can't put my finger on, that endeared me to them.

 

Quite - what we have in preservation (of ex-BR stock) is very strongly influenced by what went through Barry. Large express locos like Blackmore Vale or Clan Line that went direct to preservation from BR usage are comparatively rare.

Years ago I also did an analysis of leaving dates from Barry that showed fairly definitively that the smaller locos wents first: as numbers of those dried up the medium locos went, and the big locos went last.

So I don’t think the charge that early preservationists preferred large locos stacks up. The real problem was that by the late 60s even “small” locos were typically a class 4 or thereabouts. Comparatively few class 2 or smaller went to Barry. So the big miss is really that by time preservation got going, many of the really ideal locos for most lines (unsaturated pre-grouping class 1-2) had been scrapped a decade earlier.

Tom

 

Where d I send my money?

 

Off the top of my head, a few Terriers and P's from the Southern, 1338, 1363, 1369, 1420,1442, 1450,1466 & 9400 from the GWR, 47383, 41708 and 51218 from the LMS and 68846 and 68153 (54) from the LNER. All the other small ex BR locos came from other sources. (4555 is relatively big!)
No doubt the list will now grow rapidly.

 

I don’t think larger locos going straight to preservation are that rare, we have 4079, 7029, 4900, 6998, 45593, 45596, 46201,46115, 48773, 60007, 60009, and I’ve probably left one or two out.

 

60019 and possibly 60532. Blue Peter spent some time in storage before purchase

 

Many of those ended up on the mainline though. The original quote was about people creating preserved lines and then obtaining large express locos to work on them, which was much less common:

"We all wanted to reopen our local line and ignored the fact it had always been worked by a tank loco or occasionally a 2-6-0 and in later years a 2 car DMU. Having secured the line, so many then rushed out to buy a main line express loco."

It's that latter point I'd suggest isn't particularly typical. For most heritage lines, larger locos came later and only really when the supply of smaller locos was largely exhausted.

Tom

 

Agreed but that wasn’t known at the time they were purchased, no one could have foreseen the main line steam scene we have now. The original proposals for the Gloucester and Warwick and Great Central were to run main line express engines.

 

I think they were in store at Healey Mills and on 25 October 1978 they were towed to Dinting Railway Centre.
Here the are parked up at Padfield en-route.