Current and Proposed New-Builds

Crampton Locomotive - this is a project that for a long time seemed to have gone into abeyance, but has flared into life over the last year or two, with really significant progress.

https://cramptonlocomotivetrust.org/

The website has had a revamp (though annoyingly, I can't find the really good technical design documentation they produced some years ago). There is a page of "latest progress" photos, which concentrate on the boiler; however, there is more recent progress producing the frame - it seems like the best place to follow that is the Northern Heritage Engineering Facebook site, as they are carrying out the construction: https://www.facebook.com/northernheritageengineering Thus far it looks like the boiler and frames are largely constructed, so the form of the loco is starting to emerge.

The project also aims to raise money for some replica SER carriages of the era, and in due course a shed to store the loco, It is interesting to wonder how they consider it will be used. What is impressive is that they have quite quietly got to the point of having real tangible parts of the loco constructed - it seems to be far from a speculative "construct a smokebox door and hawk it round every railway gala going" sort of affair.

Tom

 

Fascinating!
And so much progress (although you look at the size of the components, they are significantly smaller and lighter than the other new-builds).

I wonder where they plan to run it?

 

HS1?

 

Obviously I can't make any definitive statements, but in the 'Not to distant future' there could well be a 12 mile line not to far from the South Eastern mainline.