- ***SOLD OUT***
Back to Black!
Stanier 8F 48624 on a Heavy Freight, 21st January 2015
***SOLD OUT***
Back to Black!
Stanier 8F 48624 on a Heavy Freight, 21st January 2015
Stanier 8F is being returned to BR Black and weathered for two days of heavy freight action on the Great Central Railway.
£65.00 per day.
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About this event
The Stanier locomotives were first introduced in 1935, when a
batch of twelve engines, with domeless boilers, was built at the Crewe works of
the LMS. These were originally classified 7F, but an improved domed
boiler was rapidly introduced and the class became the now recognised 8F.
Such was the success of the class on the LMS that the design was chosen
by the War Department for large scale production in the Second World War.
Engines were built at many locomotive works around the UK and large
numbers went overseas immediately for service in many theatres of war.
Eventually 852 members of the class were built and with such a large
number there were many detail differences.
No 48624 is unique in 8F preservation in that it is the only surviving Southern Railway built example, being part of a Railway Executive Committee order completed in 1943 at Ashford Works. The locomotive spent its entire working life allocated to Willesden Shed and is not thought to have led to harsh a life, evidenced by the lack of the normal main frame repair around the Main Driving Wheel seen on almost all other preserved 8F’s. The locomotive was withdrawal from traffic in 1965 with a suspected fractured internal main steam pipe and then lay slowly rusting in Barry scrap yard in South Wales, before being rescued in 1981.
Stanier 8Fs were no strangers to the Great Central Railway (GCR), having worked many heavy freight trains on the London Extension from Nottingham to London in the latter years of the line’s operation. It is this information that we base our two days of events on, with day one seeing 48624 at the head of a heavy Bauxite Freight of around 20 plus wagons. Day two will see her lifting the Windcutter Minerals rake.
Thanks has to be given to the owning group for giving permission to have their loco put back into a temporary Black BR livery. Our days will start from Loughborough at 08.00 and will run until sunset. We will have the full use of the line but will concentrate our photography on the double track sections only. Please note the line should have been flailed by the time we visit.
Heavy mixed Freight £65.00 per person.
