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Railway heritage: The first century 1839-1939

However, the principle of railway preservation had been established as early as 1839. In the second of a special series looking at the amazing story of railway preservation, Robin Jones looks at the achievements and disappointments of the century that followed.

1839 was the year when it all began.Not steam haulage, of course. The key date there is 1804, when Richard Trevithick gave the world's first public demonstration of a railway locomotive, on the Penydarren Tramroad at Merthyr Tydfil. It follows that without railways, you cannot have railway enthusiasts, and in a chickenand- egg situation, you cannot have a preservation movement if there is nothing to ignite the public imagination to such an extent that they would want to preserve it.

Sadly, Trevithick's early locomotives were therefore not saved for posterity, and so the first examples of an invention which changed the face of the globe and formed the vital link between the Industrial Revolution and the modern world were lost forever. It was to be more than a third of a century after Trevithick that the seed that grew into the preservation movement was sown.

In 1829, as every schoolboy should know, Stephenson's Rocket won the Rainhill Trials and became the blueprint for the future of rail travel. Not only did it establish the basis of steam locomotive development, but it confirmed that locomotive traction had a place at all; the directors of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway had seriously considered cable haulage for their trains, and they were not alone.

Rocket was the 19th locomotive to be built by Robert Stephenson & Co. The 20th was Invicta, which was built for £635 for the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway.

Named after the motto on the flag of Kent, 'invicta' meaning undefeated, the four-wheeled locomotive was brought by sea from Newcastleon- Tyne to Whitstable.

It hauled the first train on the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway, referred to colloquially as the 'Crab and Winkle Line', on 3 May 1830.

The line was the idea of canal and early steam pioneer William James, who surveyed a seven-mile line from Canterbury while making plans to improve the harbour at Whitstable, a small fishing port that carried out a trade in iron pyrites from the Isle of Sheppey. The problem with a direct route between the two places lay in hills that rose to 200ft, leaving three steep gradients. It was decided to use rope haulage on two of them.

The line had received its Act of Parliament in 1825 and building started three years later, with George Stephenson as its engineer. Despite his immortal worldwide fame as the inventor of Rocket, Stephenson suggested that the level sections were worked by horses, and all three inclines by rope, but the directors demanded a locomotive that would be capable of tackling the least difficult incline. So Invicta was bought. It did not live up to the directors' hopes. It stumbled on the 'easier' gradient where a third stationary engine was installed in 1832.

Invicta was modified in 1835 in a bid to improve its performance, but this was unsuccessful and a year later it was withdrawn. In a retrograde step swimming very much against the tide of railway development, stationary engines were then brought in to work the whole line.

Invicta was offered for sale in 1839, as the railway tried to clear its debts, but by then it was blatantly outmoded, and there were no takers. The locomotive passed into the ownership of South Eastern Railway when it took over the Canterbury & Whitstable.

The first of them all

Thankfully, Invicta was later given to Canterbury City Corporation as a museum artefact – and so became the first locomotive to be preserved. For many years it stood on a plinth in the Dane John Gardens beside the Riding Gate following some restoration work in 1892. In 1977, a programme of full cosmetic restoration was undertaken, with help from the National Railway Museum.

Invicta returned to Canterbury in time for the 150th anniversary of the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway on 3 May 1980, and is now displayed inside Canterbury Heritage Museum in Stour Street, cosmetically restored. Canterbury City Council now hopes to use Heritage Lottery Fund money to build a new museum in Whitstable to house both Invicta and a stationary winding engine built by Robert Stephenson.

So railway preservation began while Isambard Kingdom Brunel was still building his broad gauge Great Western main line from Paddington to Bristol. In the preservation field, Invicta was followed 18 years later by Locomotion No 1 from the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world's first public steam line which opened in 1825.

Of course, with steam technology by then gathering momentum, locomotive types were quickly outdated, and Locomotion No 1 was withdrawn and sold into industrial use as a stationary boiler for Pease & Partners.

Likewise, Rainhill Trials runner-up Sans Pareil, withdrawn from the Bolton & Leigh Railway in 1844, ended its working days as a stationary boiler powering a pump at Coppull Colliery, Chorley. The legendary Rocket was extensively rebuilt since its Rainhill victory, with the addition of a smokebox and the realignment of its cylinders.

It may have been the first main line locomotive to enter industrial service when, in 1837, it was sold to the Duke of Cumberland's Brampton Railway. Rocket may have also been the first engine to be restored for heritage purposes.

In 1850, its fame established even then, it ran over the Newcastle & Carlisle line to Newcastle for refurbishment at Robert Stephenson's works. The aim was for it to be displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851, but this did not happen, and it was returned to the duke's railway for another decade of service.

It may be worthy drawing analogy between the development of steam and that of mass market computers 160 years later to understand why more was not saved. In the Victorian age, the emphasis was of the development of technology, pioneers like Brunel and the Stephensons sweeping the past aside.

The ones that got away

There would be little sentimentality for a machine which did a job far less efficiently than one which had replaced it: the emphasis was on the future, not the past, and in the booming railway sector, there was so much that was new to generate excitement.

In the same way, a state of-the-art laptop of 2003 which has only a small hard drive and a comparatively slow processor, is big and bulky, and does not have wi-fi access may well end up in the landfill site. Who would want to give it shelf space when they have the latest all-singing all-dancing model?

Sadly in the mid-19th century, certain engines were earmarked for preservation but did not survive. One of the Blenkinsop rack locomotives built by Fenton Murray & Wood in 1812/13, hailed by historians as the world's first commercially successful steam locomotives, was saved after withdrawal in 1835. However, it was scrapped in error in 1860, leaving only its three wheelsets.

By the 1860s, however, there was a growing awareness of the historical importance of pioneer locomotives, especially with the establishment of the Patent Office Museum in London, which later became the Science Museum.

It set out to save several of the key early engines, although most of them had by needs been extensively rebuilt by then.

Classics saved

Rocket was preserved in 1862, after being was rescued from a scrapyard, but by then its firebox had gone. The next year, Sans Pareil was presented to the Patent Museum without its wheels. Locomotion No 1, another classic survivor, had twice been rebuilt.

The oldest of them all, the 5ft gauge Hedley engines built for Wylam Colliery in Northumberland, which dated from 1813-15, were still running at the beginning of the 1860s after being heavily rebuilt between 1827-32. Puffing Billy went to the Patent Museum in 1862, while Wylam Dilly went eventually to the Royal Scottish Museumin Edinburgh.

The Great Western Railway preserved its famous Robert Stephenson 2-2-2 North Star at withdrawal in 1871. Originally built for the 5ft 6in gauge New Orleans Railway, only for the order to be cancelled, North Star was regauged to 7ft 0½in and arrived at Maidenhead by barge in late November 1837, later followed by sister Morning Star.

North Star headed the directors' special over the London to Maidenhead inaugural section of the GWR five days before it opened to farepaying passengers on 4 June 1838.

The GWR also saved, for display at Swindon, Victor, one of the standard gauge Fossick & Hackworth 0-6-0s with distinctive inclined cylinders from the Llanelly Railway.

Ireland's Great Southern & Western Railway kept the last of its Bury bar-framed engines when 2-2-2 No 36 with taken out of traffic in 1874.

Entering preservation around 1864 was the Foster Rastrick 0-4-0 Agenoria, with its enormously high chimney, and a nameplate in the form of a balancing weight on one of its wheels. Built for the Earl of Dudley's Shut End colliery line at Kingswinford, Agenoria is very similar to the Stourbridge Lion of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, now preserved in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

By contrast, numerous classic locomotives on other lines came and went without a thought by their owners to save one for posterity. However, an event in 1875 changed the way the public at large viewed railway heritage. It was a major celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

The first great cavalcade

Early that year, North Eastern Railway director Henry Pease came up with the idea of holding the event to commemorate the opening of a line with which his family had been long associated.

It was decided "that an Exhibition be held of Locomotives and other Engines, commencing with No 1 and showing progressively the improvements made from the earliest up to the present time."

The exhibition was to take place at the company's North Road Engine Works, Darlington, and would consist of the unveiling of the statue of Joseph Pease, the first Stockton & Darlington treasurer, the presentation of a portrait of him to the Darlington Corporation, a celebratory banquet, excursions to places of industrial, topographical or antiquarian interest around Darlington and most significantly, an exhibition of locomotives at North Road Works, which opened on 27 September 1875.

The anniversary day of was declared a general holiday and shops and houses throughout Darlington were decorated by the tradesmen and citizens. Banners were hung throughout the town, including one which read: "The Locomotive, the Sources of England's Greatness."

'Let's have a national collection'

Bank Top and North Road stations were both decorated with furze, laurel and flowers, to greet the crowds that surged into the town on packed trains.

North Eastern Railway chairman George Leeman led a VIP party round the works. Locomotion No 1 was specially moved into the works from its pedestal at North Road station, and with the wheels raised above the track, was supplied with steam so that the visitors could watch the wheels turn and the valve gear operate. Henry Pease stood on Locomotion and made a speech. Among the locomotives present was Invicta.

The North Eastern's Darlington Section workmen with at least 10 years' service were allowed to visit Darlington after being given a half-day off with pay, a free pass from their home station, and a dinner at the works.

In 1881, the centenary of George Stephenson's birth was marked with the assembly of a static display of old locomotives at Newcastle-on-Tyne, again featuring Invicta and Locomotion No 1, plus Timothy Hackworth's 0-6-0 Derwent which had been built for the Stockton & Darlington in 1845 but which was still in industrial service.

Killingworth Colliery's Billy, a four-wheeled locomotive built in 1826 as a development of Stephenson's 'Killingworth Travelling Engine', and which was used to haul wagons of coal to the shipping staiths on the River Tyne, ran under its own power at the event.

The 4ft gauge Horlock long-wheelbase 0-4-0 Fire Queen used on the Padarn Railway in North Wales was withdrawn in 1886 and preserved in the quarry's private museum at Llanberis. It is the only Crampton locomotive to survive in Britain.

In 1885 Archibald Sturrock, the far-sighted former Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Northern Railway, suggested that a national collection of historic locomotives should be compiled.

Unfortunately, his words presaging the later founding of the National Railway Museum, went unheeded.

In 1898, owner Pease & Partners presented Derwent to the NER. It was placed on a plinth at Darlington's Bank Top station and displayed there for many years. In such times, static display on station platforms was often the only way of preserving a locomotive.

When the Furness Railway preserved 1846- built Bury 0-4-0 Coppernob in 1900, it was 'stuffed and mounted' in a large glass case outside Barrow-in-Furness station.

Space has always presented a problem in preservation. How many items have been scrapped because there is nowhere for them to go? Today's heritage lines find siding space is at a premium, and even if it is allocated to rolling stock, the likelihood is that it will deteriorate in the open.

The best solution is under-cover accommodation: however, that is where big money comes in.

Stanier's blackmark

Sometime in the late 19th century, preserved locomotives were relegated to a corner of a locomotive works, but here, with demands on space forever increasing with the growth in traffic, their safety could not be guaranteed.

GWR locomotive superintendent William Dean oversaw the scrapping of the Fossick & Hackworth locomotive Victor at Swindon in 1889.

Perhaps far worse was an ultimate act of vandalism perpetuated by none other than William Stanier in 1906 when, left in charge of Swindon Works, he ordered the scrapping of North Star and legendary Iron Duke class 4-2-2 Lord of the Isles, all but wiping out what remained of Brunel broad gauge rolling stock at a stroke, together with Isambard's private omnibus. George Jackson Churchward, who was on holiday at the time, was not amused, and retrieved the remains of North Star, which was 'reassembled' in 1925, and also saved the driving wheels of Lord of the Isles.

The early 20th century saw the preservation of the survivor of the five Hetton 0-4-0s built by George Stephenson and Nicholas Wood between 1820-22 and a representative of the 'Crewe' or 'Allan' type locomotive, Grand Junction Railway 2-2-2 No. 49 Columbine, possibly saved only by the erroneous belief that it was the first engine built at Crewe. Another famous LNWR locomotive, 1847-built 2-2-2 Cornwall, was preserved on withdrawal in 1907. Cornwall would be restored to traffic four years later, and would be used to haul directors of the LNWR, and subsequently the LMS, before being withdrawn for a second final period in preservation in 1927.

The other major event in preservation before World War One was the welcome saving of Great Northern Railway Stirling single No 1, but with an incorrect pattern tender. While those returning from the trenches looked for a land fit for heroes, there was little sympathy shown by the GWR for an old soldier in the form of a Shrewsbury & Chester Railway 2-2-2 of 1848, which was cut up in 1920. However, railway heritage was given a double boost by major events in successive years.

Firstly, the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 gave a platform similar to that of 1851 for railways, and as well as the latest locomotives from the newly constituted 'Big Four' companies, Locomotion No 1 was taken to Wembley to stand alongside them.

The following year, the LNER marked the centenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, in the presence of the Duke and Duchess of York, the late King George VI and the Queen Mother, and 250,000 spectators, with the biggest-ever cavalcade of locomotives held to date, at Shildon. A cavalcade of 53 locomotives and trains, old and new, passed by at Urlay Nook. Although the actual centenary date was 27 September, the giant procession was held on 2 July 1925, to coincide with the meeting in Britain of the International Railway Congress attended by delegates from all over the world.

Stockton & Darlington 100

On the day previous to the procession, an exhibition of locomotives, rolling stock and railway equipment was opened at the newly completed Faverdale wagonworks at Darlington.

A large covered grandstand was erected at milepost 6 on the north side of the Darlington to Eaglescliffe line between Goosepool and Urlay Nook signalboxes – on the same stretch of line that Locomotion No 1 made its historic first run on 27 September 1825. Numerous specials including the Royal Train arrived for the big occasion, while people travelled in any way they could, by car, bicycle, bus or on foot to glimpse the cavalcade from numerous viewpoints along the route.

At 9.54 am on the big day, the signal was given for the first exhibit – the Hetton Colliery locomotive of 1822 – to move off under its own steam and lead the great procession.

Each exhibit carried a number tablet on the front of the engine, while at the grandstand two porters announced the locomotives through megaphones.

As the cavalcade was considered as one unit, only the replica train, the last exhibit in the procession, carried a tail lamp.

Regrettably, an appearance by a veteran locomotive in the procession did not mean it would be preserved. Great North of Scotland Railway K class 4-4-0 No 45 of 1866 was brought in with a train of old matching carriages for the occasion, but although repainted in GNSR livery, it was scrapped shortly afterwards, with the coaches being sold to the Harton Coal Company for use on miners' trains.

However, many of the older engines were taken to York afterwards to form the nucleus of the country's first dedicated railway museum, under the direction of the LNER, and which laid the foundations for today's multiple awardwinning National Railway Museum.

In 1880, JB Harper of the NER began collecting material which was exhibited at the 1925 centenary celebrations and was used as the basis of the York museum opened in 1928 under the curatorship of EM Bywell.

Smaller exhibits were accommodated in the old station buildings and the rolling stock and other large exhibits in the former locomotive erecting and repair shops of the York and North Midland Railway. The collection was dominated by items from the North Eastern Railway, together with Great Northern Railway items.

In 1937, GNR Atlantic No 990 Henry Oakley went to York Museum after withdrawal.

The LNER had stolen a march on its rival 'Big Four' companies in preserving its heritage, but the LMS was following suit. In 1928 the last of the Johnson 4-2-2s, No 673, which had also been at Shildon, was safeguarded. Also saved were Midland Railway 1856-built 0-6-0 No 401 which was withdrawn in 1925 and restored in 1929, MR 156 class 2-4-0 No 156, withdrawn in 1930 and Johnson 0-4-4T No 1226 of 1875, set aside on withdrawal in 1930. North London 4-4-0T No 6 was also kept for three years after withdrawal, and restored to NLR colours.

Disgracefully, soon after Stanier was appointed LMS Chief Mechanical Engineer and moved from Swindon to Derby, he scrapped the latter four in 1932.

The LMS makes amends

A better fate met LNWR Precursor 2-4-0 No 790 Hardwicke and the unique Paris exhibition Neilson-built Caledonian Railway 4-2-2 No 123 which were saved on withdrawal in 1932 and 1935 respectively. The LMS also saved 1838-built Liverpool & Manchester 0-4-2 No 57 Lion, which since withdrawal in 1859, had powered a pump at Wapping in Liverpool Docks for 60 years.

Still remarkably complete, it was taken to Crewe and overhauled, for the centenary celebrations of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1930, when it hauled replica stock on a specially laid track in Liverpool's Wavertree Park.

Plinthed at Lime Street station in 1931, Lion was steamed in 1938 for the film Victoria the Great and at Euston the following year for the London & Birmingham Railway centenary, alongside the latest 'Coronation Scot' stock.

Britain's first 4-6-0, Highland Railway 'Jones Goods' No 103 was preserved by the LMS at St Rollox Works on withdrawal in 1934.

The Stephenson Locomotive Society achieved a landmark in 1927 when it saved LBSCR 0-4-2 No 214 Gladstone for York Museum – a true first for the enthusiast sector.

The Southern Railway set aside three locomotives for a planned railway museum at Eastleigh Works. Isle of Wight Railway Beyer Peacock 2-4-0T No 13 Ryde of 1864, LSWR Beattie 0-6-0ST No 0332 and unique Drummond 4-2-4 locomotive/inspection saloon of 1899 nicknamed 'The Bug' were supposedly preserved, only to be scrapped at the start of World War Two.

Truro goes to York

The GWR at this time did little for preservation, but thankfully did save unofficial record breaker No 3440 City of Truro when it was withdrawn in 1931, being sent to the LNER's York Museum. It was the first 4-4-0 to be preserved.

GWR broad gauge was finally represented in preservation in 1927 by the plinthing of verticalboilered South Devon Railway 0-4-0 Tiny of 1868 at Newton Abbot.

Sadly, South Devon Railway 2-4-0ST Prince of 1871, which would have told us far more about broad gauge locomotives, albeit having been converted to standard gauge in 1893, was scrapped in 1935 after surviving since withdrawal in 1899 at Swindon Works as a stationary boiler.

Other broad gauge engines performing similar task were also cut up at this time. Ironically, it was theGWR's centenary year.

The 50th anniversary of the train which became the 'Flying Scotsman' led the LNER to take Stirling single No 1 from York Museum in 1938, and run it on the main line, complete with a train of old GNR six-wheelers.

A series of trains run behind the locomotive included the first-ever railtour organised by an enthusiast group in the form of the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society.

In so many ways, the 30s were a zenith of main line steam, and plans were made for the preservation of North British Railway Class C11 Atlantic Midlothian. Scrapping of the engine had begun when orders from on high deemed that it should be saved, by then, World War Two broke out, priorities changed overnight, and the locomotive was cut up anyway.

However, as we shall see, World War Two and changing social patterns in the years that followed heralded a fresh and far-reaching approach to railway preservation.