Home on the Grange – nearly! …but help needed for a tender of its own

IN the early days of standard gauge railway preservation, it was relatively easy to repair a recently out of service BR steam locomotive, the fires hadn’t long since been dropped and there was plenty of know-how about to keep the old machines going.

Second and third ‘ticket’ overhauls have become much more challenging, with boilers worn out, wheel tyres down to scrapping size and cylinders cracking beyond economical repair.

In many respects things have swung completely so that the opposite of the 1960s and 1970s is true. We now have the technology, if not the same steam know how, to cast new cylinders, build new boilers and replace almost any worn out parts – but now it is the cost that has become a problem, whereas back in the day, spare parts were relatively plentiful and cheap.

There are now so few large steam locomotive