When #24 was first bought, it was decided that it would be nice to take it visiting other railways periodically. Now the C.C.L.R where she is normally based is a nice railway and on a sunny summer day it's great ambling along looking over the sand dunes and watching the big ships entering the Humber estuary. Trouble is, that at a little under a mile long and with most of that running pretty level, neither the locos or the driver's get much of a chance to show what they are capable of. Basically, we wanted to test and expand our driving skills, give the loco a bit of real work to do and have the pleasure of driving somewhere different.
Following a conversation with Peter van Zeller of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway at our Autumn Gala in 1997, Steve Woods, their General Manager, was contacted to see how they would view a visit from #24. "How about coming up for our May 1998 Gala" came back the reply. For those who don't know, 'La'al Ratty' as the R&E Railway is known, is a seven mile 15" gauge line climbing steadily upwards from Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast to Dalegarth some 200 feet above sea level. It has some awesome grades of up' to 1 in 36 and is a real 'drivers' line.

In the months leading up to our visit, much hard work was put in by our little team getting the loco into shape both mechanically and visually. This was our chance to show just what she was made of. Transportation of the 5 ton load was to be by lorry on Friday 24th April so that we would have a full week to get used to the line before the Gala on 2-3-4th May. She left about 10:00 am with one of the CCLR volunteers accompanying her in the lorry and Chris Shawe (CCLR owner) traveling by a shorter route by car a little later. It was a pretty normal sort of day and I expected a phone call late afternoon to say they had all arrived OK. The call finally came but the message was all wrong. Chris was saying something about the loco being in the middle of the A595 halfway up a hill in Cumbria.
It took a little while for the full situation to sink in, but there was no doubt that our precious load now sat firmly in the middle of a main road with an unknown amount of damage. They were awaiting a recovery crane and would phone when more details were known. I have to admit that the next few hours were terrible, both for me not knowing what was happening, and for the advance team for actually having to cope with the situation. A number of phone calls and frantic re-arrangement took place over the next 48 hours but the bottom line seemed to be that the damage was not terminal and with a lot of hard work, we could re-build her on site and still make the Gala.

First thing Monday morning, myself and my good friend and 'ass fitter' Paul Stubbins, headed north with a car full of cutting, welding and general loco mending gear. I must stress here for those not blessed with a sick sense of humour that 'ass' is actually short for assistant in this case. When we finally arrived at Ravenglass station, #24 was sitting outside the workshop and looking very sorry for herself. The cab was sagging backwards at a strange' angle, half of the side running boards were off, a number of pipes and fittings were missing and part of the boiler cladding had been removed.

We now got the full story of events. It seemed that the lorry for some reason had started rolling backwards down a steep hill and a sharp application of the brakes had caused the load to lurch backwards. The sudden shock had over loaded the retaining straps and the loco left the lorry. She hit the road, drag beam first, then the front end slammed down burying the left hand cylinder drain cocks into the tarmac. All this resulted in a slightly bent drag beam and rear pony tuck frame, one smashed wheel bearing casting on the rear pony truck and two on the front and both left hand drain cocks demolished, parts of which are still embedded in the road.
Now this would have been bad enough, but unfortunately the tender wanted to go for a run too and decided to follow the loco off the lorry. No sooner had the engine hit the ground, than the tender shot back gouging into the right hand boiler cladding, running on along the running board, smashing the entire cab backwards off it's six mountings and finally falling into the road on it's side. On it's journey, it ripped off a number of steam and other pipes and curled the heavy steel running board as though it was tin plate. Unfortunately, further damage was sustained by the well meaning recovery crane crew who, to be fair, were under pressure to re-open the now closed main road, and who were more used to moving crashed trucks than steam locomotives.

It was about two hours before the load could continue the last few miles to Ravenglass and the road could finally be open to traffic again. The advanced team had already done much of the removal of damaged parts and given her a good looking over but we still had a good check round before starting. The 1" thick main frames etc. looked good and she moved along the track OK when pushed so the chassis seemed good but we decided that a hydraulic test of the boiler was the first priority to see if any structural damage had been sustained there. This proved good so it was all go to rebuild the rest as quickly as we could. The gang at Ratty were extremely helpful and virtually gave us the run of their main workshop which has excellent facilities including large inspection pit and electric overhead crane. The team of four of us worked all day Monday to Thursday, carefully cutting off damaged parts and either repairing or replacing as we went on. The cab had been ripped completely off its mounting brackets and these needed much straightening and welding before it finally sat straight again. Three new axle bearings had to be machined up for the pony trucks, but as these are modified from commercially produced items, this was not too much of a problem and the selection of heavy lathes and milling machines at our disposal made light work of it. Temporary manual drain cocks were adapted and fitted to the left hand cylinders, and though this meant walking to the front of the loco to open or close them, they did the job. Various new steam pipes were fabricated and some old ones repaired. By late afternoon on Thursday, she was as well as we could make her at that time and all that remained was a steam test before we attempted a trip up the line. We raised steam slowly to ease her back into the idea of doing some work and, after a few runs up and down the yard headshunt we were ready for the big test.

Shortly after the last service train of the day had finished, we set off from Ravenglass with a four coach train. Driver Stubbins took the regulator and we traveled up in the first coach as support team. I spent most of the first mile with my head out the window watching the motion and listening for strange noises, but she seemed just fine. We stopped a couple of times on the way up just to check things over but apart from an axlebox running a little hot everything was OK and we arrived safely at the other end about 45 minutes later: Our first problem came at Dalegarth, the top terminus, where she was unable to get onto the turntable due to our low slung tender brake gear and a turntable locking plate that had taken an earlier knock from another visiting engine and was standing proud of the track. This meant that we had to do the return journey tender first and as I was driving back, it did little for my posture, but nevertheless was a marvelous experience.

Having proved she really was OK, we put her to bed happily. On Friday, Chris Shawe and Andy Barnes took her out for their trial runs so that all four of us now had some knowledge of the route. Over the three Gala days we shared the driving between the four of us and apart from a couple of minor faults which appeared and were easily fixed, she worked hard and did us all proud. Needless to say, her return journey to Cleethorpes on Tuesday 5th May was happily uneventful, helped I'm sure by extra vigilant loading and securing. Since her return she has been in regular service and apart from the obvious visual scars, seems none the worse for her adventure. A full repair and re-paint is scheduled for later in the year when she can be spared from traffic and the insurance claim is settled.

A second article detailing the subsiquent rebuild, appeared in issue #11 (April 2000) of Grand Scale Quarterly magazine.
Click here to read it now.