RAIL fans have two more reasons to attend a Somerset gala celebrating all things steam.
The West Somerset Railway Autumn Steam Gala runs from October 17 to 19 and has announced details of two more locomotives that will be taking to the tracks.
Built at Swindon in 1934, number 5029 Nunney Castle was one of a class of locos that headed express trains on the Great Western Railway and the Western Region of British Railways until displaced by diesel hydraulic locomotives in the 1960s.
Named after the Somerset castle, the Nunney spent much of its life based at Old Oak Common in West London before moving to Newton Abbot and Plymouth Laira in the late 1950s.
Throughout that part of its life it would have been a regular sight at Bath and Bristol and in Somerset and Devon.
Meanwhile, when passing though Newton Abbot or Totnes, it would have passed a small tank engine.
Also built at Swindon, the 1936-made 4866 (now number 1466 after being renumbered in 1946) was designed to work on the most lightly used GWR branch lines such as the Totnes-Ashburton, the Exe Valley lines serving Tiverton, Bampton and Dulverton, and Yatton to Clevedon.
Number 1466 spent nearly all its time based at Newton Abbot until just before its withdrawal it moved to Taunton. There, it had no practical use and spent most of its time cold in the yard until official withdrawal.
However, it became a founding part of the Great Western Society’s collection at Didcot in Oxfordshire.
Number 1466 had not steamed since 2000 until earlier this year, when it left Didcot and returned to Somerset, where its restoration to working order was completed in the workshops at Williton.
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Safely back home at the GWS base it was publicly relaunched as a working engine on August 23, with members of the Williton Restoration team present.
West Somerset Railway general manager, Kerry Noble, said: “The West Somerset has had a good working relationship with the Great Western Society for many years and this year we have welcomed their recreated Saint 2999 Lady of Legend as a guest addition to our fleet.
“The team at Williton have completed a number of restorations and overhauls in recent times and are working on a locomotives for the West Somerset Railway Association which we hope to see working in the not too distant future.
“This is Great Western Small Prairie 4561, a surviving member of a class of engine once familiar on the branch lines from Taunton to Barnstaple, Chard, Minehead and Yeovil.”
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