PRESERVATION

OCTOBER has been good for preserved industrial diesel shunters, with at least three being coaxed back into life after many years sat out of traffic. At the recently arrived Thomas Hill Vanguard No. 103c has been restarted after, Kerr Stuart 6wDM No. 4421/1929 has also been restarted and again a return to traffic is on the cards. One of only a handful of diesel locomotives built by Kerr Stuart, No. 4421 is one of the earliest diesel locomotives built in the country and believed to be the first purpose-built standard gauge diesel. Originally built to run on a standard gauge branch line of the otherwise narrow gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in Cumbria, it worked trains of crushed granite from Murthwaite to Ravenglass. When the quarries were closed in 1953 No. 4421 then went to the north east, working for the National Coal Board, where it was rebuilt with a Dorman diesel engine in 1959. It moved onto Rom River Reinforcement, Lichfield, in the late 1960s, before finally being preserved at the Foxfield Railway in 1985.