Colonel Stephens Light Railway Locomotives

By Brian Janes

Holman Fred Stephens (1868-1931) set himself up in the 1890s as an engineer and manager of the complete light railway as evolved by Victorian theorists to serve rural districts as yet bereft of the benefit of cheaper transport. To them, a light railway was not an assemblage of second-hand mainline equipment of dubious merit but of fit for purpose, new material. This ideal theory did not survive the near universal inability to raise sufficient capital to build and equip a light railway that would give a reasonable profit. Recourse was therefore made to the second-hand market.

Stephens became a master at the art of building and running railways with the minimum of capital. The history of the mechanical performance of his railways was also nearly always handicapped with inadequate engineering facilities. This left staff struggling, often surprisingly successfully, with a menagerie of locomotive types.

Limited standardization was practiced but most often expediency ruled. This gave rise to a glorious kaleidoscope of locomotives the history of each of which is outlined This variety was further colored by Stephens generally regarding a locomotive name as far more important than its number.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399023450

Brian Janes

Brian Janes is the Curator of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum at Tenterden with which he has been closely associated for over twenty years. A Kent born resident he has family associations with Stephens’ Kent & East Sussex Railway and served as a director of that railway for many years after he retired as a Whitehall Civil Servant. He is a leading historian of Colonel Stephens nationwide collection of railways.

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE NEW AND NOVEL LOCOMOTIVES

1.1 2-4-2T Selsey

When Holman Fred Stephens set himself up as the complete light railway engineer and manager, he undoubtedly foresaw projects that used new, fit for purpose, material. In Stephens’ first independent venture ‘the Rye & Camber’ he was successful. In his second venture, the Selsey Tramway, he was less successful, but he began to tackle the provision of an ideal standard gauge light railway locomotive.

In 1897 Peckett & Sons of Bristol produced, to Stephens’s specification, the perfect theoretical light railway locomotive, the 2-4-2T Selsey. Built to Holman Stephens’ specifications, Selsey was undoubtedly intended by the builders to be the prototype of a new class of light railway locomotive, but it was destined to remain unique. With economy of design, the engine was a studied amalgam of Peckett standard components. They produced a neat 2-4-2T with slightly inclined outside cylinders and driving wheels of 2ft 9 in, with identical 2ft diameter front and rear pony trucks and small ‘mudguards’. Built for the opening of the Tramway, the locomotive left Peckett’s works by rail on 17 August 1897, but for some reason it took no fewer than ten days to arrive at the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway’s Chichester goods yard, only arriving on the morning of the Tramway’s official inauguration on the 27th, just too late for the opening ceremony.

Official drawing of Selsey for the Peckett catalogue which they proudly used to advertise their products.

The builders’ specification read as follows:

Selsey before the water tanks were moved backwards to adjust adhesion.

Selsey was painted in Stephens’ favoured livery of dark blue with vermilion lining. The name was painted in yellow on each side tank with the works plates on either side of the 20cwt. capacity bunker. A brightly polished brass dome with two Salter spring balance safety valves, a tall copper-capped chimney and a whistle on the front of the cab roof put the finishing touches to a handsome locomotive. A re-railing jack was carried either in front of or beside the smokebox, a common and necessary fitting on Light Railways. Locomotive numbers were of little consequence on the Tramway but she carried the No. 2 and also No. 1 on occasion.

Selsey was immediately successful on the light loads of the tramway. Undoubtedly it would have been desirable to at least duplicate her on the Selsey but capital was short and she remained unique, though Stephens retained a fatherly pride in her and a photo always hung in his Salford Terrace, Tonbridge office.

Not long after entering service as ‘the passenger engine’, the displacement lubricator fixed to the rear of the chimney was replaced by a neater and smaller one mounted behind the chimney on top of the smokebox. Following experience in service, the side plates above the bunker were cut away, the cab being shortened to suit and a single coal rail was added round the bunker. At the same time, the smokebox wing plates were temporarily removed, as was the sandbox in front of the right-hand side tank along with the one unusually positioned in the cab for use in reverse running. As early as 1900, the side tanks were moved bodily backwards into what had previously been a very spacious cab and the sandboxes were lost. This alteration was probably made to shift the weight to improve adhesion, but removal of the sandboxes was a mistake, even in the flat Selsey peninsula, and they re-appeared after a 1908 boiler overhaul.

Selsey poses, in Edwardian days, with her original Falcon-built train by Selsey engine shed on the soon abandoned Beach extension.

Selsey was laid up by December 1918 and the manager, Henry Phillips, asked Holman Stephens, as engineer, ‘to endeavour to get the locomotive sent away for a thorough overhaul as it was essential that the Company for the 1919 season should have a reliable second engine’. The tone of this missive echoes the poor relationship that the two had developed at this time and Philips was to depart when Stephens belatedly took over management of the whole line. Selsey probably entered service for the summer season. Following this overhaul, cast-iron nameplates were added to the tank sides. Not long afterwards, sand boxes, with rounded corners, put in an appearance on both sides of the footplate above the leading wheels.

On 13 October 1933, William Austin expressed concern about a forthcoming hydraulic test because of the fragile nature of the boiler and, indeed, it did see her withdrawn from service with leaking tubes in the summer of 1934. At this time, her livery was really faded and she did not work again.

Selsey awaits departure from Chichester’s tramway station which was squeezed between the main line and the canal basin.

Selsey in the mid-1920s with restored wing plates and cast nameplate. The pioneering Wolseley-Siddeley railmotor stands in the background.

Following complete closure of the Tramway and prior to the auction of the Tramway’s effects on 30 June 1936, a young Frank Kellond-Jones managed to remove a nameplate from the engine which he hid away in a loft for the next fifty-five years before presenting it to the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum at Tenterden. Selsey was cut up for scrap on the site of Selsey engine shed in the autumn of 1936.

1.2 The Rother Valley Railway 2-4-0Ts

For his next venture in locomotive design for the Rother Valley Railway (later Kent & East Sussex Railway) Stephens again aimed at the best theoretical locomotive but he turned to another builder, R&W Hawthorne, Leslie & Co Ltd of Newcastle upon Tyne. The reasons for this change of builder are, in the absence of hard evidence, open to some speculation. They may, however, be found in the company policies of the builders concerned. Peckett’s had been established in 1881 but was building only an average of eleven locomotives a year in the early 1890s. From 1897, however, they grew rapidly with the provision of new facilities and production and marketing policy ‘specialisation and standardisation’ rather on the lines of ‘you can have any colour provided it’s black’. The market in small light railway locomotives showed no signs of maturing and it was probably a wise management decision to concentrate on standard industrial shunting tanks, a policy that was to prove very profitable and successful. Hawthorn Leslie by contrast had a tradition of craft locomotive building. From 1870, their Forth Bank Works in Newcastle had become only part of a wider, predominantly shipbuilding, company. The decision of main line companies, particularly the North Eastern Railway, to build their own types caused large main line locomotive orders to disappear from 1875. Hawthorn Leslie thereafter survived on single and small batch production utilising ‘a body of particularly high class and loyal workmen whom we did not want to turn adrift’. By the mid-1890s, Forth Bank Works was at a very low ebb, producing only some ten to fifteen locomotives a year. Stephens’ orders for one-off locomotives would have been received with open arms.

Whatever reasons for the choice of builder, Stephens’ relationship with Hawthorn Leslie was to prove long lasting, as for the next fifteen years, when Stephens had the money for new engines he turned to them. The resultant products throw an interesting light on Stephens’ strengths and weaknesses as a specifier of motive power for light railways.

Northiam at Rolvenden shed in 1913. Still in largely original condition and in Stephens’ full blue livery.

Official sales postcard literature from Hawthorn Leslie, carefully kept by Stephens and his heirs.

With the construction in and delivery in September 1899 of Tenterden and Northiam from Hawthorn Leslie, the use of engine builders’ standard components was again very evident. They were directly comparable in capacity to its builder’s smaller industrial shunters. Important changes were, however, made for the little 2-4-0Ts, for they had a smaller diameter but longer boiler, smaller wheels and single slide bars to accommodate the necessary leading truck.

According to the K&ESR’s Rolling Stock ledger, the two Rother Valley Railway locomotives’ main dimensions were:

Tenterden waits at Robertsbridge Junction with her original coaches in Rother Valley Railway days c.1902.

The omission of the trailing wheels used with Selsey with the consequent loss of coal capacity might be seen as retroactive. However, locomotives without trailing wheels ‘sit back’ when they pull away, thus improving adhesion when moving forward and both RVR locomotives soon earned themselves a reputation for excellent haulage for their very modest size. Painted in Stephens’ blue livery with red lining and brass domes, which were painted over after their first few years in service, although Northiam was to regain this distinction for a period in the 1930s. With the change of company name to the Kent & East Sussex Railway (K&ESR) in 1904, the new title was added in yellow, surrounded by an oval band around the locomotives’ nameplates. Northiam was to retain this livery to the end, although the band and company name disappeared for a part of this time. Tenterden lost her oval painted ownership at an early date to be replaced by ‘K. & E. S. R.’ in similarly coloured block shaded lettering above her nameplate.

In service, the two locomotives suffered from bearing and wheel problems, perhaps a legacy of their industrial heritage, and it may be for this reason that Tenterden received 4ft 0in diameter driving wheels in July 1904.

According to the K&ESR’s Rolling Stock Ledger, in March 1908, Tenterden was given new sides and an interior ring to her smokebox and her chimney was patched. A crack in her tube plate at the firebox end was discovered on 13 October 1908 and a new copper replacement was put in in January 1909. The following month, she received a new copper tube plate on the right hand side at her firebox end. In August 1909 and the following month she received a new ‘Jones Patent Blast Pipe’. This little known device was probably fitted as it claimed not only to improve steaming, but also to lessen spark throwing, something these small locomotives were, no doubt, prone to do, given their known loads. Possibly as a further measure to mitigate this problem, she, and her sister, received a new and much longer stovepipe chimney in place of her elegant original, but the date of this fitting is unknown, although it is certainly thought to be by 1913.

One of a set of K&ESR official postcards. Tenterden with her new, larger wheels, hauling bogie rebuilds of the original RVR four-wheeled carriages. The pride of the line in late 1904.

Tenterden leaves Headcorn Junction with a set of second-hand coaches c. 1910.

At an early date, and again certainly by 1913, coal rails were added around both Tenterden’s and Northiam’s bunkers. She was re-tubed again in February 1926. Following this, Tenterden continued to carry out her duties regularly on the K&ESR until 1930, after which she was only used spasmodically, and she probably did not work at all after 1936. Although reported as having received an overhaul in Rolvenden shed in July 1937, she was finally sold for scrap in 1941.

Northiam remained on her original wheels, but she had her leading wheel tyres turned up in May 1906 and again in May 1907 and, on that visit to the workshop, her front axle was straightened and new brasses were put in. On 3 June 1909, the engine received a new leading axle and the leading wheels off of Tenterden and, two months after her sister, she also received a new ‘Jones Patent Blast Pipe’ in October 1909.

Northiam was out of service between November 1909 and January 1910, for a major overhaul but had to receive further extensive work in August 1911. She was now to have a much more adventurous life than her sister. From September 1912 until at least 1914, she was transferred to Holman Stephens’ East Kent Light Railway (EKR) where she was put to work on construction trains. She received a