TODDINGTON Standard Locomotive Limited (TSLL), owner of BR ‘4MT’ 2-6-0 No. 76077, has confirmed that the engine will be equipped with a new BR2A tender, the type coupled to the locomotive during its short BR career. The loco is under restoration from Barry scrapyard condition for service on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway. The new tender will use wheelsets recently purchased from the Bluebell Railway.
No. 76077 lost its tender while at Woodhams’ Barry scrapyard, to sister No. 76017 – the first member of the four class survivors to leave the South Wales graveyard. No. 76017 had already lost its tender, which was sold to Duport’s Briton Ferry steelworks to be converted to a steel billet carrier, the fate of many tenders from Barry.
Before discovery of the wheelsets at the Bluebell and, in the absence of the correct axles and roller-bearing axle-boxes for a BR2A, TSLL’s directors favoured constructing a larger BR1B tender: a type used by the class on the SR and a decision largely supported by shareholders.
The group had already sourced suitable axles and axle-boxes from a Class 40 diesel. This would have brought a significant costsaving compared with having new BR2A-type axles and axleboxes manufactured.