SENTINEL 4wVBT Nutty (7701/1927), the only surviving narrow gauge Sentinel steam loco, arrived at Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway’s (W&LLR) Raven Square station on June 3, from its previous display location at Leighton Buzzard Railway (LBR). It will be displayed in the museum shed as a nonworking exhibit.
Nutty (7701/1927) spent its working life at the London Brick Company near Peterborough, its name deriving from driver and fitter ‘Nutty’ Rowell who kept the loco in service for 30 years.
It was donated to the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum Trust (NGRMT – based in the museum at Talyllyn Railway’s Tywyn Wharf) in 1964 and following regauging from 2ft 11in to 2ft 6in was a working exhibit at W&LLR for a few years. It returned to Tywyn in 1991 and, in dismantled condition spent a period at Whipsnade Zoo where no restoration work took place before the components were moved to Railworld, Peterborough, in 1994.
In 1996 the components went to Midas Technologies (GB) Ltd in Peterborough where cosmetic restoration was completed in 2004. Loaned to the LBR in September 2012, it was displayed at Stonehenge Works.