The oldest Manning Wardle remains arrive at Beamish…
We recently had the opportunity to acquire the remains of Manning Wardle No.254 built in 1868. The locomotive, once named Newcastle, had worked at Silverdale Colliery in Stoke on Trent. Redundant by the 1920s, major components including the cylinder block, motion and the centre axle were incorporated into a stationary winding engine built by Warner Bros of Hanley. In 1985 the winding engine was moved to the now defunct but much mourned Chatterley Whitfield Mining Museum where it was restored and reassembled. The museum closed in the mid 1990s and though some items remained on site, a large number were auctioned or moved to new homes. At this point the remains of 254 were salvaged by the Staffordshire Railway Circle, the idea being to eventually incorporate them into a replica North Staffordshire Railway tank locomotive. Time passed and the Circle became aware of Beamish’s purchase of the other ‘Newcastle’ and so a dialogue was opened that resulted in the delivery this morning of the remaining locomotive components of 254. I don’t know at this stage what became of the rest of the engine, but am researching the history as a whole – locomotive and winding engine – and in due course this will be published on this blog. Meanwhile, the parts are now safely here and will be placed into store pending their display at the Museum, in some form or another…
This is an important item to have as part of the collection, not least in the fact that it was thought to have been ‘lost’ for many years. This was not the only set of 1860s MW ‘M’ class cylinders and driven exle to end up this way as corresponding components from DISRAELI of the Maddwy Railway were utilised in a similar manner at the Oswestry works of the Cambrian Railway after the engine’s withdrawal circa 1911. As possibly the earliest surviving MW components (I have not yet looked at the makers’ records for details of component replacement although the surviving wheel centre is not original as the loco was built with 3ft.6in. wheels). Nonetheless, the wheel centre is a genuine MW component and could be useful as a source of data for a pattern for authentic wheel centres for NEWCASTLE. These components certainly need to be placed under cover prior to display – does the link motion survive?