Freshwater Breaks Duck

History was made on the Kent & East Sussex Railway last weekend when Terrier locomotive W8 “Freshwater” finally worked on the line a mere 130 years after entering service with the London Brighton & South Coast Railway.

Terriers have been synonymous with the K&ESR since the original purchase by the old Rother Valley Railway of LB&SCR No.70 “Poplar” way back in 1901.  Renumbered and renamed “Bodiam” the engine has given stalwart service ever since and was returned to traffic last May at the highly successful All Terriers Great and Small event which saw five of the surviving Terriers in action.

Another first with “Bodiam” and “Freshwater” in steam together is the fact that both are recipients of brand-new boilers built by Israel Newton of Bradford in the late 1990s.  It is believed to be the first time in the history of preservation that two reboilered standard gauge engines have worked together on a heritage line since Bluebell reopened in 1960.

The appearance of “Freshwater” for the Colonel Stephens Weekend, May 05-07, at Tenterden now means that nine of the remaining ten Terriers, designed by William Stroudley and built at Brighton between 1872 and 1880, have worked on the K&ESR at some stage in their careers.  As far as is known, “Boxhill”, officially preserved just after WW2 and now in the National Collection at York, has never visited the railway.

The Colonel Stephens Weekend celebrated the eccentric railway engineer who became famous for his Light Railway empire run from Tonbridge in Kent.  Light Railways in the early part of C20th were aimed at bringing the iron road to sparsely inhabited parts of the countryside at a maximum of 25mph rather than bulk people-movers of today such as the Docklands Light Railway. 

Apart from the two Terriers, resident P-class No.753 and austerity No.23 “Holman F Stephens” were also in steam. They were joined in service by Great Eastern Railway J15 No.65462 from the North Norfolk Railway, also making it debut, whilst a replica Ford Railbus was on show at Tenterden.

Because the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, based at Havenstreet, uses air braked stock, operational opportunities for “Freshwater” were somewhat limited.  The engine participated in a parade of engines at Tenterden in the morning then worked down to Rolvenden to bank the 1228 and 1443 trains ex-Bodiam; formed of the Maunsell three-coach set that looked absolutely magnificent and double-headed by Nos.3 and 753.  It then worked light out to Wittersham Road in order to shunt the wagons off the last train of the day which ran as a mixed and was worked by J15 No.65462.

A morning freight from Wittersham Road was worked by the J15, then, after the parade, the first departure was formed of No.23 with a Mark1 set, followed by the double-headed Maunsell set.  The third train was the railway’s famous vintage train headed by No.65462 with GER brake No.197 appropriately marshalled at the Headcorn end of the set.  The pattern, passing at Rolvenden and Northiam, was run three times in all, and as noted in the previous paragraph, the last train had the freight vehicles added to the vintage carriages to form a mixed train.

This completed a busy programme for the J15 which on the preceding three days had worked the Maunsell set on a test run followed by freight and mixed trains with Geoff Silcock’s famous Sentimental Journeys photographic charters.

HN-08/05/2007