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More Light on the East Kent Terrier by Peter CooperFirst
published in issue 52 of The Tenterden Terrier Summer
1990 In the Tenterden Terrier No.37 Tom Burnham described how the East Kent Light Railway purchased a Terrier boiler in 1926 and then, having failed to find a use for it, re-sold it to the Southern Railway in 1932. The question of why the East Kent considered itself in need of a Terrier boiler has remained unsolved but Peter Cooper has discovered why the Southern Railway were willing to take it off the East Kent’s hands and how it came to run on a Stephens line after all. It is well known that conversion of a Brighton Terrier to A1X included fitting a Marsh boiler and an extended smokebox. It is also fairly well known that a “half-and-half” variety of Terrier existed. Numbers E735, formerly No.668 (ex-LB&SCR No.68 “Clapham”) and 680S, formerly No.654 (ex-LB&SCR No.54 “Waddon”) received the Marsh A1X boiler but not the extended smokebox. The latter locomotive is still in this condition in Canada. Less well known is that there was one Terrier on which the opposite condition could be found, an extended smokebox but an original Stroudley boiler. The LB&SCR had built twenty A1X boilers and the Southern built a twenty first in 1931. Nineteen of the LB&SCR’s twenty were used to convert sixteen of their own Terriers to A1X and three belonging to other lines. The twentieth was not used until 1927 when it replaced the A1X boiler already fitted to B655 (ex-LB&SCR No.55 “Stepney”) which was then refurbished and kept as a spare. A sequence of boiler changes and refurbishments then ensued until the replacement of E735’s Drummond boiler in 1930 left the Southern with no spare boiler. This presumably was the reason for the Southern’s manufacture of a new Terrier boiler but this was soon snapped up to convert A1 No.W2 to A1X No.W8 on the Isle of Wight (ex-LB&SCR No.46 “Newington”). Through the early 1930s the Southern managed without a spare boiler, Terrier overhauls continuing without boiler changes. It was not really satisfactory to continue without a spare and one was duly found. The late D L Bradley, in his ‘Locomotives of the LB&SCR Part 1’ recorded that Terrier No.B653 (ex-LB&SCR No.53 “Ashtead”) ‘had been laid aside with no driving wheels or chimney in the Eastleigh Paint Shop from May 1934 until overhauled in July 1935’. This overhaul released a spare boiler which was fitted to No.2678 (“Knowle”) in 1937after its return from the Isle of Wight. However, if B653’s boiler went to 2678, which boiler was B653 now using? |
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No. 1050480 |
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The mileage record card for this locomotive supplies the identity of this boiler as No.62. Although Eastleigh had confused the identification of Terrier boilers by issuing its own numbers to some Terrier boilers around 1930, this was not an Eastleigh number but the original Stroudley number. It had been fitted new to Terrier No.60 (“Ewell”) and when that locomotive was withdrawn in 1903, had been fitted to No.642 (ex-LB&SCR No.42 “Tulsehill”). Boiler No.62 stayed with No.B642 until withdrawal in 1925. The record card for this boiler still exists and says the boiler was “Sent to Shepherds Well, East Kent Railway 8/27. But was not used apparently – sent to Eastleigh 7/34.” Apart from the discrepancy of dates, the East Kent Minutes were only recording an intention to sell and not the sale itself, this was obviously the boiler described in Tom Burnham’s article.
So there ran on the Southern Railway an A1X with a Stroudley boiler but not for long. Less than two years after its rebuilding and with only 8217 miles on the clock, No.2653, as it had become, was sold. Appropriately, its new owner was another Stephens line, the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Light Railway where it became No.4 and enabled services to struggle on until closure in 1940. With fellow Terrier No.2 “Portishead” (ex-LB&SCR No.43 “Gypsyhill”) it then passed into the stock of the Great Western Railway as No.6; No.2 became No.5 and retained its name. No.6 was repaired by the GWR in 1941 but, despite receiving its new owner’s livery and brass number plates, only seems to have worked for eighteen months before going into store. It was eventually condemned in January 1948. By contrast No.5, which had not seen the inside of a main works since the mid-1920s, was selected for a heavier repair by the GWR and remained active until put into store at Swindon in 1950 and was not actually scrapped until 1954.
It should be added that the Southern acquired a further Stroudley boiler from yet another Stephens line when they purchased Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway No.9 ‘Daphne’ (ex-LB&SCR No.83 “Earlswood”) in 1939 but although various parts were salvaged from this locomotive, no attempt was made to make use of its boiler and what remained of the locomotive was eventually broken up in 1949. In the meantime the Southern again found itself without a spare boiler on the mainland following the sale of the current spare to the Kent & East Sussex to rebuild ‘Bodiam’ in 1943. It was only when the Isle of Wight spare boiler was returned to the mainland after the War that there was a spare there again. There remained a spare from then on through British Railways days until the end of the Terriers in B.R. service.
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Footnotes:-
HN-15/03/2006