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WELCOME
TO THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE TERRIER TRUST |
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Getting
Tanked Up by Stephen Garrett Our archives contain many documents of immediately obvious historical value. We have also inherited large numbers of documents whose historical value is not so immediately obvious: goods receipts, cheques, invoices, demurrage claims and the like. John Miller, our Archivist, was recently making his painstaking way through these drifts of ephemera, classifying here and filing there, when he came across three related items of more than nostalgic value. These consisted of an invoice from the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway to the Kent & East Sussex, a cheque in payment for the invoice and the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire’s stamped receipt for the same. The transaction in question concerned the sale to the Kent & East Sussex of “2 Tanks for ‘Terrier’ or ‘A’ Class engine @ £1.10 (one pound 10 shillings) each.” and took place in September 1941. According to the Kent & East Sussex Locomotive Mileage Register, the line’s surviving ‘Terrier’, No.3 BODIAM, had last run on 10 June 1941 after a period of increasingly intermittent use during 1940. Since this left the line with only one locomotive of its own, ‘Saddleback’ No.4, there was obviously some concern to get BODIAM back into service without too much delay. In the event it was not until 22 September 1943 that BODIAM was dispatched to St Leonard’s for rebuilding and not until 07 March 1944 that BODIAM returned to service on the Kent & East Sussex. Whether
it was a shortage of cash, a shortage of skilled labour or a
shortage of parts that delayed BODIAM’s rebuilding is
not yet clear. It may well have been a combination of all three.
However, we obviously now have evidence that the Shropshire
& Montgomeryshire was the probable source of some of the
parts that went into BODIAM’s |
| Charity
No. 1050480 |
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Which of the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire’s ‘Terriers’ provided the tanks is another mystery. No.9 DAPHNE originally LB&SCR No.83 EARLSWOOD can be eliminated as it had been purchased by the Southern Railway in January 1939 and spent the War at Eastleigh with its tanks still firmly attached. The other two, No.7 HECATE and No.8 DIDO, originally LB&ESR Nos. 81 BEULAH and 38 MILLWALL, had been taken out of service as long ago as 1930 and had been substantially dismantled by 1934 with most reports alleging the disposal of the last parts in 1939. However, the yard at Kinnerley was as well littered with spare parts as Rolvenden usually was and it is perfectly possible for two tanks to have gone undetected in the undergrowth. DIDO is probably the more likely candidate of the two as there were reports that this locomotive’s tanks were amongst the last components still at Kinnerley in 1939.
Which of the two Railways got the better bargain from this transaction is arguable. The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire disposed of two assets for which they had no use while the Kent & East Sussex obtained two very useful items at a bargain price. What is certainly not open to question is that any Railway needing to dispose of two genuine Stroudley tanks today could hope to get a little more than £3 for their pains.
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Footnotes:-
Bodiam’s lack of use in the year leading up to withdrawal may have had as much to do with the quality of Knowle in comparison as its all too frequent fragile state. Certainly the pattern of locomotive usage in the period immediately following the arrival of 2678 in early 1940 merits closer examination
Incorporated within the body of the article are the original invoice from the S&MR to the K&ESR dated 19 September 1941 and a cheque for £3 dated 25 September 1941 from the K&ESR to the S&MR for what, after all was essentially an internal transaction. Two photographs accompany the text. One shows Hecate/Beulah and Dido/Millwall being dismantled at Kinnerley in 1931 whilst the other shows Bodiam in the Down platform at RB with the evidence of surgery on its left hand tank. This was taken on 26 April 1947, shortly before yet another rebuild, this time at Brighton
But this not the end
of the tanks saga and the reader should now refer to my article Getting
Tanked Up Take Two…
HN-18/02/2006