BARRY wreck GWR 2-8-0 No. 2859 has been sold by the Llangollen Railway Great Western Locomotive Group to a private buyer for £38,000.
The sale, completed on October 6, came after three separate groups expressed an interest in buying the 1918-built locomotive, which came minus a tender and many other fittings.
The new owner, Paul Walley, managing director of sewage treatment company Cambi UK Ltd of Radnor Park Industrial Estate, Congleton, is also set to exercise an option to buy coupling rods from the group.
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The group will use the money from the sale to restore the boiler of its other locomotive, GWR 2-6-2T No. 5532.
No. 2859 was allocated new to Southall and stayed there for three years before being transferred to Old Oak Common, where it spent another three. It was subsequently shedded at Swansea East Dock (twice), Newport (Ebbw Junction), Severn Tunnel Junction (twice), Bristol, Reading, Cardiff, Bristol St Philips Marsh, Cardiff Canton, Oxley and Pontypool Road.
Like the rest of its class, it hauled heavy freight trains, mainly from coalfields and steel works, including Brymbo steel works near to Wrexham, and occasionally passenger trains in emergencies.
It was the last locomotive repaired at the Stafford Road Works, Wolverhampton, on February 14, 1964, when it was given new coupling and connecting rods (long disappeared at Barry).
The smokebox and boiler were painted up for the semi-official works photographs that were taken.
It was condemned at Southall in December that year, and reached Dai Woodham’s scrapyard the following March.
In October 1987, it became the 193rd out of 213 steam locomotives to leave Barry for preservation, and was taken to the Llangollen Railway. The group had bought No. 5538 earlier that year.
Read more in Issue 235 of HR – on sale now!
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