This is 5643, doing what it does best....
The Furness Railway Trust's Great Western Railway 0-6-2T Number 5643 is out of traffic undergoing its first heavy general overhaul after its return to steam.
The boiler is receiving specialist attention with contractors in Loughborough. The motion is receiving attention by FRT volunteers at the Ribble Steam Railway in Preston.
The locomotive had been withdrawn from service in October 2011 after developing some weeping around some boiler tubes and stays as well as a broken rivet in the foundation ring. Although the locomotive still had two years to go on its 10 yearly boiler "ticket", the need to lift the boiler to address the rivet meant the best way forward was to bring forward the heavy general overhaul.
5643 had spent the summer and autum of 2011 in action at the
Wensleydale Railway where it was on hire until the end of October.
It also visited Locomotion, the National Railway Museum at Shildon, County Durham, for the GWR-themed Steam Gala. This record-breaking event saw the loco pair up with the FRT's flagship engine Furness Railway Number 20, the first time the pair have been together since 2007.
5643 was one of the stars of the event, which also featured record-breaking GWR 4-4-0 "City of Truro". 5643 hauled some of the shuttle trains on the Locomotion running line which links the main museum building and the Hackworth Museum/main entrance, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
5643 had been booked to spend just the month of July based at the Wensleydale's Leeming Bar headquarters but they liked it so much, it was asked to stay on until the end of the main season. The Wensleydale Railway runs for 16 miles, from Leeming Bar alongside the A1 up the dale to Redmire. The views from the upper portion of the line in particular are stunning.
5643 is seen here at Redmire station,
having hauled a class 101 DMU as coaching stock during the first
weekend of July, which was the WR's first ever Steam Gala. 5643 starred
alongside King Arthur "Sir Lamiel" for this event which at that time
was also on hire
to the WR.
5643 had started 2011 at Embsay undergoing work to replace the valves in the steam chest after a snow-affected Santas Special season at the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. The work was completed in time to return 5643 to Llangollen for the spring gala in April.
The 1925-built locomotive was returned to front-line action in September 2006, and has spent the bulk of its operational service since then at the Llangollen Railway where it has been on a rolling annual hire.
The engine has seen action as a star turn at gala weekends and other special events from the Barry Island Railway to the North Norfolk, the East Lancashire to the Severn Valley Railway! In 2007 alone it clocked up nine separate gala appearances!
If you wish to hire this powerful and beautifully turned-out locomotive, please contact us.
For full details of where 5643 is, and is planned to be, and when, please see our page on its current whereabouts and future programme. We also have a page charting its exploits on tour and another looking at its history.
There is
also details of the 18 year restoration
programme.
On Sunday 16th October 2005, the first test steaming of the nearly completed locomotive was carried out. The locomotive is seen here raising steam outside the goods shed in the yard at Haverthwaite that morning.
At 2.15pm, with Trust Chairman Tim Owen and 5643 Project Leader Keith Brewer on the footplate, the regulator was opened and the engine moved off smoothly in the yard at Haverthwaite, to cheers from assembled volunteers.
The Trust has had to raise every penny of the £100,000 cost of the restoration, through donations and a variety of fund-raising methods. Volunteers put in many thousands of hours of labour, often in the open air, to return the locomotive to working order.
5643 is the Trust's third operational steam locomotive, joining Austerity "Cumbria" and Furness Railway Number 20.
5643 was built at the Great Western Railway's Swindon Works in October 1925. It spent its entire working life in South Wales, and was withdrawn from Barry Shed in July 1963, moving the short distance to the now famous Woodham's scrapyard in Barry. Woodham's did not scrap 5643 and over 200 other steam locomotives, thus saving them for preservation. Over 100 of this number have now been returned to steam.
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