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National Railway Museum acquires rare locomotive
The National Railway Museum (NRM) in York has acquired one of the earliest industrial locomotives in the world.
Bradyll, which dates back to the 1840s, is believed to be the oldest surviving locomotive with 6 driving wheels and is unusual in that she has survived by chance and serendipity, rather that by her association with a particular historic event or person.
It is this anonymity compared to other locomotives from around the same time period such as Stephenson’s Rocket that makes the story of Bradyll so intriguing.
Although Bradyll with her 0-6-0 wheel configuration was a common place industrial locomotive in her hey-day, no other working machines of this kind have stood the test of time.
The secret of Bradyll’s survival may be down to her colourful history. In the 1870s she was converted into a snowplough by removing the cylinders and motion and adding a weight and a blade.
Despite being out of use for even this secondary purpose by WW11, Bradyll went on to survive the notorious scrap drives of the 1940s by being isolated on a stretch of line by a growing spoil heap.
At some point after the war she was placed at the works gates in Philadelphia Works Co Durham as a historical curio, where she was regularly painted with a tar-like material, which considerably slowed further decay.
Jim Rees, Vehicle Collections Manager at the NRM commented that:
“As so much of the Victorian railway grew out of the industrial north east, it is fair to say that the locomotive is of more than mere local or regional importance. The lack of ‘restoration’ or later rebuilding means that Bradyll remains an incredibly valid piece of railway archaeology, from a period which remains understudied and undervalued by railway historians.”
4 March 2008
Notes to Editors:
Bradyll is currently on display in the Soho Shed at Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon, which has only limited access to the public.
Until fairly recently it was believed Bradyll was named and built by Timothy Hackworth at his Soho works at Shildon. Now an academic who has been instrumental in the restoration of this rare piece of railway history has cast new light on its origins.
In his yet unpublished research Dr Michael Bailey has put the theory that the locomotive may have actually been originally named ‘Nelson’, worked on the railway at South Hetton, Durham and was built circa 1840 by Thomas Richardson of Hartlepool, an unremarkable and little known early builder of industrial and colliery haulage locomotives.
Dr Bailey has recently re-commenced research on the origins of Bradyll. His paper is due to be given at the Fourth International Early railways conference in London during June 2008.
The Adamson type firebox may be a unique locomotive survival in this locomotive. The smokebox is complete enough to show the mountings for the lost cylinders, and their incline. The six wheels are of the later form of Wilson wheel, as adopted and popularised by Hackworth on the S&D following ‘Royal George’. A surprising number of vestigial or incomplete fittings give a good idea of the original features of the locomotive; the fractured pumps for example still showing the pre-asbestos use of hemp packing.