#old coppernob

[sparkarrestor]

He must have been bitching the entire time

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Furness Passenger Engines 1/5: The Bury 0-4-0s

In the 1970s, Bob Rush devised a system making sense of all the Furness locomotive classes using L.N.E.R.-style alphanumeric codes (A1, B1, etc.) This system is very useful in bringing clarity to a confusing history. But understand that it is an anachronism. Edward, for instance, would never think of himself as a "K2." The identity he would have known was "Furness 21 class."

These engines comprised two identical pairs, although the second (the A2s) were really just an enlarged version of the first (the A1s). They were made by the great early locomotive workshop Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy, and they were the original F.R. Nos. 1-4.

1 and 2 helped to construct the two short lines that were the beginning of the railway (connecting Kirkby and Lindal to Barrow actually it was originally to St Roa harbor, as James Ramsden had not quite yet gotten a dock built up in Barrow village). 3 and 4 were acquired to help run it, and the four little engines together handled all Furness traffic for six years.

No. 3 carried the first passenger train in August 1846… which was composed of all four coaches that the F.R. then owned. This was a mineral railway, 97.9%. They owned a crap-ton of mineral wagons, four engines, and four coaches. That was it.

^Above are Nos. 3 and 4 respectively. You may recognize No. 3 as “Old Copper-Nob,” who is now preserved in the National Collection at York. (*waits a moment for @pup-can’t-blog’s giggles to die down*)

This pair had long and varied careers. When the 2-2-2Ts started to arrive in 1850, the 0-4-0s were no longer needed for passenger details. In the same decade came larger 0-4-0s from Bury's successors, Fairbairn's (A3 and A4), thus relieving the original engines of the heaviest goods work. The Bury 0-4-0s for a time were based around Lindal Peak, which generally required bankers for goods trains in both directions, but around 1870 specialized tank engines were ordered from Sharp and Stewart's for this purpose (G1). In the end the survivors from the earliest days settled down back at the heart of the whole network, at Barrow Docks.

Nos. 3 and 4 were still shunting there at the end of the century; by 1899, No. 4 had been scrapped but No. 3 was still in her 55th year of service, a contemporary railway expert identifying her as the oldest working engine in the country. Which really surprises me tbh. But that's what was claimed. They were clearly excluding stationary engines, that's for sure. She was put into storage in 1900 and, seven years later, was mounted on a plinth at Barrow Central station.

This sounds like a chill retirement, as things go for vehicles, except that she was also encased in a big glass box (practical for keeping the engine somewhat clean, sure; but which, for sapient engine worldbuilding purposes, promptly makes this sound more like some Kafkaesque nightmare rather than a place of honor).

After suffering bomb damage in World War II (see the station in the aftermath of the Barrow Blitz above, May 1941), No. 3 was then removed from Barrow to the museum at York. Apart from the rare visit to some gala, she’s been vibing in the Great Hall ever since.

Frankly, after all that bullshit, she deserves it.

What happened to Nos. 1 and 2, though? They were not as lucky as their bigger siblings. No. 1—brace yourself for this—No. 1 had her firebox burnt up. Yes, that thing that happened in the TVS, lampooned in TV Tropes?... yes, that thing. It really happened, for some idiot at Carnforth sheds built up her fire while her boiler was empty. This destroyed her firebox and she was subsequently broken up, this after 22 years of service (which is basically a child, by Furness standards).

Sometime after this, No. 2 was sold to a colliery in Northumberland, and nothing more is known of her fate.

Despite their ridiculous nobs, they were handsome engines and total badasses, thank you very much.