BRITAIN’S CURRENT largest operational steam locomotive has been returned to traffic – in a private garden.
Owned by David Buck and based at his private railway in Berkshire, the five-foot gauge Finnish ‘HR1’ class ‘Pacific’ – outshopped as No. 91016 ‘Lady Patricia’ – was steamed for the first time in a decade over the weekend of June 24/25. It runs along 400 feet of track. Originally built in 1955 as Works No. 946 by Oy Tampella Ab, it is described by Buck as a cross between a ‘B1’ and a ‘Britannia’. He said: “It performs very well, which is great.”
Explaining the ‘Anglicisation’ of the locomotive, he said most continental engines “have superfluous pipes and adornments on the boiler and the first thing I did was I worked out what you needed and what you didn’t need and every pipe that wasn’t needed was removed and those that were needed were re-routed so they weren’t on the outside. It has a clean finish now and she looks clean and very British,” he added.
The locomotive – named ‘Lady Patricia’ after his wife – wears a British Railways lined Apple green livery, with early BR ‘cycling lion’ tender crest, “with s
