JAMES SPOONER
As the Ffestiniog Railway welcomes the completion of its seventh ever double Fairlie, James Spooner, Steam Railway tells the full story behind Britain’s newest steam locomotive.
Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself? In 1979, the Ffestiniog Railway completed its first new steam locomotive of the preservation era – double Fairlie Earl of Merioneth. The austere, angular machine had been built to replace the life-expired 1886-built double Fairlie Livingston Thompson. But rather than subject the Victorian machine to a heavy rebuild along similar, controversial lines as 1879-built Fairlie Merddin Emrys – thus erasing the locomotive’s classic Spooner-era styling and destroying much historic material – the arrival of the new Earl of Merioneth allowed Livingston Thompson to be conserved in aspic, and preserved as a cherished museum exhibit.
Fast forward 40-odd years and the story has come full circle. In 2018, Earl of Merioneth was retired needing significant attention, but having become an important part of the FR’s history in its own right, and with there being a desire to conserve the ‘Earl’s’ unique shape, the FR decided to store Earl of Merioneth in the old engine shed at Boston Lodge and replace it with a new double Fairlie – James Spooner.
Spooner the first
First announced in late March 2016, James Spooner takes its name and some design cues from the FR’s 1872-built double Fairlie. The original James Spooner was the second double Fairlie built for the Ffestiniog, following the pioneering and game-changing Little Wonder of 1869. Named after the FR’s original surveyor and first manager, James Spooner was built by the Bristol manufacturer Avonside. This was because the Hatcham Iron Works in Surrey, which had built Little Wonder, had closed in 1870 after the death of George England Junior – Fairlie’s business partner and son of George England, who had built the first steam locomotives (Prince, Princess, Mountaineer, Palmerston, Welsh Pony, and Little Giant) for the FR in the 1860s. As Avonside was one of the builders favoured by Fairlie for building his locomotives, it got the gig for building James Spooner.
Although built to Fairlie’s patent, James Spooner was actually designed by George Percival ‘Percy’ Spooner, the son of the FR’s then secretary/manager Charles Easton Spooner and grandson of James Spooner. It was on this engine that the classic Ffestiniog Fairlie features started to appear, such as the drumhead smokeboxes, the round-ended apron at either end, the curved-edge water tanks, and the large, rectangular spectacle plates. Like Little Wonder and unlike the later double Fairlies, James Spooner was originally built with a parallel boiler, while
