With most of the railway collection of the former railway museum at the National Trust’s Penrhyn Castle now dispersed, Mark Pearce takes a fond look back at this unusual centre of industrial locomotive preservation.
If you’d just stumbled across it, you’d assume your eyes were deceiving you. Turn a corner into a cobbled courtyard in the midst of a massive stately home – turrets on the horizon and grandeur all around. You might be expecting to see some suits of armour, a few prized oil paintings in gilded frames, or something else that stately homes normally like to display… but no. Peering out from what was originally a stable block is one of the finest collections of industrial steam locomotives in the UK.
Or rather, was. Because this is Penrhyn Castle, a huge stone-faced 19th ‐century extravagance overlooking the coastline near Bangor in North Wales that was constructed for the Pennant family. It was designed by well-known architect Thomas Hopper and showed the wealth of this English family, famous in railway circles for their slate quarry and, of course, narrow gauge railways. Famous also among local people for the longest running industrial dispute in British history.
That railway heritage is not vanishing entirely, but one of the most idiosyncratic railway museums certainly is, along with the dispersal of most of its collection. Indeed, by the time you read this, the majority of locomotives are due to be safely ensconced in new homes – albeit a little less grand.
Last of its kind
Although exclusively focused on industrial locomotives, not even the most hardened devotee of Ian Allan’s ABCs for main line machines could ever accuse the collection of being unimportant. From an 1840s-built Crampton-style tender engine, to an exquisitely preserved 1890s steelworks saddle tank – each of them was a gem with a story to tell. The fact that the National Trust, not exactly known for its railway interests, was the creator and custodian of the museum and its artefacts speaks to just how unusual this place was.
What makes the passing doubly sad is that the railway museum at Penryhn was arguably the last of its kind. In the formative days of railway preservation, there was no time (or money) to start constructing new buildings to house railway museums. The race to find a home for hastily preserved rolling stock, freshly saved from the scrapman, was real in the 1960s.
