Ninety-nine years old and steaming in for a North East debut
Make a date with Dora, says Tony Henderson
Dora, a 99-year-old steam locomotive, will be making her North East debut at a heritage railway gala event this weekend.
She will appear for the first time in the North East at Tanfield Railway’s Legends of Industry event on Saturday and Sunday (June 20-21).
Newly-restored, Dora is one of only a handful of surviving steam locomotives built by the Bristol-based Avonside Engine Company and was constructed in 1927 for the British Electricity Authority.
The engine, normally based on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in West Yorkshire, will join six of Tanfield’s own steam locomotives.
Although Tyneside-based locomotive manufacturers dominated North East industries, a small number of Avonside’s products found their way to the region, including sisters of Dora.
The Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company bought three in 1919 and 1920 for use in their pits, while Dean and Chapter Colliery in Ferryhill bought one named Angela second-hand in 1946.
Tanfield Railway general manager David Watchman said: “Locomotives built in other parts of the country were never that common in the collieries, shipyards and works of the North East, mainly because there were so many being built locally.
“But occasionally local industries did turn to the likes of Avonside when they needed engines in a hurry, or when the price was favourable.
“Bringing Dora to the North East will give us the chance to see how Avonside locomotives compare.”
The Legends of Industry gala weekend will also feature Twizell, built by Robert Stephenson and Company in 1891, and National Coal Board No. 49, which spent its career at Backworth Colliery in Northumberland.
The line-up will also include Tanfield’s Scottish-built pair of Horden and Stanley, which were built in Kilmarnock to work in County Durham.
All of the locomotives will be working passenger trains on the three-mile-long railway that runs from East Tanfield, near Stanley, to Sunniside on the outskirts of Gateshead.
Folk music and clog dancers The Cloth Cappers will be performing throughout the event at East Tanfield station from 11am-2pm.