Furness Railway 0-4-0 No. 29 (3) 'Coppernob'
York, Yorkshire, UK 		Location: National Railway Museum
Status: Display
Related Notes
Photo Copyright © Russell Newman
Here are the notes for Furness Railway No. 29 (3) 'Coppernob', a 0-4-0 located in York, Yorkshire. If you have additional information about this locomotive, and would like to share it, click the Add Note button.
Posted: Jul 4, 2011 @ 12:07:21 by Steve Frost
At last the Railway Museum has moved No 3 to a better lit location so I've moved my grim photo of 'Coppernob' to the album, mainly to show how poor the lighting was in its old position in the Station Hall. On my most recent visit, in July 2011, it had pride of place on the turntable in the Great Hall and the shrapnel holes in the tender from the 1940s bombing raid on Barrow in Furness could be better seen, too.
Posted: Nov 4, 2008 @ 14:11:01 by Steve Frost
The preceding note is, of course, quite true, but since the loco's been down there since September 1892 and the mine has been filled in, its current situation is somewhat difficult to ascertain. Perhaps some suicidal mining expert could visit the site at Lindal to find out how No 115 is doing after 116 years underground! The crew and the tender survived, but the loco was not thought worth recovery, which probably tells you a lot.

This is the possible origin of the 'Thomas the Tank Engine' story where the luckless Thomas suffered the same fate as Furness 115 but lived to tell the tale.

Posted: Nov 4, 2008 @ 13:11:34 by New York Central
There is another surviving Furness Railway engine. It is a coal burning 0-6-0, Number 15. It is currently about 200 feet below after a pit mine collapsed under it and she was buried.
Posted: Sep 15, 2003 @ 09:09:22 by Steve Frost
'Coppernob' gets its name from the huge polished copper haystack firebox that fills the picture here. A very early loco from the days when a passenger loco was a 2-2-0 and a freight loco was an 0-4-0, often using the same type of boiler, cylinders, etc. Bury built many of this type, and this is a rare survivor of the very early days of main line railways in the UK.

Built for the Furness Railway, based in Barrow in Furness in what is now Cumbria, but was then part of Lancashire, she was preserved at Barrow in a greenhouse-like structure which resembled the famous Crystal Palace. During World War II a German bomb showered the engine with shrapnel, so it was removed for safety. There are still holes in the tender from this damage. Later the loco was displayed at the Transport Museum at Clapham, south London, and was moved to the National Railway Museum in York in 1975. A great treasure from the early days.