Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway 0-4-2WT No. 1 'Gazelle'
Tenterden, Kent, UK 		Location: Kent & East Sussex Railway
Status: Display
Posted: Jul 19, 2008 @ 13:07:33 by Steve Frost
This unusual survivor is that rarest of items - the private owner's 'personal engine'. Built for a wealthy business man, William Burkitt. He is said to have travelled from King's Lynn to Chesterfield on it, fulfilling a boyhood boast, although by then in his 70s. The loco really saw little use after this and was sold after Mr Burkitt's death to T.W.Ward, locomotive dealer and scrap merchant, who subsequently re-sold it to Colonel Stephens for use on the Shropshire and Mongomeryshire Railway as an inspection loco. It was rebuilt by Bagnalls and lost its original 2-2-2T wheel arrangement and its elegant Mansell drivers of 45 inch diameter in the process.

The Shropshire and Montgomeryshire was, like most of the Colonel's railways, a poverty stricken outfit, and would have died but for the Second World War when the army took over and operated it to serve ammunition storage in the area. They took to 'Gazelle' (Well, its cute, isn't it!) and this may have been instrumental in its survival. In 1950, the army handed the S&MR to British Railways, who promptly condemned everything - except 'Gazelle', which went to the Longmoor Military Railway on loan and eventually ended up in the Museum of Army Transport at Beverley. When that closed it has moved to the very appropriate site of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.