7820 Dinmore Manor

Dinmore  Manor has arrived at Toddington at last, so I thought it would be a nice idea to run a bit of an article on her to welcome her and the Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD (DMLL) group to the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway.

The Great Western Railway started the Manor class with a batch of just 20 locomotives built in 1938.  The intention was to create a lightweight engine capable of operating on 'blue routes', yet possessing the stability of a 4-6-0 wheel arrangement which would be able to replace Churchward's successful yet by this time ageing 43XX class.  Much of the weight saving was achieved by the use of a new boiler, smaller than those in use on other GWR 4-6-0 locos which became designated Standard No 14. Much of the rest of the locomotive shared common parts with the Granges.

A further batch of 20 was ordered by the GWR in 1939, but WWII intervened at this point and the order was cancelled.  It wasn't until 1950 that more were finally built. By this time of course the order was placed by the recently formed British Railways, and it had been scaled back to just 10 examples.  7820, Dinmore Manor was the first of this second batch.

The class is mostly associated these days with the Cambrian line however they were also to be found in many places within the GWR network, including on Newcastle to Swansea services with a Manor taking over at Banbury.  These services ran through Stow-On-The Wold and Cheltenham. Both Gloucester and Cheltenham had an allocation of Manors.

The later batch of engines were built at a cost of £8,189 each.  I expect that the DMLL wish that her current rebuild had come in at that price.  The price did not include the tender as Manors weren't provided with new ones, but received tenders liberated from withdrawn locomotives instead.  During her 15 years of BR service, she was attached to seven different tenders, the first being number 1750 of 1907, originally built for 2926, Saint Nicholas. Other tenders that she was paired with during her BR life, included ones originally built for; 3802 County Clare, 4119 Primrose & 4016 Knight of the Golden Fleece.

Manors were the last GWR 4-6-0 class to remain intact, the first withdrawal wasn't until April 1963, with the last two surviving until December 1965. Dinmore Manor survived in traffic until November 1965.  A quirk of fate saw a large proportion of the class sent to the legendary Barry Island Scrapyard and as a consequence, 9 examples, nearly a third of the class, still remain today. All bar 7808, Cookham Manor were saved via Barry Island Scrapyard.  As a testament to the usefulness of these engines, all 9 have been restored and seen at least one boiler ticket in preservation.

In BR use, Dinmore Manor's shed allocations were extremely diverse, commencing with Oswestry, she also spent time at Aberystwyth, Chester, Laira, Truro, St Blazey, Canton, Cardiff East Dock, Oxley & finally Shrewsbury.  She spent a third of her working life at Plymouth Laira (83D), from December 1954 until September 1959.  To mark this fact, she will soon be fitted with an 83D shed plate.

What of the building that Dinmore Manor Was named after?  Situated 8 miles north of Hereford, it dates from 1189 and is now the private residence of Martin Dawes the mobile phone tycoon.  Situated at an elevation of 500', it commands views of the Malvern hills.  The associated land around the manor is used as a horse stud farm.  The grounds also incorporate a 1200 year old yew tree.  Needless to say, one of the original nameplates is on display in the house.

Dinmore Manor

Dinmore Manor entered Barry Island Scrapyard in May 1966 and remained there until September 1979 when she left for the Gwili Railway. No restoration work was undertaken at the Gwili Railway and it wasn't until she moved to the West Somerset Railway in 1985 that work commenced, though ultimately, much work was done at Tyseley.  She finally returned to traffic on the West Somerset Railway in September 1995.

7820 at Minehead on the West Somerset Railway

7820 on the West Somerset Railway

Since Dinmore Manor was taken out of traffic in 2004, DMLL have been painstakingly rebuilding her at Tyseley, with the boiler work being carried out by Ian Riley at Bury.  The following collection of photographs of her restoration were kindly provided courtesy of Mike Solloway:

On the turntable at Tyseley

Mechanical help required

Off her driving wheels

Inside the frames

Boiler work in progress

New throat plate

Work progresses on the boiler

New tube plate

Out of frames steam test

DMLL volunteers and their boiler

Brake rigging assembly

If you can assemble flat pack furniture, then putting this lot together should be no problem

Boiler in frames

Motion assembled

Ready to leave for Toddington

There was no small element of irony on Wednesday, road transport was responsible for the scaling down of the railways, yet the low-loader sent to fetch Dinmore Manor from Tyseley to Toddington managed to break down, resulting in her arriving a day late. 

Dinmore Manor 1 : 0 Low-Loader

Arriving at Toddington.  Photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

She is now safely tucked up in the David Page shed and needs a few more tweaks before she is ready for her in frames boiler exam on 7th March:

7820 brought the sunshine with her

The blower and ejector pipes still need fitting

Mike getting to work on the blower pipe work

Dinmore Manor

Mark and Mike couldn't resist trying out the footplate for size.  Mark seems quite happy about things, even though somebody appears to have nicked the regulator handle.  Look as he might, Mike couldn't find a shovel up there.

Something missing!

So, other than the regulator, what exactly is missing then?   When asked, Mike replied that the list of tasks left to do were: "Make & fit ejector exhaust pipe, split pinning of bogie, some cylinder cladding to be fitted, fit cab floor, complete grate/drop section installation, fit brick arch, modify damper door linkages to suit new ash pan, fit handrails, carry out valve setting, packing of valve and piston rods, fit cab seats, insurance steam test, run in. Relax".  Let's hope that the 'Relax' item on the list comes soon.

More sources of information on Dinmore Manor and her sister DMLL locomotives have been available for some time now amongst the plethora of links in the right hand margin of this blog, however should you have failed to find them so far, here they are again:

Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD on facebook
Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD on flickr
2874 Blog
7820 Blog
Dinmore Manor Official website