Bachmann 71-026 NG7 Scale Quarry Hunslet 0-4-0ST 'Britomart' Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Blue

Bachmann NG7 Scale Quarry Hunslet 0-4-0ST 'Britomart' Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Blue

QUARRY HUNSLET ‘BRITOMART’ HISTORY

The Quarry Hunslet locomotives were built by the Hunslet Engine Company of Leeds. Rather than denoting a single design, the term Quarry Hunslet refers to several different locomotive types, each built to a similar design, but with specifics suited to their intended use. The first Quarry Hunslets were the Penrhyn Port Class, built for shunting duties at Port Penrhyn, the coastal port of Penrhyn Quarry – once the largest slate quarry in the world. These locomotives sported a 4ft wheelbase and the first example was delivered in 1883.

In 1886 the nearby Dinorwic Quarry, Wales’s second largest slate quarry, took delivery of its first Quarry Hunslet, named ‘Velinheli’. Smaller than the Penrhyn locos with a wheelbase of just 3ft 3in, the second Dinorwic loco, delivered in 1889 and originally named ‘Alice’, would lend its name to the locomotive type and by 1904 eleven Alice Class Quarry Hunslets had been delivered to the Dinorwic Quarry. All were built to fundamentally the same design, although details inevitably changed over the years, but a notable feature of the Alice Class locos was the angled frames and resulting shallow bufferbeams at the front and rear. At the quarry the locomotives were moved between the various galleries and to and from works via the steep inclined planes – straight frames would bottom out on these steep inclines, a problem avoided by building the locos with angled frames.

Five similar locomotives were built for use at Port Dinorwic during the same period, these shared much the same design as the Alice Class locos but had straight frames which resulted in them sporting much deeper bufferbeams. The Alice Class also provided the blueprint for six more engines which were built for smaller concerns; the Pen-Yr-Orsedd Quarry which took three, Moel Tryfan Quarry had two, and a single example was delivered to the Dorothea Quarry. The Penrhyn Quarry placed orders for four of these smaller 3ft 3in. wheelbase locomotives too – these became known as the Penrhyn Small Quarry Class to avoid any association with their rivals the Dinorwic Quarry. Penrhyn Quarry would later order another six Quarry Hunslets, but these reverted to the 4ft wheelbase used on the Penrhyn Port Class locos; whilst very similar in design, this final batch of Quarry Hunslets were different enough to be known instead as the Penrhyn Large Quarry Class.

‘Britomart’ was the first of three locomotives built for the Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry, works number 707 delivered in 1899, and was later joined by ‘Sybil’ in 1903 and ‘Una’ in 1905. Built with an enclosed cab and named after a character in The Faerie Queen (a poem by Edmund Spenser published in 1596), ‘Britomart’ was employed at the quarry in the Nantlle Vale, North Wales until the mid-1960s. In 1965 she was sold to a private consortium of Ffestiniog Railway workers and volunteers, arriving on the Ffestiniog Railway in June and returning to steam the following year. The blue livery which ‘Britomart’ wore in service, and remains resplendent in now, is based on that of the former Great Northern Railway of Ireland. Today, the locomotive can still be found at the Ffestiniog Railway where it remains in operational condition.