Poppy Line Spaceship to Land at Bressingham

 

The North Norfolk Railway and Bressingham Steam Museum today announce a partnership that will see out of ticket 9F No. 92203 “Black Prince” head from her North Norfolk base and spend the next two years on loan as one of the star exhibits at the famous Steam Museum.

  

NNR Interim General Manager, Graham Hukins explained “This is an excellent arrangement for both the NNR and Bressingham: we need to store Black Prince until workshop space and funding are available for her overhaul and the Steam Museum has room in their standard gauge exhibition hall.

 

“We anticipate this exciting initiative being the start of a mutually beneficial collaboration between the two organisations” he added.

 

 Chair of the trustees at Bressingham Steam Museum, Chris Leah, commented “We at Bressingham are delighted and proud that the North Norfolk Railway wish to partner with us to house its iconic 9F loco Black Prince. It will be on show here at Bressingham and we are looking forward to working with North Norfolk on a programme of joint promotions.
All visitors will be welcome and it is pleasing that two East Anglian organisations can work together for the benefit of steam preservation.”

 

The locomotive’s final public appearance (for now) at the North Norfolk Railway took place earlier today and saw the Friends of Black Prince – the engine’s very own supporters’ club – and members of the public enjoy a behind the scenes tour of the line’s locomotive sheds at Weybourne to see No. 92203.

 

The engine will be towed to Sheringham ready to be loaded on to a low-loader for the journey across Norfolk to Bressingham which is scheduled for Monday 29 April enabling the mammoth locomotive to make her first static appearance at the Steam Museum’s Annual Heritage Steam Gala on 4, 5 and 6 May. The event will feature visiting road steam engines, steam farmyard demonstrations, a mixture of stationary and portable engines, the popular Victorian Gallopers and steam trains operating on all four of the museum’s railways, allowing visitors to see and travel behind a variety of miniature, narrow gauge and standard gauge engines.

 

No. 92203 was withdrawn from traffic earlier this year after covering almost 35,000 miles in the decade since her last overhaul. The locomotive is a British Railways 9F heavy freight engine and the type were nicknamed “spaceships” by enthusiasts as when viewed side on the gap between the running plate and the wheels gave the appearance of the boiler floating and resembling a UFO!  Having been built at Swindon in 1959 the powerful engine had a working life of just eight years with British Railways before being withdrawn in November 1967.  Fortunately 92203 was purchased by wildlife artist and railway enthusiast, David Shepherd, and it was he that named the engine Black Prince.

 

The locomotive had spells at the Longmoor Military Railway, Eastleigh Depot the East Somerset Railway and the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway before moving to Norfolk. In September 1982 it worked the heaviest steam-hauled freight train in Britain, 2,198 tonnes, at Foster Yeoman’s Tor Works.

 

Despite the absence of Black Prince, the North Norfolk Railway’s steam trains will run every day except Mondays and Fridays in May and daily through the summer. To supplement the line’s own fleet of working locomotives, the line is welcoming a number of visitors this summer including another Swindon-built goods engine No 4277 “Hercules” dating from 1920. Trains run through 5½ miles of wonderful scenery between the Victorian resort of Sheringham and the Georgian town of Holt. Full details and timetables can be found at www.nnrailway.co.uk/opening-dates/ and passengers booking online in advance receive a generous discount.

 

ENDS