Nearly 15 years since the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway (The Middy) started a project to restore Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 saddle tank No.1604, next Thursday, 8th December, the final stages will be in sight when its boiler returns from outside contractors.

Once the boiler is back at the railway’s workshops at Brockford, it will be united with the rest of the locomotive to make sure that all components fit together correctly. Final testing and certification of the locomotive can then take place.

Although the locomotive will not be steamed on December 8th as certification will not have taken place, it will be close to ready-to-run condition. The restoration team hopes that 1604 will be operational sometime next year.

When 1604 is back in operational condition, it will be re-numbered as No.4 since it will be the fourth locomotive to have been owned by the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway. Like 1604, the previous three, Nos 1, 2 and 3, were all built by Hudswell Clarke of Leeds but all were scrapped in the 1920s, soon after the London and Northeastern Railway took over the Mid-Suffolk.

During its working life, 1604 spent over 40 years working at the British Sugar Corporation factory at Bardney in Lincolnshire, having been there since new in 1928.

The Mid-Suffolk Light Railway sees the introduction into operational service of its own steam locomotive is a major step forward in securing its future. As well as being an attraction in its own right, it will also reduce the cost of hiring in steam locos whenever the railway holds an open Steam Railway day as, like everything else, hiring costs are getting no cheaper.

John Durrant, the railway’s Locomotive Superintendent said, “There have been many times when people doubted if it could be done, understandable as she is coming up to 100 years old, but here we are entering the final straight of bringing 1604 back into traffic”.