63395

I've not seen this locomotive on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway before. This is 63395 and the fireman invited me onto the footplate to take this photograph. This was the 1500 out of Pickering, bound for Grosmont.

The Q6 was an unglamorous freight workhorse that plied the tracks of the north east of England for fifty years. Remarkably, along with the class J27s, it was one of the very few pre-Grouping steam locomotives to survive right up to the end of steam on British Railways.

Capturing the imagination of countless enthusiasts in the final days of steam operation in County Durham and Northumberland, one of the last survivors, 63395, became the subject of a purchase appeal by the Newcastle based North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group, which had successfully acquired a J27, 65894, in November 1967.

Following purchase, the locomotive, like 65894, was restored to work on the then fledgling North Yorkshire Moors Railway, being delivered in June 1970, but was withdrawn for a major ten-year overhaul in 1982.

Text from NELPG