About the Fund

The project started life in the late 1990's under the aegis of South Devon Railway fireman John Besley, who worked hard to get the new locomotive off the ground until 2003 when work and family commitments forced him to hand over the controls to Cheshire-based SVR footplatemen driver Tony Massau and fireman Chris Proudfoot.

Initially, The 82045 Locomotive Fund maintained a fairly low profile, though a great deal of hard work was being done behind the scenes in order to put the project on a sound footing. The Fund has built up a rapidly growing nucleus of enthusiastic and supportive members and is quietly confident of success with this comparatively simple, practical newbuild scheme.

The flood damage experienced by the SVR between summer 2007 and spring 2008 caused us to put our plans on hold to some extent, as it did not seem right to promote ourselves too vigorously at a time when our home Railway itself need all the help it could get. However, since mid-2008 the 82045 project has moved on apace. SVR volunteers laid down an excellent reinforced concrete base at our dedicated site at Bridgnorth in June, and in November the locomotive's frame plates - cut, profiled and machined before the floods - were delivered to Bridgnorth after drilling at Boro' Foundry in Lye (Stourbridge) and installed in holding jigs made by Tony Massau (see News Update November 2008).

Other large components inherited from John Besley (two pairs of buffers, reportedly from an 08 diesel but of the correct type, and the chimney from Class 3 Mogul no.77014), previously held in Cheshire these are now at the SVR. The Fund has a sizeable collection of smaller parts, including driver's brake valve, sanding gear, firehole doors, lamp brackets, bunker steps, assorted grab- and handrails and many other items. We have also built up a large library of BR drawings of the 82000 class, and these have already been used to construct the frames, buffer beams and buffer beam gusset brackets, the latter having been cast from patterns made by SVR pattern-maker Brian Oldford.

We are now making excellent progress towards the creation of a complete frame assembly at Bridgnorth. This will initially be bolted together at our site, then moved into Bridgnorth Works to be riveted as a contract job. Once the frame assembly has been achieved, attention will be turned to wheeling the chassis so that it can be moved in and out of the workshops as required.

The original aspiration was to build the boiler and firebox first, achievement of this goal being the ultimate proof of seriousness of intent. A provisional quotation of approximately £300,000 was obtained from Roger Pridham in late 2004, though with the rising prices of steel and copper in the meantime, the Fund expect an appreciably higher eventual cost for this item.

The intention is that the boiler and firebox should be of traditional construction - lapped and riveted steel boiler, copper inner firebox and firebox tubeplate - both because we would like 82045 to be as authentic as possible, and because traditional boilersmithing skills are still more readily available. Main problem here is the extreme scarcity of the correct grade of arsenical copper and its consequent very high market price. An all-steel firebox would be possible, but staying arrangements would then need to be altered.

Although the Fund is pressing ahead with the frame construction, we still nurture a wish to build the boiler and firebox and would love to hear from anyone who would be prepared to sponsor this, so if there are any interested parties out there, please do get in touch!

We have no personal ambitions with 82045: we simply want it to be built and would be more than happy to build it on behalf of a benefactor, the only criterion being that the engine should be based on the SVR, though available for hire to other heritage lines.

We consider that the SVR is an ideal home: it has a 16-mile operating length, steam railway engineering know-how that is unsurpassed in modern Britain, and it is also historically correct for this locomotive since examples of the class worked over the line throughout the 1950's and early 1960's. It is hoped that as much as possible of the work involved in building 82045 will be done under contract at the railway's Bridgnorth Works.

Although based on the SVR, the Fund is an independent body. An earlier tie with the "Hengist" project was terminated by mutual consent in 2003, and the only affiliation now is with the BR Standard Locomotive Owners' Group (BRSLOG), an informal consortium of individuals and organisations concerned with the surviving (and planned newbuild) Riddles locomotives. This meets twice a year and is a valuable forum for cooperation as well as providing an interesting overview of the status quo of all these locos.

How the Fund Began

John Besley, the originator of the scheme (and not to be confused with John Beesley of footplate clothing & equipment supplies!), writes about the germination of the idea behind building the next BR Standard class 3 tank engine, 82045.